Debate: Iraq and the Kurds

[greenleft at peg.pegasus.oz.au]

DEBATE: IRAQ AND THE KURDS

By John Arrowood

In his article ``Kurds: `Bush Responsible for Massacre''' (issue 
8), Peter Boyle writes: ``United States forces occupying southern 
Iraq ... did nothing to stop Saddam Hussein from brutally 
crushing the Kurdish revolt and an earlier revolt by Shiites in 
the south''.

He appropriates here both the perspective and the language of 
apologists for the continuing imperialist adventure in the Gulf 
region.

No-one would want to deny or minimise the plight of the Kurdish 
refugees. However, by abstracting their suffering from its 
context in devastated post-war Iraq, Peter plays right into the 
hands of the propagandists and fails to grasp the essential 
content of his own headline.

Bush and the forces he represents are indeed responsible for the 
present crisis, but not in the simple one-sided way the article 
suggests.

They are responsible primarily because, by destroying the 
infrastructure of the Iraqi nation, they created the conditions 
in which such an outcome was entirely predictable. When the 
economic, social and political foundations of a society are 
vandalised by the most brutal means imaginable, chaos inevitably 
results. That the consequences are bloody should surprise no-one.

By focussing on the suffering of the Kurds in isolation, Peter 
further assists the propagandists. They want to ignore the 
desperate condition of the rest of the Iraqis and of the captive 
populations (largely but not exclusively Palestinian) of Kuwait 
in the aftermath of this vicious war. They cynically exploit the 
Kurds to distract attention from these realities, as well as to 
retrospectively justify the savagery of the US and its allies.

Peter also colludes with imperialist propaganda by personalising 
the issues. Saddam brutally crushed the revolt. This is nonsense.

It invests Hussein with a degree of personal power and demonic 
energy which exists nowhere in the real world. It is the stuff of 
propagandist fantasy.

But it is not just a form of words. Saddam is not my ideal of a 
political leader; neither is he a demon. To turn him into one 
was, as Ramsey Clarke pointed out months ago, the prime move of 
the Americans in justifying their attack on Iraq.

They continue to do so in the aftermath of the war in case people 
start questioning who the real ``demons'' were. Peter should not 
have been drawn into participation in this project.

Most significantly, the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from 
the sentence quoted above is that the US should have done 
``something''. That ``something'' could only be further military 
intervention.

Is that what Peter wanted?

Following through the logic of his statement, you find that he is 
upholding the right of the US to use its military might to 
determine the course of political events in Iraq and elsewhere. 
This was the ``right'' they exercised in prosecuting the war - 
and will soon be exercising somewhere else in the third world.

Which side is Peter on?

He goes much further than the Kurdish representatives he quotes. 
They make their opposition to American intervention clear.

In short, Peter Boyle has fallen into the trap in which large 
sections of the peace movement have been caught since the 
conflict began. He reinforces key elements in the imperialist 
propaganda while attempting to oppose the actions it is used to 
justify.

I regret having to take him to task over this. Attempting to come 
to terms with complex and changing events, and surrounded by 
propagandist distortion, we all make mistakes of judgment.

Only through open and vigorous debate will the left achieve the 
clarity it so desperately needs in the present 
period.

Saddam, imperialism and the Kurds

By Peter Boyle

I also think vigorous debate has a place in left politics, though 
I would hope it might take place without immediately reaching for 
extreme accusations, such as that of collusion with imperialist 
propaganda.

I do not support United States military intervention in Iraq or 
anywhere else. The Kurds have called for a United Nations 
peacekeeping force, and I would support such a call provided the 
force is made up of genuinely neutral troops.

Secondly, much of the media coverage of the Kurds' plight is not 
imperialist propaganda but fairly accurate reportage of a human 
disaster. Moreover, it is coverage that embarrassed the Bush 
government, which would have preferred to let Saddam Hussein deal 
with the Kurds without the glare of international publicity.

Yes, chaos and civil disaster are an inevitable outcome of war, 
but the flight of more than half the Kurdish population of Iraq 
does not fall simply within this category. The Kurds fled out of 
fear that they would be slaughtered by the Iraqi army in 
retaliation for their abortive uprising.

I accept there is some ambiguity in my phrase ``United States 
forces occupying southern Iraq ... did nothing to stop Saddam 
Hussein from brutally crushing the Kurdish revolt''. But this 
phrase reflects the opinions of the Kurdish representatives I 
spoke to.

They have a point. Their grievances against the regime are of 
long standing, and when Bush called for a revolt against Saddam, 
the Kurds and Shiites took him seriously. They didn't realise 
that only a revolt within the army would be acceptable to Bush, 
that he simply wanted a more tractable general in power, and that 
unacceptable mass revolts would be left, unarmed or very lightly 
armed, to face the full force of the Iraqi army.

I think the US should get right out of the Middle East, but since 
the US was at least partly responsible for this latest Kurdish 
uprising, might not the Kurds have reasonably expected some 
support - such as, for example, no-strings-attached military and 
material aid? What about diplomatic initiatives at the United 
Nations and elsewhere in support of Kurdish self-determination? 
As with the whole Gulf War, military intervention was only one 
option.

Of course, the Kurds were rather credulous in expecting 
assistance from the US, but that doesn't excuse Bush's callous 
acceptance of a mass slaughter resulting, at least partly, from a 
call he made for an uprising.

As for my supposed demonising of Saddam, it's true I held Saddam 
responsible for the policies of the Iraqi government, just as I 
hold Bush responsible for the policies of the US government. 
Would John blame the Iraqi parliament instead?

It's worth filling in a little background on Saddam. This is no 
glorious anti-imperialist fighter. He heads the Baath Party, a 
group originating among right-wing elements in the army in 1951. 
It emerged in reaction to a huge rise of popular struggle led 
largely by the Iraqi Communist Party. Ideologically, Baathism 
drew directly on some aspects of Nazism.

Formed in 1934, by 1959 the Communist Party was leading 
demonstrations of up to 500,000 in Baghdad, calling for 
fundamental social and economic change and land reform. CIA boss 
Allen Dulles said the situation in Iraq was the most dangerous in 
the world.

>From late 1958, the Baath Party, aided by police, organised 
murder squads and terror against the Communists and the mass 
movement. In these gangs, Saddam Hussein began his rise to the 
top of the Baath Party.

Slowly, the mass movement declined, but still the Communist Party 
was a mass force, so in 1963 the Baathists unleashed nine months 
of bloody terror in which Communist Party members and mass 
leaders were shot in the street, herded into concentration camps, 
tortured to death and executed after mock trials. During all 
this, the CIA fed the Baathists lists of names.

In recent years, Saddam has zigzagged politically, and at one 
stage the Communist Party fell into the trap of an alliance with 
the Baathists. But through all this, the Iraqi regime has been 
one of the most repressive in the Middle East. This leaves aside 
its role in launching the Iraq-Iran war, the poison gas attacks 
on the Kurds etc.

I came on the scene far too late to demonise this vicious 
dictator. He did that himself, long ago. The imperialist 
propagandists didn't even need to tell many lies about 
him!

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Reprinted from Green Left, weekly progressive newspaper. May 
be reproduced with acknowledgment but without charge by 
movement publications and organisations.