Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Ozeti
clear that the United States had given up on a unified Iraq. That would unleash a violent
separation of populations and wholesale killing until Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish militias
established what they considered defensible boundaries. In this initial separation, tens of
thousands could be killed. (The Indian subcontinent still shudders from the trauma of the
India-Pakistan partition almost 60 years ago.) Once stable ethnic cantons were established, the
killing would diminish but not stop. In Lebanon, the separation phase was followed by 16
years of civil war that included sniping and artillery duels across the "green lines" that
separated the cantons.
If things are as bad as Galbraith argues, it's possible that poor, ragged Lebanon may be Iraq's
best model. Through all the years of its miserable 1975-90 civil war, Lebanon retained a
president, a prime minister, a parliament, a national army. These governing institutions didn't
do much; real power had devolved to the militias and to the regional powers -- Israel and
Syria -- that had occupied Lebanon. But the idea of a Lebanese nation survived, as has been
evident in the way its population has rallied around its tattered flag during recent weeks.
A partitioned Iraq, too, would risk being carved up by the regional powers, with Iran
enfolding the Shiites in its wings, Turkey setting brutal red lines for the Kurds lest they try to
wrest away a chunk of its own turf, and the Syrians and Jordanians sharing the thankless task
of trying to maintain order among the Sunnis. Not an appealing prospect.
Despite its troubling prescription, Galbraith's book is important because, as much as any
American, he has lived the Iraq tragedy up close and personal. From the beginning, he focused
his attention on the plight of the Kurds, becoming a kind of adviser and emissary of the
Kurdish leader (and now Iraqi president) Jalal Talabani. This ardent identification with the
Kurdish cause has simplified Galbraith's choices in analyzing the Iraq conundrum: It's clearly
good for the Kurds to achieve their historic dream of an independent homeland, but whether
this separation is better for other Iraqis -- and for the interests of the United States and its
allies -- is a much harder question.
Galbraith's fascination with Iraq began in 1984, when he traveled to Baghdad as a staff
member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He had the gumption to press
then-Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz about whether Iraq was using poison gas in its war
against Iran, and he has been asking good, contrarian questions ever since. Galbraith's
passion for the Kurds dates back to 1987, when he traveled to Sulaymaniyah and stumbled
upon what he later realized was a genocidal Iraqi campaign, code-named the Anfal, that was
meant to break Kurdish political and culturallife. He returned again and again, becoming
close to Talabani, Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and other key figures in the story.
Galbraith sketches some reasons for the American failure in Iraq, such as inadequate
planning for postwar Iraq, lack of understanding of the players and their interests, and
ongoing policy squabbles in Washington. But such familiar assessments are not the real
contribution of his short book, part-memoir, part-policy treatise. Other books, published and
on the way, are doing that big analytical task better. The value of Galbraith's account is that
it's rooted in his personal experience -- why he loathed Sadd am Hussein's regime, why he
came to champion the Kurdish cause, how he watched as America turned a war of liberation
into a bungled occupation.
I wished for a little more self-criticism -- an appreciation that the Kurds, for all their tragic
history, have been part of the problem in post-liberation Iraq, too, by pushing their own
agenda for greater self-rule so hard. And I found a bit too easy Galbraith's transition from
enthusiast for toppling the old Baathist tyranny to critic of the postwar occupation. The people
who got it wrong sometimes seem to include everyone but Galbraith. But those criticisms don't
alter my admiration for the book or its author.
So what of the fundamental question he raises? Is the Iraq venture doomed? Are we wasting
American and Iraqi lives pursuing a vision of a new, unitary Iraq that has no connection with
reality? Should we conclude, as Galbraith does, that Iraq itself is finished? We're all shaped
by our personal experiences and contacts in weighing questions like this. When I put the
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