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Revue de Presse-Press Revù?w-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
WHO'S
NEXT
Blood, Treachery
And Betrayal
MASSOUD BARZANI and
JALAL TALABANI are key
to any conflict in Iraq
BY CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
ITRUST AMERICA," A LEGENDARY
Kurdish leader in Iraq declared some
30 years ago. "America is too great a
power to betray a small people like the
Kurds." He must have known better.
The United States has been making and
breaking promises to the Kurds in their
mountain redoubts since the aftermath of
World War I. But he could hardly have
foreseen the treachery and disappointment
that lay in store as the Kurds rose
against Saddam Hussein in the 1970s,
the 1980s and the 1990s, often with U.S.
encouragement and support, only to be
left in the. end to face
'America is
toogreata
powerto
betray a small
people like
the Kurds'
Saddam's genocidal revenge
alone.
Today that trusting
leader's son is the calculating
realist Massoud
Barzani, 56, one of the
two great tribal warlords
ofIraqi Kurdistan. He has
sometimes fought Saddam,
sometimes made
peace with Saddam, even
invited Saddam to help
him thrash his longtime Kurdish rival, the
bluff and impetuous 69-year-old Jalal Thla-.
bani. But today the two are united once
again against the Baghdad regime. And this .
. time they know Washington may need them
as much as they need it.
Since the last round ofinternational betrayals
and intramural bloodletting in
1996-97, Barzani and Thlabani have taken
advantage of U.S. and British air cover to
create theclosest thing to an independent
state Iraq's 4 million Kurds have ever had.
They control roughly 12 percent of Iraq's
territory. With a salient that reaches to
. within about 100 miles ofBaghdad, de fac~
to .Kurdistan is a natural asset for any
American push against Saddam's regime.
Barzani and Talabani also have tens of
thousands of men under arms: traditional
fighters called peshmerga, meaning they'll
look death in the face. Their colorful turbans,
sashes and baggy pants are giving
way to camoutlage gear, and they're better
equipped than ever before to meet Saddam's
artillery and tanks head-on. But
they're also less anxious to plunge into battle.
Barzani and Thlabani have. managed to
cobble together a workable Parliament, an
eConomy thriving on international aid and
oil smuggling, even a haven for invest-
. ment by exiled Kurds, who are now building
factories and food-processing plants.
So good is life in Kurdistan compared with
the past, in fact, that neither warlord has
been enthusiastic about a final showdown
with Saddam.
What do they want if the tyrant is gone?
And what can they get? Their stated ambition
is KurdisQ autonomy, but their undisguised
wish is still for independence. If
they move too far too fast down that
road, they could touch off new conflicts
with neighboring Thrkey
: Fornier rivaIs
Talabenl (left)
and Barzani'are .
linlted for nov(
and Iran-which want to
discourage such hopes
among their own Kurd-
JAN. 8. 2003
ish minorities. And who
would rule? Thlabani is
said by friends to harbor
national ambitions as a
member of whatever federal
government takes
shape in Baghdad. Barzani
is expected to try to
expand bis personal control
over the home turf. Yet at a recent conference
of fractious Iraqi opposition leaders
in London, it was Barzani who reached out
beyond Kurdistan for support from "other
forces and people who have not joined us:'
whoever and wherever they might be.
Could these two turn on each other
again? There areplenty of precedents. In
the Kurds' long history as victims, they
have clung to two mottoes. One holds
~at their "only friends are the mountains."
Tlle othèr is that "fighting is better than
idleness." IfBarzani and Thlabani are to salvage
their hard-won homeland from the
conflagration they're now convinced is inevitable,
they will have to forge friendships
well beyond the confines of their craggy
strongholds. And the United States will
have to encourage constructive peace if it
wants to avert a return to endless war. •
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