>>The Story of a War Dictated by Foe Friends: The Spoiled Child [Turkey] Who Stabbed America in the Back!
Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
Kurdistan Observer
Mar 28, 2003
Why is the greatest superpower in the world bogged down in the deserts of south of Iraq? Why are US and Britain suffering increased losses and their military strategy seems to be in trouble at least in terms of timeline, which means extra financial and human costs? Is it the unexpected resistance by Saddam’s thugs that is causing this? Is it weather? Is it the extra cautious approach of the military not to cause civilian casualties? Yes all this does have a part. But these are only expected operational difficulties.
The real reason lies somewhere else. The US military strategy is in trouble in Iraq because its spoiled child Turkey has stabbed America in the back.
The real problem is and has been US’s policy in the Middle East which has not been based on principles and values of freedom and human rights and therefore contradicted US’s own long-term interests, either.
Turkey has made a fool of America. It has made a fool of the Jewish lobby who have been blindly supporting Turkey even in its genocide against the helpless and defenceless people of Kurdistan who have almost instinctively thought of Jews as their natural friends or must-be friends.
The US and Jewish lobby’s support for Turkey have always been based on wrong reasons and false premises: to win an Islamic state to the West’s cause.
Racism and oppression against Kurdish nation
For 80 years the fascist dictatorial medieval states of the Middle East have managed to portray the image of Kurds as anti-Western, as communists, as tribal warriors who know nothing about civilization. For 80 years Kurdish children have been born to be slaughtered or subjugated and enslaved by chauvinistic regimes of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. A helpless friendless but proud and brave nation, have found themselves at the mercy of merciless slaughterers armed and backed by almost all the powerful states in the world, East and West, Islamic and non-Islamic. Our only sin has been and is that we wanted to defend our homeland Kurdistan and to live free and peacefully on it just like any other nation in the world who cherishes liberty, peace and progress. It is this "great sin" that Turkey uses as an excuse for invasion. Look! These people want to be free after 80 years of oppression. I will not allow them. I will crush them.
How shameful is it that American, British and European politicians, journalists and commentators listen to and repeat this Turkish posture as a matter of course, as if the Kurds are from another planet and the Turkish dinosaurs have divine right to prevent their freedom and lengthen their historical suffering.
In no part in this planet the world’s support for racial oppression and inhuman repression has been so cruel, extreme and enduring as in Kurdistan.
What other nation, or even tribe, racial group, etc has been eliminated and oppressed just because they speak their language, they call their children names in their own language, because they call their villages, mountains, and traditional lands by their historical geographical names?
In regard to which other nation and land in the world so blatant racism is accepted and taken for granted as to deny the very geographical name of the land?
Yes, the US supported and enabled our oppressor to kill us, oppress us and deny our humanity and human rights for the last 80 years.
Yes, Russia, especially as former Soviet Union, enthusiastically supported and armed Iraq to eliminate us and supported Syria to enslave us.
Yes, Europe has been a main investor in our death and blood and a loyal supporter of the colonial fascist regimes occupying Kurdistan.
But let us come back to the present conjuncture and make a few reminders.
Criteria for friends and foes
Saddam and all Arab states have been blindly armed and supported by the West. The reason apart from immediate or short- term commercial gains, at the expense of other people’s blood and freedom, has been the false premise that these countries are pro-Western.
But what have been the criteria? A ruling elite serving the interests of the West for its own authoritarian interests. But the same ruling elite, being afraid of democracy, human rights and free market, concepts which have no existence in the Arab-Islamic culture, have been guardians of despotic anti-democratic Oriental culture, using religious fundamentalism to educate young people in the virtues of martyrdom [death] and hatred of all non-Arab ethnic groups and nations whose murder can easily be justified just by labelling them ‘infidels’. (That is why, for example, we find this impasse in the Arab/Jewish conflict.) The pro-Western ruling elite has been adamant to prevent anything Western, apart from commodities, from influencing the minds and manners of people. All the values which are pillars of Western democratic civil societies such as: freedom of expression, free press, free scientific thought and experiment, opposition parties, democratic elections, diversity and equal opportunity, pluralism and multiculturalism, human rights, liberation of women, etc have been punishable taboos in all Arab and Islamic countries. Therefore, while various lobbies with vested interests were keen to portray the Arab elite as friends, they were equally keen to prevent any objective consideration and investigation of reality of culture, education, media and the role of repressive authoritarian structures in undermining any meaningful approach to and adoption of Western democratic values. That is why anti-Americanism, anti-West feelings and even anti-Christian and anti-Jewish feelings are always there to be provoked by any serious or frivolous event or incident. It is not Palestinian question which is the reason for so called Anti-Americanism in Arab and Islamic countries. It is the backward fundamentalist unilateral religio-nationalist culture which ahs been entrenched and reproduced as the bastion of authoritarian dictatorships
Once upon a time Iran was a modern, secular westernised country!
Yes, Iran under Shah seemed to be a well-functioning modern secular Westernised country. Outwardly there was nothing to create suspicion that this was the case. But in fact this was only an outward reality. Pro-Western elite was enjoying all privileges
while the majority of people were left disenfranchised with no democratic institutions of civil society to engage people in both modern civilization and politics. The West was supporting the Shah and his faction to ensure short-term economic interests but nothing was done to encourage the development of a democratic society in which all sections of population understand, accept , and adopt the values of democracy and freedom. The mosques and traditional exclusive Islamic cultural centres remained the main sources and means of educating people. The emergence of fundamentalism following the Islamic Revolution was therefore not a surprise. Only democracy and its participative civil institutions can ensure freedom of debate and expression which will eventually create conscious people who understand their place in a globalised world. This did not happen in Iran. The West, and US in particular, was not interested in encouraging this to happen. And they reaped the result.
And now Turkey shows its true face, too!
For 80 Years the West has been supporting Turkey and its racist Kamalist ideology. For 80 years Turkey, partly for its geopolitical location and partly for its Western-style secular democratic pretension, managed to play a dishonest, deceitful hypocritical game to have the best of both worlds: a secular NATO state when dealing with Western countries and a pious Islamic state when dealing with Arab and Islamic countries. Just the way the West believed the secular Western modernist credentials of the regime of late Shah of Iran until the Islamic Revolution exposed its reality, they sincerely or hypocritically promoted the image of Turkey as a secular "democratic2 state which is protecting Western interests in the strategic region of the Middle East. During the era of communism, Turkey, without losing any thing or being involved in any real action, used its strategic geopolitical location
to behave and expect to be treated by the US and other NATO countries as the West’s spoilt child in the Middle East whose demands however unreasonable and aggressive should be fulfilled and all his sins and crimes however criminal and beastly should be forgiven.
The US, partly under the pressure of the Jewish lobby, and NATO went along with this spoiling exercise allowing Turkey to become the bully of the Middle East.
They supported Turkey’s 80 years of policy of oppression, enslavement and genocide against the people of North Kurdistan. They failed to take any real measures against Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus and its continued colonial aggression there. They enabled Turkey to build the second largest army in NATO armed with the most modern lethal weapons which have often being used for the genocide of Kurdish people. They supported Turkey to ignore all efforts made by PKK to negotiate a peaceful democratic solution of Kurdish question and their intelligence forces cooperated with Turkish MOSAD to illegally kidnap and inhumanely mistreat and mistrial the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
They provided billions and billions of dollars in aid and loans to bolster Turkish decaying economy and enable the fascist regime to continue its occupation of Cyprus and Kurdistan and its colonial aggression against them.
But Turkey just like Iran and Arab countries could never become a modern democratic secular state because it has never been a democracy. The basics of democracy which are freedom of political parties, human rights, the right of free expression, free press and freedom of debate, thinking and opposition, have never existed in Turkey. So just like Shah’s Iran it seems modern and Westernised outwardly, but the society has remained largely Islamic, backward, Anti-American and anti-West because lack of true democracy prevented Turkey from developing values of freedom, democracy, human rights and opposition. Without these hared values the West cannot be assured of any sort alliance with any state.
In fact the present Turkish government IS an Islamic government and they are turning Turkey into an Islamic state with extreme anti-Western values and ideas which will turn into hostile actions sooner or later. Turkish demonstrations against the US, burning American flags and shouts of "Yankees Go Home" are foretastes of things to come.
The second strongest NATO army created by the financial, military and political support of the west, is definitely not an army to defend the US and its allies in time of need. It will sooner or later be controlled by fundamental Islamists with a mission not different from Iran’s Islamic revolutionary guards or Saudi’s Wahabis.
And now it is the paying back time!
Only few weeks ago both US and Britain were reacting very angrily to NATO allies’ refusal to send AWAC S, patriot missiles and other weapons to Turkey. The US was prepared to pour billions of dollars to Turkish economy for Turkey’s allowing US to use its occupied Kurdistan for its war against Iraq. In a war which has a very serious defining historic significance for US and its role in the 21st century world, Turkey, the spoiled child, stabbed its guardian the US in the back. As an arrogant bully instead of accepting American conditions, Turkey has been insisting to impose its own condition of the US forgetting that it owes its very existence to the US’s wrongful support.
The new, Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to give permission to US to use its occupied Kurdistan for military deployment against Iraqi regime in spite of 15 billion dollars of aid offered by US to Turkey. Turkey manoeuvred shamelessly keeping allied supply ships floating off Turkey's shores for over two weeks. The Islamist government eventually allowed restricted U.S. overflight only after US proved that it has alternatives through Jordan, Kuwait and South Iraq. But it also balanced this late concession with an aggressive decision to send its own troops to invade Kurdistan in spite of US, Britain and Europe’s strong opposition to this illegal colonialist aggression.
The war is prolonged and the coalition is suffering losses and troubles because of Turkey
Now American forces are bogged down in the sand and cities of South Iraq because of policy mistakes, because of lack of political will to deal firmly with Turkey. President Bush, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld gave Turkey deadline to accept cooperation with the US but once these deadlines passed they did nothing but to give new deadlines and keeping spoiling their spoiled child even more. It is this lack of political will which is confusing and endangering American and British troops in the quagmire of South Iraq.
Why Northern Front should have been the strategic priority of the War plan
The US largely because of Turkish influence has never been allowed to understand and appreciate the reality of Kurdish people in the Middle East in general and in Iraq and Turkey in particular. Even while US has been determined to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and change the Iraqi regime at least since September 2001, it seems that no realistic assessment of the role of Kurdish people and Kurdistan has been made by the US strategists. It is clear now that some people in the US administration were confident that their 50-year ally and friend Turkey would not disappoint and undermine them. And for this aim it seems they had accepted the Turkish view to bypass the Kurds and even to act contrary to all the moral arguments and logic US and Britain have been using to justify their war against Saddam by allowing Turkey to replace Saddam in oppressing and massacring the Kurds who are in fact the only real and effective US allies in the region.
It is no exaggeration to say that if northern front with close solid solidarity with the Kurdish people were used, allied forces would be in Baghdad now for these reasons:
Military advance in the deserts of South Ira is very difficult because of existence of marshes, oil wells, date palms, and more importantly sandstorms and unhelpful weather which can severely restrict view and hence military activity. But in the mountainous Kurdistan the opposite is true. High hills and mountain allow clear view and even if a bird moves can be detected. There are no sandstorms and any other hindering weather conditions especially in this time of year. It is extremely difficult for the regime to conceal any of its forces and weapons. So they will be completely exposed and thus could be easily destroyed by air power alone. That is why Ira for example withdrew its forces in the frontlines in Kurdistan two days ago.
For Saddam this war is the continuation of the first Gulf War. For the US it is finishing an unfinished business after 12 years of muddle and indecision. The same men who fought the first Gulf war are still leading Saddam’s resistance as if there were no interruption at all not only from the first Gulf War but also from the Iran-Iraq war which preceded it in which they learnt the technique of desert war against massive regular armies. But the regime ahs great weakness in fighting in mountains and against a wholly hostile population especially with the lack of air force. That is why they withdrew from Kurdistan in 1991 to concentrate their forces in the centre and south in order to protect their repressive regime.
Saddam has only one single aim: to survive and protect his power. For this sole aim he is ready to sacrifice not only his own family but the whole Iraqi people and in fact the whole world. And Saddam has been working for the last 12 years of his continued Gulf war arrangements to ensure this. He has been buying and making arms, building bunkers and underground command centres, keeping weapons of mass destruction.
But more importantly Saddam has been working hard to make absolutely sure that once he were attacked there would be no repetition of the popular uprising of 1991 in south and centre of Iraq. For this purpose:
he has appointed ruthless military leaders absolutely loyal to him.
he has appointed death squads to shoot anyone whose loyalty is questionable.
more importantly in the last 12 years Saddam has transformed Baath party into a special paramilitary class with special privileges, high salaries and power to arrest, kill, rape and rob
Saddam has installed his Baath party members, security men and reliable sections of the military in the populated areas with orders to kill anyone who does not obey Saddam’s orders or is suspected to rebel or flee. Military and militia are wearing civilian clothes. Special Baath militia’s are in charge of weapons of mass destruction to use when they are ordered by Saddam. It seems that only Saddam and his appointed military commanders of Iraq’s four zones are authorised to order the use of weapons of mass destruction at this point.
Saddam is prepared and has planned to use all Iraqi people as his human shield. Iraqi regime has since December 2002 applied security control measures to prevent the civilian population from leaving the cities which would lead to the evacuation of the cities leaving Baath party fanatics, security and military forces to be targets of allied attacks. Since December 2002, it has been known to Kurdish parties that Saddam had plans to provide only one member of a family with a yellow card which allows them to leave their home in emergency cases. The rest of the family must stay under virtual house arrest until the war ends one way or another.
Furthermore Saddam has forced every Iraqi family under his control to offer one of their young sons [if not daughters} to be trained as a member of either Saddam’s Fidayyen army, those who will die for Saddam who are mostly Baathists, or a member of Quds (Jerusalem) army. Now the war started these trained militias are forced to fight for Saddam.
Saddam has totally militarised Iraqi society. Through over 30 years of Baath rule Iraq has only seen and experienced war and all the predominant values of Iraqi Arab society are the values of war, killing, and martyrdom. People have been seeing war only, hearing war, breathing war. And the God of War [Arab heroism] has been Saddam on whom all other human activities art, music, stories, films, social life, etc have been focused. Therefore there is no wonder to see young people whose world and worldview is tied to Saddam, know nothing more about life than dying or killing of Saddam.
The distinctiveness of Kurdistan and Kurdish people
In Kurdistan Saddam’s Gulf War ended in his defeat. He left some areas of Kurdistan protected by the US and British air force. This enabled the Kurdish people not only to uproot Baathists and their practices but also to build in a short time a democratic civil society enjoying freedoms and services unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. The Kurdish people know very well that they have been able to enjoy freedom and self-rule sue to US and British protection. And this is very important in the context of present war which, alas, US and Britain, under the influence of Turkey and perhaps others, has not fully appreciated this importance. So why would a northern front allied to the Kurdish forces and Kurdish people would be clearly successful.
For geographical reasons we mentioned above.
In Kurdistan the back of allied forces would be safe with four million Kurds supporting them.
The Kurds have about 100,000 trained fighters. They can at any time recruit further 100,000 retired fighters. These all have experience in fighting Iraqi army and Baathists. Many of them have been soldiers and officers in the Iraqi army. The Kurds have been fighting to end Saddam’s regime for the last 30 years. They have been praying for this moment. They have been praying to God to send them a liberator liberating them from genocide and oppression.
The Kurds have very good connections inside the Iraqi army. In 1991, after Saddam was defeated, over 100,000 Iraqi troops surrendered to Kurdish forces. The Kurds did not kill anyone and sent them all home safe after feeding them and protecting them. This happened although the Kurds had just lost 182000 civilians in Saddam’s Anfal operations carried out by the Iraqi army. The Kurdish people did not take revenge from troops knowing that they were recruits forced to kill and fight. So it is likely that Iraqi army would be willing to surrender to Kurdish forces while they might be unsure or unwilling to surrender to allied forces.
The Kurds know which targets to choose, where and which ones are politically and militarily decisive. It is shame to lose all these skills and capacity.
The Kurds are enthusiastic to fight and for them the war would be really war of liberation. More than 300,000 people have been displaced by the Iraqis from Kirkuk as part of its racist ethnic- cleansing policy. These people are impatient to fight and sacrifice to go back to their homes in the US-led war of liberation.
It is shameful that the greatest sole superpower in the world allows its policies to be dictated by Turkey, allows its interests to be undermined by Turkey, allows its principles and values to be a hostage to Turks’ bully and intransigence. The American people will sooner or later will realise that their dilemma, danger and death in Basra and Nasiriya sands are not the result of a failed military strategy but they are in fact the result of a wrongful comprising shameful policy towards Turkish fascists and an equally shameful hesitance to support the freedom of a long-suffering people ready to sacrifice for our common cause against terrorism, fascism and slavery, and are able to ensure victory in the current war. I think then the American people will not forgive their current leaders if they do not act decisively to change all this and very urgently.<<
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