MASTER OF TREACHERY
By Barry Lando

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February 4, 2010

It is amazing how Henry Kissinger has been able to retain his aura of
invincible genius in international relations, continuing to counsel
presidents, foreign governments and major global businesses, while
occasionally writing lofty Op Ed pieces advising the U.S. on what it
should or should not be doing next. This mind you, despite Kissinger’s
own history of monumental cynicism and duplicity when he was guiding
foreign policy for President’s Nixon and Ford. Indeed, it’s a tribute
to the ability of mainstream American media to forgive and forget.

The latest example is an Op Ed piece Kissinger just wrote for the New
York Times warning American leaders that they are no longer giving
Iraq the attention it deserves.

The fact is, however, when Kissinger was in charge of U.S. policy
for Iraq, the results for its people, particularly the Kurds, were
disastrous. I wrote about it in my book "Web of Deceit-the History
of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W.

Bush."

Over the decades, the Kurds quixotic struggle for some form of
independence doomed them to a seemingly endless cycle of rebellion
followed by incredibly vicious repression. Those uprisings were
usually encouraged by enemies of Iraq’s rulers who made use of
the Kurds to destabilize the regime in Baghdad. It was a ruthless,
deceitful process, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Kurds
being slaughtered and displaced over the years. And it was an ideal
playing field for Kissinger.

For years, the Shah of Iran had been secretly supporting the Iraqi
Kurds to put pressure on Baghdad. So were the Israelis, who hoped to
distract Iraq’s increasingly virulent leader from joining an Arab
attack on the Jewish state. In 1972, Henry Kissinger and Richard
Nixon, motivated by fear that Iraq was becoming too cozy with the
Soviet Union, agreed to a request from the Shah to help back the Kurds.

For the sake of deniability, the U.S. supplied the Kurds with Soviet
arms seized in Vietnam, while Israel provided Soviet weapons that it
had captured from the Arabs. According to the Washington Post’s Jon
Randal, the clandestine operation was kept secret even from the U.S.

State Department, which had argued against any such support. The Kurd’s
news friends, however, did not want their protegees to win their
struggle. An independent Kurdish state would be much too disruptive
for the region, they felt. Their support was carefully doled out-enough
to keep the revolt going, but not enough to take it to victory.

The Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, was hard-headed enough to
understand his people were being used by Iran, but not worldly enough
to comprehend that his American backers could be equally duplicitous.

"We do not trust the Shah," Barzani told reporter Randal in 1973. "I
trust America. America is too great a power to betray a small people
like the Kurds."

It was to be a fatal error of judgment. In 1975 the Shah and the
leaders of Iraq abruptly agreed to settle their disputes and signed
a treaty of friendship. A key part of the agreement was that Iran
would immediately cease its support of the Iraqi Kurds. Overnight,
Iranian army units that had been supporting the Kurds-with artillery,
missiles, ammunition, and even food-retreated across the border
into Iran. The U.S. and the Israelis similarly called a sudden halt
to their support. At the same time, Iraqi troops began a massive
offensive against the hapless Kurds.

Thus, without any warning, the Kurds were abandoned; not just
their fighting men, the pesh merga, but their villages, wives, and
children, were exposed to a ferocious Iraqi onslaught. Barzani sent a
desperate plea to Kissinger for aid. "Our movement and people are being
destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. We feel,
Your Excellency, that the United States has a moral and political
responsibility towards our people, who have committed themselves to
your country’s policy. Mr. Secretary, we are anxiously awaiting your
quick response."

Twelve days later, a U.S. diplomat in Tehran cabled CIA director
William Colby, noting that Kissinger had not replied and warning
that if Washington "intends to take steps to avert a massacre it must
intercede with Iran promptly."

Meanwhile, a quarter of a million Kurds fled for their lives to Iran.

Turkey closed its borders to thousands of others seeking refuge. Many
of the militants left behind-especially students and teachers-were
rounded up by the Iraqi, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Some
1,500 villages were dynamited and bulldozed.

Over the following weeks and months, as the killing continued, Barzani
issued more desperate appeals to the CIA, to President Gerald Ford,
to Henry Kissinger. No one answered. Kissinger not only refused
to intervene but also turned down repeated Kurdish requests for
humanitarian aid for their thousands of refugees.

This duplicity of American officials might never have surfaced but for
an investigation in 1975 by the U.S. Congress’s Select Committee on
Intelligence headed by New York Democrat Otis Pike. The Pike report
concluded that for Tehran and Washington the Kurds were never more
than "a card to play." A uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq’s
"potential for international adventurism." From the beginning said
the report, "The President, Dr. Kissinger, and the Shah hoped that
our clients [Barzani’s Kurds] would not prevail." The Kurds were
encouraged to fight solely in order to undermine Iraq. "Even in the
context of covert operations, ours was a cynical enterprise."

The report’s damning conclusions continued: Had the U.S. not encouraged
the Kurds to go along with the Shah and renew hostilities with Iraq,
"the Kurds might have reached an accommodation with [Iraq’s] central
government, thus gaining at least a measure of autonomy while avoiding
further bloodshed. Instead the Kurds fought on, sustaining thousands
of casualties and 200,000 refugees."

One of the officials who testified before the committee in secret
session was Henry Kissinger. When questioned by an appalled congressman
about the U.S.’s decision to abandon the Kurds to their bloody fate,
Kissinger chided the committee, "One should not confuse undercover
action with social work."

Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia University, spent
25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes.

The author of numerous articles about Iraq, he produced a documentary
about Saddam Hussein that has been shown around the world. He lives
in Paris. His latest book is "Web of Deceit: The History of Western
Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." He
can be reached through his blog.