This does not mean that they understand—or think that they understand, or even need to understand— every detail of any problem of foreign policy. But they do know that there is such a thing as the national interest; they have their own sense of it; and they rightly identify their own interests and even their lives with it. If they are unclear as to what the national interest is, they feel less secure about their personal interests. If they feel that the national interest is not being protected, they themselves feel threatened in their own day-to-day rounds. The feeling that one's country is being kicked around, as we should know from the histories of many countries, gives rise to the uneasy feeling that it is oneself who is being kicked. This affects how people react to every other problem and vote on every other issue. It is hard to persuade them that the national interest is at stake in an energy shortage at home if they are not convinced that there is any national interest that needs to be protected vigilantly abroad. Everyone might just as well look after himself or herself, and feed morsels of organic wheat germ to the snaildarter.

We do not have to reach to any notion of patriotism to explain this—although a legitimate patriotism is not to be discounted—and it is grossly unfair to suggest that such a concern has anything to do with war-mongering. There is ample evidence that the voters can add up Angola and Panama and Zimbabwe and Cuba, and yet not arrive at the same sum as Ronald Reagan. The people have more capacious minds than Reagan,

with room for more than one response to different stimuli. They are able to perceive different degrees of danger, and react to them at different levels of intensity. They do not find it necessary to add every complicated and unsuccessful encounter of America with the world to a simple roll call of American defeat. They are even capable of entertaining the notion that not every unsuccess is to be counted as a defeat. Nevertheless, in such circumstances there is always a raw nerve to be touched. It is when legitimate leaders do not clearly define the national interest, and do not seem willing or able to protect it, that illegitimate leaders have their chance to come forth. When the urbane are feeble, the primitive will seem strong.

Seldom has it been more important that an election should accomplish the kind of redefinition that I have described. This cannot be done simply by calling for leadership, and looking around to find someone to whom the label of leader can be fixed. More is needed than to draft a waterlogged hulk to do service as a flagship. There are several imbalances in the American political system at the moment that make it very difficult for an appropriate or fertile communication to take place between the people and their politicians. To uncover and correct those imbalances ought to be part of the work of the coming year, for the kind of communication that takes place between the voters and the candidates will count more than the final results, as together they interact in order to discover for America and the world a sense of the nation again.

The ayatollah writes the latest chapter in the sad history of the Kurds.

# Khomeini's 'Feast of Blood'

## by Smith Hempstone

Shedders of blood, raisers after strife, seekers after turmoil and uproar, robbers and brigands; a people all malignant, and evil-doers of depraved habits, ignorant of all mercy, devoid of all humanity, scorning the garment of wisdom; but a brave race and fearless, of a hospitality grateful to the soul, in truth and in honor unequalled, of pleasing countenance and fair cheek, boasting all the goods of beauty and grace.

Thus a 19th-century Western traveler described the Kurds, the warrior-poets now locked in combat with the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic regime in Iran. Since

Smith Hempstone is a Washington syndicated columnist.

the days of Alexander the Great, the Kurds always have gotten the short end of the stick from history.

The Kurds, a Sunni Moslem but non-Arab people— they are thought by some to be the descendants of the ancient Medes—have lived in their Central Asian mountain fastness since the beginnings of recorded time. They have fought with ravenous joy for their independence against Greeks, Persians, Mongols, Turks, Arabs, crusaders, and Britons. When there has been no outsider to wage war against, they have kept in practice by fighting one another. The Kurds number more than 10 million but, despite their centuries of struggle, no atlas portrays a nation called Kurdistan.

18

The New Republic

In the aftermath of World War I, when Wilsonian self-determination was all the rage, the 1920 Treaty of Sevres promised the Kurds a homeland of their own. But the rise of Kemal Atatürk and the greed of Britain and France aborted the treaty. The Kurds were left worse off than they were before: formerly united in bondage under the Ottoman Turks, the Kurds found their homeland divided among three masters: Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Today, six million Kurds live in Turkey, four million in Iran, and two million in Iraq. Another 600,000 are divided between Syria and the Soviet Union.

In 1919, Atatürk, who dealt just as harshly with Turkey's Greek and Armenian minorities, swore "to proceed in such a manner as to destroy the possibility of a separatist movement by the Kurds." His successors proceeded in the same manner. It is Turkish policy to this day to deny even the existence of a people called the Kurds: they are, according to Ankara, simply mountain Turks who have forgotten their language and miraculously learned another.

Kurdish rebellions in 1925, 1930, and 1937 were put down with great severity. The leaders were executed and some tribes were exiled from their mountain homes. Today the Kurdish areas of eastern Turkey are under martial law. The use of Kurdish as a written language is forbidden, and it may not be spoken on Turkish radio or television. To be elected to the national assembly, one must demonstrate a fluency in Turkish that most Kurds do not possess.

There are at least 16 underground Kurdish organizations in Turkey, but the only political party openly to espouse the Kurdish cause, the Marxist Turkish Labor party, was banned in 1971 and its leaders were given long prison sentences. Because of Ankara's tough policies, internal tribal rivalries, and linguistic differences, there has been no significant Kurdish insurrection in Turkey for more than four decades. The few Kurds within Syria and the Soviet Union also have been quiet.

The situation has been quite different in Iraq. There the Kurdish nationalist movement has been dominated since 1927 by the Barzani clan, whose charismatic leader, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, died in exile in Washington earlier this year. (Mulla Mustafa's father was hanged by the Turks.) Iraq, whether ruled by monarchists or leftists such as the current Moscow-supported Baathist regime, has from time to time granted its two million Kurds some cultural and political autonomy. But it has never been enough for the freedom-loving Kurds. Four times between 1961 and 1974, Mulla Mustafa Barzani launched full-scale rebellions against Baghdad.

The 1974 insurrection came closest to succeeding. Barzani's Pesh Merga ("those who face death")—supported by the shah of Iran, armed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and assisted by the Israelis—gained control over 43,000 square miles of northeastern Iraq.

But the shah never wanted the rebellion to succeed, for fear of the example it might provide to Iran's four million Kurds. Barzani, totally dependent on the shah for food and military equipment, was kept on a short-lease. The shah was just using him and his movement to weaken the Iraq Baathist regime, which was fomenting disorders among Iran's Baluchi tribesmen and giving refuge to anti-shah dissidents.

When that purpose had been served, and Baghdad proved willing to make other political concessions to Iran, the shah (and Henry Kissinger) pulled the oriental carpet out from under Barzani. The revolt collapsed in 1975, and many of Barzani's followers fled into Iran, where they were disarmed and interned. Many of those who stayed behind in Iraq were executed or deported to punishment camps in the south, leaving whole areas of Iraqi Kurdistan depopulated.

Kurdish rebellions in northwestern Iran in 1921, 1926, and 1930 were put down by Reza Shah, father of the exiled monarch and founder of the short-lived Pahlevi dynasty. There were executions, but the Iranian monarchy's Kurdish policies fell somewhere between Turkey's total denial of the very existence of the Kurds and the more permissive line of at least some Iraqi regimes.

In Iran, where Kurds account for about 10 percent of a population that is no more than 60 percent Persian, the tribes were disarmed, the use of Kurdish was not permitted in schools or government, and Kurds who showed marked leadership qualities or dissident tendencies were either bought off or restricted in their activities. But books in Kurdish were published, and Kurdish programs were broadcast by the state-controlled radio.

Yet the Pahlevi monarchy never succeeded by this judicious use of the carrot and the stick in totally extinguishing the spark of Kurdish nationalism. In 1946 the Kurds, with Russian help, set up an independent Marxist republic at Mahabad. But when Harry Truman forced the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from northern Iran, the central government retook Mahabad, executed the republic's president,

Coming:
Morton Kondracke on
Why Germany Works.

September 22, 1979

19

Qazi Mohammad, and forced Barzani, who had crossed the Iraqi border with several thousand fighting men to help the Iranian Kurds, into a Russian exile that lasted a dozen years.

With the collapse of the Pahlevi dynasty in February of this year, many of Iran's Kurds hoped they would be allowed autonomy within the framework of the Ayatollah Kohmeini's Islamic republic. But as a precaution—for there is a saying that “the Kurds have no friends”—they took over most of the police posts and army barracks within Iranian Kurdistan, helping themselves to the arms stored there.

It is difficult to say who started the fighting in Iranian Kurdistan; what the objectives of the Kurdish leaders are; and what outside forces, if any, are supporting the insurrection. Khomeini may have called for a Shi'ite holy war against the Sunni Kurds to divert the attention of his restive countrymen from the inadequacies of his regime. Certainly he used the disorders in Kurdistan as a pretext to crush all opposition to his rule.

The first confrontation between Khomeini and the Kurds came late last February after the Kurds took over the Mahabad garrison, wounding its commander. Dispatched to Mahabad to find out what was going on, Labor Minister Dariush Forouhar was told by Sheikh Ezzedin Hosseini, the bearded, 58-year-old Kurdish religious leader, that the Kurds "are not separatists."

What Hosseini and Abdul Rahman Qassemlu, secretary general of the banned Kurdish Democratic party, said they wanted from the new regime was local autonomy within the framework of a federal, democratic Iran; joint control of military and police forces within Kurdistan; and, paradoxically, a crackdown on the political and military activities of Barzani's two exiled sons, Idris and Massoud. There was no formal reply to the Kurdish demands from either Khomeini or the government of Mehdi Barzagan.

Throughout the spring, Kurdish missions continued to travel between Mahabad and Tehran. More police posts and army barracks were peacefully occupied in Kurdistan, their demoralized garrisons disarmed and told to leave the area.

Late in July, Major General Nasser Farbod resigned as Iranian army chief of staff, and was replaced by Brigadier General Hossein Shaker, a hardliner. On July 22, the first major armed clash occurred when Iranian army units relieved a police post besieged by the Kurds near the Turkish frontier. Another bloody incident took place on July 28, when revolutionary militiamen called Pasdars tried to re-enter the Kurdish town of Marivan.

The fighting escalated in August when the army and the hated Pasadars retook the town of Paveh after a bombardment by tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, and American-made F-4 jets. More than 400 people lost their lives in the Paveh fighting. The Kurds claimed to

have downed three helicopters and an F-4.

Khomeini, enraged at the Kurdish resistance—and fearful their separatist virus might prove contagious for Iran's Arab, Baluchi, and Turkomen minorities (Pasdar brutality in Khuzistan already had provoked serious rioting among Iran's Arabs)—assumed personal command of the armed forces. He threatened military leaders who did not achieve immediate results in Kurdistan with "revolutionary justice" (a euphemism for execution) and called for "a feast of blood" in Kurdistan. The Kurdish Democratic party was banned, Hosseini and Qassemlu were branded as "corrupt Satanic agents," and the summary execution of captured Kurdish guerrillas began in Saqqez and other government-held Kurdish towns.

A Kurdish peace mission to Tehran failed. Khomeini was quoted as saying the Kurds "deserved no mercy." The Kurdish leaders abandoned Mahabad without a major battle and pulled their forces back deep into the mountains. Qassemlu accused Khomeini of planning "a genocide of the Kurds," while he and Hosseini continued to insist they are not separatists, but want only the right to run their own affairs within the framework of Iran's independence, territorial integrity, and national sovereignty.

At last report the situation seems to have reached a stalemate, with Khomeini's forces in control of most Kurdish towns, but the Kurdish guerrilla units still roaming the mountains with their captured weapons.

It is clear the Kurds cannot hope to succeed, if success is defined as the creation of an autonomous Kurdistan independent of Tehran in all but name. History has demonstrated that a Kurdish nationalist movement can succeed only with the coincidence of three key factors: the emergence of a single, charismatic Kurdish leader, the existence of a weak central government, and the active support of an adjacent major power.

The division of authority (and support) between Hosseini and Qassemlu, the two Iranian Kurdish leaders, is not clear, and neither is a charismatic figure like Mulla Mustafa Barzani. Massoud Barzani is gallant, but he is both an Iraqi and a tribal chief, and hence suspect to the radical faction of the KDP. The regime in Tehran is weak but, spurred both by fear of their own executions and by anti-Sunni prejudices, Iranian army commanders, with their far superior fire power, have shown themselves capable of holding the Kurdish towns and roads.

Qassemlu claims (and Khomeini charges) he has Moscow's support, but there is no firm evidence of this. The Kremlin has no love for Khomeini, who has cracked down on Iran's Communists and incited Afghan rebels against Moscow's client regime in Kabul. But the Russians, while they have influenced the Kurdish nationalist movement over the years, never have been prepared to give wholehearted support to it.

Certainly the United States, which participated in the shah's betrayal of the pro-Western Barzanis, has shown no disposition to embrace Qassemlu, who spent

20

The New Republic

years in exile in Czechoslovakia and has ties to many European Marxist groups. Nor is there any evidence of Israeli participation in this chapter of the Kurdish saga, although Jerusalem has an ax to grind with Khomeini, who cut off the principal source of Israel's oil and backs the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In the absence of fruitful negotiations between the Kurds and Khomeini—and the chances of this now seem slight—the prospect is for a prolonged guerrilla

war in Kurdistan, which will bring great suffering to Iran's four million Kurds.

Mulla Mustafa Barzani, in the last bitter days of his Washington exile, once remarked that "the Kurds are the orphans of the universe." With President Carter, who has spoken more than once of the need to inject an element of morality into the conduct of foreign policy, selling kerosene and military supplies to Khomeini's regime, that would appear to be an accurate appraisal.

### Arthritis and "non-alignment."

# The Third World in Middle Age

### by Thomas Geoghegan

At the recent sixth meeting of the non-aligned heads of state in Havana, the rhetoric of "non-alignment" had one last hurrah. The delegates at the conference listened politely to sermons from old-time third-worlders from the 1950s such as Fidel Castro and Marshal Tito, on the subject of which side the non-aligned nations should align with. Though the Western press took the whole conference quite seriously, there was something quaint and even comic about the raising once more of this antique theological question. The current generation of third world leaders, including most of the delegates to the Havana conference, have lost the taste for "non-aligned" theology in a world that hangs on the words of Sheik Yamani.

In contrast to its solemn treatment of the Havana conference, the Western press has been describing with more appropriate amusement the recent scrambles for power and cynical alliances among India's political leaders after the downfall of the Desai government in July. The first successor to Desai, 77-year-old Charan Singh, was perhaps the most grasping and cynical of the lot. Although he was the most determined prosecutor of Indira Gandhi in the last cabinet, he came to power by trying to cut a deal for the ex-dictator's support. Then he resigned in a high-minded huff, accusing Gandhi of trying to "blackmail" him.

The political atmosphere has been so sordid that many expect Indira Gandhi's faction of the Congress party to emerge with the largest vote in November's elections. Try to imagine how desperate the US political situation would have to be if Richard Nixon suddenly emerged as a promising contender. Yet no matter how

sordid, India's politicians solemnly invoke the pious shades of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru on almost every occasion. At the outset of his 24-day rule, Singh announced his devotion to "the policy of non-alignment which will not lean on any superpower."

These two shorts bursts of the old rhetoric of the 1950s make one wonder what ever became of the great obsession with "non-alignment." In the black-and-white world of John Foster Dulles, non-alignment commanded breathless attention. For the leaders of the new states in Asia and Africa, it was their moral platform, and their moment of glory in history. Nehru and others pictured themselves as existential heroes, forced to make an anguished choice between the horrors of Coca-Cola capitalism and Stalinism. "Development," it seemed, dictated the choice of one or another of these "models." Fresh from their Oxford educations or Paris student life, a whole generation of Prince Hamlets came to power agonizing over which price they should pay to lift their countries into the modern world.

Twenty years later, it turns out that most of this posturing was wasted energy. Neither "model" works; the gap between rich and poor nations simply widens. Democracy doesn't work. Authoritarianism doesn't work. When Chile tried to combine communism and parliamentary democracy, that didn't work either, and only alarmed the military, the middle class, and our own Harold Geneen. In fact, instead of capitalism or communism, every third world country that can do so has opted in various degrees for the economic mercantilist doctrines of the French Bourbon kings. OPEC's star has replaced Nehru's.

The romance of non-alignment also was a casualty of detente. No doubt someone on the National Security

Thomas Geoghegan, a former TNR staff writer, is a Chicago attorney.

September 22, 1979

21

Defence officials worried by
Begin's Kurdish aid' leak

By HIRSH GOODMAN
Post Military Correspondent

Premier Menahem Begin's dis-
closure last week that Israel had ex-
tended military aid to the Kurds
between 1965 and 1975 has caused
consternation among officials in the
defence community.

Despite the fact that the
relationship between Israel and the
Kurds, which ended in March 1975,
has been widely reported, the officials
felt that public acknowledgment by
the premier would preclude any
further dealings with the Kurds, es-
pecially now that renewed contacts
were both possible and desirable in
the light of the Iraqi-Iranian war.

The U.S., for the last few years
prior to the cessation of aid, was an
active partner in Israel's dealings
with the Kurds.

According to Israeli sources the
American interest was twofold: to
undermine the pro-Moscow Iraqi
regime of then President Hassan el-
Bakr, and to counter Iraqi designs
on Iran.

The Post was told that the
Americans believed that the Kur-
dish revolt weakened Iraq, and that
a weak Iraq would be less in-
terested in challenging the shah for
hegemony over the Persian Gulf.
This in turn would provide the
Americans with the stability they
needed in the Gulf area to ensure an
uninterrupted flow of oil to the
West.

According to information that has
become available since Begin

revealed the Israeli-Kurdish con-
nection, the seeds for cooperation
were planted in a Kurdish overture
to the Israeli embassy in Paris in
1963. It was not until 1965 that a full-
fledged programme of military
cooperation was evolved, which in-
cluded Israeli military assistance.
Israel provided arms, ammunition
and training to the Kurds, as well as
medical supplies and staff.

The relationship came to an end
in 1975 when, under American
pressure, the shah agreed to settle
his dispute with Iraq.

The change in American attitude
came after strategic planners in the
U.S. concluded that it would be
more propitious to try and under-
mine the Soviet influence by
appeasing the Iraqis.

It was also revealed by Begin that
Kurdish rebel leader Mustapha
Barazani visited Israel and met
with several key political leaders,
including Begin himself when he
was leader of the opposition.

On Friday, Mr. Begin denied
emphatically reports in French
newspapers that Israeli warplanes
had bombed the Iraqi nuclear in-
stallation. He made this denial in an
interview granted to the United
Press International in Jerusalem.

"I would like to say that there is
not one word of truth in the articles
which contain these allusions," he
said. "It was published that the
Iranians did the bombing, but they
deny it. I still assume they did it,"
he declared.

Jerusalem Post International Ed,
Oct. 5-11, 1980

Council chairman Asher Lazimi — are already in custody. Lazimi is also deputy secretary-general of the National Religious Party.

Police said that Gabai and

Micha Gaspri

"In the eyes of the police, in both the legal and moral context, the minister is to be treated like any other citizen," he said.

## Israeli victim

Aliza Shagrir, an Israeli film editor, was one of the three people killed by the bomb attack in Paris on Friday. Mrs. Shagrir—with her husband and youngest child — was having dinner with Israeli Paris-based journalist Tamar Golan when she decided to go to a nearby shop on the Champs Elysees to buy figs. According to Golan, writing in "Ma'ariv," they heard a tremendous blast minutes after Aliza had left the apartment, and instinctively knew that "something terrible had happened."

The Shagrir family were on the first leg of a European tour.

Shagrir, 42, a veteran film editor, managed the Cut film editing company in the Jerusalem Films and Communication Centre, owned by

her husband, producer and film director Micha Shagrir.

The Israel cabinet stated on Sunday that Mrs. Shagrir had been a victim of a hostile act against Israel, and would be given an official state funeral.

## CABINET EXPRESSES HORROR

(Continued from page 1)

damaged synagogue, Alain de Rothschild, president of the Committee of French Jewish Organizations, read a message to President Giscard d'Estaing. The message spoke of "the passivity of the authorities, the indifference of our leaders and the inexplicable impotence of the police in the face of attacks against Jews in recent years that culminated in Friday night's bomb."

The explosion outside the synagogue, near the Arc de Triomphe, damaged buildings along fashionable Rue Copernic where the synagogue is located and dozens of cars were burned out. An eyewitness said: "It looked as if a dozen aircraft had bombed us."

Jewish demonstrators claimed that the neo-Nazis felt free to act because of the French government's pro-Arab stance in the Middle East conflict.

EDITION

Published weekly: October 5-11, 1980

WASHINGTON POST - 21 JANUARY 1975 Pg. 1

# Iran Troops in Iraq;
# Backing Rebel Kurds

By Jim Hoagland

Washington Post Foreign Service

BEIRUT, Jan. 20—Iraq has turned to the Soviet Union for heavy artillery to match the 155- and 175-mm. guns being used by Kurdish and Iranian forces inside northeastern Iraq, Arab sources said today.

Two Iranian artillery battalions possessing 155-mm. howitzers are operating inside Iraq with the Kurds and have brought in antiaircraft guns for their own defense, according to authoritative reports. Iranian soldiers are also firing 175-mm. guns at Iraqi forces from border positions.

The urgent Iraqi request for new Soviet artillery, advanced Mig fighter-bombers and (according to one report that could not be confirmed here) surface-to-surface missiles, appears to reflect growing military troubles for Baghdad, which has been forced to begin calling up 36- and 37-year-old reserve officers to replace Iraq's losses against the Kurds, these sources reported.

The sources, who are well acquainted with the 10-month-old civil war between the Kurdish forces of Gen. Mullah Mustafa Barzani and the Baathist government of Iraq, confirmed Beirut press reports yesterday that a large Iraqi-Soviet arms deal has been concluded.

A new Iraqi effort to get Iran's Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlevi to halt his military support for Barzani's Pesh Merga forces collapsed yesterday when talks between the Iraqi and Iranian foreign ministers in Istanbul ended without producing results. Later the two conferred separately with Turkish President Fahri Koroturk in Ankara.

The shah is reported by Arab sources to have told Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo a week ago that while he had no border problem with Iraq that could not be negotiated, he saw no hope of reaching any agreement with the Baathist government, which he termed a threat to the entire region.

The Iraqis, who had rolled the Kurds back toward the border with a major autumn offensive before the Iranians stepped in to provide the Kurds with heavier weapons, have not been able to reach the

Iranian positions with their 152-mm. Soviet-made field guns, the heaviest artillery they now possess.

Baghdad is also seeking new bombers from the Soviets. The Iraqis have reportedly grounded their only squadron of Tu-16 bombers, which raided Kurdish positions regularly until Dec. 14.

On that date, one of the slow-moving Tu-16s, flying at an altitude of 18,000 feet, was shot down. Iraq accused Iranian troops of using U.S.-made Hawk missiles to down the aircraft. Highly reliable sources said today that American-made missiles were not used in the incident. Kurdish forces used another type of surface-to-air missile to shoot down the Tu-16. they said.

These sources also identified antitank wire-guided missiles supplied to the Kurds by Iran as being of non-American manufacture, but they refused to specify for publication the type of missile involved.

The Kurds claim to have killed 8,000 Iraqi troops and wounded 15,000, in contrast to their own military losses of about a thousand dead.

The Iraqi reserve callup has reached its 19th category, according to reports from Baghdad, and newsreels paid for by the Iraqi Government being shown in Beirut movie theaters call on citizens of other Arab countries to volunteer for the Iraqi army.

Ten brigades of Iraqi reservists have been mobilized since the Kurds rejected an autonomy plan presented by the Baghdad government in March 1974 and began their latest rebellion. Barzani and his forces have periodically fought for self-rule for nearly half a century.

Iraq was estimated by London's Institute of Strategic Studies to have 112,000 men in its armed forces at the beginning of the Kurdish war.

Investigating the CIA / 421

the intelligence contribution and resolved that, if I could get
time away from the Congressional investigations, I really
would like to figure out how better to organize ourselves for
crisis management, so that we could keep up with the need
for fast action but at the same time benefit fully from the
depth of knowledge and understanding of our analysts.

In addition to these intelligence activities, the Agency
during this period was also conducting a number (albeit a
much reduced number since the 1950s and 1960s) of covert-
action operations. Perhaps the most significant of these were
the ones in support of the Kurdish rebels in Iraq and of the
non-Communist black nationalists in Angola.

The Kurds are a primitive mountain people in the area
where Iran, Iraq and Turkey meet, with the largest group in
Iraq. They have struggled for autonomy for centuries, asking
and receiving assistance from wherever they could find it.
The assistance generally reflected the interests of the coun-
try giving it. For example, the Soviets helped the Kurds
when the USSR saw them as a useful force against Iran. But
in 1972, the problem was Iraq, while Iran and the United
States were concerned about Communist influence there. So
the Shah of Iran asked President Nixon to share in his pro-
gram to help the Kurd autonomy struggle against Iraq, as a
way of demonstrating that the United States was truly allied
with Iran against the danger of expanding Communist influ-
ence in the area. With the best clandestine techniques, CIA
provided that share—and it was only a minor share—of the
aid requested by the Kurds to carry on a defensive struggle
against Iraqi suppression. But in March 1975, the struggle
was going badly, and the Iraqi were clearly winning despite
the outside help to the Iranians. So the Shah changed course
and arranged a settlement of his border disputes with Iraq
and cut off Iranian (and American) aid to the Kurds. CIA's
cable traffic suddenly was jammed with requests to help the
refugee and exiled Kurds instead of shipping arms and mili-
tary supplies to them clandestinely.

In Angola, late in 1974—before Angola's independence,
but after Portugal had announced that it would be granted—

THE KURDISH INSURGENCY

DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT

THE AUTHOR: Dana Adams Schmidt was born in Ohio and graduated from Pomona College, California. He attended the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University and has been a foreign correspondent ever since. He represented the *United Press* for five years, the *New York Times* for twenty-nine years, and he is currently writing for the *Christian Science Monitor*. Through his extensive experience in the Middle East and special knowledge of the Kurd guerrillas, he is specially qualified to appraise recent conflict in Iraq.

IN BRIEF

The Kurdish people, some ten million strong, occupy areas of southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran, with some spillover in the Soviet Caucasus and in Syria. As a minority in every country, the Kurds have been subject to opposition or persecution of varying intensity under changing regimes. They have been promised independence or autonomy by powers seeking their support and have been as frequently betrayed. They are a tough, fighting people, led now by Mulla Mustafa Barzani, aged seventy-three, the head of a family long dominant in revolts of the past. Barzani looks to the United States for help in his conflict with the Iraqi Government.

Kurdish culture and Kurdish nationalism are cultivated in the Soviet Union. Although the USSR must now side with its client Iraq, it holds a potential for championing Kurdish nationalism if and when that alternative becomes advantageous. As the pro-American Barzani passes from the scene, new leaders may turn to the Soviet Union unless a better alternative is offered them.

"The day when the national consciousness of the Kurds is awakened and when they unite, the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi states will fall like dust before them." This passage from the book *Two Years in Kurdistan* is today, as when it was written in 1921, a statement of the hidden dynamite of the Kurdish problem.¹ Call it dynamite because the only beneficiary of the collapse of the Middle East as we know it would be the Soviet Union. When, if ever, the Kurds come to the point of proclaiming a Greater Kurdistan, they will also be proclaiming, by implication, their alignment with the Soviet Union.

But the reality of the Kurdish problem as it

exists today is, paradoxically, very different. The reality is that a solidly anti-Communist national movement led by Mulla Mustafa Barzani in the northeastern third of Iraq, comprising an estimated two million Kurds, is on the brink of war with the pro-Soviet, Baathist (Arab Renaissance) government of Iraq (with an estimated population of ten million), headed by President Ahmed Hassan al-Baqr and Vice President Siddam Hussein al-Yakriti. By the time these words are in print the armed forces of the state may well have been launched in a fateful offensive against the Kurdish guerrillas in the mountains of the north.

To appreciate what this conflict means in

51

terms of current Middle East strategy, how it
may develop, and what it means in terms of the
ultimate dangers cited by Hay, one must take a
careful look at these submerged, almost un-
known people. Their obscurity as a people has
been aggravated by their partition among five
states, none of which, with the possible excep-
tion of the Soviet Union, feels impelled to
acknowledge their existence, much less their
history, language, culture and qualities.

The Kurdish People

In my book *Journey Among Brave Men*, I estimated that while there were probably somewhat less than two million Kurds in Iraq, Iran had three or four million and Turkey more than five million.² Syria has along its northern border and eastern tip more than three hundred thousand, while the Soviet Union is said to have a Kurdish community of one hundred and seventy-five thousand. That would total more than ten million—somewhat less than the twelve million claimed by Kurdish nationalists and considerably more than the five to six million estimated by William Eagleton of the State Department in his book, *The Kurdish Republic of 1946*.³

The Kurdish area or Iraq, which is situated
very roughly in the regions north and east of
Mosul, Arbil, Kirkuk and Suleimaniya, was in-
cluded in Iraq rather than Turkey by a League
of Nations Commission in spite of its Kurdish
majority and very largely because of covert in-
fluence brought to bear by the British, who
wanted sure access to the oil of Kirkuk. The
British could control Iraq by means of a League
of Nations mandate whose provisions included
one stating that officials of the Kurdish race
should be appointed for the administration of
the region, the dispensation of justice and teach-
ing in the schools. Kurdish should, furthermore,
be the official language of these services.

The estimate of three or four million Kurds
in Iran is very rough because many Kurds have
found is convenient to lay claim to some differ-
ent racial affiliation and because there is much
dispute as to which tribes should be included as
Kurdish. Kurdish nationalists, for instance,
claim the Lurs who inhabit the country's western
borderlands down to the vicinity of the Persian
Gulf. Many of the tribes of Lurs, and others of
uncertain affiliation, seem indifferent to the
claims of Kurdish nationalism so far as can

be ascertained by foreign observers. But then,
it is always true that nationalist and revolution-
ary movements are carried by a minority, and
this minority knows well that it is healthy to
keep such sentiments quiet in the Iran of Savak
(the secret police) and Shah Reza Pahlevi.

The center of the Iranian Kurdish area, situated on the western borders as far north as the Soviet border, is Mehebad, of which I shall say more when I take up Kurdish history.

The Kurds of Turkey are the most numerous
segment of the Kurdish people. Their natural
center is Diyarbekir, which the Kurds have
transformed into a predominantly Turkish city.
For centuries they shared with the Armenians
all of eastern Turkey from Diyarbekir to the
frontiers of Iran and of what is now Iraq; the
Kurds were the people of the hills, the Arme-
nians the people of the valleys. But the Ar-
menians were almost entirely exterminated by
the Turks after World War I (sometimes trag-
ically, with the help of the Kurds); and the
Kurds, after a long succession of bloody revolts
in the 1920s and as late as 1936, have been
thinned out, scattered and mixed with Turkish
settlers.

With rare exceptions the Turks have refused
to acknowledge the existence of the Kurds,
whom they persistently call "mountain Turks".
The Kurdish language and national dress are
prohibited.

The Kurds of Syria are for the most part an
overflow from neighboring Turkey and Iraq.
During the period of the French mandate in
Syria, the Kurds enjoyed protection and they
flourished. Many migrated from the harsher
climate of republican Turkey and found pros-
perity and cultural expression in the rich agri-
cultural lands of the country's northeast (now
to be watered by the new Euphrates dam) and
in Damascus. Quite the opposite situation pre-
vails in Syria today. Many of the Kurds have
been dispossessed by the Arab-nationalist rulers
of Syria.

About the small segment of Kurds in the
Soviet Union, little is known except to careful
students of Soviet publications. These will learn
that the Kurds of the Soviet Union have attained
a high rate of literacy, that they have their own
publications in which Kurdish poetry and other
arts find ample expression within the limits
prescribed by the Soviet state. There are Kur-
dish books, newspapers and theater.

52

The Kurdish Insurgency

Mulla Mustafa Barzani

The bloody and futile revolts of the Kurds in Turkey in the 1920s and 30s were intimately associated with the life of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, whose grandfather and eldest brother were hanged by the Turks and who was imprisoned with his mother in an Ottoman jail at the age of one and a half. Without attempting here to recount the military exploits of Barzani one may say that he has outdone all his illustrious predecessors.

Mulla Mustafa, as he is commonly known among Kurds, began his campaigns against the British—who were then the mandatory power in Iraq—and the Iraqi government in the early 30s. For a time he was imprisoned by the British in Suleimaniya, but he escaped and returned to his native village of Barzan.

Finding himself and his tribe under growing pressure from the British, Mulla Mustafa and his older brother Sheikh Ahmed decided in 1945 to move their entire tribe to the region of Mehabad in northern Iran where, in the twilight zone between British and Soviet military influence, an area of Kurdish “autonomy by default” had been growing up since 1941.

According to Barzani himself, thirty-five thousand men, women and children (about ten thousand according to other sources) moved eastward in the late summer and fall of 1945. At first the Russians used their influence to keep Barzani and his tribesmen out, and thousands perished during the first winter. Eventually, however, the Kurds of Mehabad accepted the Barzani tribesmen and Barzani himself became one of the Mehabad Republic's four generals. This, it should be noted, is Barzani's claim to the title of “general”. It has nothing to do with the Russians, as has often been said. He himself told me not to call him General. “Call me Mustafa”, he said, “I care nothing for titles”.

But the Republic's life was short. In March 1947, the Iranian army took over, and the Republic's President, Qazi Mohamed, was hanged. Barzani got away and with 400 men executed an extraordinary escape, weaving back and forth between the Turkish and Iranian borders, through mountains and heavy snow, with the Turkish and Iranian armies after him, until he escaped into Russia. Something of his experiences in Russia has been mentioned already. He turned out to be one of the Soviet Union's

ruins of the Turkish empire. Major E. W. Noel and other British officers traveled widely in Turkey and Iraq gathering the facts about this nationality for the British government.

One of the consequences of British interest was the treaty of Sèvres of August 1, 1920, signed by Britain, France and Italy, which recognized the right of the Kurdish people to constitute an autonomous Kurdistan and, if they should show that they wanted it, the right to independence. Shades of Wilson and his fourteen points and self-determination of peoples! But the Turks resisted and the treaty was stillborn. On July 23, 1923, the allies signed the Treaty of Lausanne with a government headed by Mustafa Kemal. Here there was no more talk of autonomy, much less of independence for the Kurds. Out of this treaty came the League of Nations commission previously mentioned which awarded the Mosul province, comprising most of what is now Iraqi Kurdistan, to Iraq.

To this period belongs one of the most fascinating episodes of British “toying” with Kurdish nationalism. As they pressed the Turks back in 1918, the British recognized Sheikh Mahmoud Barzindji as “Hukumdar” or ruler of the area between Sirwan and the Great Zab. About a year later the Sheikh took complete control of the town of Suleimaniya and put the British out, an indiscretion for which the British rewarded him with swift exile in India.

Yet in 1922, when they thought they needed a symbol to consolidate Kurdish national feeling against the Turks, the British brought him back and allowed him to proclaim himself King of Kurdistan. The experiment lasted only a few months, partly because of Sheikh Mahmoud's lack of diplomacy, and the British deposed him.

The episode is one of those pathetic moments of history when the Kurds have reached out for national expression; like the time in 1927 when Kurds proclaimed independence as laid down in the Treaty of Sèvres and raised the Kurdish flag in the Agri Dagh (Ararat) mountains of eastern Turkey; and the time in August 1944 when Kurds from Iraq, Turkey and Iran met on Mount Dalanpar, where the three countries' borders meet, and signed a pact of mutual support; and finally the short sad episode of the Kurdish Republic of 1946 of which Archibald B. Roosevelt, Jr., then in the State Department, was a witness.

55

many disappointments in dealing with the "underdeveloped" world.

Upon his return to Iraq Barzani agreed with
Abdel Kerim Kassem, who had overthrown the
Iraqi monarchy. But the agreement did not last.
Little by little Kassem began to disregard the
constitutional guarantees of partnership. The
Kurds found that Kassem's republic was moti-
vated by an Arab nationalism that could not
tolerate another language and culture.

As the partnership broke down Barzani es-
caped to the mountains and the Kurdish wars
resumed in September 1961.

I had the great good fortune in the summer
of the following year to visit Barzani in the
mountains. Traveling with a Kurdish guide, I
slipped secretly through Syria into northern
Iraq and then walked or rode mules or horses
across the top of Iraq until we found Barzani
near the border of Iran. The experience was
perhaps the greatest of my career, and left me
with a lasting appreciation of the human and
soldierly qualities of the Kurds. They are among
the world's great natural guerrilla fighters.

As Barzani sees it, their qualities and their
geographical position on the southern borders
of Russia, roughly between Russia and the oil
wealth of the Persian Gulf, make them vitally
important to the United States. His appeal to
me, the first American journalist to visit him,
and to a succession of other journalists who
have followed, is always the same: "Let the
Americans give us military help, openly or se-
cretly, so that we can become truly autonomous,
and we will become your loyal partners in the
Middle East."

Washington has listened and listens today
with interest, but maintains a stony silence. It
remains too committed to the governments of
Iran and Turkey, and even of Baghdad, to make
any such bold move. But there can be little
doubt that Washington has, during the twelve
years since I visited Barzani and first heard his
pleas, given many a discrete nod to the Iranians
who have slipped rifles, ammunition, machine
guns and even light artillery across the border
to the Kurds.

Insurgency in Iraq

When I first visited the Kurds, Iranian help
had not yet begun and the Kurds were armed
entirely with supplies they had "lifted" from the

Iraqi army, together with older items that dated
back to the Mehabad Republic. Their favorite
weapon-because of its great range and accu-
racy, was and is the Brno rifle (7.98 mm cali-
ber). Beyond that they had a bit of everything,
including British Lee Enfields and Soviet Glash-
inkov light automatics. They never tired of
discussing the merits of their various weapons
which they displayed endlessly before my un-
comprehending gaze. And at every opportunity
they would demonstrate for me their astonishing
marksmanship.

When the Iraqis thrust into the mountains,
the Kurds regularly ran rings around them, in-
flicting casualties and taking prisoners. Of
course the Iraqis did a lot of damage, burning
villages, bombing and strafing from the air.
But they could not defeat the Kurds and are not
likely to do so now, even with improved Soviet
weapons.

The Kurdish army has not changed much
since 1962 except that it has gradually become
less tribal and more regularly organized into
units of the so-called Pesh Merga, the "devoted
ones", probably now numbering about twenty
thousand. Beyond them, the Kurds can still, of
course, call upon a considerably larger number
of tribal fighters.

Their isolation and lack of development is
their weakness and also their strength. Had the
Iraqis really put a lot of effort into opening up
communications into Kurdistan and promoting
economic development, they would probably
have also weakened the Kurdish national move-
ment. This is a lesson the Iranians and Turks
seem not to have learned in dealing with their
respective Kurdish minorities.

The weakness of the Kurds in Iraq was and
is that they can whip the Iraqi army over and
over but cannot impose themselves politically
in Baghdad. The weakness of the Iraqis is that
they cannot win in the mountains. Regime after
regime has found itself undermined by the hu-
miliation and the cost of unavailing campaigns
and military defeat.

In each of half a dozen campaigns, the Iraqi
army has used half, sometimes more than half,
of its army of fifty to sixty thousand men. At
present I understand that three Iraqi divisions
and elements of a fourth are gathered in the
north to oppose the Kurds.

One of the basic considerations in Kurdish
thinking is that they cannot hope to prevail in

56

The Kurdish Insurgency

Iraq—to establish their autonomy, and partnership in the republic—unless they can ally themselves with a substantial element among the Arabs.

When Kassem was overthrown on February 8, 1963, the Kurds had made a deal with the Baathist revolutionaries. But within five months, the Baathists were fighting the Kurds. Each time the regime in Baghdad has changed the Kurds have tried again, and each time they have been disappointed.

In March 1970, the Baathists, having re-gained power, initiated an “agreement” with the Kurds. In principle this was to have led, like the other agreements, to Kurdish autonomy. But in practice, the ensuing four years became an armed truce. The government carried out few of the terms of the agreement. Some economic development in Kurdistan was begun. A Kurdish university was opened in Suleimaniya. But the essential things, political autonomy in Kurdistan and a Kurdish share in power in Baghdad, remained unfulfilled.

In December of last year the Kurds finally published a draft of their constitutional demands. They wanted an elected legislative council and independent executive, their own armed force (the Pesh Merga) and participation not just in the cabinet but in the Revolutionary Command Council, the center of power. Furthermore, they wanted national elections in a democratic Iraq. They wanted their capital in Kirkuk, center of the oil fields.

The government came back with its proposal. Although it offered little of what they really wanted, the Kurds accepted it as a basis of negotiation. Barzani sent his son Idriss to Baghdad. But the Baathists did not really want to negotiate. They proclaimed their constitution and said they would impose it unilaterally.

There has been no formal declaration of war, but the execution of eleven prominent Kurds, who were moved from Baghdad to Arbil at the edge of Kurdish territory to make the occasion more demonstrative, and the Kurdish reply in the form of the execution of seventeen Iraqi officers, left little room for further discussion.

At the time of writing, the Iraqi army's tactics have consisted of probing in various areas. They have withdrawn from a number of places where during previous engagements they had to worry about isolated and impotent garrisons, notably the towns of Rewanduz, Kala Diza and Ranieh,

all in the northeast. This has left the Iraqi air force free to bomb these places, and that it has been doing.

In reply, the Kurds say that they have blown up some Iraq Petroleum Company installations. If so, this is a new departure. In the past Barzani discouraged this sort of thing which he thought would offend the British and Americans. But now that the Iraqis have just about nationalized the company, perhaps he feels free to try to use his own “oil weapon”. If he is really able to use it—able to deprive the Iraqis of their oil in any serious way—the war will enter an entirely new phase. This remains to be seen.

For their part the Iraqis can be expected to try (as other Iraqi military commanders have tried before) to gain control of the Iranian border, thereby isolating the Kurds from outside contact. But this is a tall order. The approaches to the border are through narrow passes and over high mountains. The Kurds are confident.

During the four-year truce the Kurds did not use the radio transmitter they have tucked away in a most inaccessible mountain aerie. But it is working again now and they have even got a British journalist to speak over the radio, which can be heard in Teheran and, with difficulty, in Beirut. I am reminded that the young man who got me into Kurdistan and back in 1962 carried with him a file of specifications of radio transmitters from an American company. That was the beginning.

The great number of Kurds who have rallied to Barzani—the Kurds say one hundred thousand—and the extent of Iraqi military preparations suggest that this round will be bigger and more destructive than any of the others.

Uncertain Prospects

Some of the strategic implications for the Middle East are obvious enough.

As long as the Iraqi army is mobilized in Kurdistan, it is not going to join any adventures in Palestine. So count the Iraqis out of that arena.

Now that the Iraqis are so occupied, they are also unlikely to make trouble for the Iranians on the Shatt el Arab, the river at the head of the Persian Gulf where Iraqis and Iranians have a long-standing quarrel over riparian rights. Nor are the Iraqis likely to make waves further down the Persian Gulf where the Iranians have

57

worried about their potential activity as spon-
sors of revolutionary movements.

Considering the clear-cut strategic benefits,
it is understandable that the Shah would keep
the Kurds reasonably well supplied. The ques-
tion of how much is enough of course dominates
the secret relations between Kurds and Iranians.
The Iranians do not want to give the Kurds
enough to win. They do not want a truly suc-
cessful Kurdish autonomous region in northern
Iraq. That might have repercussions among the
Kurds of Iran.

The Kurds on the other hand seek by hook or
by crook somehow to gather together the means
that would enable them at last to impose their
political will on Baghdad. Hence their tireless
pleas to America. If the Kurds should succeed,
and a government friendly to the United States,
or at least neutral, were installed in Baghdad,
with the Kurds enjoying true autonomy, then
the complexion of the Arab Middle East would
truly be changed. The Russians would be de-
prived of the channel through which they could
at some future time most easily reach the Per-
sian Gulf. Only Syria would remain as an im-
portant pro-Soviet base in the eastern Arab world
(assuming that one can already count out
Egypt).

Given this disastrous potential, the Russians
can be counted on to provide Iraq with plenty
of what is needed to fight guerrillas. The Kurds
claim that this already includes new missiles
and aircraft. I am inclined to doubt the Kurdish
claim that it also includes chemical weapons.

If the Iraqis should at any point show signs
of prevailing, the Iranian army, whose means
thanks to American arms sales are growing
formidable, is sure to intervene.

But I am thinking of a different set of cir-
cumstances, of the danger that makes it so im-
portant to the United States that it should at
last hear Barzani's pleas and see to it that the
Kurds get enough help to succeed in their ob-
jective. Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the friend of

the United States, is old now, seventy-two or
seventy-three years old. No one seems to be
sure of his exact age, but it is considerable for
the leader of a basically guerrilla army. He has
been grooming his son Idriss as a possible suc-
cessor. The Kurdish Democratic Party has also
been developing new young leaders. But the
succession is in doubt. It is not likely that any-
one else could hold the traditionally warring
tribes together and maintain the delicate bal-
ance between the urban elements of the Kurdish
Democratic Party and the tribal elements of
which Barzani is the natural leader.

For years there have been men in the KDP
who have spoken bitterly about Barzani's per-
sistent pro-American pitch. They argued when
I first made contact with them in 1962, and they
argue more insistently now, that if ever the
Kurds are to get their autonomy it will have to
be with Russian help. They know that as early
as 1962 the Communists were trying to get Bar-
zani to raise the flag of revolt among the Iranian
Kurds. They promised him every possible ma-
terial aid, overland from Russia.

Barzani has always turned down these pro-
posals. But when he is gone, other Kurdish
leaders could take a different view. If at that
time the Russians should also fall out with the
government in Teheran, and perhaps also in
Ankara, then the hidden dynamite of the Kur-
dish problem as described by W. H. Hay, may be
set off. With Russian backing, the Kurds of
Turkey, Iran and Iraq, ten or twelve million
strong, with oil in their hands and with access
to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf,
could become an anti-American power to be
reckoned with.

NOTES

1. William Rupert Hay, *Two Years in Kurdistan—Experiences of a Political Officer 1918-1920*, London: Sedgwick & Jackson, Ltd., 1921.

2. Boston: Atlantic Monthly-Little Brown, 1964.

3. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.

58