June 13, 2004

www.rockfordinstitute.org

KURDS: ANOTHER AMERICAN ALLY ABOUT TO BE BETRAYED

by Srdja Trifkovic

While it may be true that great powers have no permanent friends and only permanent interests, they differ considerably in their treatment of those friends and clients who come into their orbit. In this respect the Germans tend to be more trustworthy than most other powerful nations. Their single-minded support of Croatia in the wars of Yugoslav succession was not based merely on a traditional Mitteleuropaeisch geopolitical design, but also on a traditional sense of affinity with a nation of loyal allies from two world wars. Neither side would readily admit that this lingering memory played a role, of course, but both know it to be a factor.

American leaders, by contrast, have a long record of betraying those who trust their word, honor and loyalty. Filipino nationalists after 1898, Vietnam-s Montagnards after 1975, Angola-s Jonas Savimbi, Ahmed Shah Masood (the "Lion of Panjsher"), Enrique Bermudez of the Nicaraguan Contras… have all paid their trust with their lives.

Most of the time betrayal does not pay. Kennedy-s decision in 1963 to sanction the coup against South Vietnam-s President Diem-a difficult ally hated by the liberal establishment, but an ally nonetheless-started a long slide that ended with the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Saigon 12 years later. Carter-s decision to exert pressure on the Shah-another bete noire of America-s liberals-to "democratize" Iran paved the way for Khomeini and his successors. Clinton-s support of the Muslim side in Bosnia against the Serbs, America-s allies in both world wars, provided hundreds of Jihadists from all over the Middle East with the first solid toehold in Europe-s heartland.

The latest act of betrayal is the decision of the Bush administration to reject requests by Iraqi Kurds to have the United Nations Security Council approve the country-s interim constitution-known as the Transitional Administrative Law-in its recent resolution on Iraqi sovereignty. The interim constitution is very important to the Kurds because it contains reference to their autonomy. The inclusion of that document in a Security Council resolution would have been the first time in history that the concept of self-rule for the Kurdish people had received international legal sanction. This has not happened, however: the Council unanimously adopted resolution 1546 on June 8, but the Americans stayed quiet and the document contained no reference to the interim constitution.

The Kurds were dismayed. As the only element in the Iraqi equation openly supportive of the US occupation force they expected Washington to support the inclusion of the document in the Resolution. They now suspect that the Administration wanted to appease Iraq-s Arab majority, and to reassure Turkey which remains adamantly opposed for any Kurdish autonomy anywhere in the region, by leaving Kurds in the lurch. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has not reassured them by saying that "the Kurds have been great friends of the United States" and that "they obviously have a role, a very important role, to play in a strong, united and democratic Iraq." Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi did even worse by promising that his cabinet would respect the interim constitution "until next year-s elections." To many Kurds the implication of Allawi-s statement is that Iraq-s future constiution, to be enacted after the general election early next year, may abrogate the provisional document altogether.

Both their leading parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, fear that if the three Kurdish-dominated northern provinces of Iraq lose the right of effective veto they now enjoy under the Transitional Administrative Law, Iraq-s Shiite majority may try to impose Islamic law through the new constitution. The veto provision was a key ingredient in the formula devised three months ago that persuaded the Kurds to agree to the interim constitution and to affirm their overall commitment to the Iraqi state. But now some top Kurdish officials complain, according to The New York Times, that they have been misled by the Americans, who "change their position day to day without any focus on real strategy in Iraq. There-s a level of mismanagement and incompetence that is shocking."

The Kurds have a trump card of their own: a 75,000-strong peshmerga, a well trained and armed militia that was supposed to be disbanded under a nine-party agreement reached by the new government in Baghdad on June 7. If the Kurds now stay armed, as they will, other party militias will be unlikely to observe the terms of the agreement and a key prerequisite for Iraq-s gradual normalization-the monopoly of armed power by the state-will be absent.

The dispute over Iraq-s future constitutional arrangements is as old as ethnically mixed states: the Shi-ites have a 60 percent majority of Iraq-s 26 million people and claim that giving any minority group veto power is undemocratic. The Kurds-18 percent-insist on minority rights, and say that after many years of oppression, bloodshed and suffering they have the right to unambiguous legal and constitutional guarantees of their status. The Shi-ites are centralists, the Kurds federalists.

The omission of the interim constitution in the Security Council resolution came at the insistence of Iraq-s top Shi-ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Boucher-s claim that the failure to include the transitional law in the UN resolution was insignificant-supposedly because the resolution endorsed the law-s principles of pluralism and minority rights in general-was a diplomatic way of saying that the U.S. had caved in to Sistani-s demands. But why should the U.S. government support a Shi-ite cleric, whose self-avowed objective is to create an Islamic state, against its only friends in the region? The answer is simple: because it is afraid of Sistani. It needs his good will to sustain the fragile ceasefire in Najaf and to keep the political process alive. Sistani is the most powerful man in today-s Iraq.

The United States- optimal strategy for reducing his power, and making the region more easily manageable, is to stop insisting on a united Iraq. It should promote extensive decentralization based on three self-governing entities-Kurdish in the north, Shi-ite in the south, Sunni in the middle-within a loose framework of Iraq-s external borders. As has been said in these pages exactly a year ago,

By now it should be obvious that the goals, challenges, and expectations of different ethnic and religious groups within Iraq are not reducible to a common denominator. Three different Ottoman provinces of old have not forged a sense of common destiny or common nationhood over the past eight decades. Being an 'Iraqi- does not come before one-s Sh-ia, or Kurdish, or even local, tribal-clannish identity.

Pragmatic recognition of this reality is even more urgently needed today, six hundred American lives and a hundred billion dollars later. A decentralized, even confederal Iraq is the pragmatic solution for the political and military challenge the United States faces in the region, and the just solution for America's only local friends.

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