19.09.1996
Climbdowns, but for how long?
In relation to Iraq, the USA has marched to the top of the hill and marched back down again, for the time being.
At the end of last week, the USA seemed to be building up to fire some more missiles and perhaps to carry out air strikes using Stealth bombers. This was apparently in reaction to the Iraqis firing on US aircraft operating in the ‘no-fly zone’. Then the Iraqis said they would not fire on US planes in the zone any more, and the US strikes, which appeared to be imminent last weekend, suddenly seemed to fall off the agenda.
An interesting aspect of the Iraqi decision is that the Russian foreign ministry claims to have talked the Iraqis into making the concession. The Russians have withheld their support from Washington’s recent actions in the Gulf. There is a certain amount of confusion about the Russian position: their diplomat in Baghdad was reported by Reuters news agency to have said that the Iraqis were perfectly justified in firing on US aircraft in the ‘no-fly zones’.
The Russian foreign ministry later denied that their diplomat had said that. Russian official circles want to keep the USA sweet without alienating the Iraqi government. Under Yeltsin, the Russian authorities revel in not letting ‘ideology’ determine their foreign policy. This is another way of saying that they do not even pretend to base their policy on anything other than expediency.
Expediency also rules in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Saddam Hussein has also been marching to the top of the hill and then back down again. This is shown by the decision to fire on US planes, and then to stop. Saddam is dealing from a stronger hand than the USA, though. He has more or less reasserted his authority in Kurdish northern Iraq, also known as southern Kurdistan. It is highly unlikely that the Iraqis really intend to attack Kuwait again, even without the military build-up carried out by the Americans in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
In the final analysis, the USA and the West do not consider the Kurdish north to be anything other than a part of Iraq. Imperialism does not want an independent Kurdistan but only to secure its control.
The reassertion of Baghdad’s central authority there has been largely accepted, though the US will now look to minimise Saddam's influence through a deal with the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
The readiness the Western media once showed to compare Saddam with Hitler has disappeared. It is not in imperialism’s interests right now to pretend that World War II is happening all over again.
The crisis in Iraq is not about the fate of the Kurds. This is simply a blind to conceal the real agenda of the USA, which is to preserve its oil supplies from Saudi Arabia and to use its considerable muscle to create some measure of stability in an explosively unpredictable region.
On September 12, one of the RAF pilots who was shot down over Iraq during the Gulf War and displayed on Iraqi TV as a captive was interviewed on BBC Radio 4. The interviewer seemed to expect the pilot to come up with robust denunciations of the butcher Saddam. However, the pilot, John Nichols, who has recently left the RAF, failed to play ball.
He said that Western policy on Iraq seemed confused and the morale of the RAF units based in the region was low. He said nobody in the RAF based in Turkey believed that their role there was to help the Kurds.
He added that RAF planes had frequently been grounded so that the Republic of Turkey’s air force could take off and bomb Kurdish villages in northern Iraq without encountering air traffic control problems. The presenter made light of what Nichols had said.
Meanwhile, Turkey is talking about setting up a “security zone” on Iraqi territory just beyond the border. The Turkish army has not yet attempted to implement this, which is aimed at deterring forays by the guerrillas of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).
Turkish foreign minister Tansu Ciller has said this zone would only be temporary: in the long term, Turkey plans to set up an electronic barrier on the border to monitor the movement of PKK guerrillas. It is worth noting that the Israelis use electronic devices to try and contain the movement of guerrillas in south Lebanon, and Turkey and Israel have good relations with each other.
Andrew MacKay