Roberts claims that “Kurdish separatism is not something unexpected by Washington.” He states that the Kurds’ unofficial vote for independence, organized by Kurdish groups during the January 30 Iraqi elections, was “tacitly backed” by Paul Bremer, Washington’s former proconsul in Iraq. He offers no proof of Bremer’s alleged support.

Following the elections in Iraq, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice made a stop in Turkey during her tour to Europe, as the Militant reported, to assure Ankara that Washington opposes an independent Kurdistan and is “fully committed, to a unified Iraq.”

Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador who criticizes the Bush administration for not paying sufficient attention to Kurdish separatism, wrote in a February 1 op-ed column in the New York Times that last year, when the organizers of the unofficial referendum sought a meeting with U.S. officials to show them a petition containing 1.7 million Kurdish signatures asking for a vote on independence, neither Bremer nor any of his aides would meet with them. Galbraith wrote that U.S. officials were surprised by the independence vote because they continue pretending that the unity of Iraq is not at issue.

One of the most important unintended consequences of the imperialist rulers’ political course in Iraq is the qualitatively wider political space for the Kurds to advance their struggle for self-determination. Similarly, Kurds took advantage of openings after the U.S. assault on Iraq in 1991, when they took control of many villages and towns—including the city of Kirkuk—for a week or more. Surprised by the scope of the Kurdish revolt, the U.S. military stood aside as the Hussein regime used helicopter gunships and heavy armor to ruthlessly put down the rebellion, causing two million or more Kurdish refugees to attempt to flee across the Turkish and Iranian borders. Acting in cahoots with the Hussein regime and Ankara, U.S. troops joined Turkish soldiers in forcing Kurdish refugees back out of Turkey and off nearby mountains into ill-provisioned, barren transit camps. Now as in 1991, the U.S. rulers have underestimated the depth of the national pride and capacity to struggle of the Kurdish people. It will always catch them by surprise.

Roberts argues that the Bush administration is using the Kurdish struggle for self-determination to encourage the “breakup and factionalizaton of Iraq.” He goes on to assert that an Iraq “united under a nationalist movement could toss out the undermanned U.S. forces within a year.”

But history teaches the opposite lesson for working people seeking to overcome divisions rooted in the legacy of imperialist domination. That lesson is that only by championing the fight by oppressed nationalities against their subjugation can working people forge the basis for a united fight against their common enemy, the imperialist and domestic capitalist exploiters.

This approach was at the heart of the program of the Bolshevik party under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, which led workers and farmers to power in the October 1917 Russian Revolution. By championing the emancipation of the nations oppressed under the tsarist empire, the revolutionary leadership laid a firm basis for the voluntary association of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and for successfully defending the revolution against imperialist military assaults. The reversal of this course by the Stalin-led political counterrevolution, which transformed the Soviet Union into the opposite of a voluntary federation of workers and peasants republics, made the collapse of the Stalinist regime and breakup of the USSR inevitable.

Likewise, the forced retention of the Kurds within Iraq by the capitalist rulers of that country has long been used to undermine a united fight by working people in Iraq—Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Kurd—first against the Hussein regime and now against the U.S.-led imperialist intervention. It has also driven workers and farmers in Kurdistan into the arms of the bourgeois leaders of the main Kurdish parties, which support Washington.

Roberts labels “inaccurate” the Militant’s statement that “wealthy Sunnis were the backbone of support for the Hussein regime.” As proof, he remarks that Iyad Allawi, prime minister of Iraq’s interim government and a Shiite, is a “former Baathist assassin.” That fact changes nothing about the main base of support for the Baathist regime, which as part of its divide-and-rule tactics promoted privileges for Sunnis at the expense of the Shiite majority. Nor does the assertion that there are Shiite-led organizations involved in the armed attacks against U.S. and Iraqi government forces change the fact that the operational capability of the “insurgency” depends on the financing, organization, and supply of weapons by Baathist forces. All reports indicate that the primary force U.S. troops faced in last November’s assault on Fallujah—a longtime Baathist stronghold—was a portion of the elite troops of the former Hussein regime.

Roberts also objects to the Militant’s report that there was “relatively minor bloodshed” by Baathist attackers on the day of the elections (the one example he gives of a shootdown of a British plane, an event of little consequence in Iraq, was in fact reported in the February 14 issue he criticizes).

Liberal commentators, in their effort to score points against the Bush administration and boost Democratic politicians, cannot accurately present these facts. They present a false view of “Bush’s quagmire” in Iraq, failing to explain how the U.S. ruling class—with Democrats offering critical support to the White House—has made gains in the Mideast today by taking advantage of the political incapacity of the Baathist and other bourgeois forces in Iraq to lead a fight against imperialism. And they fail to see the space that is simultaneously opening up in Iraq—for working people, for oppressed nationalities, for women—to organize and fight to advance their interests.
 
 
Related articles:
Iraqi Kurds make progress toward return to oil-rich Kirkuk
Top U.S. military brass cleared of wrongdoing in Abu Ghraib abuse  
 
 
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