WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN IRAQ?
CIA coup, Iranian invasions, fleecing of U.S. Taxpayers covered
up
ByHusayn Al-Kurdi
Among the items covered up or ig-nored in mainstream-media coverage of re-cent
events in northern Iraq were a failed CIA coup against Iraq and the end
of an extensive operation which has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $500 million.
Barely reported were the invasions of parts of Iraq by Iran, which occurred
shortly before Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces intervened at the behest of
one of the two major political factions in the north of Iraq. An entire
CIA operation based in the area was subsequently sent packing, leaving an
estimated $20 million worth of military equipment in its wake.
The two CIA-backed and funded factions-the traditionalist Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) led by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) led by Jalal Talabani, an outfit which branched off from the KDP in
the early 1960s-had been waging warfare against each other for over two
years in their respective bids to control the proceeds of smuggling and
other economic activities, while ferociously repressing the Kurdish population
in the process.
These two parties have taken turns selling their services to a variety of
regimes while selling OUT the freedom and rights of the Kurds in the process.
Besides killing over 2,000 of each other's supporters over the last two
years, they have attacked a variety of Kurdish critics and people of differing
persuasions, also victimizing the Kurdish population in the "safe haven"
area through extortion and intimidation. They have collaborated with Turkish
forces in attacking the Kurdish liberation movement directed against Turkey
and led by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). PUK leader Talabani has openly
courted Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Saddam Hussein and
Turkey, entering in a variety of "understandings" with all of
these states in recent times. Such machinations have earned him the sobriquet
"Everybody's Agent."
Starting in late July, the PUK began facilitating the entry of Iranian armed
forces into internationally recognized Iraqi territory, at first to attack
and disperse a Kurdish organization resisting the Iranian occupation of
one part of Kurdistan, and then joining the PUK in its attacks against its
long-time rival. The Iranian incursion penetrated up to 150 miles over the
internationally-recognized Iran-Iraq border. It was only after the PUK was
joined by Iran in attacking the KDP, and after the KDP leader pleaded unsuccessfully
with the U. S. government to intervene to halt the PUK/Iran onslaught, that
Massoud Barzani turned to Saddam Hussein to send forces in to assist the
KDP in gaining the upper hand. The U. S.responded by letting matters take
their course in Iraqi Kurdistan. The U.S. government and President Bill
Clinton made a show of hitting Iraqi locations away from the North with
44 cruise missiles in early September, just after the Iraqi-KDP victory
over the PUK and its Iranian backers.
Only a month before, a CIA coup had been exposed and smashed by Saddam.
The coup involved senior Iraqi military officials, and may have been the
last try in a failed campaign to oust Saddam but retain a repressive regime
amenable to international financial interests. The bombing and the bluster
which issued were forthcoming as a cover-up and a distraction from the failed
coup and the liquidation of an entire major destabilizing operation conducted
by the CIA in northern Iraq since the establishment of the "safe haven"
area following the U.S. -led war against Iraq in March 1991. The establishment-dictated
"spectrum of opinion" which predominated in the news media centered
on the question of "how hard to hit and punish Saddam Hussein and Iraq."
The wisdom of U.S. policies of intervention in the Middle East, involving
such acts as the war and the sanctions-induced genocide directed against
the Iraqi people, were not called into question. The failed CIA coup and
the Iranian invasions of Iraq were barely mentioned anywhere.
The extent of U.S. taxpayer participation has only recently been confirmed:
a minimum of $100 million in CIA expenditures, plus an officially acknowledged
$350 million in "humanitarian aid" in "Operation Provide
Comfort" -actually a cover for destabilizing operations against Iraq
and the use of the CIA-puppet Kurdish gangster formations against more politically
responsible and determined Kurdish elements waging their struggle for freedom
and liberty particularly against Turkey. Turkey occupies over half of Kurdistan
and has been conducting a systematic genocide against the Kurdish population
under its sway. Kurdish Museum Director Vera Beaudin-Saeedpour, residing
in Brooklyn, New York, accurately identified the role that the PUK and KDP
were signed on to play when she remarked that "Protected by the allies,
the Kurds of Iraq will be the buffer to keep 25 million Kurds divided."
Turkey had over $7 billion of its foreign debt forgiven as a condition for
participation in Desert Storm in 1991, and gets close to $1 billion in "official"
U.S. foreign aid yearly, a figure surpassed only by two other major CIA
government players in the region-Israel and Egypt. Only one leader of an
existing nation has supported the Kurdish struggle with any consistency
in recent times-Libya's Mu'ammar Qaddafi. Qaddafi exclaimed that "[This]
nation has the right to be an independent nation on its own land like any
other nation in the Middle East or in the world," affirming that he
is "against these anti-Kurdish things that happen, whether they are
committed by Arabs, Turks, Iran, or any other country against them."
Turkish-occupied Kurdistan today resembles El Salvador during the 1980s.
Imprisonment, torture, group punishment, summary executions and the destruction
of whole towns and villages are carried out routinely by the Turkish state.
In a two-year period roughly corresponding to the calendar years 1993 and
1994, some 1,390 Kurdish villages were evacuated and destroyed by the Turkish
army; 2 million Kurds were displaced, with some 5 or 6 million pushed out
of Kurdistan and toward western Turkey; and more than 2,000 Kurds were killed
by death squads. At least 22,000 have died during the course of the PKK-led
struggle against Turkey, which started in 1984. During an airborne offensive
against Kurds around Mt. Djoudi in 1989, Turkey was reported to have used
napalm and defoliants along with toxic gas and nerve gas.
While Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurds has received much post-Gulf
War coverage, his worst acts against Kurds were carried out with the approval
of the U.S., which backed and supported him during the Iraq-Iran war, which
went on for over eight years and produced over one million deaths on both
sides. That was a time when Kuwaiti princesses wore Saddam Hussein T-shirts
in support of the strong man who was keeping the Iranian threat at bay.
People such as myself, who protested Saddam's outrages against Kurds, were
rebuffed by establishment politicians of both major parties, as we continue
to be today when we protest U.S.-supported Turkish outrages against Kurds.
Kurdistan-occupied by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and rich in oil, water,
gas and other precious resources, constituting over 30 million people and
a highly refined, very recognizable geographical area-has been denied self-determination
by New World Order policy makers and their precursors dating back to the
aftermath of World War I. At that time, Kurdistan was divided among various
states set up in the area. Kurds have suffered genocide at the hands of
a variety of regimes ever since. Council of Foreign Relations author Gidon
Gottlieb pronounced the world banker line when he said that "The Kurds
can at best hope for an internationally protected, internationally guaranteed,
and internationally recognized autonomy within nominal Iraqi sovereignty,"
necessitating the repudiation "of any claim to the territory and provinces
of Turkey, Iran, and Syria." Of course, Gottlieb adds the proviso that
the Kurds "will have to demonstrate their effective control of Iraqi
Kurdistan" by aiding Turkey in its drive to "restrain the violence
of the Kurdish PKK rebels in Turkey."
Col. Richard Wilson, in charge of the "safe haven," claimed that
"These mountains can't sustain a viable country. To survive, Kurds
must be part of a larger government." The mania for "larger government"
entails suffering and pain for both Kurds and Americans, who are being mulcted
by what disguises itself as "their" government to underwrite policies
they would not condone if they were informed of the facts. Americans are
not willing to spend their money to repress others worldwide in pursuit
of the interests of banks, oil companies, and multinational corporations.
In order to correct the situation, Americans must mobilize to resist the
drive for big government at home, in part by curtailing the odious activities
of the entity that poses as "their government" abroad.
Husayn AI-Kurdi is a writer, speaker, video producer and journalist of Kurdish
descent. He is the President of News International, which he founded in
1983. His articles have appeared in numerous publications worldwide. Al-Kurdi
writes extensively on Kurdistan and the Middle East, and is preparing a
collection of his writings, Dispatches from the New World Order for publication
next year. His grandfather was Sheikh Farajullah Zaki Al-Kurdi, a noted
Kurdish publisher and scholar who lived in Cairo, Egypt. His mother, Bahia
Farajullah Al-Kurdi Gulick, is an internationally-recognized educator residing
in Sun City, Arizona. Al-Kurdi has acted as an advisor and director to a
variety of Kurdish social, political, cultural and educational organizations,
and was active in mobilizing Kurds and others to oppose the Persian Gulf
War in 1991. Al-Kurdi's political ideology is centered on the liberation
of all oppressed people.
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