Kurdish Observer (MJ)
majeed.jafar@maxima.se

The US late President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger landed in Tehran on their way to China. Both of them and the Shah of Iran, the then close and loyal ally of the USA, met the late Kurdish national leader Mustafa Barzani in the Iranian capital and promised their support for the Kurdish people struggle against the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein until they reach their legitimate human, cultural and political rights.

In March 1975, the President and his Secretary of State as well as the Shah went back on their promises and, to put it very politely and mildly, dropped the Kurds and left them at the (un)mercy of the brutal and vengeful Iraqi regime in return for concessions to both the USA and the Shah. As a result, tens of thousands of Kurds became unwelcome “refugees” in Iran. Most of these refugees were then handed over to Saddam who forcibly re-settled them in western and southern Iraq far away from their homes in Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

Understandably, the Kurdish people bitterly felt betrayed and angered especially by the USA. They never, in their darkest pessimism, could imagine that the President of a democratic superpower and his Secretary of State would or could renege on their promises to a people and their leaders who have suffered so much at the hands of ruthless and inhumane totalitarian and despotic regime. This reinforced the old Kurdish proverb, namely, “the Kurds’ only friends are the mountains”.

No one has resisted and fought the regime of Saddam so steadfastly and for such a long time as the Kurdish people of Iraq, withstanding his regime’s mass killing, mass forcible displacement, mass graves, etcetera etcetera. Thousands of villages were leveled with the ground, tens of thousands imprisoned, killed and gassed to death; hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced, deported abroad or became exiles. All this happened while the US various Administrations and the West in general were arming and economically, politically and diplomatically supporting that very tyrannical regime up until its occupation of Kuwait.

In 1991 the Kurdish people rose against the regime of Saddam, who responded by his typical ruthlessness and vengeance. In response to mounting public opinion pressure, the USA, G. Britain and France decided to create the no-flight zone in parts of the Kurdish region and in the south. Saddam withdrew his troop from some areas of the Kurdish region.

The US present Administration plans to clear Iraq of weapons of mass destruction by ridding the country of Saddam’s regime and replace it with a democratic system of government under which "Iraq will provide a place where people can see that the Shia and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a federation." (President George W Bush March 6, 2003). This stand is very significant and courageous. All Iraqis, especially the Kurds, hope the President means it. It would be cynical if it is merely a means of pressure on Turkey to allow the passage of the American army in order to open a northern front. The Administration wants the military participation and the active cooperation of Turkey in that endeavor, namely, to open a northern front passing through the Kurdish region. Nevertheless, the Turks do not want to participate in the fighting and the US maintains at the same time it does not really need that participation or passage. “We've got contingencies in place that, should our troops not come through Turkey -- not be allowed to come through Turkey. And, no, that won't cause any more hardship for our troops; I'm confident of that.” (President Bush, at the same press conference).

However, the Turkish government and army have their own hidden agenda and ambitions in the Kurdistan region in Iraq, as all indicators point out. They have made open statements to this effect. The Turkish army wants to occupy the region, disarm the Kurdish guerrillas, put their hands on the northern oil resources, deny the Kurds their very national identity and deprive them the freedom, democracy (as they have done with their own large Kurdish population) and self-rule they have been enjoying since 1991 and for which they had fought for almost a century.

How are the Kurds to solve this obvious and fundamental difference of agenda and ambitions between the USA and Turkey? Whom should they believe? What guarantees have the Kurds that (during and in the aftermath of the war and complexity of diplomacy and self-interests and power of the status quo) they will not be “dropped” now as then in the name of expediency and pragmatism? When Kissinger was later asked in a Congressional hearing why he and the Nixon Administration “dropped” the Kurds, his remorseless and callous reply was that he was conducting “foreign policy” and not “charity”! Will we hear something similar soon? This is a vital question that is beginning to haunt the Kurds again.

Will the USA and Britain, President Bush and Mr. Blair allow short term military considerations prevail over their moral commitments and public statements thus losing their credibility among the Kurdish people? Will they be party to new tragedies that will befall the Kurdish people in the eventuality of the Turkish government and army occupying northern Iraq and carrying out their outspoken hostile policies and hidden agenda against the Kurds of Iraq? I do not want to believe that. But, and it is a big but, recent history does not give me comfort. I remember US President W. Wilson’s declaration (World War One) on the rights of peoples under the Ottoman Empire control to self-determination not applied to the Kurdish people, the betrayal of March 1975, the total silence about the gassing of the people of Halabja in 1988 and the passivity towards the uprising of 1991 partly in response the call made by to President Bush senior. I really hope that I will be proven wrong and pessimistic.

How would the Kurds in particular and Iraqis at large look upon US declarations of concern for their freedom, democracy, prosperity and security and the safeguarding of the independence and territorial integrity of the whole of their country Iraq if Turkey is to be allowed to carry out what it has said it wants to do in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq?

How can Turkey accept federation, Kurdish national and cultural rights for the Kurds in Iraq while it denies its own large Kurdish population these very same rights? The former Shah of Iran reply to a question about why he “dropped” the Kurds of Iraq, he replied something like, how can I support the Kurds in Iraq get their rights and I have my own Kurdish population. It must be added that the

The Turkish government has sent troops to Cyprus in response to a military coup d’état in Athens and they are still there, after more than 20 years, against the wish of the whole world including the USA. What guarantees are there that Turkish troops will not come to Iraq to stay as they have done in Cyprus. What can the USA do if they refuse to leave? Neither the USA nor the UK will risk attempting driving them out by force when they overstay.

In the light of their historic experience (not only in Iraq but also in Turkey, Iran and Syria) the Kurdish people have all the reasons in the world to be suspicious and will not stay passive when they see their very hard won freedom, democracy and national and cultural rights are put at risk and threatened by a hostile foreign regional power that has nothing to do Iraq and is not welcome there in the first place. The USA mistaken attempt to pacify some areas of Iraq by bringing in (or as some cynics put it “imported”) troops from Iraq’s neighbors, will certainly lead to the alienation of a large friendly and peaceful area and people to an unfriendly and in all probability a hostile one. It will also lead to huge and unforeseeable problems and conflicts within Iraq and in the Middle East region immediately and in the longer run, without solving short term difficulties that can be dealt with by more active Iraqi participation.

It seems to be a very high price to pay (billions of dollars and new Iraqi and regional tensions and conflicts) for a hardly likely pacification of a small segment of the Iraqi population at the expense of alienating much larger, and friendly, sections. Some observers have begun to be suspicious about the real aims and intentions of the USA and add that, unless, there is, of course, a hidden agenda with aims that are not similar to the declared one, on the Kurds and on Iraq, or, to give the benefit of the doubt, the USA Administration has no clear vision and plan of action for Iraq and the Kurds and therefore, one hand does not really know what the other is or will be doing (the Defense Dept, the State Dept, the NSC and the CIA have different and sometimes conflicting views, visions and courses of action on how to deal with the various aspects of the Iraqi and Kurdish issues).

Some say times have changed and people have changed and policies have changed. Nevertheless, events are influenced by their own history and people are shaped by their historical experiences. History is a school with lessons to learn. The Kurdish people have their history, ancient and recent, a history of disappointments, of betrayals and of setbacks mostly triggered by outside forces. The Kurds in Iraq have had such bitter experiences with various forces, external (Britain, USA, Iran) as well as internal (Iraqi regimes and political forces); the Kurds in Turkey with Britain, USA Syria and Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal; the Kurds in Iraq with the former Soviet Union and the regimes of Iran. The smell it in the air, though it is colorless and odorless, like Halabja’s poison gas, and the Kurds feel it in the marrow of their bones again. There are too many indicators to ignore or to ignore.

A question that begs itself, and which can be put to President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, Secretary of Defense, State Secretary, Mr. Anan and others:

Need the Kurdish people in Iraq be dropped again as they have been so many times?

And why? Is it the price for not committing acts of terrorism, of fighting it; for active participation in the war of liberating Iraq; for actively cooperating with the Coalition during and after that war; for our hard won freedom and democracy and stability?