Current page: Home : Editorial : America, friend of the Kurds


24th September 2002



A CIA memo from 1974: "Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situation, in which Iraq is intrinsically weakened by the Kurd's refusal to relinquish semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor ourselves wish to see the matter resolved one way or the other".


The Pike Committee 2 years later, noted that "Documents in the Committee's possession clearly show that the President, Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah] hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue at a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's neighbouring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise."


A Kurd Leader wrote to Kissinger in 1975: 'Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way, with silence from everyone. We feel, your excellency, that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people, who have committed themselves to your country's policy.'


When the US Congress put this to Kissinger, he replied, cynically: 'Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.'
 

These are the same Kurds whose suffering at Saddam's hands the US now uses, in part, to justify the imminent bombing of Iraq.


In January this year, political activist Noam Chomsky appeared in a Turkish court as a witness in the trial of a publisher who had printed his essay 'Prospects for Peace in the Middle East' which among other things documented 'some of the worst atrocities of the 1990s' all made possible because of American weapons sold to Turkey with the full knowledge of what they would be used for. Atrocities which took place within the so-called 'no-fly zones' imposed after the Gulf war, but all this meant was that the Kurds were suffering at the hands of America's newly chosen oppressor, instead of the previous one that was Iraq.


We have to ask ourselves this question: why, after a generation of being used as political pawns by the US, do the Kurds suddenly matter so much to them? The answer, of course, is that they don't, but they do provide a suitable selling point for an unnecessary war to an American public who have been bought up on the idea of their country as being liberators of the oppressed.


The truth of the matter is, it was the US who contributed more than most to their oppression in the first place.