Iraqis Seeking to ‘Neutralize’ Kurds, U.S. Says

The government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has forcibly moved as many as half a million Kurds and razed an estimated 700 Kurdish towns and villages in a ruthless resettlement program aimed at creating a 14,000-square-mile security zone around Iraq’s northern border, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Last month, Iraqi troops leveled the border town of Qala Diza and drove 50,000 Kurds from the strategically vital region that they had inhabited for centuries. Scores of smaller towns have been bulldozed in recent months and their residents moved to resettlement camps south of the border, Administration officials said.

After decades of sporadic warfare with the non-Arab Kurds, the Iraqi government is attempting to finally “neutralize” the rebellious minority and create a depopulated cordon sanitaire around Iraq, State Department officials charged. They theorize that with the eight-year Iran-Iraq War finally over, Hussein hopes to crush the troublesome Kurds so that he can begin to act on larger political ambitions in the Middle East.

Iraq says that it relocated the Kurds for their own protection and has given them land and money to compensate for the loss of their homes and livelihoods.

The Bush Administration, concerned about what it calls “mass deportations” and other human rights abuses, repeatedly has protested to the Baghdad regime. But the protests from the United States and other countries have been ignored, U.S. officials said.

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, attached an amendment to the foreign aid bill now before the panel to impose sanctions on Iraq if it is shown that its treatment of the Kurds constitutes a “gross violation of international standards of human rights.”

Committee aides said the measure would cut off credits to Iraq, halt all foreign aid to the country except humanitarian assistance to the neediest residents, ban the sale of items subject to export controls and force the United States to vote against Iraq in international financial institutions.

The resettlement program--begun in late 1987--is part of Hussein’s effort to settle Iraq’s domestic problem with the Kurds, who have long agitated for autonomy from the various governments that currently control Kurdistan, their ancient ethnic homeland. The territory straddles Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and a slice of the Soviet Union.

Earlier efforts to repress the Kurds, however, have been met by armed resistance, as Kurdish guerrillas retreated to mountain strongholds and carried out hit-and-run attacks on Iraqi troops. Until the mid-1970s, they were given money and weapons by the United States and Israel, and they were supported by Iran during the Persian Gulf War, which ended a year ago this month.

But today the Kurds are demoralized and destitute, according to State Department officials. “The back of the Kurdish resistance has been broken,” said one U.S. official.

In 1988, Hussein carried out a savage campaign against the Kurds, including chemical weapons attacks on civilians in Halabja that left an estimated 4,000 dead. Last September, the United States publicly charged that Iraq had used poison gas against the residents of several other Kurdish border towns in retaliation for Kurdish aid to Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War.

Hikmet Bamarni, U.S. spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, alleged Tuesday that the resettlement program is only temporary and that Hussein plans to move the Kurds again, even farther south, to make it more difficult to reclaim the ancient lands.

“Saddam is determined to destroy the Kurdish movement and Kurdistan as an independent region,” Bamarni added. “This is a dictatorship. It will tolerate no movement asking for democratic rights.”

The Kurds constitute about 20% of Iraq’s 16 million people. The Sunni Muslims, who rule the nation, account for another 20%. Most Iraqis are Shiite Muslims, the same sect that predominates in neighboring Iran. Hussein and the Sunnis have long felt squeezed by the Kurds to the north and the Shiites, who live primarily in the south.

In a statement issued last week, the Iraqi government said that the relocation was “aimed at relieving residents of the border areas of the suffering to which they were subjected during the eight-year war with Iran.”

The statement said that the resettlement program was not limited to Kurdistan but encompassed all the nation’s border regions. It said that those moved were given cash compensation of about $9,000 per family and that land had been provided for housing and farming.

Bamarni acknowledged that some payments had been pledged, but insisted, “The issue is not money. What’s important is their home and their land. . . . Besides, they’ve given us no choice.

A State Department official said that the Administration is “deeply concerned” about the human rights aspects of the program.

“On the one hand, we understand that a country like Iraq that has fought an eight-year war with a neighboring country while also facing a rebellion among its own citizens faces internal security concerns,” the official said. “But against that we must weigh the concerns about the mass deportation of people.”

The Iraqis are moving roughly 20% of the Kurdish population, the official said. “This is not a solution to the underlying problem, which we hope Hussein will try to work on separately.

“The security strip is only a short-term fix. It’s a ruthless attempt to neutralize the rebellion while leaving the road clear to later political solutions,” he said.

Bamarni flatly predicted that Hussein’s program will backfire.

“This is not going to work. It’s only going to make the situation worse,” he said. “When you put people in camps, it’s only going to make them angrier. It’s exactly what you already see in Israel and South Africa. It’s going to make them more interested in revolt.”