IRAQ The betrayal of the Kurdish rebellion WHILE US imperialism and its allies claimed and continue to claim to fear the ambitions of Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein, they were and are far more afraid of the effects of any successful movements of revolt by the oppressed masses of Iraq, and in particular by the Kurds. This was shown at the end of Operation Desert Storm, when Saddam Hussein's regime was given a free hand to suppress rebellions in southern Iraq and among the Kurds.
Saman, an Iraqi Kurdish socialist, visited his homeland last summer and on his return described the course of the Kurdish rebellion to Internationalen, the paper of the Swedish Socialist Party (Swedish section of the Fourth International).
revolt spread from town to town. It was a spontaneous rising. • But were there no groups organizing the rebellion once it got started?
"At first, small left groups were the most active. Later the "asses" [that is, donkeys, used in a pejorative sense] took over", Saman answers.
"All regimes have tried to recruit Kurds for their purposes. During the war against Iran many Kurds preferred to desert into the mountains rather than joining the military forces. Saddam offered them an escape, allowing them to join the Kurdish militias, which we call the 'asses", instead of the army.
"This meant that before the rebellion there were up to 300,000 men in arms in Kurdistan. Their leadership were followers of Saddam. But the rank-and-file were only boys who wanted to get away from the war.
"Thus when the revolt started many of them turned the regime's own arms against it.
"In the next phase, the leadership of the asses also sided with the people. The explanation is simple: in all Iraq there was the same feeling 'Saddam does not exist any more.'
"The rebellion developed quickly. Towards the end of March Kirkuk, the biggest city fell. Kurdish armed forces were approaching Kirkuk. At the same time the town rose. The government soldiers threw down their arms and fled.
"In many towns, people formed committees with elected representatives, to lead the street fights and control distribution of food rations."
Saman stresses that the big established Kurdish organizations had no influence on the rebellion at that stage. The organizations he refers to are the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) led by Mahmoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Front of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani. These organizations have traditionally led the armed struggle. Saman's bitterness about their actions during and after the rebellion is manifest.
"They did not return until more than half of Kurdistan was already liberated.
"First when the people took over Kirkuk, Barzani and Talabani came back and tried to gather people to mass rallies. They had almost nothing left. No armed forces and an even weaker popular base. Their first aim was to regain control over the mass movement.
"They fought the committees, instead of building them to strengthen the rebellion. They saw them as competitors.
"In Sulaimaniya the big organizations even used weapons to attack the committees. The PUK is reported to have closed down committee premises.
"Besides they completely trusted the US alliance to 'arrange' a Kurdish state of federation for them."
Saman is perhaps most critical of the
IT WAS wonderful to come home", Saman suddenly says, as we talk about his voyage home to the liberated areas of Iraqi Kurdistan last summer. "Wonderful" — a big contrast with the misery and the Kurdish defeats he had been describing.
But maybe it is not so strange. Apart from the understandable joy that this Iraqi Kurd and socialist felt on returning to the country that he fled 15 years ago, there is also the joy of knowing that at last something has happened in Kurdistan.
At the end of the war with Iran and the peace agreement of August 1988, the Iraqi regime launched a big offensive against the Kurds. Now, for the first time since then, there are Kurdish liberated areas in Iraq. At that time the Iraqi military forces annihilated 4,000 Kurdish villages and 20 medium size towns. On 60 different occasions gas was used against the Kurds. The armed Kurdish movement, as well as many civilian Kurds, was put to flight over the mountains into Iran and Turkey.
Today, the Kurds control about two thirds of Kurdistan, according to Saman. Since he left the region, the cities of Erbil and Sulaimaniya have been recaptured by the Kurds.
"Among those I talked to, there was a feeling that something can be done, that something can be built. Imagine, only a few months earlier, all of Kurdistan was free. Then the Kurds had all the possibilities. But it is not only Kurdistan that has changed.
"People all over Iraq are more courageous than before, the repressive apparatus of the regime has collapsed. Saddam's police and armed forces no 4. longer have control. When people occupied the buildings of the police during International Viewpoint #222 • February 17, the rebellion, they burned all the old files with data on dissidents. It will take a long time to recreate those files. "It is a regime built on the repressive system. Just remember what happened to Ceaucescu once his security forces collapsed." Saman himself knows first hand about the collapse of the security apparatus. During the month he spent in the liberated parts of Kurdistan he was personally in touch with no less than 200 relatives and friends. Many of them travelled all the way from Baghdad northwards to the liberated parts of Kurdistan, passing the frontier without confronting the authorities. Before the war it would have been unthinkable. The war waged by the US alliance against Iraq last year had less grave direct effects in Kurdistan than in the rest of Iraq.
"There are no strategic targets and the military bases are situated outside the big towns. On one occasion the town of Kirkuk was bombed, however, after the military had moved planes into the streets. Hundreds died, but the attacks were less intensive than in the south.
"Really I had to force people to talk about the war itself. This people has been so severely hit, before and after, that the 'threshold' is very high." In the first days of March, as it became clear that Saddam Hussein had been defeated, the Kurdish rebellion started.
"It was in the town of Rahnia. I have heard people say that there were a few, maybe tens of demonstrators taking to the streets, as soon as they heard of Saddam's defeat. It was said that a small Communist group took the initiative.
"Within a few hours the whole town was in rebellion and the population had occupied the nearby army barracks; the 1992
KDP and PUK leaderships because they did not prepare for Saddam Hussein's counter-offensive, although everyone knew it was coming.
"They did not use the pressure of the mass movement, the strength of the rebellion. It is even more incomprehensible if you consider the degree of dissolution of the Iraqi army. The soldiers asked themselves: who are we fighting for?"
Saddam started the counter-offensive round the end of March/beginning of April, using armed helicopters against Kirkuk.
"They started from the air; that was what they learnt from the Americans. Later on they used land-to-land missiles, like the Scuds, but of shorter range. The destruction in Kirkuk was massive. Some districts were levelled to the ground.
"People escaped in panic. There was a chain reaction. When the people running away reached the towns further north, people fled from there as well. People were screaming: 'Gas, Halabja!' [Halbaja is the Kurdish town attacked with poison gas by the Saddam regime in 1988]. During one of the helicopter attacks the Saddam forces dropped a cloud of lime -very similar to gas. Panic increased."
As many as 2.5 million Kurds escaped to Iran or Turkey.
The Iraqi counter-offensive stopped some tens of kilometres north of Arbi. According to Saman it was due to the reactions of world opinion and to the fact that the Kurdish forces, now reaching the actual mountain areas, started fighting back.
On April 18, the US forces entered and started forming "security zones" for the Kurds in the north of the country.
"They said they came in to protect the Kurds, but they were really only keen to solve the refugee problem, before it threatened Turkey.
"Most Kurds I talked to did not object a lot to the US presence. They saw the US troops as a protection against Saddam. But they had mixed feelings towards the USA, because at the same time they did object to the sanctions against the people of Iraq."
When Saman visited the liberated areas, there were negotiations going on between the Kurdish leaders and Saddam in Baghdad. Saman is critical about the secrecy surrounding these negotiations.
"People knew that Kurdish leaders were hugging Saddam in Baghdad, but they were not told anything about the results of the negotiations. The international support for the Kurds has never been so big, but people in Kurdistan know very little of it."
Saman sees the basic reason for the errors made by the Kurdish organizations in the bureaucratization of their leaderships. They have an old tradition of negotiating with the regimes of the neighbouring countries, following the principle of "my enemy's enemy is my
IRAQ / SYRIA