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Sam v. Saddam: no easy victory
If the war on terror targets Iraq next, the U.S. shouldn't count on the
Kurds, says political scientist DAVID ROMANO
By DAVID ROMANO
Friday, December 21, 2001 - Page A19
As U.S. troops search the last remaining caves in Afghanistan, the
question seems to be not if, but when the Americans will pursue their
next target. A prime candidate is Iraq. Saddam Hussein might have
assisted the Sept. 11 terrorists, but even if he did not, his chemical,
biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons programs put him on the U.S.
target list. But can the Afghan experience be repeated?
The Afghan model pursued in Iraq would cast Kurdish groups in the
Northern Alliance role, and the operation would be launched from the
Kurdish autonomous zone in the north (created by the West in 1991 to
protect the Kurdish population from Mr. Hussein). The two Kurdish
parties that govern the autonomous area, the KDP (Kurdish Democratic
Party) and PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), can field roughly 60,000
experienced fighters. Like Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, Iraqi Kurds
are torn by plenty of divisions within their own ranks, but have many
years of experience in fighting Baghdad from their mountain hideouts. We
generally take it for granted that they would be eager, like the
Northern Alliance, to destroy Mr. Hussein's regime to the south of them.
But this is where the similarities with the Northern Alliance end. The
Kurds have some very good reasons to not support a campaign against
Baghdad. To begin with, Kurdish groups in Iraq have never sought to
control the entire country, but rather to carve out a degree of
self-government for themselves in their own mountainous region. Although
they loathe Mr. Hussein (he dropped chemical weapons on them in 1988,
part of a genocidal campaign that killed 100,000 to 200,000 Kurdish
civilians), they do not want to risk the freedom and self-government
they are enjoying at the moment. If the U.S. starts a campaign but fails
to see it through, the Kurds know all too well that they will pay the
price as soon as the Americans leave. And they do not trust the West,
particularly the United States.
In the early 1970s, the U.S., Israel and the Shah's Iran persuaded
Iraq's Kurds to rise up against Baghdad, but then changed their policies
on the issue and left the Kurds to be crushed by the Iraqi army. In
1988, when Mr. Hussein was the West's ally against fundamentalist Iran,
we dutifully ignored reports that he was using mustard gas against
rebellious Kurdish villages and had massacred as many as 180,000 Kurdish
civilians. Finally, as the Persian Gulf war came to an end in March of
1991, George Bush Sr. encouraged the Iraqi people to depose Mr. Hussein.
When Shia Muslims in the south, along with the Kurds, followed his
advice, they were left holding the proverbial bag, to be slaughtered by
Mr. Hussein's Republican Guard.
Only two things saved Iraq's Kurds in 1991 and led to the creation of
the autonomous Kurdish safe haven: the public outcry as CNN cameras
filmed columns of fleeing Kurdish refugees being strafed by Iraqi
helicopter gunships, and the fear that Turkey, which has its own
rebellious Kurdish minority, would be overrun by hundreds of thousands
of refugees. As the only way of encouraging the refugees to return home,
the gulf war allies created the haven and committed themselves to
launching air strikes against Iraqi troops if they crossed into the
protected zone.
Since the haven's creation, however, Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed their
first experience with self-rule. Although they still have their share of
problems (many of their own making), the experiment has been a success:
They held free and fair elections in 1992 for a Kurdish regional
government, people are free to say and publish whatever they like, and
civil society is thriving.
While Iraq languishes under the sanctions regime and its children die of
starvation, standards of living in the Kurdish area have risen to a
point higher than before the gulf war (despite the application of the
same international sanctions to the Kurdish haven). Villages, roads and
hospitals have been rebuilt, and modern supermarkets complete with
automated check-out scanners and uniformed clerks have sprouted up. Only
the stance of the international community and neighbouring Turkey, Iran
and Syria has prevented the Kurds from officially declaring their own
state, which they have in all but name.
So the question is, do they want to risk it all to join the American war
on terrorism? Given past betrayals, their co-operation would require
iron-clad Western guarantees for continuing protection and either a
Kurdish state or real autonomy (in their view, autonomy that gives them
about as much self-determination as they have now). But the U.S. cannot
promise the Kurds much, mainly because of Turkish objections.
Although Iranian and Syrian opposition to Kurdish statehood or autonomy
(both have Kurdish minorities of their own) can be ignored by the U.S.,
Turkey is a solid American ally, a member of NATO and, in the U.S. view,
the most important bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism.
Turkey's opposition to Kurdish gains in Iraq goes much further than
Pakistan's disdain for the Northern Alliance -- Turkish Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit recently declared the establishment of a Kurdish state
there to be causus belli. To Ankara, a true Kurdish state would set an
undesirable example for the 10 million to 12 million Kurdish citizens of
Turkey (around 20 per cent of the population).
As a result, if the U.S. wants to use the Afghanistan model in Iraq, it
will either have to get the Kurds on board with false promises (again),
or renege on assurances made to Turkey that the Kurdish autonomous zone
would never become a permanent entity. Neither course of action bodes
well for Washington's image.
David Romano is senior research fellow at the Interuniversity Consortium
for Arab and Middle East Studies at McGill University.
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