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

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
The Left isn't listening
.The. Stop theWar coalition is the greatest t~reat to any hope
for a democratic Iraq
WITHOUT
PREJUDICE
Nick:Cohen
WHEN SADDAM IS sent to rendezvous
with ajudge in The Hague, or a rope on a
lamppost, the democratic opposition in
Iraq will need help. It has many enemies:
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, theCIAand the
Foreign Office want to replac~ the old'
tytant with a new, compliant di~tor -::Il ,
Sa\idam with~~t a m~ustache: As the.
. mbment of decIsIon amves, IraqI democ-'.
. rats and socialists tJ.a,vèdiscovered that
their natural allies in the European Left
don't want to know them. They must âdd
the shameless Stop the Warcoalition to
the enemies list.. . ;
Iraq is the only country inthe Arab',
world with a strong, democratic move- '
ment. Yet I wonder how many who
marched yesterday know of the dissenters'
existence. The demonstration's
organisers have gone to great lengths to
censor and silence. How else could the
self-righteous feel good about themselves?
The usual accusation when
whites ignore brown-skinned peoples is
that of racism. It doesn't quite workin
the Stop the War coalition's case. The
Socialist Workers Party, which domi-.
nates the alliance, was happy to cohost
the march with the reactionary British
Association of Muslims. The association
had blotted its copybo'ok by'circulating a
. newspaper which explained that apostasy
from Islam is 'an offence punis~ble
by death'. But what the hell. In the interests
of multi-culturalism, the. SWP
ignored the protests of squeamish lefties .
and let that pass. The Trots aren't Islamophobes,
after all. The only Muslims they"
have a phobia about are secular Iraqi.
Muslims who, shockingly, believe in
human rights.
The Iraqis made a fruitless appeal for.
. fraternal solidarity last month. The Kurdish
leader Barham Salih flew to l3. meet-
. ingofthe Socialist International inRome,
. to argue for 'the imperative of fr.eedom
, and l\beratJpu {rom fascism anti ;dieta~
. torshlp'. Those marchers who affect to
. believ.em.\l}uralism should find his argument~.attfactive,
if they can suppress
their prejudices long enough to hear him
out. Salih explained that the no-fly zones
enforced by the .RAf and USAF ha!l
allowed his.Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
and the Kurdish Democratic Party to.
build a fair imitation of democratic stl3,te
.in liberated northern Iraq. The Kurds
promote the freedom of j~urn~list~,
women and religious and raclaI mInon. '
ties. Naturally, the local supporters of~-
'Qaeda agree with Baghdad that this
intolerable liberal experiment must end,
and the Kurds are having to fight both
Saddam and the fundamentalists.
Salih was prepared for that: what he
wasn't prepared for was the e!1mity of
the anti-war movement. FoolIshly, he
tried to reason with it. He
pointed out that the choice wasn't
between war or peace. Saddam
'has been waging war for
decades and he has inflicted hundreds
of thousands of civilian
casualties.' Indeed, he contin-
.ued, the ethnic cleansing of the
Kurds who are still under Bagh- .
dad's control continues to this
day. 'I do not ~ant war and I do
not want,civilian caslJalties;.nor .
do those who are coming to olir
assistance,' he said. 'But the war.
has already begun.' '
What, he then' asked, about
the' strange insistence of the
. anti-war movement that Iraqis
must not belib~rated UJ:ltilIsrael
. Mthdraws from. the oçcupied
.. territories? Would the cOnverse
apply? If thé Palestinians were
on the verge of seemg Is~eli rule
overthrown, would hundreds of
thousandstake té>tl1e streetsof
Londbn and bellow that Pales- .
tinians éould not get rid' of
Sharon .until IraqiS got rid' of
Saddàm? Salih doubted it, and"
also had little time for those who
say war should be opposed
becaUse 'it's all about oil'.
So what? he asked. 'Iraqis
know that their human rights
have toooften been ignored
because Iraqi oil was more'
important to the world than
Iraqi lives. It would be a good
irony ifat long last oil becomes a
cause of our liberation - if this is
the case, then so be it. The oil
will be a blessing and not the
curse that it has been for so
long ... So to those who say "No.
War", I say, of course "yes", but, .
we can only have "No War" if .
there is "No Dictatorship" and .
"No Genocide".'
Readers with access to the .
internet can read the whole
speech at www.pukorg. I urge .
. you to do so because you're
never going to hear democratic
Iraqi voices if you rely on the
anti-war movement. For most of
the time, the comrades pretend the Iraqi
opposition doesn't exist.
HAROLD PINTER is the most striking
. member of àBritish Left with its hands
'over its earsdu 198Mhe staged Mountain
Languagr,l:f.PJay about the b~nning of
Kurdish in Tutkey. The conceIt was all
too rCéiIistic: the world would never
'know of the suffering of the Kurds
because the Kurds would never be
allowed to speak. ('Your language is forbidden,'
an officer bellows at Kurdish
women. 'It is dead. No one is allowed to
speak your language. Your language no
longer exists. Any questiQns?') In 2003
when Iraqi Kurds found the words to ask
'for aid in an anti-fascist struggle, Pinter
turned Pinteresque. He refused to hear
the mountain tongue he had once
defended and became a noisy supporter
of the Stoplhe War coalition. The cur.
rent issue of the left.wing magaZine Red
Pepper takes evasion into outright false.
hood. It condemns journalists - well, one
journalist, me - for being conned into
believing the Iraqi opposition supports
war. Only American stooges in the Iraqi
National Congress want war, it
announces with mEmdacious self.confiot'nr.r'.
The main Irélqi parties -- wh,ich
- Red pppper listsas the Kurdish Democratic
Party, Supreme Council for 'the
Islamic Revolution and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan - are with the peace
-protesters.
. It's a convincing case, spoilt only by
. the fact that the Iraqi National Congress
is an umbrella organisation whose memo
bers include the Kurdish Democratic
Party, the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution and, indeed, the:
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose
leader flew to Europe to beg the Left to ,
get its priorities right and support a war
against tyranny.
, If evasion and lies won 't do, vilifica.
tion is the last reSort. The writings of the
Iraqi intellectual Kanan Makiya have
inspired the opposition and brought him
many enemies, not least Saddam
Hussein, who wants him
dead. Edward Said has been
only slightly less forgiving.,
Makiya, he wrote recently, is
a man 'devoid of either compas:,ion
or real understand.
ing, he prattles on for Anglo.
. American audiences who
seem satisfied that here at last
is an Arab who exhibits the
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