February 4, 2010
It is amazing how Henry Kissinger has been able to
retain his aura of invincible genius in
international relations, continuing to counsel
presidents, foreign governments and major global
businesses, while occasionally writing lofty Op Ed
pieces advising the U.S. on what it should or should
not be doing next. This mind you, despite
Kissinger’s own history of monumental cynicism and
duplicity when he was guiding foreign policy for
President’s Nixon and Ford. Indeed, it’s a tribute
to the ability of mainstream American media to
forgive and forget.
The latest example is an Op Ed piece Kissinger just
wrote for the New York Times warning American
leaders that they are no longer giving Iraq the
attention it deserves.
The fact is, however, when Kissinger was in charge
of U.S. policy for Iraq, the results for its people,
particularly the Kurds, were disastrous.
Over the decades, the Kurds quixotic struggle for
some form of independence doomed them to a seemingly
endless cycle of rebellion followed by incredibly
vicious repression.
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Henry Kissinger, is a German-born American political
scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel
Peace Prize. He served as US National Security
Advisor and later concurrently as U.S. Secretary of
State in the Nixon Administration. After his term,
his opinion was still sought out by many following
presidents. |
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Those uprisings were
usually encouraged by enemies of Iraq’s rulers who
made use of the Kurds to destabilize the regime in
Baghdad. It was a ruthless, deceitful process, which
resulted in hundreds of thousands of Kurds being
slaughtered and displaced over the years. And it was
an ideal playing field for Kissinger.
For years, the Shah of Iran had been secretly
supporting the Iraqi Kurds to put pressure on
Baghdad. So were the Israelis, who hoped to distract
Iraq’s increasingly virulent leader from joining an
Arab attack on the Jewish state. In 1972, Henry
Kissinger and Richard Nixon, motivated by fear that
Iraq was becoming too cozy with the Soviet Union,
agreed to a request from the Shah to help back the
Kurds.
For the sake of deniability, the U.S. supplied the
Kurds with Soviet arms seized in Vietnam, while
Israel provided Soviet weapons that it had captured
from the Arabs. According to the Washington Post’s
Jon Randal, the clandestine operation was kept
secret even from the U.S. State Department,www.ekurd.netwhich
had argued against any such support. The Kurd’s news
friends, however, did not want their protégées to
win their struggle. An independent Kurdish state
would be much too disruptive for the region, they
felt. Their support was carefully doled out—enough
to keep the revolt going, but not enough to take it
to victory.
The Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, was hard-headed
enough to understand his people were being used by
Iran, but not worldly enough to comprehend that his
American backers could be equally duplicitous. “We
do not trust the Shah,” Barzani told reporter Randal
in 1973. “I trust America. America is too great a
power to betray a small people like the Kurds.”
It was to be a fatal error of judgment. In 1975 the
Shah and the leaders of Iraq abruptly agreed to
settle their disputes and signed a treaty of
friendship. A key part of the agreement was that
Iran would immediately cease its support of the
Iraqi Kurds. Overnight, Iranian army units that had
been supporting the Kurds—with artillery, missiles,
ammunition, and even food—retreated across the
border into Iran. The U.S. and the Israelis
similarly called a sudden halt to their support. At
the same time, Iraqi troops began a massive
offensive against the hapless Kurds.
Thus, without any warning, the Kurds were abandoned;
not just their fighting men, the pesh merga, but
their villages, wives, and children, were exposed to
a ferocious Iraqi onslaught. Barzani sent a
desperate plea to Kissinger for aid. “Our movement
and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable
way with silence from everyone. We feel, Your
Excellency,www.ekurd.netthat
the United States has a moral and political
responsibility towards our people, who have
committed themselves to your country’s policy. Mr.
Secretary, we are anxiously awaiting your quick
response.”
Twelve days later, a U.S. diplomat in Tehran cabled
CIA director William Colby, noting that Kissinger
had not replied and warning that if Washington
”intends to take steps to avert a massacre it must
intercede with Iran promptly.”
Meanwhile, a quarter of a million Kurds fled for
their lives to Iran. Turkey closed its borders to
thousands of others seeking refuge. Many of the
militants left behind—especially students and
teachers—were rounded up by the Iraqi, imprisoned,
tortured, and executed. Some 1,500 villages were
dynamited and bulldozed.
Over the following weeks and months, as the killing
continued, Barzani issued more desperate appeals to
the CIA, to President Gerald Ford, to Henry
Kissinger. No one answered. Kissinger not only
refused to intervene but also turned down repeated
Kurdish requests for humanitarian aid for their
thousands of refugees.
This duplicity of American officials might never
have surfaced but for an investigation in 1975 by
the U.S. Congress’s Select Committee on Intelligence
headed by New York Democrat Otis Pike. The Pike
report concluded that for Tehran and Washington the
Kurds were never more than “a card to play.” A
uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq’s “potential
for international adventurism.” From the beginning
said the report, “The President, Dr. Kissinger, and
the Shah hoped that our clients [Barzani’s Kurds]
would not prevail.” The Kurds were encouraged to
fight solely in order to undermine Iraq. “Even in
the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical
enterprise.”
The report’s damning conclusions continued: Had the
U.S. not encouraged the Kurds to go along with the
Shah and renew hostilities with Iraq, “the Kurds
might have reached an accommodation with [Iraq’s]
central government, thus gaining at least a measure
of autonomy while avoiding further bloodshed.
Instead the Kurds fought on, sustaining thousands of
casualties and 200,000 refugees.”
One of the officials who testified before the
committee in secret session was Henry Kissinger.
When questioned by an appalled congressman about the
U.S.’s decision to abandon the Kurds to their bloody
fate, Kissinger chided the committee, “One should
not confused undercover action with social work.”
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