.Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la PrensÇ1-Basm Özeti
Trudy Rubin Worldview . , .
The Kurdish question:
Wùl U.S..keep.bargain?
On eve of war, memories lii£gerofformer betrayals ..
SUlAYMANIYAH,
Iraq .:- TliiSis "free
.Iraq;" the portion of
northern Iraq
where 4 million
KUrds enjoy Virtual
autonomy froni Sadélain aus~
sein bècause. they areprotected
by a Ù.s. air ümbrella.
The.Kurds; a Iion"Arab Mus- .
lim people who ..inhàbitthis
beàutiful,. mountainous re-.
gion along with adjacent
parts of Syria, Iran and Turkey,
are America's closest Iraqi
àllies. U.S. troops may soon
enter Kurdistan from Turkey
on their way to Baghdad.
The Kurds i1ateSaddam
Hussein, who slaughtered
them by the tens of thousands
with bullets and poison gas in
the 1980s. Yet the :Kurds .distrust
the United States.
Two weeks' ago, the independent
Kurdish newspaper
Hawlati did a sUrvey in which
respondents were asked,"Do .
you trust the U.S. to protect
Kurdistan?" in the event of a
war With Saddam. ''Fifty-five
percent said. no," I was. told
by As9 Harti, the gutsy e.ditor
ofthis pioneering paper.
A prime reasonfor. this
skepticism:the I{urds fear.
U;S~officials will let Saddam
gas them again. .
For six months, Kurdish
leaders have been asking the
United States ~o help them
preparê for the. possibility
that Saddam may attack them
with weapons of massdestruction.
They hàve repeatedly requested
mobile clinics, gas
màsks, antibiotics like. Cipro,
arid antidotes to biological
agentS such as atropine, all of
whicb they ~e ~cking.
Help. has been p~omised,
but. nothing has ~ved yet, .
AÏ1d war may be onlya few
weeks away.
, ,,~: .
....... of.
Such concerns are not aca-
,'''I11eymight send us masks demic. In 1988, Iraqi airforce
.arid medicine - after the l}elicopters dropped mustard
war," says. Interior Minister gas and nerve agents on the
Freydoun AbdUl Kheder wea- Kurdish town of Halabja and
rUy. As the man ID charge of may even have disseminated
the emergencY committee of biological agents like aflatoxregional
ministers, which. In. Several thousand men,
.d~ with potential wardisas- women and children were
ters,. he is. facing a critical.killed, and Halabja residents.
shortage. of normal medical •continue to suffer hideous.
supplies, and a near-absence health complications.
ofmeans .to protect against . At the time,. U.S. officials
biochemical attack. mew of the gassing, but the Re-
Kheder worries about Sad- agan administration choSe to
dam's large arsenal of short- downplay it because it supportrange
rockets, which were ed Saddam in his war against
not bannedby the 199~ Gulf Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. This
War cease-tire and can be is orny oneßf several bitter betitted
with chemical .war- trayals of the Kurds by various
heads. He. fears small .. at-. U.S. adnùnis"
trations ..
. tacks by terrorists enlisted ,. A prime example: George
by Saddamto use .cheinicals H.W. Bush'urged'Iraqis to rise
or toxins to destabilize the up in i991 and then let Sadd.
Kurdish region. am slaughter them when they
"Our cear," he.. says, "is. d Onl wh CNN
l' . responde.y en
thatsome diseases might be recorded a million desperate
spread which have disap- KUrds fleeingto Iran andTurpeared
from the world." . key did ~ush es~ablish the na- .
fly zone that still protects -'.
. much of Ir~qi Kurdistap. .
'\ So it is an outràge that us.
officials have yet to respond to
Kurdish requests forprotectfôn.All
th~more s.owhen Saddam's
use of poison gas against .
the Kurds is cited by tJte,Bus~
~dministration as proofthe Ifàqi
dictator must be removed.
" U.S. ~oops have been issued
preventive .suits against
his chemical weapons. The
Bush administration has sent
Patriot antimissile batteries
to Israel and Jordan to protect
against chemical warheads.
Only the Kurds - in
far more d~er than Israel
- have. gotten nothing.
The Kurds can't turn for
medical supplies to the United
Nations, which works through
Baghdad. They can't turn to
international humanitarian
agencies, ~s regional Health
Minister Muhammad Khoshnaw
found out last. week: ''I
told them the war is coming
nearer day by day and we
have nothing. They say no one
will give them funds [for this
crisis] before the war starts."
If the Kurds fear they won't
be protected. against poison
gas they irulY once again flee
to the mounUUnsisayS. Gen.
S~o Dizay~, head of the
peshmerga (Kurdish military)
general staff. That would
~use a major h~tarial1
crisis. Or, if they shit put, and
some aregassed, "AInerica
will crt;late new enemles in
. theregion by betrayàl."
Why would ..the United
States risk tfu!,t? Maybe U,S.
officials think die war.will end
so •soon that. Sàddam .won't
have time to lob VX gas at
Kurdish cities. But if those officials
are wrong, America. will
never live down the shan'le.
ContaCt columnist Trudy Rubin .
at 215~4-5823 or
trubin@phillyriews.com.
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