The Associated Press

December 13, 2002, Friday, BC cycle

SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 760 words

HEADLINE: Kurds, with history of shifting alliances, now siding with America

BYLINE: By BORZOU DARAGAHI, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: SULAYMANIA, Iraq

BODY:
The Kurds like to say they have "no friends but the mountains," arguing that a quirk of geography has placed them in a landlocked enclave surrounded by hostile neighbors.

But over the decades the Kurds have also proved themselves their own worst enemy - breaking and remaking friendships with neighboring Iran, Iraq and Turkey, and fighting among themselves.

Kurdistan's two major parties have in the last 20 years allied themselves with neighboring Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, both part of what President Bush has dubbed the "axis of evil."

Now protected from Saddam by U.S. and British fighter planes, the two parties control northern Iraq and are working with American officials to prepare to build a new Iraq. "Our leaders are not very keen on keeping their word sacred," said Fouad Baban, a Kurdish doctor whose ancestors founded the city of Sulaymania three centuries ago. "But up until now the geopolitics of Kurdistan have been so complicated that it's been impossible to stick to one policy."

This time is different, said Sherko Bekis, a prominent Kurdish poet and publisher.

"In our history, we've done great damage to ourselves," he said. "But we know we can't have peace without getting rid of Saddam. And we know we can't get rid of Saddam without America. And although Kurds would betray each other, we would never betray America."

As the United States threatens a military campaign to topple Saddam, the two Kurdish parties - Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - are among six Iraqi opposition parties meeting under U.S. auspices in London this week to map out a political future for their country.

The Kurds also could play a military role. They have 70,000 lightly armed soldiers controlling three of Iraq's 18 provinces.

The Kurds, though, could hinder the American aim of retaining a unified, Baghdad-controlled Iraq, said Colin Rowat, an authority on Iraq at the University of Birmingham.

"Iraq's Kurds have carved out their small measure of autonomy in part because U.S. politicians have seen their opposition to Saddam as useful over the decade," Rowat said.

"If, however, the current Iraqi government is replaced with one that the U.S. wishes to support, then Iraq's Kurds become an irritant."

The Kurds have tried to reassure the world they are not seeking to tear apart Iraq. Barzani, speaking to reporters Tuesday during a visit to Iran, said his party does not want to form an independent Kurdish state that would worry neighbors such as Turkey.

Turkey, Iran and Syria all share borders with northern Iraq and oppose autonomy for Iraqi Kurds living in the area since it could feed the nationalist desires of their own Kurdish minorities.

For most of the 20th century, the Kurds have formed and broken alliances with their more powerful Turkish, Persian and Arab neighbors as well as the Western powers.

Usually they've wound up betrayed and left out in the cold, as when the United States and the Shah of Iran pulled the plug on the Iraqi Kurdish resistance movement in 1975.

Many observers of Kurdish history worry that Kurds will again be stabbed in the back.

"It is the American administration, not the Kurdish leaderships that I worry about," said Carole O'Leary, a Kurdish expert at the American University in Washington. "The question is, 'Can the Kurds trust the American leadership?' Not the other way round."

The Kurds also have had internal problems. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have fought numerous times throughout the decade, most seriously during a 1994-1998 civil war that killed 1,000.

At the height of that war, following a failed 1996 CIA-backed coup attempt against Saddam, the Patriotic Union called upon Iran for help and Barzani called upon Saddam, who once sprayed chemical weapons on Kurds.

In the early 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, the situation was almost reversed, with the Patriotic Union helping Iraqi-backed guerrilla groups against Iran and Barzani siding with Tehran.

The two factions say they have put aside their differences and earlier this year sealed their pledges of peace by convening the full Kurdish parliament for the first time since their civil war.

"We know we haven't been trustworthy," said Rebin Herdy, a writer for the quarterly Kurdish magazine Rahand, or Wind. "Sometimes we have to form alliances with Turkey, with Iran, with Syria, with Baghdad to protect ourselves. What can we do? It's the curse of our geography."