U.S. Failed to Assist Plan to Block Kurdish Infighting

On at least three occasions in the past year, Iraqi groups opposed to President Saddam Hussein approached the United States with a plan to prevent the Kurds of northern Iraq from dissolving into factional warfare, according to senior U.S. officials and Iraqi opposition leaders.

But the idea of providing $2 million--less than the price of two cruise missiles--for a peacekeeping force drawn from a multiethnic Iraqi coalition already funded by the CIA became bogged down in U.S. bureaucracy and indecision, according to the officials.

With no such plan in effect, a militia backed by the Iraqi leader recently took advantage of the factional strife to take effective control of the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Hussein had been unable to exercise authority since shortly after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The Clinton administration denies that the debacle in northern Iraq would have been averted if only it had put up its $2-million share of the $4 million sought for the peacekeeping force.

“If it had only been a case of $2 million, then it might not have been a problem,” an administration spokesman said. “But there were much deeper political problems. We tried to help, but the Kurds did not rise to the occasion.”

While recognizing that any cease-fire between the factions would need an enforcement mechanism of the sort now in place in Bosnia-Herzegovina and other world hot spots, the State Department was particularly concerned about the long history of infighting in Kurdistan and the animosity between the Kurdish factions’ leaders.

“It was never clear that [they] really wanted the deal to work,” said another U.S. official deeply involved in the issue. “We were concerned that the energy for a cease-fire would have come from the outside, not the inside.”

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Iraqi dissidents call the plan’s demise one more reason that the Iraqi opposition is now in tatters. With Hussein stronger than at any time since the Gulf War, the opposition will have to start virtually from scratch to put together new organizations and plans to bring him down.

That could take years, say U.S. officials and Iraqi opposition figures. Hanging in the balance is whether the opposition that emerges will be as U.S.-oriented as in the past.

The peacekeeping plan, which was originally put forth during U.S.-brokered Kurdish talks in Ireland in August 1995, called on the United States to pay about $2 million to help launch a force to separate and monitor the feuding Kurds.

The 1,250 monitors, stationed at 53 locations over a 240-square-mile area of northern Iraq, would have come from the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of several opposition groups, including the two feuding Kurdish factions.

The money, half from the United States and the rest from the rival Kurdish factions and other regional parties, would have paid for police salaries, uniforms and equipment.

But the money never came.

“At every meeting, the Americans said they’d get the money,” said Barham Saleh, the Washington representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two warring factions and the losing side in the recent fighting. “Then they’d come back and say there were problems--budgeting problems or authorization problems.”

Supporters of the Neutral Commission, under which the peacekeepers would have operated, said funding was only one reason that outside support was crucial.

“Like the Arabs and Israelis, the Kurds needed an honest broker willing to use its political prestige to implement an agreement,” Saleh said. “We were pleading that we needed an American or two to say Uncle Sam was watching in case someone was tempted to violate the agreement.

“The inability to come up with the money was a manifestation of the lack of serious U.S. engagement.”

Even the U.S. official involved in the issue conceded of the plan, “It was worth a try.”

Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, was sufficiently interested in the plan that he dispatched an envoy to Washington four months ago to break the logjam. Barzani eventually turned to Hussein for support, and his militia, backed by Iraqi army troops, has taken effective control of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The consequences for U.S. strategy, according to a senior figure with the Iraqi National Congress, are “incalculable.”

“U.S. policy was contingent on the presence of a northern safe haven outside the control of Saddam Hussein where the opposition could return from exile and establish a base to fight Baghdad,” he said.

That enclave has now been “squandered” as sporadic clashes between the two Kurdish factions gradually escalated into full-blown civil war, he said. “This ultimately caused the collapse of American policy in Iraq by opening the door for Saddam to return,” he said.

“The U.S. government apparently does not believe [that] an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” said another opposition official involved in the discussions. “Washington could end up spending billions for what it could have prevented with very little money.”

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Each of the 44 cruise missiles lobbed at Iraqi air defense installations earlier this month is priced at $1.2 million. Other costs include the deployment of F-117A stealth fighters, B-52 bombers and an additional aircraft carrier in or near the Persian Gulf.

U.S. intelligence, which has lost its primary base inside Iraq as well as many of its agents, is now operating in a bleak landscape. Most members of all U.S.-backed groups in the north are still stranded on the border with Iran or have gone underground.

Northern Iraq was more than a base for U.S. intelligence and Hussein’s Iraqi opponents. It was also the way out for military or government defectors, hundreds of whom sneaked into the U.S.-protected “no-fly” zone north of the 36th parallel. Among them was Gen. Wafiq Samaraei, an air force general subsequently involved last year in one of the most serious coup attempts against Hussein.

The failure of the United States to provide its share of the $4 million sought by the dissident Kurdish factions stemmed in part from a spat over which U.S. agency would bear responsibility, according to administration officials.

The CIA had funded the Iraqi National Congress since its formation in 1992. But in contrast to other U.S. operations in Iraq, the peacekeeping plan would have been an overt action.

“The administration made a determination early on that it wasn’t legal or appropriate for the CIA to do it,” a U.S. official said.

Legally, a covert operation is “an activity of the U.S. government to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad where it is intended that the role of the U.S. government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly,” according to CIA documents.

Because the proposal was a product of U.S. diplomacy, it then went to the State Department, where it stalled. A key issue was the mechanism of establishing a new relationship with the Iraqi National Congress, a thorny legal problem, administration officials added.

“And higher-level people were not persuaded of the need to get through the complications with any urgency,” another official said.

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U.S. policy over the past year, especially since Iraq’s Aug. 31 invasion of Kurdistan, has bred disillusion, frustration and anger among the Iraqi dissidents who have traditionally worked most closely with the United States. Administration officials admit concern that the opposition coalition will fragment, lose its collective leverage and move into the orbits of diverse and sometimes divisive patrons.

“The Arab opposition for the first time after the Gulf War turned not to the Saudis, Syrians or Iranians but to the West and said, ‘We want to be identified with you and your political ideas,’ ” said Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi dissident and a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies. “But that has now come badly unstuck.”

Lost for now are the budding opposition activities, from radio and television broadcasts to sabotage and even the odd military thrust against Hussein’s forces. Opposition forces are scrambling to regroup, and some are clinging to hope.

“Kurdish politics has always been a mixture of desperation and hope,” Saleh said. “Each time we have risen from the ashes of defeat.”

Meanwhile, U.S. officials continue to hope that Hussein’s repressive rule will fuel the opposition.

“The story is not over,” a State Department official said. “There is still little love for Saddam Hussein, and the natural breeding ground for dissent is as great as ever.”