http://themilitant.com/2015/7931/793158.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 31 September 7, 2015
‘Kurds enter world politics
as fighters, not victims’
Following is an excerpt from “Washington’s Assault on Iraq: Opening Guns
of World War III,” by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist
Workers Party. Published in issue no. 7 of the Marxist magazine New
International, it describes the consequences of the 1991 Gulf War on the
Kurds and their long-time struggle for national rights and a homeland.
After Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the U.S.
rulers launched a war drive with the aim of establishing in Baghdad a
reliable regime subservient to Washington. A six-week bombardment
launched in January 1991 and a 100-hour invasion left hundreds of
thousands dead, millions of refugees and widespread destruction. The
bloody U.S. invasion stopped short of Baghdad, leaving Saddam in power.
Copyright © 1991 by New International. Reprinted by permission.
BY JACK BARNES
The U.S. rulers’ military “victory” put an international spotlight on
another unresolved fight for national self-determination in the region —
that of the Kurdish people. Prior to the Gulf war the Kurdish struggle
had largely been in retreat, having been dealt repeated defeats over the
past half century by the Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, and Syrian ruling
classes, with the complicity of Washington, London, Paris, and Moscow.
The consequences of the Gulf war have now posed Kurdish national
self-determination more sharply than at any time since the close of
World War II and the years just after the 1958 revolution that overthrew
the monarchy in Iraq.
Some twenty million to thirty million Kurds are divided between
southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern
Iran, as well as a small region in the southern part of the USSR. An
independent Kurdish republic [Republic of Mahabad] came into existence
in northern Iran after the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’
government in neighboring Azerbaijan in December 1945.
Although the Kurdish republic was crushed by the Iranian monarchy a year
later, the Kurds continued their struggle during the decades that
followed. The U.S. rulers have alternately doled out aid with an
eyedropper to Kurdish nationalist groups, and then abruptly cut off this
backing, depending on Washington’s shifting relations with regimes in
the area, especially Baghdad and Tehran.
The Kurdish people took advantage of the weakening of the Saddam Hussein
regime as a result of the war to press forward their struggle once
again, holding many villages and towns — including the major city of
Kirkuk — for a week or more in March. Baghdad used helicopter gunships
and heavy armor to crush the Kurdish rebellion with ruthless brutality,
causing two million or more Kurdish refugees to attempt to cross the
Turkish and Iranian borders.
As we discuss here today, the U.S. and European imperialist powers have
declared a temporary refugee “enclave” for the Kurds north of the
thirty-sixth parallel in northern Iraq near the Turkish border.
Washington is sending troops, Special Forces units, into northern Iraq
to function as what amounts to little more than a police force for
Saddam Hussein. Along with Turkish soldiers, the U.S. troops are forcing
the refugees out of Turkey and off nearby mountains into ill-provisioned
and barren transit camps. Washington’s aim is to push the Kurds back to
the towns and villages from which they fled.
At best, this enclave will be the temporary equivalent of an Indian
reservation in the United States or one of the many blocked-off areas
near Israel’s borders containing Palestinian refugee camps. The
imperialists share a common interest with the capitalist regimes in
Baghdad, Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran in ensuring that such a “haven”
for the Kurds is short-lived. All of them know that any
more-or-less-permanent Kurdish area can only breed aspirations for more
land that is justly theirs, as well as potential “intifadas” among young
generations of Kurdish fighters. Bush will have nightmares about setting
up a very large reservation, nightmares about a modern-day Geronimo
leading a new breakout.
This is another of the unresolved and uncontrollable social forces in
the Gulf that has been unleashed, rather than contained, by the results
of Washington’s war against Iraq.
As we continue campaigning against imperialism and war today, we must
call not only for “All foreign troops out of Iraq!” but also “Open the
U.S. borders!” — to the Kurdish people and to all Iraqi and Kuwaiti
refugees fleeing the Baghdad regime and the al-Sabah monarchy.
For the ruling class in Turkey, which joined Washington in the war
against Iraq in hopes of winning trade favors and military aid and
hardware, the results so far — nearly one million refugees pounding at
its borders — are nothing short of a catastrophe. (The Turkish regime is
also suffering major economic blows from honoring the continuing
blockade, which shuts off Turkey’s oil pipeline with Iraq and the
resulting flow of funds into the state treasury.) These events have
brought to greater world attention once again the Turkish rulers’ own
suppression of the Kurdish people, until recently legally denied the
right even to speak their own language in Turkey — and they are still
denied the right to read, write, or be educated in Kurdish.
Above all, the Kurdish people have come to the center stage in world
politics as never before, not primarily as victims, but as courageous
and determined fighters for national rights.
Related articles:
Canadian gov’t silent on Turkish assault on Kurds
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home