Iraq's brutal repression of Kurds should be no surprise to U.S. gov't

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'There is no question of the U.S. rulers having any sympathy for the aspirations of the Kurdish people.

Bush administration spokespersons made it clear that they were against any 'breakup' of Iraq. Washington even opposed establishing a sanctuary Washington has been forced to offer minimal help to the Kurdish refugees only by a monumental international scandal. Reports of millions of Kurds fleeing to Turkey and Iran (the total number of Kurds in Iraq was only about 4 million), reinforced by TV pictures of desperate multitudes starving and freezing on bare mountainsides, threatened to stamp a skull and crossbones on Bush's "new order."

There is no question of the U.S. rulers having any sympathy for the aspirations of the Kurdish people. Bush administration spokespersons made it clear that they were against any "breakup" of Iraq. Washington even opposed establishing a sanctuary for the Kurdish refugees.

«The Administration backed away from the idea of setting up a Kurdish 'enclave' that later might be used as a claim to statehood by Iraq's Kurdish minority and the 20 million Kurds dispersed over five nations in the region," Patrick Tyler wrote in the April 12 New York Times.

The United States, the conservative great power of the 20th century, made no bones about the fact that it was as much committed to maintaining "established borders" as the conservative powers of the 19th century were in preserving "legitimate monarchs."

Both principles deny the democratic rights of peoples. Moreover, the historical claims for both monarchs and borders often cannot stand much looking into.

In fact, the Kurdish people of Iraq never wanted to be included in the Iraqi state. The British empire handed them over at gunpoint to the Hashemite Arab monarchy it set up to rule a country that it carved out of the Turkish empire. It itself assumed the task of suppressing the Kurdish rebellions against the artificial state.

The Kurds were concentrated in the Mosul vilayet (province), also the location of most of the known oil resources at the time the British moved in during the First World Britain only began to occupy this area after the armistice with Turkey. In 1919, it lost control of Suleymanieh, the most important Kurdish center, to the Kurdish nationalist leader Sheikh Mahmoud Berenji. It put down the revolt, but could not crush Kurdish aspirations.

"They supported independence"

The British political officer in Baghdad, Sir Arnold Wilson, wrote later: "The Kurds wish neither to continue under the Turkish government nor to be placed under the Iraqi government."

Wilson also wrote: "In Southern Kurdistan, four out of five people supported Sheikh Mahmoud's idea to set up an independent Kurdistan."

In order to secure their control of the oil, the British were determined to include Mosul in their Iraqi client state. They, however, promised the Kurds autonomy within Irag to justify separating the area from Turkey. In 1921, Sir Percy Cox, the British high commissioner in Baghdad, had the Hashemite Prince Feisal enthroned as king of all Iraq, including Mosul.

In his report to the League of Nations Commission on Mandated Territories, Cox acknowledged: "The Kurds feared for their interests if Baghdad should hold the reins of industry and the economy in Iraq. They assumed they would be cheated. The Suleymanieh region decided not to participate in the election of the King of Iraq. In Kirkuk, the emir's [Feisal's] candidacy was rejected and the Kurds demanded a government of their own race. ... Suleymanieh was almost unanimous in rejecting outright any form of inclusion under the Iraqi government."

When the British ended their mandate in 1930, giving formal independence to Iraq without offering the Kurds anything, the imperial army again had to put down a rebellion in Suleymanieh.

In 1932, when Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations, it had to put down a revolt in Barzan. During the Second World War, Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion, but his forces were driven into Iran by the Royal Air Force.

The suppression of the Kurds was an integral feature of the neocolonial regime. The Kurdish people make up around a quarter of the population of Iraq. Any regime that denies them their national rights has to have at least the connivance of its neighbors and the imperialist powers active in the region. By suppressing the Kurds, it puts itself at the mercy of the bordering states and the imperialists.

The 1958 uprising in Iraq After the Second World War, the Iraqi monarchy became the kingpin of the U.S.for the Kurdish refugees.' sponsored neocolonialist alliance in the region. When this contemptible regime was swept away by a popular uprising in 1958, logically enough the government that rose to power on the wave of revolution extended a hand to the Kurds.

The constitution adopted two weeks after the revolution proclaimed: "Iraqi society is based on complete co-operation between all its citizens, on respect for their rights and liberties. Arabs and Kurds are associates in this nation; the constitution guarantees their national rights within the Iragi whole."

This was the first time any state with a large Kurdish minority had recognized their national rights. It made a major impact throughout the region, where assuring the rights of minorities is vital for an effective fight against imperialist domination.

Unfortunately, it was just as logical that, as the new Iraqi regime turned its back on the revolutionary wave that brought it to power, it also turned on the Kurds. Finally, Thawra, a publication close to the government, published a series of articles calling for forced assimilation of the Kurds. This process led to five wars against the Kurds.

Until the last one, the Kurds held their own. And then their leaders made a disastrous mistake. They trusted the United States. But to give them their due, they did not have much choice. The Soviet Union had made an opportunist alliance with the populist Arab dictatorship in Baghdad.

The Barzani family, then in the leadership of the Kurdish struggle, turned for help to the shah of Iran, a lieutenant of U.S. imperialism opposed to Arab nationalism.

Mustafa Barzani, did not trust the Iranian monarchy. In fact, he was in Iranian Kurdistan in 1946-1947, when the Iranian state crushed the short-lived independent Kurdish Mahabad republic. He had to fight his way out through the Iranian lines with 500 stalwarts. But the U.S. government, in the person of Henry Kissinger, gave a special guarantee to the Kurds.

In fact, the U.S. administration gave an example of cynicism shameless even for capitalist international relations. The publication in 1976 of the Pike Report to the Patrick Robert-SYGMA House of Representatives on the covert activities of the CIA made clear the game the United States was playing. The report stressed: "Neither the foreign Head of State [the shah] nor the President and Dr. Kissinger desired victory for our clients [the Kurds]. They merely hoped to ensure that the insurgents would be capable of sustaining a level of hostility just high enough to sap the resources of the neighboring state [Iraq]."

The large-scale military aid given by the shah encouraged the Kurdish peshmergas to try to fight a regular war with the Iraqi forces, which outnumbered them three-toone. The Kurdish war did achieve its objective for the shah. Saddam Hussein granted his territorial demands. The shah then dropped the Kurds.

Results of trusting Washington Barzani gave up the fight and withdrew to Iran. As part of his deal with the shah, he opposed Kurdish nationalist activity in Iran, and actually collaborated in repression of Kurdish militants. From that time on, the Barzanis remained clients of the Iranian state.

The results of the collapse of the Kurdish leadership were tragic. Saddam accelerated the campaign of Arabization, especially in the oil-producing areas. Some 200,000 Kurds were expelled from lands where in many cases their ancestors had lived since pre-historic times. Arab colonists were brought in to replace them.

A regime of terror was imposed on the SOCIALIST Kurdish area, as on the rest of Iraq. But in Kurdistan, it was a racist-chauvinist terror directed against an entire people.

Armed resistance to the Iraqi regime was resumed, on a small scale, by Jelal Talebani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which got some support from Syria. The PUK adopted a more radical language than the Barzanis, whom it denounced as "feudalists." On the other hand, some radical Kurdish nationalists in Iraq suspect Talebani of being more open to deals with Baghdad than the Barzanis.

In Iran also, massive repression was clamped down on the Kurds. Here there are no mineral resources and very little development of any kind.

The Kurds lived mainly in the countryside, in villages of earthen dwellings. But the shah's secret police had a large building to centralize their surveillance over these poor farmers and shepherds. When the crowned dictator fell in 1979, it was torn to pieces and the files scattered over a good acre. I watched the crows picking through them on a sunny afternoon in March 1979.

An inextinguishable rebellion The minute the power of the Iranian state faltered, the perennial opposition of the Kurds came to the surface. Almost immediately, the Khomeini regime turned on the Kurds. But to this day, despite a prolonged pacification campaign, it has not been able to stamp out their resistance. Iranian Kurdistan became a refuge for all the Iranian leftists fleeing Khomeini's repression.

During the Iran-Iraq war, the Kurdish nationalists in Iraq eventually came to accept Iranian support, while their compatriots in Iran took Iraqi aid. Both argued that this was a tactical necessity and that they would not become dependent on their suppliers. Talebani at one point tried to make an alliance with Saddam Hussein against the Iranian butchers of the Kurds, but the Iragi dictator's treachery and bloodthirstiness aborted the attempt.

It was quite clear that any alliance of Kurdish nationalists with either Tehran or Baghdad was inherently unstable—if not an outright deception. The basic reality is that the Kurds have been the consistent victims of undemocratic settlements in the region, and the instant they get an opportunity they will rise up against them.

Thus, the Kurdish rebellion against Saddam Hussein was as predictable as the Iraqi dictator's savagery in repressing it. Washington cannot claim that it was taken by surprise by the one or the other.

By the same token, the struggle of the Kurds for self-determination is an essential part of the fight for democratic rights, and therefore social liberation, of all the Middle Eastern peoples.

The victory of the Kurds, as of the other peoples, depends on alliances firmly based on the principle of respect for the right of self-determination for oppressed peoples. Such alliances, and most specifically the fight of the Kurds, will be favored by the broadest possible understanding of, and solidarity with, the Kurdish struggle by democrats and socialists throughout the world.

The prophet of the revolutions of 1848, Michel de Lammenais, referred to the Polish people as a martyr people suffering for humanity. That certainly applies to the Kurds. Their cause should be as central a concern for the movements for political and economic liberation in the 20th century as that of the Irish and the Poles was to the progressive movements of the 19th.

vernationa A biweekly magazine published under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. One year sub:$47. Send to: 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108, Montreuil, France ICTION MAY 1991 15

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these unreconstructed class collaborationists,