The Iraqi Kurds and the Cold War

Regional Politics, 1958–1975

Hawraman Ali

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367345747
• eBook ISBN: 9781000766059
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Oriente Medio

Examining the effects of the Cold War and regional politics on the Iraqi Kurds between 1958 and 1975, this study demonstrates how regional and international powers sought to exploit the Iraqi Kurds in their quest for statehood. The research draws on a plethora of British and American archival documents and select Soviet and Iranian sources integrated with Kurdish authoritative and eyewitness accounts.

The work explores the Iraqi Kurds on three levels: Firstly, on a national Iraqi level, starting with the Iraqi Revolution in 1958 to the collapse of the Kurds' liberation movement in 1975 under Mela Mustafa Barzani. Secondly, it considers the issue on a regional level by examining the political dynamics between Iran (under the Shah), Iraq, Egypt (thus Nasserists) and other regional states, with a focus on these states' relations and tensions. Thirdly, it scrutinises the impact of the Cold War on the politics and history of Iraq, focussing on the effects on the Kurds in particular.

Complementing the existing literature, this volume builds a chronological narrative through historical analysis. It is a key resource for students, scholars, policymakers and regional experts interested in Kurdish history, foreign policy, politics and security in the Middle East.

1 1958–1962: Iraqi Revolution, Kurdish hostilities

Abstract

Broadly covering the earlier years of the Cold War and especially from 1958 until 1962, this chapter starts by presenting a background of the Kurdish Issue. It will then move on to demonstrate how from the start of the Cold War, Iran and Turkey sought to portray the Iraqi Kurds as a potential communist threat and a USSR client, posing an existential threat to the status quo of the political order in the Middle East. This chapter will assert that the threat of the USSR sponsoring a Kurdish state was inflated by the regional states with a Kurdish population to demonise the Kurds in the US perception due to their fear of a Kurdish state of any kind, and that the USSR at least did not have a committed plan to create a Kurdish state, if at all. The regional and international consequences of the Iraqi Revolution of 1958 are then examined and their effects on the Iraqi Kurds looked at. It will be argued that after the Revolution, the regional states, Iran in particular, started to view the Iraqi Kurds as a card to be used to shape developments in Iraq. In addition, relations between the Iraqi Kurdish liberation movement and Nasser are looked at. Lastly, the bases of the US policy to view the Kurdish Issue in Iraq as an Iraqi matter is explored together with the broader global US Cold War foreign policy from Truman to Kennedy, and by correlation the Kurds' place in this.

Background

In the aftermath of WWI, on August 10, 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire. Among other things, the Treaty stipulated that a referendum should be held on self-determination for the Kurds under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which was obliged to respect its outcome. Sèvres also laid the ground for ‘the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan, which [had] hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet [i.e. Iraqi Kurdistan]’. ¹

However, with the birth of the new Republic of Turkey, Sèvres never materialised. Instead, it was annulled and replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which demarcated the borders of the new Turkish republic. With control over eastern Levant already ceded to Britain at the San Remo conference in April 1920 as a League of Nations mandate over the then Mesopotamia, Mosul was included in what became the State (later Kingdom) of Iraq, a British client territory in which the House of Hashim was established (the Iraqi kings Faisal I, Ghazi I and then Faisal II). Thus, denied the opportunity for self-rule, the Kurds of what was the old Ottoman province (vilayet) of Mosul rebelled, with major revolts and uprisings in 1922, 1931, 1937, 1943 and thereafter. Each time, Britain intervened, supporting the Iraqi forces in forcibly subduing the Kurds. ² Britain, however, did hold a referendum to legitimise the Hashemite accession, but, as Nader Entessar has noted, the ‘Kurds either boycotted the referendum or voted against Faisal’. ³ After Faisal’s accession, Britain was more concerned with installing and maintaining a pro-British monarchy in a viable Iraq than it was in autonomy for the Kurds, regarded now as lost, like the Treaty of Sèvres, to history. ⁴

The 1943 uprising was led by Mustafa Barzani, also known as Mullah—or rather Mela (in Kurdish)—Mustafa, later to become a pivotal figure in the Iraqi Kurds’ national liberation movement until his death in 1979. ⁵ Outnumbered and outgunned, the 1943 rebellion crumbled in the face of RAF bombings and the Iraqi army onslaught, and Barzani and his fighters retreated across the border into Iran’s Kurdistan. In Turkey and Iran too, various Kurdish uprisings took place, but all were crushed by the use of military force and the leaders usually executed. The Kurds of Syria did not have a better fate, and in all these countries, the Kurds faced forced assimilation in one way or another. ⁶

From the beginning of the new arrangements imposed on the post-WWI Middle East, therefore, regional and international politics had a profound effect on the status of Kurds. This included what were now the Iraqi Kurds, who never settled with the new order of rule from Baghdad. After WWII, the impact of the wider political environment on the Kurds was to evolve further with the transition from imperial conflicts to the Cold War. Following their crossing into Iran, Mustafa Barzani and his fighters joined the Kurdish Mahabad Republic (January–December 1946), before it, too, was crushed (by Iran) and its founder (Qazi Muhammad) hanged. Barzani and his fighters then made their way and sought refuge in the Soviet Union. ⁷

In connection to the Cold War, perceiving any sign of Kurdish nationalism as a nemesis and thus seeking to demonise it, as early as November 20, 1945, the Turkish ambassador in Moscow conveyed to the Americans that Barzani was ‘in Moscow being provided with a printing press and propaganda to be distributed to the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey’. ⁸ Thus, Kurdish aspirations for independence became entangled with international relations and alliances as determined by the growing tension between the US and USSR.

By August 1946, the Iraqi Kurds had established the Kurdish Democratic Party in Baghdad, in the absence of Mustafa Barzani himself, who was, nevertheless, appointed as its chairman. The Party was later renamed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1953. ⁹ When, in July 1958, the monarchy in Iraq was ousted by a group of officers led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim, the KDP declared its support for the new regime and the interim constitution. According to that constitution ‘Arabs and Kurds are partners in the Homeland, and their national rights are recognized within the Iraqi entity’. ¹⁰ Qasim also invited Barzani back from exile, but this was primarily just to balance his adversaries. Consequently, the honeymoon was short-lived, and a combination of factors led to the outbreak of major hostilities between the Iraqi Kurds, led by the KDP, and the Iraqi government, in September 1961. ¹¹ Hostilities continued intermittently until 1975, when Iran ended its support for Mustafa Barzani’s Kurdish movement, to be followed by the US and Israel.

The 1961 hostilities broke out in the shadow of a number of regional struggles and issues, including a global one. At the regional level, one may name the regional powers of Iran, Egypt and Turkey, among others, as well as the perceived threat of communism by the non-communists, while at the international level, the international powers of the USSR, US and UK all had a stake in the direction in which Iraq headed. Subsequently, the road taken by the new republic after the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown also impacted on the relations of these actors with the Iraqi Kurds. ¹² This chapter, therefore, is concerned with analysing these interactions and the contributions this may make to the broader research of Kurdish, Iraqi and related international relations’ issues. The chapter broadly focuses on the years 1958–1962.

The Cold War’s regional delineation and the Iraqi Kurds: the exaggerated Soviet interest

Contrary to the impression that the literature conveys about the lack of US interest or knowledge regarding the Kurds in the early years of the Cold War, it is apparent that the US was taking a cautious interest in the Kurds from at least the late 1940s. A lengthy secret report produced by the CIA on December 8, 1948, provided thorough information to US policymakers not only on the Kurds’ political circumstances and their relations to the ‘parent state’ but also on the Kurds’ ancient history, socio-political composition and even, in a throwback to nineteenth-century anthropology, their physical characteristics. ¹³ The term ‘parent state’ was used by the CIA to refer to the countries that control Kurdish territories. Distributed to the Office of the President and the National Security Council (NSC), among others, this report comprised 21 pages and was presented in the form of a study. In fact, it might be better categorised as research on the Kurds’ socio-political history than a mere intelligence report.

In terms of Kurdish unity and struggle, it is clear from the report that disunity hampered the success of Kurdish national aspirations, or at least that is how the CIA perceived it. The Agency saw a unity that would have to be on an unprecedented scale as ‘necessary before any Kurdish uprising could achieve genuinely serious proportions’. Nevertheless, ominously to the Kurds, however, it also stated that ‘The Kurdish question, as manipulated by Soviet agitation, is a disruptive force which will continue to threaten, sporadically, the delicate balance of the present Near East system’. ¹⁴ In other words, the Kurdish Issue was seen by the US in the shadow of the Cold War from the very start of the US involvement in the region. The report goes to some length in describing the Turkish government’s assimilation policies and various Kurdish uprisings, as well as Kurdish organisations and the names of influential individuals and their ambitions in each of the so-called parent states. Undoubtedly, therefore, there was a degree of awareness of the Kurds’ situation in US government circles, although any natural empathy there might have been for the desire of a people for self-determination was tempered both by realism (the Kurds’ own divisions) and realpolitik (the overriding concern with communism and the power politics of regional domination).

Concerning the start of the Cold War and its relation to the region in the context of this book, various US documents from the period understood the Kurds in one way or another to have, as one put it, ‘strong but unfulfilled nationalistic aspirations’. ¹⁵ In contrast, primary sources suggest that Iranian, Turkish and Iraqi diplomats and other officials played a significant role during the second half of the 1940s as well as the 1950s in attempts to convince the US that the USSR was intent on establishing a satellite Kurdish state in the midst of these countries. ¹⁶ Certainly, Soviet attempts to woo the Kurds ran counter to Kurdish aspirations, since they both augmented the states’ apprehensions that the Soviets really were seeking to establish a client Kurdish state out of their Kurdish areas and were also indeed perceived by the US as dangerous. For example, The Washington Post reported that a Soviet radio station broadcasting from Baku in September 1950 had ‘appealed to the broad masses of the “Kurdish people” to be ready to fight “for peace and independence”’ ¹⁷ while a CIA report on the matter concluded that ‘Soviet propaganda continues directed agitation of the Kurdish tribes’, that there were ‘reports of greater Kurdish activity than in previous years’, and the ‘tribes’ were ‘not capable at present of causing serious trouble in Iran and Iraq without direct Soviet support’. ¹⁸

There was, therefore, at least a suspicion at these times among various American organs that the Soviets were attempting to destabilise the post-Ottoman framework in the northern Middle East and establish a client Kurdish state there. ¹⁹ This belief seems to have influenced US views on the perceived risk that the Kurds posed, which must have contributed to the US policy of remaining aloof, cognisant of the Kurds’ various attempts to self-rule and watching them closely, but with some apprehension. The US would not have consented to its number one antagonist, the Soviet Union, creating a Kurdish state from a territory at the geographical intersection of its allies of Iran, Turkey (and Iraq), and most especially not in the geopolitically significant Middle East.

In relation to the CIA’s apprehensions, a question that arises is whether the USSR actually did have such an intention of supporting the emergence of a Kurdish state. On the one hand, the prevailing view among ‘the diplomatic community’ on the West’s side of the Cold War immediately after 1945 was that the Soviets were intent on establishing what would be a satellite Kurdish state and thus adding a regional Soviet ally to the Cold War in the region that would thus significantly enhance Soviet power in the area. ²⁰ On the othe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Events
• List of Figures
• List of Acronyms
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 1958–1962: Iraqi Revolution, Kurdish hostilities
• 2 1963–1965: Seeking allies
• 3 1965–1971: Politics and struggle
• 4 1971–1975: Hope and betrayal
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index