Al-Qaida links to Kurds complicate Bush's decisions
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Monday, August 26, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
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Al-Qaida links to Kurds complicate Bush's decisions
By Scott Taylor ON TARGET
WITH JUST A QUICK glance at a newspaper's headlines
last Tuesday, it seemed that the final nail had been put into the coffin
of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein. The banner headline in the Ottawa
Citizen
read: al-Qaida making chemical weapons in Iraq and the subhead explained
that the U.S. Air Force had considered launching airstrikes to eliminate
this deadly threat.
Curiously, it was U.S. President George W. Bush who
had ordered these airstrikes postponed. After he spent 11 months trying
to convince world leaders that Iraq poses an imminent global threat,
this latest revelation seemed almost too good to be true: al-Qaida
terrorists making weapons of mass destruction right in Saddam's
backyard.
So why would President Bush suddenly abort the
pre-emptive strike against such a clear-cut threat to U.S. interests?
The answer to this question was buried in paragraph four of the news
story, where it was first revealed that the al-Qaida stronghold was
actually located somewhere in the three northern provinces of Iraq.
Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's troops
have not been allowed to enter this region in compliance with the
cease-fire agreement. Although still recognized as sovereign Iraqi
territory, the predominantly Kurdish population has complete autonomy
from Baghdad.
The United Nations supervises the local Kurdish civil
authorities while the United States Air Force enforces the no-fly zone
to keep Iraqi military forces from entering this territory.
Over the past decade, despite the presence of
international monitors and constant air patrols, these three provinces
have remained virtually lawless.
Governed by bickering warlords, internal factional
conflicts have retarded genuine economic development while the drug and
arms trades have flourished. Under the umbrella of protection offered by
the U.S. Air Force, these Iraqi provinces have also become the staging
area for nationalist Kurdish guerrilla movements in neighbouring Turkey,
Syria, Iran and Armenia.
Now, provided U.S. intelligence reports are accurate,
we are to believe that al-Qaida operatives have also set up shop in this
UN protectorate. However, if we take to heart Bush's previous
pronouncements that his administration is dedicated to "eliminating
terrorists and those who harbour terrorists," suddenly such a scenario
is not so simple.
Presumably Bush will not start launching airstrikes
against the United Nations headquarters in New York, or shipping his own
Air Force pilots off to pigeon coops in Guantanamo Bay.
It has been widely publicized that, back in 1988,
Saddam Hussein's military used chemical weapons (that were supplied to
him by the United States and Britain) against rebellious Kurdish
guerrilla bases in northern Iraq. The U.S. State Department and hawkish
editors often use these incidents as examples of Saddam's "gassing his
own people" to illustrate the Iraqi dictator's evilness.
While no one can justify the inhumanity of poisoning
civilians and contravening the Geneva Convention, it now seems that
Saddam's Kurdish "victims" and their new al-Qaida cohorts are at least
playing by the same cold-blooded rules.
After centuries of conflict, there is admittedly no
love lost between the Iraqis and the Kurds. However, this year, when
Pentagon officials approached the Kurdish leaders to seek their military
assistance in overthrowing Saddam, they received a very cool response.
Any change of regime in Baghdad would mean a relative
loss of power for these warlords, as the international community would
undoubtedly insist upon an immediate security restructure within Iraq's
borders.
More importantly, the Kurds have no reason to trust
the Americans, and they're still bitter at being betrayed during the
Gulf War. With the Iraqi army shattered by the Coalition Forces and
forced to retreat from Kuwait, the Kurds launched a simultaneous attack
from the north. However, instead of supporting the Kurdish revolt (aimed
at overthrowing Saddam's regime), the Americans halted their own
offensive in southern Iraq. This reprieve allowed the remnants of the
Iraqi Republican Guard divisions to regroup, drive north and suppress
the Kurdish uprising.
Is it possible that Saddam's age-old Kurdish enemies,
by cozying up to al-Qaida terrorists, have also become America's
enemies? If so, it would certainly put a twist into President Bush's
declarations that you're "either with us or against us."
Further complicating matters was the news that the
Iraqi secret service allegedly shot and killed Abu Nidal, the notorious
Palestinian terrorist, in Baghdad. Nidal had dedicated his life to
launching attacks against the United States and Israel. To believe
current American propaganda, one would have expected Saddam to build
this guy a statue, not have him executed.
Of course, no real-life conflict is as predictable as
the plot of Hollywood High Noon-style Westerns, where the good guys wear
white hats and the bad guys wear black.
Revelations that the allies George Bush was trying to
recruit were harbouring the real enemy should go a long way towards
making people realize nothing is ever quite so simple, especially in the
Middle East.
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