12.09.1996

Kurdish enemy allies

Self-determination for the Kurdish people has moved centre stage again as bourgeois commenters wrestle with the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) Iraq-backed invasion of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) bases. Mostly it is swept under the carpet, as Nato member and EU ally, Turkey, ceaselessly imposes its control in Turkish-Kurdistan, against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The struggle on Turkey's border is perhaps a ‘cleaner’ one between the Turkish state and Kurdish national liberation fighters, though even here the struggle is not without its internecine rivalries.

The petty-bourgeois nature of the struggle - complemented by a certain sleepiness, if not actual chauvinism, amongst sections of the Turkish left - has meant that the battleground has increasingly become a narrowly nationalist one. It has failed to forge unity between workers in Turkey and fighters in Kurdistan for their common liberation against a state in which the use of force against all opposition is part of everyday life. This in a regime which is becoming increasingly unstable and vicious.

With PKK bases in Iraqi-Kurdistan, Turkey has inevitably edged into the present conflict. Iraq, Iran, Turkey and the US move troops and threats around in their tussle for domination in this explosive region.

What has become glaringly apparent during the latest skirmish in Iraq is that the Kurds have been turned into little more than pawns for these major players. All have major problems at home - Iraq, Iran and Turkey still have weak or backward economies and are desperately scrambling for the market crumbs still remaining. These regimes are using national chauvinism and fundamentalism to rally their own oppressed and exploited behind them.

Media attention has focused on Clinton’s election campaign, but we all know that this is a US strategy which goes back further than Bush and goes much deeper than just one campaign. While most metropolitan states have been far from enthusiastic over the US’s blatant assertion of itself as the world hegemon (shades of Independence Day), Britain has acted as critical cheerleader.

The US failed in its duty to stop the Saddam-backed KDP consolidating power in the north with the capture of Sulaymaniyah, according to bourgeois commentators in Britain. Furthermore the killing of 100 Iraqi dissidents and the collapse of the CIA-backed Iraqi National Congress (made up of separatist Kurds, southern Shi’ites and Iraqi government opponents) and of the Iraqi National Accord led by Sunni muslims - has all but destroyed this ‘masterplan’ to topple the Iraqi regime. Yet all Guardian feature writer Martin Woollacott can do is wring his hands and hope the US will step up its domination:

“... the American government is faced with a situation that demands immediate action, decisions needed now to preserve, as far as possible, a Western influence over the fate of the Kurds and the future of Iraq, as part of a general influence in the region” (The Guardian September 11).

Devastating, though familiar hypocrisy, comes from the same rag’s editorial. After years of Western-manipulated power struggle, in the region, with the Kurds stuck in the middle and years of implicit support for Turkey’s full scale war against the Kurds, it has the temerity to state: “The only certainty is that the Kurds need humanitarian help on a much larger scale than has been provided.”

In the midst of all this, what of the struggle of the Kurds themselves? Certainly they cannot rely on the “humanitarian help” of Guardian editors. Dependence on oppressive regimes bigger than themselves is nothing new to the Kurds of Iraq. Memories of how the Kurdish cause was betrayed by the US in 1975 has pushed the KDP into the arms of Iraq. Likewise the PUK came to the conclusion in the 1970s that a deal with Saddam would not bear fruit and looked to the West for protection - principally to Turkey, and eventually into the arms of Iran.

The thread is the lack of independence and unity, driven by the absence of any historically progressive programme for liberation. Though the Kurdish struggle has adopted to the modern world, it is still riven with its historical tribal formations and divisions. Political parties are still infused with tribal patronage. Fundamentally there is no self-reliant path to liberation. Kurdish society is impoverished and surrounded by rival powers also socially and economically backward. An impoverished economy of the Kurds was further destroyed by Iraq, aided by Turkey and the West, and so in the process of fighting for what was left of the economy, tribal conflicts erupted.

Humanitarian aid and developing a Kurdish economy is the hopeless, reactionary, idealist agenda of ‘liberal’ commentators. Likewise a Kurdish nation state seems unlikely to be won by progressive forces in this situation. If it did come into existence under these conditions, it would have little chance of survival on its own. The struggle for self-determination of the Kurdish people must rely on forces bigger than just themselves. As in Turkey, this demands winning the working class of the whole region to fight for their own freedom - in unity. Nationalism clearly has no progressive element in a global economy. But the democratic content of the nationalism of the oppressed can be won for the future, because it concerns our liberation.

Linda Addison