Tag: Iraq

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Kurds and Whey

The debate about the war in Iraq was always really about this question: what happens now. The Americans sometimes act as if they have proven the world wrong by winning an easy victory. Nobody doubted the easy “victory”– Iraq has about 25 million people, the U.S., 300 million. But the Iraqis are not, as a rule, dancing in the streets waving American flags, Donald Rumsveld notwithstanding. They’re not. A lot of them are saying, “thank you very much, now get out.” The first large demonstrations against the American presence have already occurred.

These are the key elements of postwar Iraq.

1. The Kurds. There are about five million Kurds in Iraq. More importantly, there are about 20 million Kurds in Turkey. That’s right– that’s the number that is more important. The Kurds have been fighting Turkey and Iraq for about 30 years — well, actually, about 800 years– for a Kurdish homeland. There are two leaders among the Kurds in Northern Iraq right now: Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. The Kurds have an army, the “peshmerga”.

2. Turkey: Turkey, as I mentioned, has about 20 million Kurds. Those Kurds are like Quebecois– they identify themselves strongly by their ethnicity and they want a homeland. From about 1985 to 2000, 36,000 people were killed in a brutal civil war in the area occupied by the Kurds in Southern Turkey, between Marxist separatists led by Abdullah Ocalan, and the Turkish government. I’ll bet you don’t remember that. Ocalan is now held in a prison on an island called Imrali. After his imprisonment, Ocalan called for a cease-fire but 5,000 of his fighters remain in Northern Iraq. Turkey has since generally “repressed” the Kurds, and imposed a “State of Emergency” on the city of Diyarbakir in Southern Turkey.

Turkey has two primary concerns. Firstly, it does not want another deluge of refugees like it experienced during the first Gulf War, when 500,000 Kurds fled Saddam’s forces (while Bush Sr. stood by and did nothing). Secondly, it does not want an independent Kurdish state to be established in Northern Iraq, and including the oil-rich area of Kirkuk. Turkey has strongly indicated that it would deploy it’s forces in Northern Iraq to prevent such an occurrence. The Americans have cut a deal here. They will stop the Kurds from taking control of Kirkuk or declaring a Kurdish state, and Turkey will keep its troops within it’s own borders.

About 90% of the population of Turkey– and this includes the Kurds– are against the American-led invasion of Iraq. The Kurds in Turkey are against it because they believe the Turkish government will impose new restrictions upon them for fear of incipient Kurdish nationalism coming to the fore in the post-war chaos.

It was reported in the New York Review of Books that after Turkey’s foreign minister Yashar Yakis, explained the complications of his situation to President Bush, Bush told him, “I understand. Now go back to Turkey and do the job.” Yakis thought about this for a moment and then said, “the man is ill.”

3. The Shiites and “The Surpreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq” (SCIRA). This organization is headquartered in Iran(!) and headed by Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim. It has links to Iran’s radical Revolutionary Guard, which, of course, is an arch-foe of the U.S. About 60% of Iraq’s population is Shiite, as is the large majority in Iran. After the first Gulf War, SCIRA led an uprising of Shiites in the south of Iraq. The administration of Bush Sr., fearing that Iran would become too powerful if it had a toe-hold in Iraq, allowed and even encouraged Saddam to crush the revolt (General Schwarzkopf released seized helicopters and tanks to the Iraqi forces to be used in the action).

Iran is not stupid. Though it officially opposes U.S. intervention in Iraq, it is no friend of Saddam Hussein, who fought a bitter war against Iran in the 1970’s and 80’s, during which he employed chemical weapons, and was supported by the U.S.. Hussein was defeated only when Iran threw thousands of suicide fighters into the fray, whose fanatical efforts turned the tide. So Iran, apparently, is quietly encouraging Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim to be nice to the Americans, to ensure that he will play a role in post-war Iraqi politics, and thereby be a conduit of Iranian influence.

Ahmed Chalabi is a protégé of the CIA, but is opposed by the U.S. State Department. In other words, Colin Powell, ever aware (and probably singularly aware) of long-term consequences, does not see him as an asset to post-war reconstruction in Iraq. He has been out of the country for 45 years and may well be perceived by Iraqis as a tool of the U.S. Chalabi keeps protesting that he has no interest in a political role in post-war Iraq. Well, why the hell shouldn’t he say that? Is anyone going to tell President Chalabi to step down because he once said he didn’t want to be President?

4. OPEC – Will a postwar Iraq administration join OPEC, which is, of course, an illegal oil cartel? If it doesn’t, won’t Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other members have a fit– the price of oil, with Iraq’s huge reserves– could fall dramatically if Iraq competes with OPEC on the open market? Keep buying those SUVs.

 

Those are the key elements, aside from the remnants of Saddam’s regime, a constituency of unknown character and composition.

There are a few possible outcomes of this entire enterprise, and it is difficult to predict which one will prevail. The optimistic view is that all of these groups, the Kurds, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the remnants of Saddam’s government and civil service, will come together to form some kind of federation with a constitutional government that respects minority rights while giving structure and coherence to a democratic federal government.

Questions have to be answered.

Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times (April 15, 2003) says this: If Lebanon, Iraq and a Palestinian state could all be made into functioning, decent, free-market, self-governing societies, it would be enough to tilt the entire Arab world onto a modernizing track.

Do you believe that? Doesn’t that sound like “pie-in-the-sky” nonsense? On what basis could you make a prediction like that? How much more believable is it than a prediction that the surrounding Arab states, terrified of possible U.S. intervention, simply accelerate their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and build up their armies, and crack down even more brutally on dissent? What if Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are taken over by Islamic fundamentalists and decide to curtail exports of oil to the west? The U.S. will invade, of course. But then you will get an intifada in Iraq, requiring more U.S. troops to suppress and maintain order. And you could have a hell of an intifada in Saudi Arabia, with all those oil wells to blow up. Then Pakistan tilts the wrong way, and India gets aggressive about Kashmir, and before you know it, you have a global disaster.

Or… you could have a democratic, federated Iraq, with a constitution that guarantees minority rights, equitable distribution of wealth, a free press, labour unions, and other intermediary institutions. Democracies, as a rule, don’t threaten their neighbors, so Iran, if it no longer feels threatened, could chill out and de-accelerate it’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Abbas leads a democratic Palestinian leadership into negotiations with Israel. Sharon, having proven his mojo with years of hard-line tactics, feels free to make a deal and stops Israeli settlements in the disputed territories and cedes back a good portion of the Golan Heights.

In short, peace breaks out. China and the U.S. cut a deal with North Korea. The stock market revives. The Democrats win the White House in 2004 and pass legislation providing health care insurance for every American. Life is great.

Crazier things have happened.

There was a recent meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders in the Kurdish-controlled town of Salahaddin. Americans, from the “Diplomatic Security Service”, were there in force to make sure nobody shot each other, especially Zalmay Khalilzad, whom President Bush calls a “special envoy” to the free Iraqis. Abdulaziz Hakim was a player, with the cooperation of the U.S., even though he is connected to the radical Islamist movement in Iran (his brother is the leader). Everyone at this meeting is holding their cards very close to their chests. No one wants to declare themselves as the provisional government of a new Iraq. No one wants to start disparaging the claims of rival ethnic or political groups because they fear that the Americans will freeze them out of the post-war reconstruction.

There are two large cities in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Northern Iraq: Mosul and Kirkuk. Both cities are located near vast deposits of oil. The Kurds will claim Kirkuk as their ancestral home, but not Mosul. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis tried to “ethnically cleanse” Kirkuk by moving Arabic families into the homes of the Kurds and driving the Kurds further north, into the mountains. As the current war drew to a close, some Arabic families, who had been forcibly settled into the area in the first place, began to leave, voluntarily, and Kurds began to move back in. There is no doubt that many, many Kurds will immediately try to move back to Kirkuk at the first opportunity.

The Kurds entered Kirkuk with American forces, but were asked to leave once the city had been secured. They politely agreed, for the moment.

Why does Iraq have so many diverse ethnic groups? Because the nation of Iraq is an artificial construct of the area of occupation by British forces in the early 20th century. They gave it an administrative identity that has no relationship to the ethnicity of the inhabitants. The same problem exists in Africa and may be one of the main reasons nations like Rwanda, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe continue to writhe with civil disturbances, wars, and forced starvation.

 

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Colin Powell’s Big Lie

According to Colin Powell, the tape that was recently released by Osama Bin Laden and broadcast on the Al Jazeera network, “proves” that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are linked.

Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman, was less coy. Forgetting, perhaps, that one of the initial reasons for America’s inevitable invasion of Iraq was its links to the terrorist organization, Fleischer said that the tape showed that Al Qaeda and Saddam were “linking up” (New York Times, February 12, 2003). Ooops. I meant “had linked up”.

These guys have spun out of control here. They are beginning to believe their own propaganda. If, like me, you read the text of the tape first and then saw Colin Powell, you wondered what the hell he was talking about. If, like most Americans, you heard Powell speak first, and never read the transcript, you thought, what’s with those crazy French? Don’t they realize we have proof?

George Tenet of the CIA is somewhat more circumspect. I think he is embarrassed, but, like Powell, has had his arm twisted and has decided he’d rather ride in circles whooping and wheezing with this posse of yahoos than exit quietly out the back door. A few years from now, he’ll need to make some money and you don’t get $50K a speech if you can’t talk about something exciting like plotting the extra-judicial killing of a foreign leader or terrorist.

The scale of the Bush administration’s mendacity has become breathtaking. This government does not “feel it’s way” carefully, with scrutiny and foresight. It acts like it believes it is receiving direct messages from the Almighty on stone tablets that are carefully dusted for anthrax before being smashed over the heads of the Democrats.

How does this play out in 2004? I’m old enough to know better than to think too wishfully. I suspect that Bush will shortly crash and burn– the economy is not perking up and probably won’t perk up until after the war. The war is obviously scheduled for political reasons this year, so it can be done with and celebrated in early 2004, but late enough so that the inevitable debacle afterwards– regional instability, new terrorist attacks, Osama thumbing his nose– won’t happen until after the 2004 elections.

I made the mistake before of believing that U.S. military victory would not come easy. I now tend to think that it will, indeed, come very easily. That’s why Bush has chosen Iraq to bear the brunt of his Mosaic complex. It has no air force. It has no real defense. Bush and Powell keep raving about the “threats” from Iraq as if Iraq had any kind of military strength, but that is essential to their political survival: if Americans see that they are the bully and Iraq is the 90 pound weakling, the medal ceremonies and flag-waving afterwards won’t have much resonance.

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Colin Powell Sells His Soul for a Bauble

Powell Sells Out

You could believe that Colin Powell has come around to the Administration’s way of thinking, and now sees the sense in Donald Rumsveld’s mindless aggression. Or you could believe his arm is so twisted behind this back that he can pick his nose without bending an elbow. I think both are true to a certain extent. It is to Bush’s credit– a credit to his shrewdness– that Powell hasn’t been driven out of this administration. But a day may come when Powell looks back at a rather dubious episode in his career and wonders where he lost his soundness of mind, his prudence, and his wisdom.

Ironically, I used to have more of a problem with the other side of Powell. During the Serbian crisis, Powell insisted he could not send U.S. troops into a region solely for the purpose of keeping the peace, without vital U.S. interests at stake.

I still have a problem with that, and obviously, Iraq is not Serbia.

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War With Iraq: Quagmire Awaits

Do you think George Bush is smart? No, you don’t. Even his conservative, Republican, oil executive supporters don’t think he is smart. But that’s okay. He is surrounded by smart people and he relies on their judgment.

That is logically ridiculous of course. Americans are suspicious of intellect– we know. They somehow think that a down-home country guy with a little cunning surrounded by competent managers is the ideal leader. He won’t get confused by details or messed up by the subtleties or ambiguities of complex realities. He’ll just go with his instincts. Instincts are always better than closely reasoned judgments. Aren’t they? They are in the movies.

Well, actually, less than 50% of the voters seemed to think that Bush was smart enough to be President. And, of course, a decisive majority of all the conservative Republicans on the Supreme Court, including the acute Clarence Thomas.

The trouble is, if you aren’t very smart yourself, how do you know your managers and advisors are smart? And when they give you conflicting advice, as surely Colin Powell and Donald Rumsveld and John Ashcroft have been doing, how do you sort out who is right? You kind of feel for it, right?

Is that good enough in 2002? Is that good enough for the world’s only remaining superpower, other than Europe, China, or India?

So you have this fixation on Iraq. Iraq is a crisis point for America right now because, well, George Bush Jr. decided Iraq is a dangerous threat. He seems to have made up his mind that he must invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein and set up a new government, so that oil can be extracted and sold by large American corporations, or democracy can be restored, or Americans can feel safe once again from all those Iraqi Scud missile attacks we’ve been experiencing lately.

Dick Cheney was so prescient about Iraq that while he was in charge of Halliburton, as recently as 1998-99, he did more than $23 million of business with Iraq. Didn’t he know that Saddam was a monster? Not until George Bush Jr. announced the “axis of evil”, apparently.

Do you think these men in charge of the White House have given thoughtful, intelligent consideration to these issues:

  • what if the Kurds, who are already itching to join the attack, decide, as they are likely to, to set up their own little country in Northern Iraq, right on the Turkish border? How would Turkey like that? Or Iran, which also has a substantial Kurd population that it is struggling to keep in check. Neither Turkey nor Iran would tolerate a breakaway Kurd republic on their borders.

Bush has extracted promises from the Kurds not to seek an independent state. And these guys are smart enough to believe them….

  • what if the hardline Moslems react to the war by tossing President Pervez Musharraf and setting up a hardline Islamic republic? With a bomb. And with an incendiary situation in Kashmir?
  • what if the same thing happens in Saudi Arabia or Yemen? What if hard-liners in Iran come to believe that the U.S. won’t be satisfied with deposing just one pole of the “axis of evil”?
  • what if the Shiite Moslems in the South of Iraq decide they would be happier united with their brethren in Iran than with Baghdad’s Sunni minority, whatever form that leadership might take in a post-Saddam Iraq?
  • what if the overthrow of Saddam doesn’t stop terrorism? (It won’t– it will probably increase it.) Who’s next?
  • can the officials of this administration name a single instance in which concerted military action (as opposed to negotiation and compromise) put an end to terrorist activities, anywhere in the world?

After Iraq, terrorists hiding out in Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere will continue to target U.S. military installations, diplomatic buildings, and the U.S. itself.

Since the U.S. seems incapable of actually tracking down and capturing real terrorists, it will have to find someone else readily available for a good bashing. Iran? North Korea? Somalia?

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Give Peace a Chance

There was a moment a few years ago when some Republican leaders in Florida came to a startling realization.

As Republicans they held two cardinal values. Well, “cardinal” to Republicans. Firstly, they were in favor of small government, efficient, and free of wasteful extravagance. Secondly, they were strongly in favor of an effective, strict criminal justice system that promoted law and order and reduced crime.

The realization that they came to was that the same strict law-and-order platform they espoused was at odds with their first goal– small and efficient government. They realized that throwing hundreds and thousands of teenaged hoodlums into jail for long sentences without possibility of early parole or rehabilitation was actually costing the government a lot more money than… gasp… prevention programs.

What they realized was that a relatively small amount of money invested in youth programs in the inner city would actually have the effect of reducing the number of youths that would proceed into a life of crime and violence. It would also thereby reduce the costs of policing, criminal prosecution, and incarceration, by a very substantial amount. They came to this conclusion on the basis of solid research conducted by– gasp– intellectuals with college degrees.

So these Republicans found themselves in the odd position of advocating greater spending on social programs and prevention– Democrat icons– in order to further their goal of smaller, more efficient government.

They were far-sighted and wise. They foresaw a win-win situation: less crime, and more opportunity for the poor in their community. They were willing to re-examine dogmatic belief in the light of scientific evidence.

National governments today spend over $800 billion on defense. They spend about $10 billion on the primary tool of averting wars, the United Nations.

The Republicans have worked very hard to demonize the United Nations over the past few years. They claim that it is a bloated bureaucracy–which it is–and that it is inefficient and works against the interests of the United States.

What they really see is that the United Nations tries to work in the interests of all peoples of the planet, and that sometimes means that the U.S. is called upon to share, and Republicans don’t want to share. They don’t want to share the fish in the sea, or the profits of pharmaceutical corporations or the responsibility of reducing global warming. They do want to share in the profits to be made by selling weapons to antagonists in local conflicts. They don’t even hesitate to sell land-mines which, more often than not, end up harming civilians rather than soldiers. Thousands and thousands of children. Children with missing limbs. Bill Clinton wanted to sign the International Land Mine Treaty. The Republicans, with a majority in Congress, blocked him.

But these Republicans in Miami realized that their long-range goals are best served with foresight and planning, and with consideration of the causes of the problems they mean to address.

Why is this lesson so hard to absorb on a national level? These terrorists are global thugs and our immediate reaction is to demand death, or long prison sentences. We launch a military attack which, in substance if not formal organization, is similar to the action that provoked it. We bomb the hell out of them.

If we keep waiting for more terrorist attacks and then simply retaliate and punish, not only will we have the very thing we are trying to stamp out– as every retaliation provides righteous fodder for the next generation of suicide bombers– but we will increase it, and it will cost us more and more to deal with.

The United Nations is the world’s inner-city program. It should be funded. It’s not perfect, but it does better than most people think it does. We don’t keep statistics on wars prevented but the truth is that the world is a far more peaceful place today than it used to be. The United Nations should be empowered. It should be employed to resolve the issues that give rise to terrorism. The U.S. will have to change it’s tack from “how can we directly benefit” to “how can we reduce the global tensions and economic disparities that give rise to insurgencies and terrorist acts”.

Redneck America scoffs: what we need to do is kill them all. If you want Ireland or the Middle East, you shall have it. But if the real goal is to reduce terrorism, to reduce death and destruction and violence, we have to follow the path of the British, who decided 20 years ago that the only way to bring an end to violence in Northern Ireland was to end the cycle of attack and retaliation and bring the interested parties to the negotiating table.

And every cop knows that the first step to preventing trouble is to win the trust and respect of the people who might or might not eventually go on to make trouble. The U.S. has to show Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt that it can develop new policies in the region that are principled and fair, and that don’t always only benefit themselves. Step #1 is that Israel must be dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiating table, not because they are wrong or because they are at fault or because they are bullies– they might or might not be all of these– but because it is the only way to begin to resolve the Palestinian issue, and the Palestinian issue is at the heart of most conflicts between Islamic fundamentalists and the west.

The U.S. must also review it’s relationships with Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Those nations need to gradually incorporate more democratic elements into their governments or they will eventually be over-thrown by militant Islamic fundamentalists, as Iran was. Most of the September 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. There is serious resentment in the Moslem world over the conspicuous U.S. presence in this nation that is custodian to the holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina.

The sanctions against Iraq should end. Saddam Hussein, though vilified by the U.S. media, is really no better or worse than most of the other leaders of nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria.

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Bush – WTC II

So what exactly is George Bush Jr. going to do?

He’s already made a couple of major mistakes here. He declared that an act of criminal terrorism was actually an act of war. He has vowed to eradicate terrorism from the face of the earth. He has promised the American people that he will destroy evil in the world.

We’re all getting carried away here. It sounds ridiculous, considering the scale of the disaster, the World Trade Centre attack, but we are getting carried away.

First of all, it was not an act of war. You have to have two parties for an act of war and both parties have to be nations in some form or another. So far, what we have, is a tightly bound group of conspirators. We have about 20 men against the entire military and industrial might of the United States of America. If this was a war, it would have been over before it started.

Bush has yet to show the world any evidence of complicity of any sovereign nation.

By calling it an “act of war”, Bush actually diminishes the horror of what the fanatics did. If it’s an act of war, it falls into the category of Dresden and London during World War II, or Hiroshima, or My Lai, or any of dozens of other wartime atrocities that history tends to excuse because it regards them as examples of excess, not criminality.

On this issue, I consider myself harsher than Bush: it was an act of criminal terror. It was mass murder.

By calling it an “act of war”, Bush probably hoped to justify a vigorous and powerful U.S. response. The next question, of course, is what is that response going to be?

It seems to me that there are three major options.

  1. He can blame a particular nation and launch a full-scale attack and invasion of that nation.
  2. He can blame a particular person or group and launch a limited attack with the aim of killing or apprehending that person or group. Or…
  3. He can blame a network of organizations and political entities and launch numerous limited attacks on their bases and hideouts.

Is there some other viable option I missed? I can’t think of it. I tried to think of it because these three options aren’t really very good.

With his grandiose rhetoric, Bush has created high expectations. Americans are waiting to see a big development. Can he deliver?

Option 1 is hopeless. There are good reasons why the U.S. would not want to invade or occupy Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen or whoever. It would take a long time, and there would be an enormous cost in lives. It would likely introduce instability into a potentially volatile region. It would create a large pool of new, future terrorists. It would create alarm and concern in China and Russia and Pakistan. If the U.S. occupied the nation, it would have to constantly contend with terrorists and insurrectionists.

It would result in disaster.  [2022-04-27: Looks like I was right about that.]

The Soviets couldn’t take Afghanistan. It is a nation of mountains and deserts, with no infrastructure left, after the Soviet Occupation, to destroy. An invasion would unite the fractious forces that are currently at each other’s throats, as well as recruit tens of thousands of Islamic volunteers from other nations, some of whom will try to bring the war home to America. Most importantly, it would destabilize Pakistan.

Pakistan has a bomb.

I can’t believe the U.S. will adopt this insane strategy.  [They did.]

Option 2 is a more attractive, viable option, but won’t be effective. It’s too easy for the targets to move and hide and avoid interdiction. If it is the option Bush chooses, expect a ton of spin on the results. We got them. We got most of them. We got a lot of them. But nobody is going to be able to pretend we got all of them, and the ones we miss will strike back with a vengeance. Two, three years down the road, someone is going to ask an embarrassing question: do you feel safer today than you did in 2000?

Option 3 will look the most impressive with a new CNN logo and theme music. Lots of maps and diagrams, showing a combination of missiles, bombs, and paratroops, taking out numerous targets, and making a mighty impression on the global reach of the all-powerful U.S. military.

Once again, I doubt it will be particularly effective, but it will look effective, and when terrorists continue to strike back, it can be made to look more like the results of having intractable enemies than foolish foreign policy. American allies in the region– Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt– can breathe a big sigh of relief as the Americans pack up their carriers and rush home.

What should they do?

They should launch a new era of activism abroad with a concerted effort to broker peace in Israel, and to promote economic development in democratic third world nations. The U.S. should sign the Kyoto accord and law of the sea treaties, and ease up on it’s demands in the areas of trade and intellectual property rights.

It should forgive huge amounts of global debt.

That last item would cost it a lot less than most of the military options.

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Our Enemy, Iraq, Straddles the Globe

And we shall have a mighty victory which the world will celebrate with trumpets and cake.

Here is the map of Iraq published recently in Time Magazine, to get you all excited about the coming victory:

iraq.jpg (10466 bytes)

And here is a more objective rendering of the same area:

world2.jpg (9547 bytes)

Notice something?

Yes, Time Magazine has made Iraq much, much bigger than it should be.  That is Time Magazine, my friend, tireless cheerleader for the American military.