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Colin Powell's Anti-Kurd Agenda:

From Fallujah to Mosul, Najaf to Karbala, Damascus to Kuwait City, Cairo to Rabat, the news from Baghdad, New York, and Washington has been music to Arab ears:
Thanks to Powell's anti-Kurd agenda, endorsed by Bush this April and now by the UN, the Kurds have been treated, not as active contributors to Iraqi politics, but as passive receivers of it.  Nothing short of a complete reversal of Iraq first, Kurd second slogan both in word and in deed can now satisfy the Kurdish street.  

By: Dr. Sabah Salih

June 10, 2004

In his ongoing effort to change Bush's mind about going to war against Saddam Hussein, Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the President on August 5, 2002, with a stark warning: You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems.  You'll own it all.  It's going to suck the oxygen out of everything.  In his best-selling book Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward further quotes Powell telling Mr. Bush that he would be wise not to think of such a war as a walk in the woods (p. 150).

In response, Bush said his job was to protect America and that he believed freedom was something people longed for everywhere, adding, . . . if given a chance, the Iraqis over time would seize the moment (p. 152).

My point here is that Powell did everything he could to change Bush's mind about the war. Apart from a serious disruption in the flow of oil, Powell's main concern was that a war would damage American's relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds.  He also feared friendly Arab regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia might be overthrown.  Here was I talking strategy, Bush later recalled to Woodward, and here was Powell worrying about the tactics.

In the end, Powell did not see the war as a victory for anyone not even for the future of democracy in Iraq except his two nemesis: Vice President Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  Grudgingly, but temporarily, he accepted defeat. Then came the upsurge in violence in the so-called Sunni triangle and parts of the Shia south, followed by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib.  These gave Powell the needed opportunity for a comeback. In Powell's mind, Rumsfeld, and Cheney had won the war but not the peace; they had unleashed in Iraq political, ethnic, and military forces they had no idea how to manage.  Powell's help as a skilled diplomat was now desperately needed but at a price: from now on Powell and his state department, not Rumsfeld or Cheney, would have the final say in shaping Iraq's future.

To Powell's delight, President Bush would sign a directive in May authorizing this policy change.  For Bush's advisors, selling the Kurds out may make him look like a backstabber, but in an election year stabbing a nation as friendless as the Kurds maybe a too small a price to pay for winning long-term with the American people.  Besides, in their dealings with the Americans, the Kurds have shown no appetite for a fight; at every instance, they have given in to American wishes, leaving the Americans with the impression that the Kurds can indeed be taken for granted.

Wasting no time, Powell moved swiftly to try his hand on Iraq the old-fashioned way: treating this diverse mix of cultures, ethnicities, and geographies as basically part of an Arab preserve stretching all the way from the Atlantic in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east. This age-old strategy, the brainchild of successive U.S. administrations and part of an overall Middle Eastern strategy, is based on a hierarchy of interests: ironclad support of Israel, strategic ties with the Turks, and protection of Arab regimes friendly to the U.S.  As for the Kurds, they need to be kept at the margins and, if needed, exploited for covert operations.  

The first serious indication of Bush's tilt toward Powell came when the President threw his support behind UN envoy L. Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister with a decidedly pro-Arab agenda.  Then came Bush's apology over the prisoner abuse.  But significantly the apology was designed to placate, not the people of Iraq, but the Arab street; it was made in the presence of Jordan's King Abdullah, not the presence of Iraqi officials, thus even the apology was made to stress the view that for America Iraq was principally an extension of the Arab world, and that what really mattered for America was what people in Cairo, Damascus, and Riyadh not the Iraqis themselves thought. Indeed, pleasing Jordan's King Abdullah is a much bigger priority for Powell and his state department than listening to the concerns of the Kurdish people.  

Not unpredictably, another indication was Powell's ax-grinding effort against Ahmad Chalabi, long a Cheney and Rumsfeld friend.  The State Department, along with the CIA two tireless resisters of regime change in Baghdad had been working behind the scene for some time to tarnish Chalabi's image.  What annoyed them the most about Chalabi was that the former banker had made some very influential friends on Capital Hill, where he was always received like a statesman.  Chalabi had also easy access to high-ranking official at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, and at the influential Defense Council Board, whose members James Woosely and Richard Pearle Chalabi had been friends with for years.

By working to discredit Chalabi, the State Department and the CIA were hoping to persuade Bush that the likes of Chalabi did not have the best interests of the country in lobbying for war against Saddam. For the President, however, the matter was not that simple; Chalabi might very well have had his own reasons for wanting Saddam gone but Saddam did indeed pose in Bush's words a gathering threat to the United States.

And now with weapons of mass destruction nowhere to be found, the CIA and the State Department are desperate for scapegoats.  They know they have no chance against Rumsfeld and Cheney.  But they know they can settle scores with them by going after their man, Chalabi. So in a way Powell's war against Chalabi is in actuality a thinly disguised war against the Vice President and the Defense Secretary.  At another level, it is a reflection of the age-old rivalry over turf and influence between the defense and state departments.  Early in the war, when Rumsfeld began making the rounds in Kabul and Baghdad acting like America's top diplomat, Powell was not amused. Washington was awash with talk of his resignation, something, no doubt, he would certainly have regretted considering how well things are going his way these days.

Powell indeed has good reasons to be happy these days. Except for the presidency, which he was hoping would be Adnan Patchachi's, the makeup of Iraq's interim government went almost entirely Powell's way, not Cheney's or Rumsfeld's.  Once groomed by Rumsfeld and Cheney and many in Congress and in the Republican conservative establishment as Iraq's undisputed post-Saddam leader, Chalabi is now a fallen figure; at some point in the future he may manage a comeback,
most likely under Ali al-Sistani's cloak, but for now he is being pushed to the margins exactly where Powell and the CIA have always wanted him to be.

More important, Powell succeeded at least for now in shaping a political structure for Iraq that keeps the Kurds as marginalized as ever granting them just enough power to make them feel they are Iraqis first and Kurds second.  The prime minister is an Arab.  The president is an Arab.  Powell and Brahimi persuaded Bush to agree to that more than a month ago. This is because Powell's agenda has always been the opposite of a three-state solution proposed so boldly in recent months by some very influential Americans, who rightly see in the continuation of Iraq as a unitary state an effort by the Arab majority and the neighboring powers to keep the Kurds permanently at bay.  Even in statements regarding issues that are strictly Kurdish the Halabja commemoration and the February 1 terrorist attacks in Arbil, for example Powell has talked about the Kurds not as active contributors to Iraqi politics but as passive consumers of it, portraying such events not as part of a minority's ongoing struggle for self-definition but largely as an Iraqi affair.  Was it any wonder, then, that Paul Bremer's February 1 statement made no mention of Kurdistan and the Kurdish narrative?

This kind of message is also being reinforced at the symbolic level, more recently through the language of clothing: the new president's Arab garb, with its glaringly self-evident codes and conventions, sends the unmistakable message that Iraq is first and foremost an Arab entity, and that when it comes to determining Iraq's political future the key players are the Arabs.  I am not saying the Arab garb is good or bad, whether it should be worn or not: I am saying the garb within Iraq's current political climate makes a powerful political statement about how a nation sets itself apart from other nations, how it views itself, and how it views others.  In this context, therefore, the Arab garb is a manifestation of national power. It makes the Iraqi narrative seem like a continuation of the larger Arab narrative that every Arab chauvinist and despot so eagerly hold on to. The garb is applauded as a sign of tradition, honor, and so-called Arab uniqueness.  Imagine for a moment if the Kurdish garb had somehow made it to the echelons of power in Baghdad.  It is highly unlikely the reception would have been anything but ridicule.    

That's why today from Fallujah to Mosul, Najaf to Karbala, Damascus to Kuwait City, Cairo to Rabat, the news from Baghdad is music to Arab ears.  They know that the most the Kurds can hope for now is a watered down autonomy.  Powell's most recent maneuverings at the United Nation were designed to accomplish exactly that.  

In part, Kurdish blunder allowed for that to happen.  The Kurdish voice has been largely mute. Worse, it has been a divided voice good for factionalism but disastrous for Kurdish nationalism.  It has been apparent to all that Powell's is a decidedly pro-Arab agenda.  The Kurds were in a position to defeat it, but sadly after some initial huffing and puffing, they caved in once again.

Now is the time for bold and urgent action.  Nothing short of reversing Iraq first, Kurd second slogan will do.  Words need to be loud.  Actions need to be concrete. Heads need to be rattled in Najaf, Baghdad, London, and Washington.  Otherwise, the Kurd continues to be taken for granted.  If Powell and his State Department have no time for the Kurds, there are many
other Americans on Kurdish side.  


Sabah A. Salih is Professor of English at Bloomsburg
University, USA. Ssalih@bloomu.edu