Peoples Across Borders

The Kurds are widely described as the largest ethnic group in the world without an internationally recognized state, with a homeland straddling Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Their autonomy in Iraq after 1991 shows one answer to the question this trail asks.

The Yazidi are centered on the Sinjar region of northern Iraq and hold a faith that does not accept converts. The 2014 campaign against them, recognized by the United Nations and several governments as genocide, turned a regional minority into a scattered diaspora.

The Assyrians trace their communal identity to Mesopotamia, yet their homeland now spans parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran and a large diaspora in the United States, Sweden and Australia. Whether Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac names describe one people is itself debated within the community.

The Druze live in the mountain regions of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, including the Golan Heights, and belong to a closed faith that accepts no converts. Druze citizens of Israel serve in the military, a civic position distinct among Israel's Arabic-speaking minorities.

The Pashtun are divided between Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan by the Durand Line, a colonial-era border that remains disputed between the two states. Their tribal genealogies and the customary code Pashtunwali have kept shaping social life across that line.

The Amazigh are the indigenous peoples of North Africa, spread from the Rif and Kabylie to the Atlas ranges and Saharan oases. After decades of activism, Tamazight became an official language in Morocco in 2011 and in Algeria in 2016.

The Tuareg are Berber-speaking pastoralists whose range crosses Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso. Their confederations were long tied to trans-Saharan caravan trade, and armed autonomy movements in Mali and Niger since the 1960s show the strain of living under postcolonial frontiers.

The Fulani stretch across the Sahel from Senegal and Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, among the most geographically extensive peoples in the world. They range from nomadic cattle herders to settled townspeople, and their history includes the nineteenth-century Sokoto Caliphate.

The Somali live across Somalia, Ethiopia's Somali Region, Djibouti and northern Kenya, bound by one language and a segmentary clan system that structures alliance and customary law, called xeer. Civil conflict since 1991 has scattered one of the world's largest diasporas.

The Hmong are a highland people of Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and southern China, organized around patrilineal clans. Recruitment of Hmong in Laos during the Vietnam War era and reprisals afterward led to refugee resettlement in the United States, notably in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Roma trace their origins to migrations from the Indian subcontinent about a thousand years ago and are today the largest ethnic minority in Europe. Several subgroups share a Romani-language heritage, and documented discrimination in housing, education and employment remains a European policy concern.