Global Policy Forum

By Peter W. Galbraith

As the Bush administration struggles to induce Turkey to support a war with Iraq, our Kurdish allies in northern Iraq are realizing that once again America is about to double-cross them.

Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, went to Ankara this month and told top Kurdish leaders to accept a large deployment of Turkish troops — supposedly for humanitarian relief — to enter northern Iraq after any American invasion. He also told the Kurds that they would have to give up plans for self-government, adding that hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes by Saddam Hussein would not be able to return to them.

For the Kurds, this brought bitter memories. They blame Henry Kissinger for encouraging them to rebel in the early 1970's and then acquiescing quietly as the shah of Iran made a deal with Iraq and stopped funneling American aid to them. (Mr. Kissinger's standing among Kurds was not helped by his explanation: "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.")

After the Persian Gulf war, the first President Bush called on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. When the Kurds tried to do just that, the American military let the Iraqis send out helicopter gunships to annihilate them. Mr. Bush partly salvaged his standing with the Kurds a month later when he cleared Iraqi forces from the region, thus enabling the creation of the first Kurdish-governed territory in modern history.

In the latest buildup to war, the Kurds took comfort from their special status as the only Iraqi opposition group to control a territory, to possess a significant population and to have a substantial military force. Kurdish leaders have been courted at the highest levels, meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But American support hit a wall: Turkish consent to the deployment of American troops for a northern front against Iraq is considered an important, although probably not essential, element in American planning. In addition to billions in cash, Turkey has demanded an ironclad assurance that there will not be a separate Kurdish state.

The Kurds did their best to meet Turkish and American concerns. They promised they would not seek independence, confining their ambitions to a self-governing entity within a federal Iraq. They also promised not to take Kirkuk, an oil-rich city they describe as their Jerusalem.

However, this proved inadequate for the Turks. They fear that federalism could be a way station to Kurdish independence — and they may be right. The four million Kurds who live in the self-governing area overwhelmingly do not want to be Iraqis. After 12 years of freedom, the younger people have no Iraqi identity and many do not speak Arabic. The older generation associates Iraq with poison gas and mass executions.

Still, seeing the Kurds as an easier mark, Washington sided with Turkey. The Kurds were told that federalism would have to wait for deliberation by a postwar elected Iraqi parliament, in which they would be a minority.

But the Bush administration may have gotten the power calculus wrong. The Kurds have established a real state within a state, with an administration that performs all governmental responsibilities, from education to law enforcement. Their militias number 70,000 to 130,000, and there is a real risk of clashes with any Turkish "humanitarian" force. The democratically elected Kurdistan assembly has already completed work on a constitution for the region that would delegate minimal powers to a central government in Baghdad, and could submit it for a popular vote. Short of arresting Kurdish leaders and the assembly, an American occupation force may have no practical way of preventing the Kurds from going ahead with their federalist project.

And now it seems Turkey's financial demands may exceed what Washington is willing to pay, and Turkey will sit out the war. That could weaken Turkey's influence in creating a postwar Iraq, and improve the Kurds' prospects for self-rule.

President Bush's war has always had a moral component to it: the liberation of the Iraqi people from a brutal regime. If it sides so completely with Turkey in putting down the democratic hopes of Iraq's Kurds, the administration looks shortsighted and cynical. And not just to the Kurds.

Peter W. Galbraith is a former United States ambassador to Croatia.

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