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Turkey pockets the price, Iraqi Kurds pay the
cost
An Arab press
review, By The Daily Star
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As Turkey closes its border with Iraq in
apparent anticipation of joining an American-led invasion of the country,
Arab commentators see the Iraqi Kurds emerging as early losers in the
approaching war.
Their aspirations in post-Saddam Iraq are viewed as a prominent casualty
of the political, financial and strategic trade-off between Ankara and US
President George W. Bush’s administration over the terms of Turkey’s
participation in war on its neighbor.
Ghassan Sharbel writes in the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that
Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani’s long-standing
suspicions of the US and its advocacy of enforced “regime change” in
Baghdad appear to have been vindicated.
Barzani made plain months ago that he feared that “the process of
deposing Saddam Hussein would develop into a great game which the Kurds
would be unable to influence and in which they would be unable to protect
the gains they made in the 1990s,” Sharbel writes. And his words have
been borne out by Turkey’s “skillful maneuvering to pocket the price
for its participation in the war alongside the US.”
He says the change of government in Ankara and the assumption of power by
the neo-Islamists there does not appear to have altered Turkey’s
traditional appraisal of its “security, unity, role and interests,”
nor the military establishment’s hold on its thinking over these issues.
Thus “Ankara demanded a big bribe in return for its role, and now it is
preparing to host American troops while guaranteeing its security by
sending its own forces into northern Iraq to dismantle what is left of the
Kurdish dream,” Sharbel writes.
Editor in chief Joseph Samaha writes in the Beirut daily As-Safir that
America’s war plans in Iraq have left the Iraqi Kurdish opposition
facing the prospect of a military showdown with Turkey.
The Iraqi Kurds are not allowed to pursue their ultimate wish of
establishing a homeland for a people who are dispersed over a number of
states, Samaha says. “If it were up to them, they would prefer to
maintain today’s status quo in (Iraqi) Kurdistan. They appeared for a
while to have been persuaded, after many bitter experiences, that the US
had become their faithful friend along with the mountains. But they now
find themselves forced to ‘participate’ in a war on Iraq when they
know, as their leaders say, that the real war could be tomorrow against
the Turkish Army.”
But the Kurds are not the only Iraqis who have been left in an impossible
position by the US, according to Samaha.
The pro-Iranian Iraqi Kurdish opposition, for one, may find itself
inexorably “becoming part of an American war machine,” which, if
successful, intends to turn Iraq into a springboard for toppling the
regime in Tehran. “Its opposition to Saddam Hussein is intense. But it
must be shuddering at the thought of becoming part of a game that goes
beyond it, and aims at subjecting its country to a prolonged foreign
occupation and regenerating a formula for government whose sole virtues
are obedience and facilitating plunder.”
Samaha indicates that even some of America’s most loyal proteges in the
Iraqi opposition are balking at its plans for post-Saddam Iraq. Some, like
Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, “will adapt,” but
others, like Kanan Makiya, appear to be in shock over Washington’s
betrayal of its self-proclaimed values, he remarks. Samaha goes on to
argue that the goal of preventing a US invasion of Iraq has to take
precedence for the time being over the justified objective of toppling
Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
Those who call on the Iraqi leadership to resign as a way of avoiding war
are taking an easy way out that misses the point, he says. “They are, at
best, evading the confrontation where it is actually taking place, and
closing their eyes to the key element of the equation: A colonial war is
to be waged against a repressive regime for reasons related not to the
regime’s nature but to the invaders’ interests.” While no sincere
person can ignore the question pertaining to the Iraqi people continuing
to suffer under the regime’s rule, “it cannot be allowed to stifle the
discussion, because that prevents it from being based on the cold
calculation that the horrors of war and its aftermath will be harsher, for
everyone, than the status quo.”
Saad Mehio writes in the UAE daily Al-Khaleej that Turkey is only the most
indiscreet of many countries that have been “openly trading in Iraqi
blood” by haggling over the price of their involvement in the Bush
administration’s war. In Ankara’s case, its bill for allowing US
troops to invade Iraq from its territory was $30 billion plus written
undertakings upholding its interests in post-Saddam Iraq, he writes.
Russia is reportedly trading its acquiescence to war for a list of things
spelled out by SPS leaders Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Kara-Murza,
including settlement of its $8 billion debt to Iraq, retention of its
existing commercial contracts with the Baathist regime, and a guaranteed
share of post-war reconstruction business.
As for China, Mehio says it had appeared “satisfied with whatever the
Americans had promised it” until the Franco-German intifada against
Washington. That prompted Beijing to submit a “new and more costly
economic-political bill” to Washington, which the latter will duly pay.
Mehio suggests that France is also taking a “calculated” approach to
Iraq. By leading the anti-war camp, President Jacques Chirac figures that
if war is prevented “he will win the lion’s share in Iraq,” and if
not, Paris will be able to “negotiate shares with the Americans from a
position of strength.”
Mehio continues: “As for the ‘canny’ Arab states, they have split
into two camps. In the first stand the states that opted to join the US
war drive openly and straight away, by blaming Saddam Hussein for the
evaporation of the peace opportunities. In the second stand the other
states that have opted to join this same drive but with different timing.
It was in the heat of the struggle between these conflicting schools of
thought … that the emergency Arab summit went up in smoke, and the
regular summit may do the same.”
Everyone, remarks Mehio, “is treating Iraq like a commercial deal that
must be clinched, an auction that mustn’t be missed, or a slaughtered
cow whose meat people are rushing to carve up.” When the UN estimates
that a war on Iraq will cause half a million deaths, “they try to cover
up the news either by hurling accusations at each other or by portraying
post-war Iraq as though it is going to be transformed into God’s
paradise on earth.”
Ahead of the Arab summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm
al-Sheikh, Jordan’s Mahmoud Rimawi joins the growing chorus of Arab
commentators calling on Arab leaders to use the meeting to demand Saddam
Hussein’s resignation as the surest way of preventing war.
Writing in the semi-official Amman daily Al-Rai, Rimawi says that if the
summit is to grapple with the crisis, it must have a clear “mandate”
and Baghdad must be prepared to “sacrifice” and make fundamental
changes to its political regime. Some may dismiss this as an “American
and British demand,” but in fact since the early 1980s it has been
“essentially an Iraqi national demand,” he says.
Rimawi goes on to judge that “most” of the Iraqi opposition and
“many” ordinary Iraqis now favor war, in order to get rid of the
regime.
The Arab summit should momentarily “abandon the principle of
nonintervention in the internal affairs of individual Arab states” and
demand change in Iraq. “This intervention is necessary to avoid a
greater external intervention,” he says, adding it was to this end that
Russia sent envoy Yevgeny Primakov for talks in Baghdad.
“The Arab summit should be knocking at this door too in order to spare
Iraqi blood, deny Washington pretexts to attack, and also to reassure
certain neighboring states that Iraq is ready to change, radically
reconsider its previous policies, and effectively become one of the Gulf
states even if it doesn’t immediately join the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC).”
Armed with a “mandate” like this, the Arab states would be able to
present Washington with a lucid and unified vision on which a peaceful
solution can be based “with effective Arab participation as well as
Iraqi participation representing all aspects of the country’s political
life.”
Rimawi adds: “Bitter past experience and the need to adopt serious and
responsible policies makes immediate action in this direction imperative.
That would foil any excuse or pretext for war, and open the door wide to
promoting peace and security in the region including putting an end to
Ariel Sharon’s war on the Palestinian entity and Palestinian society,
and resuming negotiations from the point at which they broke off. That
would set the stage for the resumption of negotiations on the Syrian and
Lebanese tracks. And perhaps before long a further negotiating track will
emerge an Arab-sponsored Iraqi-US track.”
Meanwhile, a commentator in the Amman daily Al-Dustour springs to the
Jordanian government’s defense after it conceded for the first time that
“a few hundred” US troops are deployed in Jordan, ostensibly to man
Patriot missile batteries and help “cope with a possible refugee influx
from Iraq.”
Bater Wardam stresses that these soldiers represent only a “tiny
proportion” of American troops in the region, and are only there to help
Jordan cope with the humanitarian fallout of a possible war. They will
not, he insists, actually be used in any American attack on Iraq.
“No one wants war, but everyone has reached the conclusion that the war
has already begun even if the shooting hasn’t started. Everyone knows
that the decision to stop the war is not a Jordanian one, but should be a
unified Arab decision backed by international support. But wise
policymakers cannot rely on hopes. They must deal with reality. Bracing
for the possible consequences of war is therefore part of the Jordanian
state’s duty toward its people,” he muses.
Wardam then draws a distinction between the few US troops who are in
Jordan to perform “information and coordination tasks,” and the
American forces in most of Iraq’s other Arab neighbors for “offensive
strategic military” operations.
If anyone is to blame for “what is happening in the region,” he
reflects, it is all the Arab countries who voted in favor of the 1990
Cairo summit resolution which supported the despatch of US troops to the
region in the first place (Jordan abstained). It is they who critics of
the US military presence in the region should be addressing, he writes.
As Arab states trade charges over Iraq, the Qatari daily Al-Sharq strongly
criticizes Saudi Arabia without naming it for pouring cold water on
Doha’s bid to convene an Islamic summit on Iraq (in its capacity as
Organization of the Islamic Conference chair). Following remarks by Saudi
Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal at the Non-Aligned Movement
conference in Malaysia, in which he suggested there was no need for an
Islamic summit, the paper professes itself baffled at such an
“inexplicable” attitude.
It writes in its leader that it is one thing to argue there was no need
for an emergency Arab summit on Iraq, seeing as a regular summit was
already scheduled to be convened soon. But to say there is no need
whatsoever for an Islamic summit is to devalue the OIC as an institution
and a political bloc entitled to a say in world affairs, Al-Sharq writes.
Those who maintain that neither an Arab summit nor an Islamic summit is
desirable invite the “logical conclusion” that they are not concerned
about the major threats facing the region, and “perhaps aren’t even
convinced that there are any threats.”
Al-Sharq explains that Qatar called for an OIC summit out of a sense of
“Arab and Islamic responsibility vis-a-vis the dangers threatening us
all.” The “voice that spoke in Malaysia” does not necessarily speak
for all the Gulf states or the Arab world, it says.
“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, and Qatar’s duty
is to light that candle in the hope of illuminating the way for others,”
the paper concludes.