I’ve been fighting for half a century. With my people I have been through mass killings, deportations, gassings. I remember times when we thought we were done for, headed for extermination.

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I’ve been fighting for half a century. With my people I have been through mass killings, deportations, gassings. I remember times when we thought we were done for, headed for extermination. I remember times, as in 1991 after the first war against Saddam, when the democracies came to our rescue but left the dictatorship in place, thus casting us back into the shadows. During those decades of resistance, of hopes dashed and reborn, I never imagined that in my lifetime I would see the day when, at the end of an exemplary electoral process unmarred by any major incident or petty political dispute, my people would finally be able to come together and express to the world their desire to be democratic and free. That day came; and it is the happiest day of my life. It’s as if everything I’ve done and dreamed of, all of the struggles that we went through together, converged at that moment.