By Norm Dixon
The hypocrisy of the US government's claim that its cruise missile barrage on Iraq was to protect the rights of the Kurdish people in the US-proclaimed "safe haven" in northern Iraq is more obvious than ever following Washington's open endorsement of Turkey's plan to invade the region to drive out its Kurdish opponents.
On September 8, Turkey's foreign minister, Tansu Ciller, announced that Ankara would soon invade northern Iraq. Turkish troops are preparing to occupy a 24- kilometre "security zone" and eliminate bases of the left-wing Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has led a 12-year fight for Kurdish national rights in Turkey. Iraqi Kurds would also be expelled, Ciller said. Tens of thousands of Turkish troops are reported to be massing on the border.
Washington endorsed the plan with unseemly haste. Secretary of State Warren Christopher on September 8 said the Turkish regime has "genuine reasons to be concerned about their borders and the PKK". Christopher's acceptance of the Turkish plan is a repeat of the US response to Turkey's 1995 invasion of northern Iraq, when 35,000 troops armed with US-supplied weapons, warplanes and tanks flooded the region. US officials then justified the Turkish army's massacre of Kurds within the "safe haven" as "self-defence".
For all the crocodile tears shed over the fate of the Kurds under Hussein's rule, the US is opposed to the right of the Kurdish people to an independent Kurdistan. Soon after Iraq's intervention in the Iraqi Kurds' civil war on the side of the Kurdish Democratic Party, US officials restated US recognition of Baghdad's sovereignty over northern Iraq. US State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns was quoted in an AFP dispatch as saying: "[The US] does not favour the dismemberment of Iraq. The US has never questioned the territorial integrity of Iraq."
Washington knows that a viable Kurdish homeland in Iraq would boost the Kurdish liberation movement in Turkey, a key US ally in the region, and perhaps inspire revolts in Iran and Syria. An independent Kurdistan in southern Turkey led by the anti-imperialist PKK, which has overwhelming support among Turkey's 15 million Kurds as well as growing support in oil-rich northern Iraq, would be contrary to US interests in the region.
At the heart of US policy in the Middle East is the need to prevent countries in the region becoming strong enough to challenge US dominance or threaten Washington's closest allies — Israel, Turkey, and the dictatorial sheikhdoms of the Arab-Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia.
The Australian Financial Review's Asia-Pacific editor, Peter Hartcher, on September 5 baldly explained why: "... by extending the no-fly zones in Iraq, the US has increased the buffer protecting Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression. The US does not protect these nations for any reasons of morality ... Their true value to the US is that they are high-volume, low price producers of oil. They hold 35% of global reserves and can look forward to continuing to pump oil at the current rate for at least several decades ahead."
The US is seeking to achieve a complex web of objectives in the Middle East, each of which has influenced developments in northern Iraq. The US is attempting to: prevent the re-emergence of a strong Iraq; weaken Iran and Syria; pressure Syria to sign a "peace" deal with Israel; and crush the PKK in Turkey.
The "no-fly" zones and "safe havens" in the north and south of Iraq have nothing whatsoever to do with defending the rights of the people living within them but are designed to keep Iraq militarily and economically weak and to allow US military aircraft unrestricted access to Iraqi targets.
Within the northern protectorate, the US crudely set about constructing an "alternative" leadership to that of Saddam Hussein. Washington's preferred scenario was that continued military pressure, combined with popular unrest and economic ruin caused by sanctions, would provoke the Iraqi military to oust Hussein and install a pliant pro-US leadership.
Washington, with heavy involvement by the CIA and plenty of cash to dispense, pulled together a disparate band of oppositionists — ranging from radical Islamists to secular capitalist politicians and local Kurdish parties — to form the Iraqi National Congress (INC). Apart from a common hatred of Hussein, they had little in common. The US plans began to go astray almost immediately.
Rather than provoking popular unrest against Baghdad, the vicious sanctions — which have cost as many as 600,000 civilian lives — severely rebounded on the INC. Ordinary Iraqis, no matter how much they despised Hussein, see the US and its pet politicians hiding in the north as responsible for their misery. The INC all but disintegrated as sections opposed to its continued backing for sanctions, its undemocratic structure and its subservience to the US split away. Some were attracted to rival opposition coalitions sponsored by the Syrian and Iranian regimes, which both fear an Iraq beholden to the US.
Another key component of the US plan began to come unstuck when its two main Kurdish collaborators in the north, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, fell out. Under US supervision, a "Kurdistan Regional Government-Iraq" was created in 1992 beneath the northern "no fly" zone. The KDP and PUK agreed to a 50/50 power sharing arrangement.
The fragile alliance between these two conservative nationalist groups broke down in December 1994. The conflict between the Kurdish parties was a product of Washington's opposition even to the suggestion of an independent Kurdistan. The US, supported by Britain, refused to exempt northern Iraq from sanctions, arguing that this would imply support for a separate Kurdistan and alienate potential successors to Hussein amongst the Iraqi military, and its close ally Turkey. As a result, the north suffered a double blockade because Baghdad had also imposed an economic embargo on the north.
The collapse of economic and administrative structures in the north, made worse by sanctions, meant these functions devolved to the Kurdish parties. The armed militias were responsible for the collection of duties imposed on trucks crossing the Turkish border. These duties were the sole income of the administration. The KDP, which controls the regions near the Turkish border, began to divert these funds into its own coffers. Clashes broke out, and the PUK seized the region's administrative capital, Arbil.
The conflict placed the US in a quandary. Committed to the crippled INC as its preferred opposition, the US chose not to openly play favourites between the rival Kurdish parties but instead attempted to broker a cease-fire and a return to the 50/50 deal. After several abortive attempts at a settlement, both camps realised that the US was not prepared to back them. The PUK turned to Iran for support, while the KDP turned to Baghdad, culminating in the KDP militia and Iraqi armed forces' seizure of Arbil in early September. The PUK loudly appealed for US intervention to prevent the KDP-Iraqi alliance taking control.
The decision by both the KDP and the PUK to put their own narrow interests above those of the Kurdish people is a betrayal of the Kurdish cause, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan said on September 1. Their actions could lead to disaster: "This brings to mind the 1974 negotiations between the KDP and the regime in Baghdad. Those talks resulted in the inglorious end of Mullah Mustafa Barzani [founder of the KDP]. If his son, Massoud Barzani [current KDP leader], plays the same game, he will meet the same end."
The KDP has a long history of collaboration with Ankara, Baghdad and most recently Washington. While the US may be upset that the KDP has again allowed Hussein's military a foothold in the north, it will not be too worried about a KDP-controlled northern Iraq. The KDP does not support an independent Kurdistan, only autonomy within Iraq. Its willingness to be part of the pro-US administration in the north shows it will not seriously challenge US interests. The KDP has good relations with the Turkish regime and has cooperated previously in Ankara's operations against the PKK.
However, the KDP-PUK betrayal will strengthen the Kurdish forces still committed to genuine self-determination, the PKK's Ocalan warned: "As the Kurdish people in south Kurdistan become increasingly disillusioned with their traditional leaders, our party will continue to gain in strength and influence in the region."