Ten years after the Persian Gulf War, in which American-led forces killed 100,000 Iraqis in less than six weeks, sanctions remain on Iraq. Estimates vary, but most authorities agree that upwards of a million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the sanctions placed on their country. Iraq is allowed to sell a minimal amount of oil to purchase food and medical supplies for its population, but it is highly doubtful that this money ever reaches its intended goal. Instead, more statues and murals of Saddam Hussein appear around Baghdad and throughout the country. Clearly the continuing regime of Saddam Hussein is the problem, and until he either dies, resigns, or is otherwise removed, the tragedy of Iraq will continue -- particularly while the sanctions remain in place.
So what's the solution? It's actually rather simple, and it's the kind of thing that the American government has been doing for decades. The solution to the problem of Iraq is to put the same kind of money and effort into arming internal enemies of Saddam Hussein and bringing down his regime. U.S. foreign policy is tainted with such "victories" as the defeat of "communist insurgents" in post-WWII Greece and the subsequent installation of a fascist dictatorship; the overthrowing and murder in 1973 of the democratically elected leader of Chile, Salvador Allende, and his replacement with Augusto Pinochet, who killed tens of thousands of political opponents with torture and death squads; and the covert selling of arms to both sides of the bloodiest war of the last twenty-five years -- the Iran-Iraq war, in which one million people died -- with the diversion of the profits to more Latin American death squads. If the U.S. government has been willing to spend defense dollars for such noble endeavors as these, then certainly the Bush, Jr., administration could muster up a few bucks to overthrow Saddam Hussein. So why don't they?
The answer is far from simple, and it's wrapped up in almost fifty years of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern geopolitical strategy, with the principal players being the U.S. and Turkey. Despite their longstanding neighborly animosity, Turkey and Greece were both admitted to NATO in 1952. The motive behind these countries' admissions was a balance of Soviet- and U.S.-allied nations in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Turkey was seen as a particularly important pawn for several reasons. First, in a region increasingly affected by pan-Arabism and Islamic fundamentalism that scared the hell out of the West, "democratic" Turkey offered an ally in the area in addition to the infant State of Israel. Second, the admission of Turkey into NATO allowed the deployment of Jupiter nuclear missiles aimed at Soviet Central Asia. Nikita Khrushchev's response, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, ended not because of brilliant brinksmanship by Jack Kennedy but because the JFK administration agreed to remove those Jupiter missiles. Third, Turkey's control over the Bospouros -- the waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean -- allowed Western governments greater monitoring over Soviet shipping in the area. Other reasons exist for Turkey's strategic importance to the West, but these are the list-toppers.
So what does all this have to do with Iraq? Well, Iraq, like Turkey (and Iran), is home to a sizeable minority of Kurdish people. The Kurds make up the fourth largest ethnolinguistic group in the Middle East, and yet they have no country of their own. Instead, imaginary Kurdistan is divided principally among these three countries, as well as bits of Armenia and Syria. Why don't the Kurds have a home? Because the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), one of the several treaties that ended World War I and one that guaranteed the establishment of three independent Arab states (Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria), an independent Armenia, and, most important to our analysis, an independent Kurdish homeland, was ratified by Turkey but never honored by the Turkish nationalist regime of Kemal Atatürk. The Treaty of Sèvres was mooted by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which confirmed Arab nationalist aims but excluded self-determination for Armenians and Kurds. Two years later, what would have been Kurdistan was made part of Iraq by decision of the League of Nations. The U.K. inked the deal a year later with the Treaty of Ankara.
As a result of the Treaty of Ankara, Iraq has the region's largest "Kurdish problem," but it isn't alone. And while Saddam Hussein's gassing of Iraqi Kurds in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war is well known to the world thanks to a propaganda campaign preceding the Gulf War, Turkey's similar mistreatment of the Kurds is virtually unheard of. Kurdish separatists in Turkey are routinely arrested, tortured, assassinated, and murdered. However, media spin concerning atrocities by the Turkish government is extraordinary. Because of Turkey's strategic importance, the genocide of between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians by the Young Turk movement in the early years of World War I is an event officially denied by the U.K. and other Western governments. Most offensive is Israel's refusal to acknowledge Turkey's genocide against Armenians despite the accepted fact that Israel exists today as a direct result of the Nazi Holocaust of six million Jews. A close relationship and military alliance with Turkey is too important for Israel to jeopardize by bringing up Turkey's ugly past -- or present.
Were the U.S. to arm the enemies of Saddam Hussein with the serious aim of deposing him, this would necessarily require arming the Kurds of Northern Iraq. It would also require arming the Shi'ite Arabs living in Southern Iraq -- a move that would please few nations in the area, except perhaps Iran, and certainly displease Israel immensely. A dual assault on Saddam Hussein's government from the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ites in the south could yield several results, not the least of which would be defeat. But let's suppose that a coalition of Kurds and Shi'ites were to topple Saddam Hussein. What next? Shi'ite Arabs, making up the largest segment of the Iraqi population, would likely form a government of some kind. But would Kurds align with Arabs in a post-Saddam Iraq, or would they seek secession and unification with their brothers in other countries?
Kurdish nationalism is strong, and the likely answer is that once the Kurds threw off the yoke of Iraqi oppression, they would move next in concert with Turkish Kurds and assert their self-determination. Turkey, already armed by the U.S. and NATO, would respond with tremendous violence. And Iraqi Shi'ites, similarly armed and probably not eager to surrender the northern portion of an oil-rich country, would likely react in the same way. So, to avoid an escalation of Kurdish nationalist aims -- not to mention another Shi'ite oil regime -- the U.S. avoids arming internal enemies of Saddam Hussein and continues with deadly sanctions and occasional haphazard bombings that take out a couple hundred more Iraqis. After all, keeping Iraq in line through economic terrorism and the occasional air raid is a hell of a lot better than a region-wide conflict seventy-five years in the making.
Isn't it?