Nixon Betrays the Kurds of Iraq
* What: The crushing of the 1973 uprising of Kurds in northern Iraq by the Iraq government, the first step leading to Kurdish genocide. Nixon, the British and Israeli governments, and the Shah of Iran all supplied the Kurds with arms, intelligence, and in the Israeli case military advisers. Support for the Kurdish uprising turned out to be a cynical ploy for the Shah to help negotiate for a disputed island on the Iran-Iraq border.
* Betrayals of the Iraqi Kurds continued from one American president to the next, Ford, Carter, Reagan, all the way until George Bush Sr. finally reversed course during the Gulf War.
* The Body Count: From 1973 to 1990, over 100,000 Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein. At least 3,000 Kurds were killed in the initial crushing of the Kurd revolt, when Nixon and Kissinger betrayed Kurdish allies once the Shah of Iran received favorable terms from the Iraqi government.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Iraqi President Ahmad Hasan Al Bakr ordered the attacks crushing the initial revolt in 1973. Al Bakr had led the Baathist Party since the early 1960s, becoming ruler of the country in 1968 and remaining so until 1979. In addition to crushing the Kurds, he issued an order in 1978 banning all other parties, punishable by death. Al Bakr stepped down in 1979, forced out by Saddam Hussein.
* Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Party ordered the largest wave of killings, including the infamous attack on Kurd villages with poison gas. Estimates of the deaths caused by Hussein range from 250,000 to 500,000, in addition to at least 300,000 deaths in the war with Iran.
* The Iraqi military carried these attacks.
* The Shah of Iran had the most to gain from supporting Kurdish attacks. The Shah claimed to be part of an ancient dynasty, when in fact he was put in power in 1953 by a CIA coup, overthrowing the elected President Mossadegh. Estimates of political prisoners under the Shah's rule are from 25,000 to 100,000, with up to 60,000 protesters killed during his attempt to hold onto power against the Iranian Revolution in 1978. More recently, historian Emad al-Din Baghi argued the number of deaths was far lower, slightly over 3,100. Most accounts still use the higher figures, and except for Baghi, many, but not all, arguing against the previous estimates tend to be anti-Muslim bigots.
* Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. all continued to support first Al Bakr and then Saddam Hussein knowing full well his human rights record. Bush Sr.’s support for Hussein did not end until after the invasion of Kuwait.
* The Kurds have been a people without their own country for centuries. Divided among the nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, they often faced exclusion and abuse. There are Kurdish independence movements in each of these nations, but the two largest, and the largest Kurd populations, are in Iraq and Syria.
* Iraq and Iran have long been rivals for power in the Middle East. Iraq is the most populous Arab nation in Asia, while Iranians are not Arabs. Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim, while Iraq has a Shiite majority but also a large Sunni minority.
* The Shah, put into power by a CIA coup and with CIA trained secret police as his enforcers, ruled Iran as a dictator until overthrown by a popular revolution in 1978. Iraq, after gaining independence from Britain, was ruled by a military dictator until the Baath Party overthrew him. Most Baathists were young army officers. Led first by Ahmad Hasan Al Bakr and then by Saddam Hussein, the Baathists were secular pan-Arabists, hoping to unite all Arabs in one large modern state. This was seen as a threat to both Israel and Iran, both US allies in the Mideast.
* While Iran was a central US ally, Iraq sought support from both sides in the Cold War. This meant the US government wanted either to weaken Iraq or to turn it into a US client and ally. From 1973 to 1975 the US, Iranian, and Israeli governments supported a Kurdish revolt as a cynical ploy to strengthen Iran against Iraq. In 1975 Bakr agreed to give Iran its desired territory. Iran, the US, and Israel then cut off military aid to the Kurds. Iraqi troops then massacred Kurd rebels. The US government under Ford did nothing, even refusing asylum for Kurds.
* In 1979, Saddam took power from Bakr. There was a massive purge both within the Baath Party and of the opposition. Carter's National Security Adviser Brzezinski stated publicly after the purges, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the US and Iraq.” Part of the reason for this was the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah and put a theocracy into power in Iran, followed by the Iran Hostage Crisis.
* Reagan supported Iraq’s dictator even more than Ford and Carter had. 1980 saw the start of Iraq's war with Iran. Reagan refused to condemn Iraq and actually favored Saddam over Iran. Reagan removed Iraq from the list of terrorist states. Donald Rumsfeld was sent to discuss trade. Reagan gave loans and subsidies to Iraq. The Reagan administration provided intelligence to help Saddam again Iran. The US Navy even escorted Iraqi oil tankers, sank Iranian Navy boats, and shot down Iranian planes.
* The Reagan administration even provided dual use military equipment to Saddam. These are items for the military one can claim are for civilian use. The most notorious examples were military helicopters used in in the chemical attacks on Kurds and Iran. Theoretically they were sold for crop dusting. Reagan funneled weapons to Iraq using other countries, Italy, Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, and Kuwait. The Reagan administration even approved 771 licenses for $1.5 billion in biological agents and equipment to Iraq including Bacillus Anthracis and Clostridium Botulinum, pathogenic agents used to make anthrax and botulism.
* European corporations also sold Saddam chemical weapons equipment paid for by loans from the US Commodity Credit Corporation. In 1988, Saddam used these chemical weapons against a Kurd uprising, killing 5,000. Iran asked the UN to condemn Iraq for its chemical attacks against both the Kurds and Iranian troops. Reagan tried to stop the UN vote and continued giving aid to the Iraqi military. Congress voted for strong sanctions, which Reagan blocked. Saddam's campaign against the Kurds continued, killing up to 100,000.
* By this time, Bush Sr. was US President. Far from condemning Saddam, Bush increased Iraq's credit to $1 billion. Bush opposed Iraq sanctions right until Kuwait was invaded in 1990. To his credit, Bush later rescued many Kurds from being killed by Saddam. (See Section Eight.)
* Ultimately, Nixon's, Kissinger’s, and the Shah's ploy turned out to be a brutal failure anyway, and the Kurds were betrayed for nothing. Iraq and Iran began their bitter and costly border war only a few years later, killing over a half million on both sides, and they fought partly over that same piece of territory. This is yet one more example of the false myth of Nixon and Kissinger’s competence on foreign policy. All this betrayal did was lead to Kurdish distrust that made later wars in Iraq more difficult for the US. Some of the blame for US, allied, and Iraqi deaths in both the Gulf and Second Iraq Wars have to be laid at Nixon and Kissinger's callous bumbling.
* What could have been done differently? The answer is simple and obvious, not use a vulnerable people as a cynical bargaining chip for a brutal dictator. There were no other likely presidents at that time who would have made the same vicious crass error as Nixon. Not Robert Kennedy nor McGovern nor Humphrey would see the point in such duplicity. Other potential Republican presidents would not make this choice either. Nelson Rockefeller, socially liberal but a conservative anti Communist, and the premier anti-Communist in the US, Reagan, both would see little point in such destructive meddling if not done to oppose Communism. Only Nixon and Kissinger, two men whose giant egos led them to be mesmerized by delusions about their diplomatic skill, fascinated by the juvenile game playing for foreign misadventures of the nineteenth century, would make such a disastrous mistake.