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CounterPunch
January
20, 2003
Will a US War Free the Kurds?
by PHIL GASPER
Right now, it suits the U.S. government's purposes
to support the Kurds--in part because they have the only armed
forces in Iraq opposed to the current regime. But Washington
and the West have a long record of betraying the Kurdish people.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group
in the world without their own country. Their total population
is around 26 million--with about half living in Turkey and most
of the rest in Iran, Iraq and Syria.
At the end of the First World War, when
the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East collapsed, U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson promised to create a Kurdish state within two
years. This promise, however, was soon forgotten, as Western
powers competed to control the region's oil.
British planes gassed and bombed Kurdish
villages in Iraq in order to enforce the borders that the colonial
rulers of London wanted. "I do not understand this squeamishness
about the use of gas," said Winston Churchill, Britain's
war secretary at the time. "I am strongly in favor of using
poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."
Meanwhile, the Turkish government brutally
repressed Kurds living in its territory, denying them freedom
of language and culture. This violated international treaties,
but the Western powers supported the Turks, who were seen as
a vital ally in preventing the spread of the Russian revolution.
At the end of the Second World War, Kurds
in northern Iran briefly set up their own republic. But the government
in Tehran soon crushed this experiment, with the backing of the
U.S. and Britain.
In the early 1970s, as tensions between
Iran and its neighbor Iraq increased, U.S. Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger agreed to support a plan devised by the Shah
of Iran to encourage an uprising by Kurds in Iraq. By 1975, Kissinger
had secretly channeled $16 million in military aid to the Kurds,
who believed that Washington was finally supporting their right
to self-determination.
But the following year, the House Select
Committee on Intelligence issued the Pike report, which revealed
that the U.S. never had any intention of supporting a Kurdish
state. "Documents in the Committee's possession clearly
show that the President [Richard Nixon], Dr. Kissinger and the
foreign head of state [the Shah of Iran] hoped that our clients
[the Kurds] would not prevail," the report concluded. "They
preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level
of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's
neighboring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our
clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting."
After Iran and Iraq resolved their border
dispute at the 1975 OPEC summit, however, the Iraqi government
was told that U.S. support for the Kurds would now be withdrawn.
The Iraqis immediately launched an aggressive campaign against
Kurdish rebels. "The insurgents were clearly taken by surprise,"
the congressional report recounted. "Their adversaries,
knowing of the impending aid cut-off, launched an all-out search-and-destroy
campaign the day after the agreement [with Iran] was signed.
"The autonomy movement was over, and our former clients
scattered before the [Iraqi] central government's superior forces."
As Iraq wiped out the remaining rebels,
the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani sent a message to Kissinger.
"Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable
way, with silence from everyone," Barzani said. "We
feel, your excellency, that the United States has a moral and
political responsibility towards our people, who have committed
themselves to your country's policy." Kissinger, however,
thought otherwise, and sent no reply.
According to the Pike report, "Over
200,000 refugees managed to escape into Iran. Once there however,
neither the United States nor Iran extended adequate humanitarian
assistance. In fact, Iran was later to forcibly return over 40,000
of the refugees, and the United States government refused to
admit even one refugee into the United States by way of political
asylum, even though they qualified for such admittance."
As usual, Kissinger had no trouble justifying
this cold-hearted behavior. "Covert action," he explained
to a congressional staffer, "should not be confused with
missionary work." As the Pike report concluded, "Even
in the context of covert actions, ours was a cynical enterprise."
This cynicism continued into the 1980s,
when, after the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah, the
U.S. began supporting Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq--even after
Baghdad used chemical weapons in its war on Iran.
During the course of the war, both Iran
and Iraq carried out brutal massacres of their own Kurdish populations.
In 1988, as the war was winding down, the Iraqi army carried
out its murderous and now infamous gas attacks on rebellious
Kurdish villages, which it accused of aiding Iran.
In response, some members of Congress
called for an end to U.S. military aid to Iraq and other mild
sanctions. But these measures were vigorously opposed by both
the Reagan and Bush administrations, which called them "premature"
and "misguided."
It was only after Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait in 1990 that Washington's concern for Kurdish rights suddenly
reappeared--during the build-up to the last Gulf War. George
Bush Sr. proclaimed that Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler and
said that the U.S. was fighting to free the Iraqi population.
But at the end of the war, when Shia
Muslims in the South and Kurds in the North rebelled against
the regime, the U.S. abandoned them--even permitting the Iraqi
military to use helicopter gunships to crush the insurrections.
Washington preferred a unified Iraq under Saddam to successful
rebellions that would have split the country and strengthened
Iran.
After the war, the U.S. and Britain unilaterally
established no-fly zones in the North and South of Iraq, claiming
that these were intended to protect the Kurds and the Shias.
But the real reason for the no-fly zones was to box in Saddam--in
the hope that he would be replaced by a more compliant dictator.
Although Kurds in northern Iraq have
taken the opportunity to establish a degree of autonomy for themselves,
the area is far from a safe haven. The U.S. permits the Turkish
military to cross the border and kill Kurdish rebels whenever
it pleases.
Though Washington condemns Iraq for its
treatment of the Kurds, it has supported Turkey's equally brutal
repression of its own Kurdish population, where more than 30,000
Kurds have been killed in the past two decades.
The U.S. may tolerate Kurdish autonomy
in northern Iraq for the time being. But it refuses to recognize
the Kurds' right to a state in the region, because that could
weaken allies such as Turkey, making it more difficult for Washington
to maintain control.
Weak leadership and antagonisms between
competing factions have greatly weakened the Kurdish struggle
for freedom. But after a century of Western betrayals, one thing
is sure--the Kurdish people must rely on their own struggle,
not Washington's false promises, to win liberation.
Phil Gasper
writes for the Socialist
Worker.
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