As part of its efforts to masquerade "Operation Iraqi Freedom" as a war of liberation for the country’s inhabitants, Washington has attempted to portray its actions as helping the Kurdish people shake off the yoke of national oppression. Nothing could be further from the truth. The U.S. rulers have no interest in the national rights of the Kurds, as the conduct of their military forces clearly showed in 1990–91. For decades they have collaborated with the historic butchers of the Kurds in the region.

During the 1990–91 Arab-Persian Gulf War and in its aftermath the Kurdish people came to the center stage in world politics as never before, not primarily as victims, but as courageous and determined fighters for national self-determination. Prior to the Gulf War, the Kurdish struggle had largely been in retreat, having been dealt repeated defeats over the previous half-century by the Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, and Syrian ruling classes, with the complicity of Washington, London, Paris, and Moscow. A look at that history helps shed light on imperialism’s predatory aims today.

The fight of the Kurds for national rights has been a historic problem for the Turkish rulers--who once sat atop the vast Ottoman empire--and for the main imperialist powers that established domination of the area in the first world war.

An estimated 25 million Kurds live in a territory spanning the intersection of the borders of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Armenia, and Syria. More than half, or up to 15 million, live in southeastern Turkey. Roughly five to seven million live in Iran, about four million in northern Iraq, and one-and-a-half million in Syria.  
 
Struggle against national oppression
The Kurds have a long history of struggle against subjugation, first against Arab conquerors in the 7th century, then Seljuk Turks in the 11th, Mongolian rulers from the 13th to the 15th century, followed by the fight against Ottoman rule.

Under the Ottoman empire the Kurds lived in the Mesopotamian plains and highlands of Turkey and Iran. They faced ferocious oppression at the hands of imperial officials and troops. Between the 16th and 18th centuries vast areas of Kurdistan were devastated.

The Ottoman rulers allied their empire to the German rulers in World War I. London and Paris, the dominant imperialist powers in the Mideast, carved up the region between themselves. The Treaty of Sèvres, named after the French city where the new imperial lords imposed their dictates on Ankara, forced the Ottomans to cede Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and Palestine, including Trans-Jordan, to the British; and Syria, including Lebanon, to the French. From that conference to today the imperialist powers dominating the Mideast and the succeeding bourgeois regimes in the region would use the Kurds and their struggle for independence as pawns in the twists and turns of their class interests.

London, for example, backed a provision in the Sèvres treaty that supported the formation of an autonomous Kurdish state, which would include the oil-rich province of Mosul. In the wake of the overthrow of the Ottoman monarchy, however, the Turkish rulers demanded a new accord that made no reference to Kurdish independence. In 1923, London reached an agreement with the British-imposed monarchy in Baghdad to include Mosul as part of Iraq. The Kurds were given a "promise" that they would hold high government positions and their language would be preserved in Kurdish areas.  
 
The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad
Kurdish rebellions in Turkey and Iran in the 1920s to secure their independence were brutally surpressed. During a revolt in Turkey in 1937–38, Ankara used aerial bombardment, poison gas, and artillery shelling against Kurdish strongholds.

During World War II, Iran was partially occupied by foreign troops. British forces took over the south, while Soviet troops moved into the north. The region around Mahabad was not occupied.

The interimperialist conflict at the center of World War II gave rise to many anticolonial struggles. In 1942, the pro-independence movement Komala Jiani Kurdistan was founded in Iran. Three years later, some of the same forces launched the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) of Iran, which all Komala members joined. The KDP demanded autonomy, not an independent state, including recognition of the Kurdish language, locally elected government authorities, and legislation that would give some protection to peasants from landlord exploitation. In January 1946, the KDP proclaimed the first Kurdish independent republic in that northern area. The Mahabad republic, as it was known, established diplomatic relations with the workers and peasants government that had come to power in neighboring Azerbaijan. It introduced Kurdish as the official language in schools, and Kurdish-language publications flourished.

The Kurdish republic lasted for nearly a year. When the Iranian monarchy deployed forces to squash the two governments and reoccupy the areas in December 1946, Moscow opposed the resistance efforts by the Azerbaijani and Kurdish peoples. This led to a split in the Azerbaijani leadership, with the majority following Soviet premier Joseph Stalin’s dictate and calling off armed resistance. The Stalinist leadership in Azerbaijan capitulated without a struggle. The fall of the Azerbaijani government quickly led to the fall of the Kurdish republic. Kurdish forces, however, organized a fighting retreat.

The retreat was organized by Mustapha Barzani, the military commander of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, who had earlier led Kurds from Iraq to join the republic in northern Iran led by Ghazi Muhammad. Fighting the Shah’s army, they crossed into Iraq where they came under heavy assault by troops of the Iraqi monarchy backed by British imperialism. Barzani then led his forces in a fighting retreat through Turkey and Iran into the Soviet Union. They remained there until the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in the July 1958 revolution, when they returned to Iraqi Kurdistan to continue the struggle for self-determination.

Although the first-ever independent Kurdish republic was crushed by the Iranian monarchy, the Kurds continued their struggle during the decades that followed. Washington, which replaced London as the world’s top imperialist power during World War II, has alternately doled out aid with an eyedropper to Kurdish nationalist groups, and then abruptly cut off this backing, depending on its shifting relations with regimes in the area, especially Baghdad and Tehran.

Following a wave of protests and strikes that broke out at the beginning of the 1950s, a group of Iraqi military officers influenced by the perspective of pan-Arab unity overthrew the monarchy on July 14, 1958. They received widespread support from the population. Kurds participated fully in the revolt with the expectation that the new government would back their demand for self-determination.

By the autumn of 1961, Kurds in Iraq were in full revolt when it became apparent that the new government had no intention of meeting Kurdish demands. The monarchy in Iran backed the fight of Iraqi Kurds in exchange for the Kurdish groups using their influence to quell Kurdish aspirations for sovereignty in Iran. Baghdad countered this ploy with a March 1970 decree that granted limited autonomy to the Kurds, recognition of the Kurdish language, appointment of a Kurdish vice-president, and representation of Kurds in the government proportionate to their numbers in the population.

A semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq was the last thing the Shah of Iran wanted to appear on his border, setting a "dangerous example" for the millions of Kurds living within Iran. In 1975 Tehran brokered a deal with Baghdad to subordinate their disputes to the need to put an end to Kurdish demands for self-determination on both sides of the border.

Both the monarchies and successive bourgeois regimes in Iraq and Iran, right up to today, have tried to divide the Kurds in this way to advance the interests of the ruling regimes in Baghdad or Tehran.  
 
Aftermath of Arab-Persian Gulf War
In the aftermath of the Arab-Persian Gulf War, the Kurdish people took advantage of the weakening of the Saddam Hussein regime to press their struggle forward. They held many villages and towns, including the major city of Kirkuk, for a week or more in March 1991. Baghdad used helicopter gunships and heavy armor to crush the Kurdish rebellion with ruthless brutality, causing two million or more Kurdish refugees to attempt to cross the Turkish and Iranian borders.

U.S. and European imperialist powers declared a temporary "enclave" for the Kurdish refugees north of the 36th parallel in northern Iraq near the Turkish border in 1991. Washington sent Special Forces units into the area, functioning as little more than a police force for Saddam Hussein at the time. Along with Turkish soldiers, the U.S. troops forced refugees out of Turkey and off nearby mountains into ill-provisioned and barren transit camps. Washington’s aim was to push the Kurds back to the towns and villages from which they had fled.

At that time, Ankara had joined Washington in the war against Iraq in hopes of winning trade favors and military aid and hardware. Now, after the Turkish parliament turned down the U.S. rulers’ request to allow tens of thousands of ground troops to be deployed on Turkish soil and use Turkey as a base to launch a northern invasion of Iraq, the tune of the White House has changed. This zig-zag in the relationship with Ankara--not concern for the trampling of Kurdish national rights in the area--is the reason behind U.S. president George Bush’s recent warnings that the Turkish government, a fellow NATO member, dare not send its army into Iraq.

The next installment will focus on the Kurdish struggle in Turkey and Syria.  
 
 
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