Don’t Forget About the Kurds : U.S. air protection is needed for the U.N. supply convoys too

Judging from its stubborn rhetoric Thursday, Iraq has apparently rejected an ultimatum delivered by four U.N. Security Council members--the United States, Britain, France and Russia. The ultimatum, made Wednesday, demands removal within 48 hours of antiaircraft missiles that Iraq has placed in the southern no-fly zone imposed by the same powers after the Gulf War.

In recent weeks, Iraq has challenged the no-fly rule. On Dec. 27, a U.S. jet on patrol shot down an Iraqi MIG over the zone. Later, Iraq moved in the missiles. For Saddam Hussein, regaining air control over southern Iraq is essential to preservation of his dictatorship.

Speaking at West Point Tuesday, President Bush attempted to formulate general criteria to “inform our decisions” about the use of military power. Obviously, few political situations met the President’s criteria more clearly than Iraq’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait and its threat to seize Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil resources. The threat that the situation might recur meets essentially the same criteria and justifies the ultimatum.

However, Washington has been mistaken not to react with comparable alacrity to recent Iraqi bombardment of truck convoys delivering seed and fuel to the U.N.-sanctioned Kurdish haven in northern Iraq.

The southern threat may seem more proximate; but in what must now be seen as a protracted holding action against Iraq, Kurdish domestic opposition to the Saddam Hussein regime is as much a military factor as control of the skies--not to mention all the compelling humanitarian arguments for the defense of the dictator’s most savagely abused victims.

Defense of the Iraqi Kurds is complicated by variously troubled Kurdish relations with the Turks, the Syrians and the Iranians, whose cooperation, active or passive, is clearly a part of the containment of Iraq. But air protection for the convoys supplying the Iraqi Kurds falls well short of any call for Kurdish independence, easily meets President Bush’s intervention criteria and should be seen as a necessary complement to the ultimatum just issued for southern Iraq.