March 3, 2003
The Kurdish Ghost
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Mullah Mustafa Barzani was a leader of the 20 million
Kurdish people — the world's largest nation without a country
— through much of the 20th century. Betrayed in the 1970's by
the Shah of Iran and the U.S. ("covert action should not be
confused with missionary work"), the dying warrior was
brought to a C.I.A. safe house in Virginia, where we had long
talks before his death.
Because Iraqi Kurds under belated U.S. air protection have
developed a democracy that will be a model for post-Saddam Iraq,
my friend Mullah Mustafa granted me this interview from the
Great Beyond.
Q: Have Kurds finally come to trust the Americans?
Barzani: We have had a saying for a thousand years: "The
Kurds have no friends." America gave us air cover after the
1991 gulf war only when the television pictures of a
half-million Kurdish refugees fleeing Saddam's slaughter made
you ashamed. But we are grateful for our only decade of freedom.
Q: Then why are the Kurds worried about the coming liberation
of the rest of Iraq?
Barzani: Because we think you made a deal with the Turks to
sell us out again. To get them to let you use Turkey as the base
for your northern front, you agreed to their demand not to arm
my son Massoud's forces in Iraq. Together with Jalal Talabani's
Kurds, that's 70,000 fighters who could be on your side to
defeat Saddam. But you deny us the weapons to fight our common
enemy.
Q: Isn't that denial because the Turks think you want to set
up an independent Kurdistan in Iraq, and that 12 million Kurds
in Turkey will want to break away and merge with you?
Barzani: That is the stuff of dreams. After finally getting
some home rule and safety in Iraq, do you think we want to fight
the whole Turkish Army? And fight the Americans, too, who have
guaranteed the territorial integrity of Iraq after Saddam? The
Turks cry "secession" because they want to crush
Kurdish culture in Turkey, not because separation is a threat.
You trust the Turks?
Q. Well, lately they've disappointed us, after we forced NATO
to send them defensive equipment and we agreed to their $15
billion rental demand — but how can we complain when Turkey
sides with France and Germany to protect Saddam if that's its
democratic choice?
Barzani: Don't complain, because you learned just in time
that the Turks want to grab the oil fields of Kirkuk, our
ancestral capital in Iraq, on the pretense that we're declaring
Kurdish independence. You're lucky their Islamists in Parliament
double-crossed you.
Q: But don't you see how we could shorten the war by a week
with a thrust down from Turkey in the north?
Barzani: Of course — and nearby is the base that my son
Massoud and my old aide Jalal offer you in the north of Iraq.
You could put your huge jets down in our airfields with over
5,000 troops and armor in time for your invasion up from Kuwait
while the Brits slip in through Jordan. And we'll be at your
side —
Q: But wouldn't your mountain fighters just get in the way of
a motorized assault by a modern army?
Barzani: When you give our pesh merga the guns, mortars,
rockets, chemical suits and gas masks they need, they will not
only wipe out Al Qaeda's allies of Ansar al-Islam. Thousands of
Kurds who cannot forget Saddam's poison-gas massacre at Halabja
are ready to help root out his Republican Guard in the streets
of Baghdad, if need be, to avenge the murder of our children.
Q: We wouldn't want any "score-settling" —
Barzani: The allies settled scores at Nuremberg and The
Hague. Iraqis will also bring Baathist oppressors to justice.
Q: But is Iraq, with all its religious groups and ethnic
factions, capable of unity and self-government?
Barzani: Sooner than some arrogant Westerners think. You'll
help us set up our confederation, organize state and federal
elections and courts, repudiate Saddam's corrupt Russian debt,
get onstream outside OPEC, block Turkish and Persian mischief,
and say goodbye. Then we'll forgive your betrayals of the past.
And when you see Massoud and Jalal, tell them I ordered Kurds to
stick together.
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