Today, the Kurds say, they are being betrayed again. After urging the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam Hussein, President Bush is turning a deaf ear to pleas for help from both Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebels. Says Safeen Dizayee of the Kurdish Democratic Party: “The rhetoric of the administration was directed at the people of Iraq, to rise against the regime. That they did, and all of a sudden they’ve been dropped, left at the mercy of the defeated Army, the wounded wolf.” To a small but vocal group of critics at home, this is even worse than past cynical abandonments of U.S. allies, like the Bay of Pigs. Some liken it to acquiescence in genocide. “It’s immoral,” said Peter Galbraith, a Democratic Senate staffer who recently returned from a harrowing trip with Kurdish rebels through northern Iraq. “Throughout Kurdistan, people talked to me repeatedly about President Bush, saying ‘He called on us to rebel, now where is American help?’ "
Bush fears the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions would dismember Iraq - a prospect that terrifies America’s coalition partners in the region, especially Syria and Turkey. White House strategy all along was to encourage the revolts as a way to weaken Saddam during the war for Kuwait, then have the Iraqi Army hold Iraq together against the Kurds and Shiites - then have the Army turn on Saddam. When Kurdish leaders said they want autonomy, not a separate state, Bush brushed the assurances aside.
The administration’s calculus overlooked one possibility: that fighting the rebels would give Saddam a cause to rally the remnants of his regime, if only out of fear of what would happen to them in the event of a rebel victory. U.S. intelligence now believes this is exactly what has happened, NEWSWEEK has learned. CIA and Pentagon analysts told the White House last week that putting down the Kurds and Shiites has only bolstered Saddam’s position in Baghdad. “We see him in a much stronger position now than ever before,” one intelligence official says.
President Bush also defends his hands off policy on the ground that the United States can’t afford to get involved in a potentially drawn-out civil war in Iraq. And by now, it may be too late for U.S. military intervention to do any good. Yet there were ways to help the rebels short of using U.S. ground forces. One was to shoot down Iraqi attack helicopters. Another, argues Galbraith, was to supply the rebels with arms captured from the Iraqis in Kuwait.
Any such policy, of course, would have carried with it the risk of prolonged involvement in Iraq. But after so many calls for Saddam’s overthrow - and so many allied bombing runs on Baghdad - it’s disingenuous of Bush to claim that the United States has no right to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs. Reports by NBC News last week said that the CIA had set up a radio station in Saudi Arabia to broadcast appeals for revolt to the Kurds, some as recently as March 29. The United States refused to confirm the reports. But Firiad Hiwaizi, a Kurdish exile leader, recounted last week how he had made tapes that were later broadcast over the Voice of Free Iraq, a station operating from Saudi Arabia under the control of Saudi intelligence. “All the hope was in outside assistance - the Americans and the allies,” he told The New York Times. “Otherwise I would not have asked my friends to rise up.” NEWSWEEK has also learned that, during the war, British special forces operated deep inside Iraq. Their mission, carried out with full U.S. knowledge, was to “destabilize” Saddam’s regime; they established contact with the Kurds and other resistance groups.
The United States and its Arab allies fear the Shiites of southern Iraq because of their ties to Iran. But this may be missing a historic opportunity: for the first time Shiite Arabs are openly looking to the United States for help. By extending a hand now, the United States could develop ties to a critical Middle East group with which it has long been at odds. Spurning them will only ensure that they turn to Iran. The Shiites’ desperation underscores one final reason for the United States to help the rebels: a lot of people may die if it doesn’t. At a U.S. military checkpoint near Al-Nasiriya, in southern Iraq, Shiites are pleading with American troops not to leave. Once they do, bloody reprisals could begin. U.S. military police recently captured six Iraqi secret-police infiltrators at a makeshift refugee camp who apparently were trying to kill rebels hiding there. On a list of names carried by an Iraqi agent, one name had already been crossed off.
