Kurdistan:
a history
of
betrayal
FOUR million Iraqi Kurds have left everything to flee Saddam Hussein's killing machine. A million people have reached the Turkish and Iranian frontiers; each day hundreds die of hunger, cold and disease. The war took place in the Gulf, but its bitter fruits are reaped in Kurdistan. Now the allies have entered northern Iraq to set up refugee camps. FUAT ORÇUN
K URDISTAN appears on the first
maps of the region drawn by the imperialists at the end of the First World War. But their realization that a powerful Turkey would be more profitable for them, combined with Britain's insistence on keeping control of northern Iraq, and, finally, the absence of an independent Kurdish leadership, capable of proposing its own alternatives, led to the Kurdish question dropping off the
After a series of unsuccessful attempts at uprisings, the end of the Second World War saw the beginnings of change in Kurdistan — not in the more politicized Iraqi and Turkish parts, but in Iran. The Soviet Union was in control of the north of this country and its presence speeded up the development of national consciousness among the Azeris and Kurds. After the Soviet withdrawal at the end of the war, these two peoples took advantage of the political void left behind and formed their own political organizations. In 1946, the Kurdish republic of Mahabad came into being, before being crushed within a year by the regular Iranian army.
The leader of the Mahabad republic's main military force was an Iraqi Kurd, Barzani. He drew an important lesson from the defeat: "In fact, the Kurds were not crushed by the Iranian army; it was the English and the Americans who
forced the Soviets to withdraw."
Thus, according to Barzani, the Kurdish national liberation movement could not be considered as an independent factor, but only in strict subordination to external forces. This analysis has been preponderant over the decades, insofar as the traditional leaderships, system, have been in control. The international situation is for them more than just one factor in the political struggle; it is its dominant element.
In 1945 the dominant imperialist power in the region was Britain. But the United States, which held the Israeli card ready, was challenging Britain's supremacy. An important factor for the Kurdish national movement, even if it only weighed indirectly, was Soviet influence in the region; starting in the 1950s, the USSR linked up with the radical Arab nationalists who were in opposition to the West owing to the latter's support for Israel.
After the overthrow of Iraq's King Faisal in July 1958, the Kurdish movement, under Barzani's leadership, went on the offensive. The new regime in Baghdad saw itself as one of the pioneers of the "non-capitalist road of development" so
Soviet policy-makers. substantial Soviet aid, while Turkey and Iran were openly pro-American. The US, Israel and Iran supported the Kurdish movement in order to put pressure on the Ba'athist regime in Irag, and the Kurds were able to take advantage of a period of relative weakness of the Iragi army and establish autonomy in 1970 - the main success in the recent history of the Kurd-
But this autonomy came to an end in 1974 when Baghdad obtained in its turn international support allowing it to change the balance of forces. Persuaded that there was no future for his struggle without a powerful backer, Barzani laid down arms in 1975, at the behest of the Shah of Iran, although the Iraqi army had not military defeated the Kurds. Iran took advantage of the situation to seize territories in the Gulf, thus providing the pretext for the unleashing by Iraq of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980.
The Kurdish movement began to undergo internal changes, in Iraq in 1976, and in 1979 in Iran, with the downfall of the Shah. There were bloody inter-Kurdish clashes due to the pro-Iranian (proKhomeini rather than pro-Shah) attitude of the Iranian-based Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK). During the Iran-Iraq war, DK militants found themselves on opposing sides, divided among themselves and allied with their respective enemies. At the end of that war Le Monde ran a headline: "The Kurds are the losers from the peace."
From then on the Kurdish leaderships in Iran and Iraq devoted their efforts to finding diplomatic support. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was in the forefront of the scramble owing to his links with the CIA. His organization had been involved in clashes with the DKP - in 1978 for example, 150 PUK militants were massa-
Furthermore, Barzani accused Talabani's followers of connivance with the Iraqi Ba'athists. Subsequently, with the massacres of Kurds by Saddam in Iraq and by Khomeini in Iran, the traditional leaders of the Kurdish movement began to look towards Turkey for support. But Turkey means the US, without forgetting
The Turkish president and the Kurdish "terrorist"
In June 1988, before the ceasefire in the
Talabani travelled to the US to discuss with responsible American officials. At that time he accused the Turkish president Ozal of complicity with the Iraqi dictator, while Turkey accused the US of talking to a "terrorist". Talabani explained the reasons for his approach: "I explained that the Kurdish people were facing the danger of genocide. I asked the American administration to stop Saddam. And I said to them that if Saddam had not got the green light from the United States, he would never have dared attack Kurdish towns. It is American support that allowed him to act in this way....All the lands occupied by Iran and Iraq are under Kurdish control by virtue of the agreement made with Iran"?
After the Halabja massacre and his military expulsion from the area in August 1988, the same Talabani declared that "a democratic and federal Turkey coulo form a central base for all Kurds."3
The PUK took further steps in their diplomatic ballet during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. On his return from a new visit to the US before the outbreak of the Gulf war, Talabani declared: "we do not want to use our fighters (peshmergas) moment when Iraq is threatened by outresult of the balance of forces on the
Turkey had lined up unconditionally with the US from the start of the Gulf crisis, one of the reasons being the desire to
KURDISTAN forestall the development of any scenario involving the creation of an independent Kurdistan. Furthermore, although it was
Turkey hoped to regain control of the former Ottoman territories of Mosul and Kirkuk where there is a Turkmen minority. Indeed such a possibility had been underlined by some Iraqi Kurdish leaders during the Iran-Iraq war, in the eventuality of the integrity of the latter state being threatened.
Were the consequences of the Gulf war predictable? Let us recall a number of facts. Saddam had given back the territory conquered from Iran in the Iran-Irag war. Saddam had to pay a high price for his while Özal, who placed all his money on the US, found himself on the winning side. Even so, in some ways Turkey may turn out to have been one of the losers in the war: the Kurdish leaderships are now negotiating with Saddam himsclf to gain an autonomy that at their best moment in 1970 they had
Which all goes to show that in a region of the world ruled by corrupt regimes, these latter often find themselves falling into their own traps. The imperialist intervention has certainly modified the course of events but it has not meant a fundamental change in the rules.
The various leaders in the region zigzagged around the Kurdish question. Durgovernment set about reorganizing the political system, in the face of the weakening of the traditional parties and of the regime. This judicial and political rcorganization is directly connected to the Kurdish question. Thus the only country that has hitherto denied even the existence of the Kurds has suddenly decided to step forward as their protector. President Özal has lifted the ban brought in by the military regime on speaking Kurdish, and has initiated ill-defined discussions of the Kurdish question. To do this he had first of all to overcome the reservations of his own party.
Secret meetings to discuss tederal Iraq
At the end of February, Özal launched his scheme for a "federal state" in Iraq with Kurdish participation. Talabani then proposed a meeting with Özal. At the start of March, at the beginning of the Kurdish uprising, Özal stated that such a meeting had indeed taken place in secret in Turkey. Turkish support for a federal Iraq, in which the Turkmens would also participate, could not have come about without the agreement of the US, and was indeed among the scenarios envisaged by the latter. 1. See International Viewpoint no. 205, April 29, 1991. 2. Inprecor, no. 316, October 12, 1990. 11 3. Cumhuriyet, June 6, 1988 4. Ikibine Dogru, September 18, 1988. May 13, 1991 • #206 International Viewpoint
KURDISTAN / MIDDLE EAST
Özal's attitude was greeted favorably by the Kurdish leaderships at their conference in Stockholm4. Özal has set in motion a process in which he is to play the role of "protector of the Kurdish cause", passing in silence over the Kurdish question in Turkey itself, at the price of a few cosmetic reforms. Talabani meanwhile has undertaken a diplomatic manoeuvre without radically changing his point of view. He has underlined that, while existing frontiers cannot for the moment be changed, the states of the region should be democratic federations. Despite pressure from the Turkish government, Talabani has refused to define the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which leads the Kurdish struggle in Turkey, as a terrorist movement, describing it, on the contrary as a "revolutionary patriotic" group. 5
Özal, whose project for the Turkish Kurds involves nothing more than the recognition of their cultural rights, is prepared to become the guarantor of an autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq, without regard for how this might complicate relations with Iran. Ozal's policy has been criticized by the ultra-nationalist and religious forces inside his own organization. Besides, the opposition parties both of right and left have talked darkly of the consequences that the president's policy may have within Turkey.
Problems conjunctural and permanent
But it is the US that has given the signal for the new orientation: Saddam is a conjunctural problem, the Kurds a permanent one. This is the only explanation for the negotiations with the representatives of an uprising that was soon to be crushed, negotiations unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Republic.
The uprising, however, the cards. Nobody seems to have foreseen the Shi'ite rebellion in southern Iraq. According to General Schwarzkopf, Saddam could have been finished off in two days. However, at the start of the uprising the American military chief expressed his confusion: "What is the best way to handle the situation? I honestly don't know." He was not the only one to feel this way. Bush, Özal, even the Kurdish leaders themselves were taken by surprise by the revolts in the north and south of Iraq. Even Saddam did not seem to be expecting this rather likely development, since he himself had armed the Kurds to combat a possible Turkish military attack in the north. The speed of the rebellion's development and the surrender of his troops without resistance testify to the lack of readiness.
But order continued to reign in Baghdad, and, despite the allied bombing, the army remained intact; and it is this essen12 tial element that thwarted the Kurds. , Unable to keep control of Kurdistan's International Viewpoint #206 • May 13, 1991 towns, conquered by irregular forces, the Kurdish leaders also proved unable to organize their defence or even use the weapons that had fallen into their hands. To organize raids in the mountains, fight the army and defend the cities required very different structures to those now at the Kurds' disposition. Thus millions of people were forced to flee in panic from Saddam's advancing army. The Turkish government also found itself in a panic at the prospect of a forced union of the Kurds of Iraq with those of Turkey. Özal thought he had played the Kurdish card in the name of the US, but in fact Saddam ironically handed it back, pushing hundreds of thousands of Kurds towards the
The Kurds' tragedy, in the full glare of has forced the US into a change of line, and the Kurds have now been placed under military protection in an enclave on the frontier.
A new dramatic turn: on April 20, 1991, it was learned that a Kurdish delegation headed by Talabani and composed of representatives of the PUK, the DKP, the Kurdish People's Democratic Party and the Socialist Party of Kurdistan had gone to Baghdad to negotiate over the proposition for the creation of "a pluralist, democratic and constitutional regime and the provision of an enlarged autonomy for the Kurds in the framework of a federal Iraqi regime." The Kurdish leaders had underlined, with the declaration of March 11, 1991, that they were going to insist on all the autonomy rights previously won.
Thus the attempts to resolve region's problems in the framework of the existing regimes continues to produce new surprises. This search for compromise on the national question in the framework of the existing regimes also shows the thinking of the traditional Kurdish leaderships. They ask themselves: how can we resolve the national problem through the intervention of imperialism, the Turkish government or Saddam Hussein?
Democratization of whole region needed
We should not under-estimate the likely consequences of the negotiations between Saddam and the Kurdish leaderships. But it is also clear that the Kurdish question cannot be resolved in the given relation of forces, at least without the emergence of an independent political current. Even autonomy in the regional framework will be too narrow for the Kurds. We are only at the beginning of the process of recomposition and reconstruction for the Kurd-
Meanwhile the idea that this is but one aspect of the whole process of a comprehensive democratization of the region will find a growing audience. * 5. Milliyet, March 23, 1991.
The Middle
East: a
history of
carve-ups
THE following article, which first appeared in the March 30, 1991 edition of the Bombay magazine Economic and Political Weekly, examines the historical background to imperialist involvement in the Arab East. The article has been shortened substantially for space reasons. SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN
N THE colourful rhetoric of Arab nationalism, Israel is a dagger that the West has plunged into the heart of the Arab world.To imagine that this description is inspired solely by the peculiar geographical contours of the state of Israel, would be a mistake. It reflects a very deep sense of historical
The creation of the autonomous state of Kuwait is again an integral element of colonial politics. Kuwait was in the first instance an enclave carved out of the head of the Persian Gulf to pre-empt the growing German-Ottoman alliance of the late 19th century from encroaching on the sea lanes to India. When empire ceased to be the overriding concern of British policy, oil took over as the raison d'être of Kuwaiti nationhood.
The denial of the rights of the Palestinian people and the raising of Kuwait to the status of an autonomous nation, are linked in the Arab political consciousness, as ramifications of the Pax AngloAmericana. Saddam Hussein's advocacy of the rights of the Palestinian people has been derided as a pathetic effort to distract attention from his aggression against a neighbouring state. Aggression and annexation were the only designs he had, or so this argument runs — the advocacy of Palestinian rights was only an afterthought.
From this viewpoint, it is easy to forget that the annexation of Kuwait was itself
an afterthought. There had, in fact, been some signs of an Iraqi withdrawal shortly after the invasion. But the Western military buildup in Saudi Arabia prompted a reversal of position, and a raising of the stakes. Saddam Hussein's later announcement of the "linkage" asserted very simply that the Pax AngloAmericana in Kuwait would be respected, provided its greatest abuse - the plight of the Palestinians - was redressed. It at once captured the Arab political imagination. For the first time since Palestine was lost to the Anglo-Zionist conspiracy, here was an Arab leader who had actually taken the military high ground and was seeking to force the West to come to a political bargain. It was heady stuff for the Arabs who have for decades been dealing with the West from a position of weakness. West misled by abject loyalty of oil Emirs
Largely because of the abject loyalty of the "emirs of oil" the West has deluded itself into believing that memories of colonial manipulation are short and transient. But the asymmetry between the Western positions on resolutions 242 (1967) and 660(1990) is only the latest of many signals that the Arab world has learned through bitter experience to recognize. They have not forgotten yet how Palestine was partitioned in 1948, and how they were driven out of their lands by the Haganah and the terrorist gangs of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. They well remember how the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, who demanded a revision of the partition plan and return of the Palestinian refugees to their land, was murdered by Zionist thugs with no more than few murmurs of protest by the UN.2
Memories of struggle against the West are deeply embedded in the political consciousness of the Arab people. And much of this struggle has been in the cause of Palestine. It is ironic that the current assault on Iraq should come in the 50th anniversary year of the last, and that the US-led axis should today identify itself, in a conscious evocation of World War II as the "allies". In 1941, Iraq had risen up in revolt against virtually the same line-up of "allies". And the factor that had precipitated the rising was the continuing Jewish colonization of Palestine the benign guardianship of Britain.?
In the event, the uprising was crushed by the British Indian Army. But it succeeded in adding another potent weapon to the Western ideological armoury. The chief instigator of the rising Amin al-Hussaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was later to meet - and win a commitment of support from - the German Führer at a private audience on November 28, 1941.4 The Arabs are therefore easily portrayed as the natural 1. In an interview with Saced Naqvi telecast over the national channel on February 2, 1991, Hassan ibn Talal, Crown Prince of Jordan, spoke of the unavailing efforts made by his country to get the western powers to refrain from building up their military forces in the Gulf region, so that the Iraqi military could withdraw from Kuwait in accordance with a commitment that they had given in the immediate aftermath of the invaIt is curious that these points have either been suppressed or been very shoddily covered by the Westerndominated news agencies and media. The James Baker-Tariq Aziz meeting in Geneva on January 9 went on for six hours. Yet few newspapers or agencies thought it worthwhile to report what the bargaining positions had been on either side. Similarly UN secretary-general Perez de Cellar's meeting with Saddam Hussein has gone largely unreported on the An Indian news agency managed to get a copy of the indicated a greater willingness to compromise on the part of the Iraqi president than he has been credited
See the Press Trust of India's New York date-
MIDDLE EAST legatees of the Nazi programme of extermination against the Jews. For Indians, who have learnt to look at Subash Chandra Bose's Nazi links with greater understanding than embarrassment, this case may seem rather overstated. Bose's Nazi connections represent a major moral dilemma, but do not diminish greatly from his standing as a nationalist figure. There are objective and identifiable reasons why Bose's characterization of the British as "super-Nazis" struck a responsive chord amongst the subject populations of "His Majesty's colonies". Haj Amin's Nazi links, similarly, could easily be read as a damning indictment of British colonial policy. Whatever the historical judgements from the vantage point of today, the contemporary view then was that British liberalism and German fascism were different only in degree not kind: that capitalism could sustain the liberal ideological facade only when given the kind of elbow space that Britain's vast colonial possessions afforded her; and that when constricted within narrow territorial boundaries, as with post-World War I Germany, liberalism is all too apt to lapse into the kind of revanchist nationalism that the Nazis represented.
History repeating itself as farce