In this admirably comprehensive dispatch, Sarkis Pogossian makes a passing reference to the Iraqi Kurdish authorities as “apparent clients of U.S. imperialism.” He writes: “The Kurdish militia armies controlled by these two strongmen [Barzani and Talabani], the peshmerga, openly collaborated with US Special Forces units in the campaign against Saddam’s regime in 2003.” I opposed the U.S. invasion, but you won’t find me faulting the Kurds for aiding in the ouster of Saddam Hussein, a perpetrator of genocide. Presented with the opportunity to defeat Saddam at last, could one have expected the peshmerga not to take part?
Yes, the Iraqi Kurds are beneficiaries of U.S. power. This has led some on the far left, like Gilles Munier, to demonize the Kurds as dark conspirators, even (horror of horrors) allies of Israel. (Munier has openly boasted of his own collusion with the Ba’ath regime in the oil-for-food scam.)
The Kurds we spoke with on March 21 were kind but world-weary people who might be described as pro-American without illusions. Hundreds of them had come to Sitaq, a former Iraqi military site near Suleimaniya, to celebrate Newroz with their families. They set up blankets and tables near their cars, pumped their stereos and joined hands in traditional line dances. Many women wore sequined outfits in brilliant colors, but a few wore jeans and even baseball caps. The atmosphere was secular but conservative (most Kurds are Sunni Muslims). Only men did the talking. The women looked on passively; the children gawked and smiled and played games. Every time we approached a family at Sitaq, they’d set up chairs for us—not just politely but with a sense of urgency. One man handed us tall cans of Carlsberg beer at 11 in the morning. “Beer alcohol, beer alcohol!” implored another man an hour later. We stuck with sunflower seeds and sweet tea.
I asked several people whether the U.S. was right to invade Iraq. Not at all surprisingly, the answer was always yes. But Muhammad Amin, 57, offered some strong caveats. “It was good that the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein,” he said, “but we don’t have to forget that he used to be an agent of the U.S.”
Amin continued: “The Americans put their interests ahead of everything. In the past, no journalists reported on the oppression of the Kurds. Now the Western countries are shedding crocodile tears. The Kurds have a proverb: ‘Keep the dog hungry so he’ll be loyal to you.’ We feel the Americans are treating the Kurds like this dog.”
My colleague Yigal invited Amin to turn the tables and ask us a question. “Will America support the Kurds, or will you betray us like in ’74?” Amin wondered. This was a reference to the Algiers Accord, a sort of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Saddam and the Shah of Iran in which the Shah, an American client, pledged to end support for the Kurdish struggle in Iraq. The accord was signed in March 1975, on my seventh birthday (yet another significant March date for the Kurds). Not knowing how to answer Amin’s question, Yigal pulled out his cell phone and offered to call George Bush. The Kurds cracked up.
Adnan Hamid, 44, also praised the U.S. invasion but then brought over his son—face full of freckles, shirt buttoned all the way up—and proceeded to show us the boy’s prosthetic leg. “For this I blame the Americans,” said Hamid, adding some incompletely translated remarks about depleted uranium shells, perhaps from the first Gulf War. Apparently the boy had lost his leg to cancer. “My son is only 15 years old, but he’s melting every day,” Hamid told us.
We also spoke with Ibrahim Ahmed, 80, who walks with a cane and has the air of a kindly village elder. He and his family and friends are from Kirkuk, which they described as “worse than Fallujah.” At least a few of them were Turkmen, not Kurds, so there was more of a split among this group on the question of Kurdish independence from Iraq. In their heart of hearts, and contrary to the official stance of President Talabani, most Kurds would like to secede from Iraq. The Turkmen tend to feel that secession would not be in their best interests. Mr. Ahmed remarked that Kurdistan is landlocked, so independence “would be very bad for us.” Playing devil’s advocate, my colleague Yigal mentioned that Switzerland is also landlocked.
Ahmed frowned, playfully. Then he began speaking in English. “My friend, look at me,” he demanded. “The Swiss are at the very top of the hill. We are 500 meters under the earth.”
I heard more than a little anti-Arab sentiment at Sitaq, not to mention an anti-Shia barb or two. One person, explaining the situation post-1991, joked that Saddam’s army “retreated to the Arab areas, on the backs of camels.” Another claimed, “Arabs are unlogical people. They don’t want to live with anyone. It’s their problem that they’re killing each other.” The casual bigotry grated on my liberal ears, but Kurdish suffering at the hands of an Arab army could not be denied. Nor could the senseless carnage unfolding in the rest of Iraq.
At one point Muhammad Amin asked me what I thought of Kurdistan. “Beautiful,” I told him, sincerely. I’ll never forget his humbling reply. “It’s not beautiful,” he said. “So many villages and trees were destroyed.” He waved in the direction of the far-off hills, as if to point out the barrenness of the landscape. “They had no power to raze the mountains to the ground.”
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