Roj Shuhe, Toronto
During the last year, the larger protests against the war in Iraq here have featured sizeable and militant contingents from the Kurdish community. At the time of the invasion, the Kurdish population was deeply and evenly divided between those opposing and those favouring the US invasion, but in recent months, support among them for the US war has been weakening.
The cause of Kurdish national liberation in Iraq has interacted in complex ways with US intervention in the region. The creation of a de-facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq was an unintended byproduct of the first Gulf War in 1991. US imperialism has never given the slightest support to Kurdish aspirations for autonomy and statehood. But during the 1991 war, Saddam Hussein's military drove millions of Kurds out of their homes, creating an immense refugee crisis on the Turkish and Iranian borders. It was to ease the refugee pressure that the US government declared a no-fly zone in northern Iraq. Seizing the opportunity, Kurds set up their own regime, independent of Baghdad.
The second Iraq war took a similarly unexpected course. Washington's plan was for Turkey to invade Kurdish Iraq and establish control. But the Turkish government, sensitive to strong anti-war feeling among its own population, refused to intervene. As a result, the war, instead of extinguishing Iraqi Kurdish independence, reinforced it. Tens of thousands of Kurdish militia took part in the military campaign to oust the regime of their hated oppressor.
For the Kurds, this autonomy has represented a cherished opportunity for cultural and economic revival, free at last from the murderous attacks of the Saddam Hussein government.
Self-determination
The Kurds face the stony hostility of all the governments of the region — Iraq, Turkey, and Iran — and have no allies in a position to render effective aid. For 13 years the de facto independence of Iraqi Kurdistan has thus depended in part on US military protection. But Washington is the sworn enemy of Kurdish independence.
None of the major contending political forces in US-occupied Iraq today is willing to concede that the Kurds have the right to self-determination. Yet it will be difficult for the struggle to oust the US occupiers to succeed without unity of all Iraq's peoples, including the Kurds. And Kurdish self-determination is essential not just to satisfy principles of justice, human rights and international law — but also as a practical necessity for the anti-imperialist struggle to go forward.
We are now witnessing a shift in opinion among Iraqi Kurds with regard to the US role. Kurdish Iraq is the one part of the country not under imperialist occupation. US soldiers go into Kurdistan only to shop — and then, in most cases, they are politely instructed to leave their guns behind and proceed under the guard of a Kurdish militia detachment. Kurds have every reason to wish that this situation continue.
Yet US imperialism makes no concessions to the right of Kurds to determine their own future. They give lip service to ideas of limited federalism, citing the US model, within a new US-dominated Iraqi state in which the Kurds' future would be outside their control. When the US demands dissolution of Iraqi militias, the 80,000-strong Kurdish militia is an obvious prime target.
In this context, sentiment among Iraqi Kurds for national independence is deepening, along with suspicion against the Kurdish governments, who seem more interested in currying favour with the US invaders than in pressing the case for national rights. The governments — for there are two, representing rival coalitions of Kurdish capitalists — seem increasingly fearful that they may soon be swept aside by the people they rule.
Leadership in peril
The Kurdish leadership "is being blamed by Iraqi Kurds for selling out to the Americans to maintain their stranglehold on political and economic power", write Ali Ezzatyar and Dariush Zahedi in the Beirut Daily Star of August 13. They note that the two Kurdish ruling parties have felt compelled to threaten, in vague terms, to withdraw from Iraq's puppet government.
"If the reputation of Kurdish party bosses is further undermined, it will take only a modicum of revolutionary initiative by mid-level party officials or the Peshmerge (Kurdish militia) to send northern Iraq into a tailspin. A leadership more willing to reflect Kurdish popular wishes could take power", they add.
Meanwhile, developments in Turkey are in some ways encouraging to the Kurdish cause. Motivated in part by the dogged resistance of Turkish Kurds and in part by the pressure of the European Union, which Turkey wishes to join, the government in Ankara has eased to some degree its repression of the Kurds and conceded greater legal space to Kurdish language and culture. The process in Turkey is complex and difficult, but it may be that the impulse to safeguard Iraqi Kurdish autonomy will come from events north of the border.
Referendum on independence
Recently the Kurdish people of Iraq took part in a referendum, in which 1.8 million Kurds voted almost unanimously for national independence. The Kurdish governments, however, refused to announce the results of the referendum, for fear of offending Washington.
The US government casually brushed off the results. In an August 19 press conference, US security advisor Condoleezza Rice said, "Iraq will need to remain a united country."
Unity in struggle
As the present US assault in Najaf shows, the US military is counting on attacking its Iraqi opponents one at a time, crushing each one in turn. Kurdish aspirations for national self-determination are in headlong collision with Washington's intentions for the region, and the Kurdish people are deeply hostile to US domination of their region. There is therefore a real possibility of forging a common front against the imperialist forces.
But whether this happens will depend on the attitude of opposition forces in occupied Iraq. The stand of friends of Iraqi freedom abroad also counts for a great deal. One positive step will be for anti-war coalitions to form strong links with Kurdish opponents of the US-led war.
[Abridged from the Canadian Socialist Voice, available at .]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, September 29, 2004.
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