There is no question that the current Iraqi regime has a brutal record of repression against many of its own citizens, and in particular against the country's Kurdish minority. Yet of all the reasons the Bush administration is offering to justify its planned war on Iraq, perhaps the most cynical and hypocritical is that it wants to end Saddam Hussein's human rights violations. In fact, at the very moment that Kurds in California were volunteering to help the U.S., Washington was negotiating a deal with the Turkish government that betrays the fundamental interests of Iraqi Kurds. The Washington Post reported that in exchange for the use of Turkish bases, the U.S. government "promised to prevent Kurds from imposing a federation-style government in postwar Iraq that would ensure their continued autonomy" and agreed to allow Turkish troops to occupy several hundred square miles of northern Iraq "to prevent a flow of refugees into Turkey and maintain stability and security in the region."
"Basically, the Kurds have been handed over to the Turkish government," states Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network. "The gains of autonomy that the Kurds have made in northern Iraq [since 1991] could well be lost. The Turkish military has depopulated thousands of Kurdish villages and killed tens of thousands of Kurds over the last 15 years. Northern Iraq could end up much like northern Cyprus, which Turkey has illegally occupied for decades." The deal may be scuttled by the Turkish government. Under tremendous public pressure at home, it has refused to allow U.S. troops to stage an invasion from Turkey into northern Iraq, though as ISR goes to press they may be "encouraged" to reconsider. The point is that the U.S. is perfectly happy to manipulate Kurdish support when they need it, and then abandon the Kurds when it suits them.
In reaction, Kurds in northern Iraq have vowed to resist any attempt by Turkey to invade. If the U.S. allows Turkey to go to war against the Kurds in Iraq, "clashes would be unavoidable," said Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader.
The Bush administration's callous abandonment of the Kurds will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the long history of broken promises by both the United States and Britain, Washington's principal ally in the current war drive. Up until now it has been useful to talk about Kurdish freedom for propaganda purposes, but the U.S. government has never been serious about defending the rights of the Kurdish people.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country. Their total population is over 25 million, with about half living in Turkey and most of the rest in Iran, Iraq and Syria. At the end of the First World War when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Treaty of Sevres recognized the Kurds' right to their own state and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson pledged to support its creation within two years. This promise, however, was soon forgotten, as Western powers competed to control the region's oil supplies. British planes gassed and bombed Kurdish villages in Iraq in order to enforce the borders they wanted. "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas," wrote Britain's war secretary at the time, Winston Churchill. "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.... [W]e cannot in any circumstances acquiesce in the non-utilization of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier." Meanwhile the Turkish government brutally repressed its own Kurdish population, denying them freedom of language and culture. Although this violated the peace treaty, the Western powers supported the Turks who were seen as a vital ally in preventing the spread of the Russian Revolution.
At the end of the Second World War, Kurds in northern Iran briefly set up their own state, the Mahabad Republic, which offered them a brief taste of freedom. But the government in Tehran soon crushed this experiment, with the backing of the U.S. and Britain. Qadhi Muhammad the republic's elected president, was publicly hanged along with several other Kurdish leaders.
But the most cynical acts of betrayal are more recent. In the early 1970s, as tensions between Iran and its neighbor Iraq increased, the U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger agreed to support a plan devised by the Shah of Iran to encourage an uprising by Kurds in Iraq. By 1975, Kissinger had secretly channeled $16 million of military aid to the Kurds, who believed that Washington was finally supporting their right to self-determination. The following year, however, the Pike report, issued by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, revealed that the U.S. had never had any intention of supporting a Kurdish state:
Documents in the Committee's possession clearly show that the president, Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah of Iran] hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would nor prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's neighboring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting.
At the 1975 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) summit, Iran and Iraq temporarily resolved their border dispute. The Iraqi government was then informed that U.S. support for the Kurds would be withdrawn, while the Kurds themselves were kept uninformed about what was happening. Iraqi forces immediately launched an aggressive campaign against the Kurdish rebels. "The insurgents were clearly taken by surprise. Their adversaries, knowing of the impending aid cut-off, launched an all out search-and-destroy campaign the day after the agreement [with Iran] was signed. The autonomy movement was over and our former clients scattered before the [Iraqi] central government's superior forces."
As Iraq wiped out the remaining rebels(НЕ ТУРЦИЈА!!, the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani sent a message to Kissinger: "Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way, with silence from everyone. We feel, your excellency, that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people, who have committed themselves to your country's policy." Kissinger, however, didn't even bother to send a reply.
According to the Pike report, "Over 200,000 refugees managed to escape into Iran. Once there however, neither the United States nor Iran extended adequate humanitarian assistance. In fact, Iran was later to forcibly return over 40,000 of the refugees and the United States government refused to admit even one refugee into the United States by way of political asylum even though they qualified for such admittance." As Kissinger later explained to a Congressional staffer, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." U.S. strategic interests, in other words, were more important than mere moral principles. "Even in the context of covert actions," concluded the Pike report, "ours was a cynical enterprise."
The cynicism continued in the 1980s. In 1979 the Iranian revolution had overthrown the Shah,(затоа го натераа ИРАК да го нападне Иран!!!) whose brutal regime had been a key regional U.S. bulwark for more than a quarter of a century. The following year, Iraq invaded Iran, beginning a bloody war that was to last until 1988. During the course of the war, both Iran and Iraq carried out brutal massacres of their own Kurdish populations. The U.S. and other Western countries gave covert support to Saddam Hussein's regime, supplying Baghdad with the materials to create chemical weapons and providing intelligence reports that allowed them to be used against Iranian forces.
A ti kako sakas veruvaj... imas Google prebaruvaj ako sakas
