The news from Kurdistan is sad and grim." So began veteran Kurdish analyst Martin van Bruinessen in his 1986
Middle East Report assessment of the Kurds in Iran and Iraq. Ten years later, the news from Kurdistan is still sad and
grim. The Kurds continue to fight with one another and with the governments of the states they inhabit.
But something has changed: for a people long relegated to the far recesses of historical memory, the Kurds have
gained a significant degree of international prominence.1 Their struggle and plight--the Kurds are the largest ethnic
group in the world without their own state--now involve regional powers such as Turkey and Syria, and a distant
superpower, the United States. The latter demonstrated its interest in September 1996 when it launched 44 cruise
missiles against Iraq to punish an incursion into the Kurdish area in the northern part of the country. Moreover, there is
a growing sense that the Kurdish issue is not about to disappear this time. Two sets of independent but nonetheless
related events account for this transformation. The first is the combined impact of the cold war's end and the
1990-1991 Persian Gulf War that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The second development is the intensification
of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.
In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's defeat in the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, along with their
Iraqi Shiite counterparts in the south, rose up against Baghdad. Both rebellions were crushed by remnants of the Iraqi
army, which deployed helicopters and other heavy military equipment with deadly results.The suppression of the
Kurdish rebellion caused a massive outflow of refugees to the Iranian and Turkish borders. The misery inflicted on
the Kurds ultimately prompted the United States and its allies to create a "safe haven" in a small part of northern Iraq
and to declare the area north of the 36th parallel in Iraq a no-flight zone. American, British, and French airplanes
stationed at Turkish bases, under the rubric of Operation Provide Comfort, performed the task of protecting the Kurds.
Reinvigorated by these international moves, the Kurds pushed back the Iraqi army and established themselves in the
north in a de facto autonomous zone, much of which coincided with the ancestral Kurdish lands in Iraq.
As the Kurds returned to their homes and began to rebuild their lives, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)--the two rival Kurdish parties that have struggled with each other since the
mid-1960s--set up a joint administration in the city of Erbil. This incipient Kurdish state, however, was saddled not
only with the refugees from the latest rebellion but also with the psychological scars and economic devastation of
Saddam's 1987-1988 anti-Kurdish campaign, in which the Iraqi leader used chemical weapons on the Kurdish
civilian population and also destroyed some 4,000 villages, killing more than 100,000 Kurds. Moreover, following
the Gulf War, northern Iraq was subjected to a double embargo: one imposed by the UN on Iraq and another imposed
by Baghdad.
Iraq, of course, refused from the beginning to accept the new reality in the north and did its best to continue to punish
the Kurds for their seditious behavior. Saddam's agents planted bombs in the north, his troops often stole part of the
harvest, and he maintained the strict embargo on goods and fuel going to the safe haven in order to undermine the
north's economy. The combined impact of the UN's and Saddam's embargoes was to reduce the population of northern
Iraq to an unhealthy dependency on food aid provided by the United States, the UN, and nongovernmental relief
organizations.
Under the strain of impossible economic conditions, the two Kurdish rivals began to fight over resources and,
especially, money. In the absence of a viable economy, trade into and through northern Iraq, including smuggling,
assumed a contentious dimension. The KDP, by virtue of controlling the more lucrative border posts along the Turkish
frontier, obtained the lion's share of customs revenues. The dispute between the two parties and their leaders over
trade and other issues escalated in 1994, with the PUK expelling the KDP from Erbil. The United States tried to
mediate between the two groups in a series of talks conducted in Ireland in 1995, but these ultimately bogged down
over the issue of monitors to supervise cease-fire agreements between the two parties. Northern Iraq, as a result, was
further divided between a KDP-controlled northern zone and a PUK-controlled southern area. The stalemate between
the two Kurdish rivals also created opportunities for Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria to jockey for influence with the
KDP, PUK, and other smaller Kurdish militias, further aggravating the divisions among the Iraqi Kurds.
The differences between KDP leader Massoud Barzani and PUK head Jalal Talabani extend beyond the immediate
scramble for resources. The two leaders differ significantly with respect to their origin, philosophy, base of support,
and world view. Barzani, the son of the legendary Kurdish leader Molla Mustafa Barzani, has always assumed that
leadership of the Kurds is his birthright. Molla Barzani managed to embrace Kurdish national aspirations without
sacrificing the tribal nature of Kurdish society. His son has been true to his legacy. Massoud Barzani is, in the words
of one observer, "unable to see the larger interest of Iraqi Kurds outside the parochial concerns of his tribal and
family alliances. . . "2 But Kurdish society has undergone significant changes since Molla Barzani's days. While a
segment still adheres to old tribal ways and loyalties, another growing segment has become urban and modern.
The two largest cities in northern Iraq, Erbil and Sulaimaniya, have about a million residents each. It is in these and
other urban areas, and in the region's emerging middle class, that Talabani's support base is concentrated, although he
too benefits from tribal support. This rural-urban split accounts for the PUK's nationalist, progressive orientation and
Talabani's unrelenting ambition to internationalize the Kurdish issue. But there are cultural affiliations involved as
well. The two leaders' spheres of influence roughly coincide with the boundary lines created by the two main Kurdish
dialects spoken in the north: KDP followers tend be Kurmanji speakers, while the PUK is stronger in the
Sorani-speaking regions of southern Kurdistan. The relationship between the two groups is strained further by the
deep personal animosity between their leaders: Barzani has never made peace with the fact that Talabani abandoned
his father and the KDP to set up the rival organization.
USING BAGHDAD
The stalemate in northern Iraq was broken when Barzani and his party struck a deal with Baghdad to unseat the PUK
from Erbil. The KDP offensive that began on August 31, 1996, proved successful as Barzani's forces--initially backed
by between 30,000 and 40,000 Iraqi troops with tanks and artillery--swept not just through Erbil but also through
Sulaimaniya and Talabani's hometown of Koi Sanjak. It appeared that the KDP had finally succeeded in uniting the
northern Iraqi Kurds. In the process it made a pact with the devil. In exchange for the military support, Saddam was
allowed to infiltrate his intelligence operatives throughout the north, rounding up dissidents and defectors. Still, this
proved a short-lived victory, as the PUK temporarily withdrew to the mountains to regroup. By mid-October, the PUK
had launched a counteroffensive and with the exception of Erbil, had regained most of the territories lost to the KDP.
The KDP's initial victory and Saddam's reassertion of his influence over the north represented a major setback for
American policy in Iraq and the region. For the United States, northern Iraq and its Kurdish population were both a
humanitarian charge and a tool of its anti-Iraq policy. While American policy toward Baghdad consisted of sanctions,
inspections, and military pressure and retaliation, Washington also concentrated on humanitarian relief and protection
in northern Iraq, showing that it had compassion for a people who had long been subjected to terrible sufferings.
Northern Iraq remained the single most important reminder that Iraq had a long way to go before being rehabilitated.
The north was a continuous source of pressure on the regime in Baghdad, home to the broader Iraqi opposition, the
Iraqi National Congress, and an important base for clandestine activities conducted against the regime in Baghdad.
Boxed in by UN resolutions and the no-flight zone, Saddam Hussein sought to undermine United States policy. In October 1994, he prodded the United States by moving troops south toward Kuwait, which resulted in an immediate deployment of American troops to the region. His more recent decision to act in the north was the result of a constellation of factors. The division between the two Kurdish factions had reached an apex, with neither side heeding United States calls for reconciliation, indicating to Saddam that American influence and interest in the north was on the decline. For Saddam, who felt that he was no longer an important player in the Middle East, the intra-Kurdish division provided him with an excellent opportunity to make his voice heard on the eve of the American presidential election. Moreover, United States success in getting UN Resolution 986--which would allow the limited export of oil for food--passed with all the requisite safeguards against cheating represented a strategic defeat for Saddam. He realized belatedly that Resolution 986 not only further diminished Iraqi sovereignty, but also deprived him of the one card--the suffering of the people of Iraq--he had to play against the United States and the West. By intervening in northern Iraq, he put the implementation of the resolution in doubt, at least temporarily.
With the advent of an Islamist-led government in Turkey, Saddam also calculated that it would be difficult for the United States to get approval to use Turkish air bases for air strikes with the planes assigned to Operation Provide Comfort. Moreover, with the stalemate in the Arab-Israeli peace process, the climate in the Arab world for another confrontation with the United States appeared to be ripe. Growing frustration with the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu made pro-United States Arab regimes vulnerable to accusations from Arab opposition groups skeptical of the peace process and continued reliance on the United States.
Kurds, and Iraqi Kurds in particular, have always had to construct alliances with stronger outside powers to survive. Both Barzani and Talabani have in the past sought the support of leaders in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Barzani himself in 1994 elicited Teheran's help when the tide had turned against the KDP. Nevertheless, Barzani's decision to align himself with Saddam against another well-established Kurdish formation took everyone by surprise. It was no secret that Barzani had been entertaining confidential contacts with the regime in Baghdad for some time. Never having envisioned a future for the Kurds separate from Baghdad, he had always been considered closer to the Iraqi regime there than Talabani. Also, deeply mistrustful of the United States, which had abandoned his father in 1975 as part of the Iranian-Iraqi agreement signed in Algiers, Barzani did not believe in Washington's commitment to the Kurds.
Although Barzani justified his decision by pointing out that the PUK had been receiving support from Iran, his gambit in aligning himself with Saddam was a risky venture--and remains so. The Barzani family was one of the primary victims of Saddam's 1988 anti-Kurd campaign; Barzani acknowledges that Saddam is responsible for the deaths of three of his brothers. Irrespective of their tribal or any other affiliation, Kurds universally fear and despise Saddam Hussein. Therefore, unless Barzani can demonstrate that concrete benefits will flow from this alliance, his tactical victory could turn into a strategic blunder. Already, the KDP and the PUK are back negotiating--although without much zeal--a cease-fire agreement under American auspices and with Turkish help. These negotiations are, in effect, an admission by Barzani that he has failed to unite the territory under his leadership. It is quite possible that the next move in this conflict will be Saddam's, who may want to undermine American efforts.
The dispersion of traditional Kurdish territories among at least four states--Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria--internationalizes the Kurdish conflict. In the past, neighboring powers were interested in the Iraqi Kurds either because they were intent on destabilizing the Baghdad regime or were afraid of the demonstration effect on their own Kurdish minorities. After almost six years of de facto autonomy, the question of the Kurds in northern Iraq is no longer a simple one, since the future of Iraq itself, including its territorial integrity, has been undermined by a variety of sanctions. Complicating matters is the Kurdish insurrection in Turkey, begun in 1984 by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK has not only proven resilient against one of the Middle East's most powerful armies, but has become the third largest military force in northern Iraq after the KDP and the PUK.
In the 13 years since the PKK burst onto the scene, some 21,000 people have died, mostly in Turkey's southeastern Kurdish provinces. The manpower and resources the Ankara government has devoted to this conflict are enormous. Combating the insurrection itself costs approximately 3 percent of Turkey's GDP, and some 250,000 troops and other security forces have been pressed into service. The brutal conflict has led to the destruction of thousands of villages and hamlets and an internal flow of refugees.
In Iraq the Kurds have always enjoyed the simple recognition of belonging to a different ethnic group. The Iraqi government, admittedly because it was under severe pressure from a successful Kurdish resistance movement, agreed in the 1970s to an unfulfilled autonomy arrangement that provided a modicum of self-rule in the north. In contrast, Turkish Kurds, despite Turkey's pluralist political system, have only in the last few years--and then grudgingly--received acknowledgment of their identity. Even so, their existence is not an official fact.
When Turkey's new rulers after World War I tried to create a Turkish state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, they endeavored to assimilate the Kurdish minority into the larger Turkish population. This was in contrast to the Ottoman practice that made no distinction between its Muslim populations; all were treated as first-class citizens. Kurds were offered a choice: to the extent that an individual Kurd accepted the "new Turkish identity," he or she would enjoy all the rights of full citizenship. In fact, many assimilated Kurds rose through the political, economic, and military ranks to occupy some of the highest positions in Turkish society.
Not all, however, wanted to assimilate. Those who wished to keep the Kurdish language alive and champion their distinct heritage were confronted by successive governments wielding uncompromising policies against any sign of ethnic consciousness. The calm that reigned over Turkey after 1937, when the last of the postindependence Kurdish rebellions was defeated, was shattered by violence in the 1970s that pitted left- and right-wing groups against each other. Kurds, who were mobilized by the radical discourse of left-wing revolutionary Turkish student groups, wholeheartedly embraced these organizations and often figured among their leaders. Dissatisfied with their Turkish counterparts' insufficient attention to the problems of eastern and southeastern Anatolia, the Kurds broke away to form their own organizations. The PKK ultimately emerged from this as a Marxist-nationalist grouping.
Three factors account for the PKK's success. The first is its textbook-style insurgency campaign that mixes brutality (especially toward Kurds considered collaborators) with a political campaign designed to politicize and then win over rural and migrant populations. The PKK has deliberately sought to create a heavy-handed response from the Turkish military which, in turn, has alienated the Kurds in the southeast. During the first stages of the insurrection, in the early 1980s, the local citizenry routinely denounced PKK members to the security forces, but by the second half of the decade loyalties were radically transformed.
Second, as much as the PKK casts its long shadow over northern Iraq today, the large influx of Iraqi Kurdish refugees into Turkey in 1987 and 1988 after Saddam's anti-Kurd campaign, and then again after the Gulf War, provided Turkish Kurds with a cause for which to mobilize. The PKK became an indirect beneficiary of this heightened ethnic awareness; Kurds were not immune to the ethnic liberalization that marked the end of the cold war.
The third factor was the PKK's ability to obtain support from Syria and diaspora Kurdish communities. Syria has long-standing disputes with Turkey, ranging from Alexandretta's accession into the Turkish republic in 1939 to the mammoth Turkish irrigation and hydroelectric projects on the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers that adversely affect the quantity and quality of the downstream water flow. Furthermore, the 500,000-strong Kurdish diaspora in Europe, principally in Germany, has been mobilized by the PKK and provides the organization with a constant stream of financial and political support.
While the Turkish military has become more efficient at combating the PKK and has captured the initiative, it has not succeeded in eliminating it. Because the PKK cannot defeat the Turkish military, it measures its success by its ability to survive as a force that can damage and engage the army while simultaneously enlarging its political base among Turkish Kurds. Though it does not appeal to a majority of Turkey's Kurds, its presence has had two contradictory results. On the one hand, it is perceived by Kurds as an instrument of pressure on the Turkish government that keeps the issue alive. Therefore, even the most moderate of Kurdish nationalists do not wish to see the PKK defeated. On the other hand, the PKK's terror tactics have enabled the Turkish government to paint all Kurdish demands with the same brush of extremism.
Ankara has increasingly found itself being dragged into the politics of the Middle East by the combination of overt Syrian and, to a lesser extent, Iranian support for the PKK and its reluctance to admit that the Kurdish problem is primarily one of identity, and therefore domestic in origin. With the PKK making liberal use of northern Iraq as a staging area, the Turkish military has intervened a number of times in an attempt to destroy PKK bases and provisions. The first large anti-PKK operation in the fall of 1992 was conducted in conjunction with both the KDP and the PUK. Since then, Ankara has preferred to rely on the KDP, primarily because this group's territory is adjacent to Turkey and also because it has found it more trustworthy than the PUK. By 1995, Ankara stopped relying on the Iraqi Kurdish parties altogether and in March and April 1995 conducted its largest operation to date with 35,000 troops.
Unable to prevent PKK incursions into Turkey, Ankara announced in 1996 that it would construct a 10-mile-wide "danger zone" south of the Turkish border that would be patrolled and extensively monitored by its own troops, although no Turkish troops would be permanently based there. Not surprisingly, Ankara found itself enmeshed in controversy with Arab governments and public opinion, which accused it of imitating the Israeli security zone in south Lebanon.
Turkey has long adhered to the belief that the solution to northern Iraq and, indirectly, to its own Kurdish problem, lies in reconstituting a strong Iraq capable of maintaining the peace along the Turco-Iraqi border. In Ankara's view, even a stronger Saddam is preferable to the status quo, although there is concern about the Iraqi leader's future ambitions and even desire to seek revenge for Turkey's Gulf War posture. Ankara's preference has been a source of irritation between itself and the United States. Turkish fears of the PKK and suspicions of American intentions have interfered with Operation Provide Comfort and curtailed United States activities in northern Iraq. This has strengthened the hand of Damascus, Teheran, and Baghdad at the expense of Ankara and Washington. The Syrians have used the PKK to attack the KDP and force the latter to negotiate a cease-fire with Turkey's nemesis, while the Iranians have often offered to negotiate between the warring Kurdish parties as a way of weaning them away from United States influence. It is in this context that the KDP fell under the spell of Baghdad. These developments and the inability of the United States to use its Turkish-based airpower to respond have exposed the Kurds' vulnerability and seriously eroded Operation Provide Comfort's deterrence function and, therefore, its raison d'être.
Soon before he died in 1993, Turkish President Turgut Özal had finally come to the conclusion that the Kurdish problem on either side of his border with Iraq was unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Instead of forcing the Iraqi Kurds into Saddam's arms, he chose to cooperate with and strengthen them politically while simultaneously making them dependent on Ankara for their existence. They were also to become his opening with the Turkish Kurds. He had hoped to defuse the domestic Turkish issue by introducing a modicum of domestic reforms and by channeling Kurdish aspirations to northern Iraq. But his successors have abandoned his policies in favor of a purely military solution.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the hopes unleashed by the 1992 elections in northern Iraq and by the Kurdish government
have been dashed. A great deal more, however, may be at stake if the latest United States-led mediation effort fails:
the Kurdish issue will not disappear and may become a dominant factor in Middle East politics.
Henri J. Barkey is an associate professor in the department of international relations at Lehigh University.
1There are 12 million Kurds in Turkey, who make up 20 percent of the country's population. The corresponding figures for Iraq are 4.5 million or 25 percent of the total population; Iran, 6 million or 10 percent; and Syria, 1 million or 6 percent.
2Kanan Makiya, "The Politics of Betrayal," New York Review of Books, October 17, 1996, p. 10.