SADDAM HUSSEIN'S military incursion into the Kurdish city of Irbil finally exposed a
fundamental truth about the five-year U.S. involvement in northern Iraq: Despite lofty
rhetoric from both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the United States never had the
will or inclination to act decisively in support of the Iraqi Kurds. Only now is the Clinton
administration coming to terms with the consequences of this hollow policy.
The United States has never believed that its strategic interests were at stake in northern
Iraq, home to about 3.5 million Kurds. Since the Gulf War in 1991, America's primary
goals have been to contain Iraq within its borders and maintain Iraq's territorial integrity.
But weeks after the war's end, when Saddam turned his tanks north on rebelling Kurds,
U.S. policymakers faced an unanticipated crisis: More than 2 million Iraqi Kurdish
refugees began to flee the advancing Iraqi forces and amass along Turkey's southeastern
border, presenting Turkish President Turgut Ozal with a serious dilemma.
Turkey, a country fighting its own war against internal Kurdish opponents since 1985,
feared that admitting these refugees would create an explosive situation and undermine its
efforts to control the 10 million to 15 million Kurds who live in Turkey. As the refugee
flow continued, however, a massive humanitarian crisis was in the making and
international outrage at Turkey was growing. Ozal sought help from his friend George
Bush. The result was Operation Provide Comfort -- a U.S.-led effort to create a "security
zone" inside northern Iraq where the Kurdish refugees would feel safe to leave Turkey and
resettle. This security zone was less a way to ease the suffering of the Kurds than a U.S.
effort to assist Turkey -- a NATO member and an important partner in the international
sanctions effort against Saddam.
Provide Comfort was a short-term humanitarian success story. The U.S. military secured a
small area, including Dahuk, one of three major Kurdish urban centers in Iraq. The Bush
administration declared that Iraqi ground forces would be prevented from crossing into this
area. The United States -- along with Britain, France and Turkey -- established a "no fly"
zone over all Iraqi territory north of the 36th parallel -- including the major Kurdish city of
Irbil. The refugees returned. Kurdish hopes soared, and so did goodwill toward the United
States and its coalition partners. Elections were held in May 1992 and a fledgling Kurdish
parliament was put in place. The situation was far from perfect, but given the history of the
war-torn region and the long struggle of the Kurdish people, the accomplishments were
dramatic.
But the seeds of the recent crisis were already in place. Turkey, having achieved its goal of
solving the refugee problem, grew suspicious of the successes of the Iraqi Kurds. A brief
period of cooperation in 1992 ended abruptly with the fading political power (and later
death) of Turgut Ozal -- the one figure willing to contemplate a new relationship between
the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds. Turkey's new leaders soon initiated a series
of high-level meetings with Iran and Syria to coordinate opposition to increasing Kurdish
autonomy. Turkey feared the creation of an independent Kurdish state because they
believed it would inflame the nationalist aspirations of their own Kurds -- about 20 percent
of the Turkish population. The result was a persistent effort by Turkey to insure that the
Kurds stayed weak, poor and divided.
International aid was channeled almost entirely through Turkey, providing Turkish leaders
with control over the Iraqi Kurds' links to the rest of the world -- an arrangement the Turks
could now exploit. Turkey repeatedly closed vital border closings, delaying essential
supply trucks for weeks at a time. Sometimes humanitarian workers were refused entry.
And the exit of Kurdish officials was closely regulated. For the last five years, Turkish
leaders in Ankara -- not the United Nations or Washington -- had the final word on who
would be permitted to enter or leave northern Iraq.
The situation deteriorated in 1993 and 1994. Despite the international efforts on their
behalf, the Kurds suffered the effects of a "double embargo" -- the one imposed by the
United Nations on Iraq (including Kurdish-controlled areas) and Iraq's efforts to prevent
assistance and aid workers from flowing north to the Kurds. Saddam controlled access to
critical energy sources, such as electricity and oil. As a result, the Kurds were left
dependent on the good will of the international community and their neighbors -- Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Turkey.
Kurdish attempts to gain some relief were rebuffed by the U.N. sanctions committee,
which included representatives from Turkey and the United States. When the British
indicated some support for a Kurdish request to bring in a mobile oil refinery, the United
States refused to consider it. The Clinton administration's position against any partial
easing of the sanctions remained firm in the most trivial cases. A project to establish a
democracy education center at Irbil University took nearly two years to gain State
Department approval. Washington had decided it was okay to protect and feed the Kurds,
but it would not facilitate any effort to rebuild their war-torn economy or create institutions
of civil society and self-government.
From the start, U.S. policy was crippled by deep contradictions -- on the one hand, our
commitment to support the Kurds, and on the other, our desire to resist any infringement
on Iraq's territorial integrity and to assuage Turkish fears of growing Kurdish autonomy.
Unable to reconcile these opposing forces, the Clinton administration did as little as it could
when it came to the Kurds.
During the administration's first two years, U.S. assistance to the Kurds was cut nearly in
half. The bulk of those funds were provided by Congress at its own initiative. The
administration's later requests fell considerably short of earlier funding levels. With the
exception of a small direct food program, U.S. aid was dispersed through private voluntary
organizations. U.S. policy dictated that none of the assistance be provided directly to the
Kurdish authorities.
The strained situation was furthered complicated by Turkey's escalating war in 1993 and
1994 against the Kurdish Workers Party -- the PKK -- a militant organization seeking
increased autonomy or independence for the Turkish Kurds. Turkey's military took
advantage of the United States need to use Turkish air bases as a staging area for the
Provide Comfort operation to gain American silence in response to its increasingly violent
campaign to "solve" the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Among other things, this effort
included frequent and massive Turkish military incursions into northern Iraq (including the
so-called "security zone" area) to destroy PKK hamlets there. Inside Turkey, the army
implemented a massive village depopulation program, destroying an estimated 2000
Kurdish villages since 1993. Provide Comfort slowly became "Provide Cover."
Meanwhile, as the political and economic situation worsened in northern Iraq, so did
cooperation between the two major Kurdish factions there -- Massoud Barzani's Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union for Kurdistan (PUK). Access
to limited financial resources became a major point of KDP-PUK contention. Barzani,
largely in control of the areas bordering Turkey in the northwest, reaped the primary benefit
of Ankara's illicit trade with Iraq through "tariffs" on the Turkish truck traffic. Open KDP-
PUK fighting broke out in May 1994.
Since then, U.S. efforts to facilitate a cease-fire between the two major Iraqi Kurdish
factions is, again, largely a record of lukewarm engagement. The difficult task of brokering
a cease-fire was not given high U.S. priority until Saddam's forces were driving toward
Irbil last month. The United States acquiesced in the Turkish desire to limit international
involvement in this effort -- including Turkey's refusal to include British officials in
important early meetings with the parties inside Iraq.
Despite our history of providing financial carrots to parties we are coaxing toward peace
-- in the Middle East, in Cyprus, even in Northern Ireland -- Washington brought
astonishingly few resources to the table with it in this Kurdish mediation effort. Finally,
U.S. leverage was undermined by the growing sense in the region that Washington could
live with the Kurdish infighting and did not see it as a major threat to its overall policy
toward Iraq.
The recent announcement that Ankara will create a 10-mile Turkish "security zone" in
northern Iraq brings the situation full circle. Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller has
stated that this zone will enable Turkey to keep the PKK off its borders and act as a buffer
against any large Kurdish refugee inflow into Turkey -- the primary accomplishments of
Operation Provide Comfort. The rest of northern Iraq is now left to the whims of those in
power in Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus. The only U.S. ground presence in the region,
the Military Coordinating Committee, withdrew from northern Iraq last week. Operation
Provide Comfort will soon be overflying largely Turkish and Iraqi/KDP controlled
territory. There is no longer any doubt that the "no fly" zone provides no protection against
Iraqi ground incursions. Foreign aid workers are fleeing Iraq -- as are Kurdish refugees,
once again.
The Kurdish parties themselves deserve ultimate blame for their factional fighting and the
misfortune it has once again brought to the Kurdish people. If the Kurds had been able to
maintain a united front, the recent crisis might have been avoided. But this does not absolve
the United States of its role in this crisis. The United States put its credibility behind a
pledge to protect the Iraqi Kurdish people and then helped perpetuate a situation in which
economic and political stability was impossible.
U.S. involvement in northern Iraq was intended to be a short-term, stop-gap policy largely
to help Turkey and embarrass Saddam. When it became clear that Saddam would be around
for some time -- and so would the need for Operation Provide Comfort -- the U.S.
government failed to address the serious shortcomings and contradictions of its policy.
Instead, the United States permitted its involvement in northern Iraq to be guided by
Turkey, a country that believes the division of the Kurdish factions is in its interests. The
Clinton administration never fully appreciated the threat presented by the growing power
vacuum in northern Iraq and the danger that the region might once again become an area of
conflict for the Kurds' neighbors -- Iran, Syria and Turkey. Over the last six months, they
ignored repeated warnings from Kurdish leaders of increased Iranian involvement. As a
result, KDP leader Barzani concluded that the future of northern Iraq lay with Saddam, not
with the United States, and he moved to establish the alliance with Baghdad that sparked
the present crisis.
The cost of this latest Kurdish tragedy was first and foremost humanitarian. An opportunity
to improve the lot of these ill-fated people was lost. At the same time, the international
community missed an opportunity to prove to the people of Iraq that those that stand up
against Saddam Hussein are able to achieve a brighter future. This, more than anything
else, might have helped bring about the internal Iraqi revolt against Saddam that U.S.
policymakers have long desired. Short-sighted, cautious, status quo policy won out. The
victims were U.S. prestige, U.S. policy toward Iraq and the hopes of the Kurdish
people.
Katherine A. Wilkens, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Center for International
and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, is former staff director of the
subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
