BADOLATO, Italy (CN) — There is no war in Badolato.
Instead, it is the peaceful old town in Calabria where the children of war feel at home.
On a warm July evening, the young Kurds who've fled their war-torn homelands met as they often do on the benches of a large square in Badolato, a fortress-like Norman town perched on a ridge with views onto the Ionian Sea.
The Kurds, all of them from northern Iraq, hardly spoke a word of Italian or any language other than their native ones. Their English was spotty at best.
Fortunately, one among them was fluent in Italian, a 24-year-old agriculture student who's studied in Italy since 2014.
Jamal Abdulqader introduced himself and spoke for the others, translating each of the men's stories about how they made it to Badolato.
Several told a common story: They left Iraq after the Islamic State attacked. They departed on foot and took months to arrive in Italy after crossing Turkey. One of the young men said his father was killed by IS fighters.
“We want so much for there to be a Kurdistan,” Abdulqader said, referring to the unrealized nation Kurds want so badly.
Kurds make up one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a nation. There are roughly between 30 million and 45 million people of Kurdish ethnicity spread across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, former Soviet republics and Europe.
Kurds, who are united by language and customs, are generally Muslim by faith, but for historical, ethnic and religious reasons were rejected by much of the Muslim world. They have suffered genocide, persecution and other horrors.
“Everyone around Kurdistan doesn't like the Kurds,” Abdulqader said. “They're all enemies: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Arabs, Turks, Persians.”
The story of the Kurds is as old as human civilization.
Erbil, a city of 1.5 million people in northern Iraq, is considered the Kurdish capital. It also may be the oldest human settlement that continues to be lived in.
Today, Erbil is the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq and its 5 million people, most of them Kurds. Effectively, this is the first Kurdish nation, but the young men said it has deep problems and the threat of violence hangs over it.
“It's a beautiful country,” Abdulqader said of Kurdistan. “I would like to live there. But it's the [Kurdish-Iraqi] government that doesn't work.”
With a glint of hope in his eyes, he added: “If there is peace there, it will become the most beautiful country in the world.”
At the conclusion of World War I and with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies began carving up lands once ruled by the sultans of Istanbul.
This led to the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 and in this division of spoils the allies made room for a new nation called Kurdistan. But two years later, further defining new national boundaries, the allies crafted a new treaty — the Treaty of Lausanne — and in it there was no provision for the state of Kurdistan.
“Kurdistan was divided into four parts: one part was in Iraq, one part in Iran, one part in Syria and one part in Turkey,” Abdulqader said.
Since then, he lamented, no country has been willing to give up lands to make way for a Kurdish state.
“I am tired of living there,” he said. “There is no future. The government is against me. All the other countries are against me; I wouldn't be able to find a job because they don't leave you alone.”
From the square, the young men headed for dinner at one of two stone houses that the town of Badolato has set aside for them. They sleep in shared bedrooms on cots, eat together and study at a small refugee center below town.