"Covert action ..."

"... Should not be confused with missionary work."

My generated image, using HiDream I1 Fast. I’m still a thug, not an artist.

The quote that titles this essay is from Henry Kissinger, although Treebeard’s “I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side" might also apply.

Recently we learn that the Christians In Action Central Intelligence Agency may be running around, talking the Kurds into weighing in on the whole Iran kerfuffle. My response to this tidbit was a slightly sardonic, “Yay”, followed by an observation that I didn’t realize we were setting the field for the next Iranian civil war so soon.

Oh, look. Blog fodder.

I’d like to preface this by stating that there are individual Kurds that I like — may even be fond of — but I don’t trust any of them. Period.

We’ll open with a very, very brief Kurdish/American history, then go on to Kurds as a whole.

Very, very, very brief Kurdish/American History

First off, let us turn our eyes to the Ramadan Revolution of 1963.

In the late 1950s Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Qasim got a case of the stupids, and began making nice-nice with the Soviet Union. Unfortunately he had gotten into power partially on a promise to grant the Kurds independence, and then crawfished the whole deal.

America, with it’s tunnel-vision on the Soviet Union, stirred the Kurds into full civil war with promises of a free and independent Kurdistan — said civil war weakening Abdul-Karim Qasim enough that he was overthrown, and stuck in front of a firing squad with a quickness by the new Iraqi government.

Since the “new” government of Iraq was anti-Soviet Union¹, the US was all sorts of happy … but there was the little matter of that — you know — civil war, and could Uncle Sam just kind of …?

So, we told the Kurds, “Yes, we promised you a Kurdistan, but the situation is, how you say, fluid, and can you knock it off?”

This was taken about as well as one might expect, and the Kurds kept going after the country that we had promised them.

When we figured out the Kurds weren’t going to listen, we sold the new² Iraqi government the napalm bombs they used to flambe Kurdish villages until the fighters gave up.

Fast forward to the early 1970s. Our ally the Shah of Iran is having border difficulties with the Soviet Union’s little buddy Iraq³, which escalated markedly in 1974 over a boundary river called the Arvan Rud⁴. As part of our Great Game campaigns against the Scum-Sucking Siberian Snow Sand Pimps, we took a look at the situation, saw the the Kurds were being a major pain-in-the-arse to the Iraqis, and starting giving them better weapons, funding, and a promise of a free and independent Kurdistan⁵ if they’d Keep Doing That to Iraq.

The Kurds were such a PITA to Iraq, that Iraq pretty quickly signed the Algiers Agreement, giving over major territorial concessions to Iran.

In exchange for these concessions, Iraq simply asked that Iran and the US just … stop helping the Kurds.

This time we didn’t even bother with asking the Kurds to stop shooting Iraqis — we just cut sling-load and ghosted them in 1975.

You can imagine what the Iraqi military — shamed and angry — did to the Kurds in the aftermath. Matter-of-fact, in response to the atrocities committed, the House Intelligence Committee yoinked Henry Kissinger in front of them and point-blank asked him to justify our betrayal of the Kurds that year. His blunt response? "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." While I appreciate the bright-line — and cynical — realpolitik, it does hinge on not ever needing the assistance of the Kurds again.⁶

In the 1990s, the American government — who apparently thinks that history books are best lightly-seared with mushroom-garlic sauce, and served with a side-salad and a Zinfandel — was frankly gobsmacked about why the Kurds were loathe to commit to helping the United States until they were damned sure which side was winning.

Odd, that.

While the 1963 and 1975 piñata jobs were what I consider to be the more egregious Doing of the Dirty to the Kurds, they are not the only ones, but that’s a whole history book, and those two examples should give you a minor insight into Kurdish mindset.

Kurds as a whole.

Thing is — they’re not.

While “Kurd” is a distinct ethnic group, that distinct ethnic group is excessively tribal. There are Kurdish tribes that are Sunni; there are Kurdish tribes that are Shi’a. There are Kurdish tribes that are Twelver. There are Yezedi, Kaka’i, Zoroastrians, and Christian tribes.

There are Kurdish tribes who are Islamic Marxist, a few full-on Marxist, some are secular, and some who are so Islamic Fundamentalist that the Iranian mullahs weep tears of envy.

They have founded al Qaeda offshoots, run ISIS sub-groups, fought on both sides in the late Afghanistan dust-up; and been a persistent pain-in-the-ass to a NATO member.

The Kurds want a free and independent Kurdistan, but I honestly think that any such “Kurdistan” will quickly devolve into the various Kurdish tribes squabbling over who get to be the Big Dawg, and putting the boot to the heretics.

I suspect that if they are, indeed, heading into Iran With Intent, that their intent is to carve off a chunk of Persia as Kurdistan. Outside of internecine squabbles over who gets to run it, there will inevitably be Persians in that chunk of Persia — and some Kurd tribes have issues with the Iranian betrayal on 1975, tethered to a fine grasp of “atrocities”.

On top of which, any government that rises from the ashes of the Islamic Regime is probably — sooner or later — going to want their chunk of Persia back.

This is yet another chapter of the history books where things get all flaggy and arrowy.

Sigh.

Ian

1. Publicly.

2. Anti-Soviet. Ish.

3. See snarky footnotes #1 and #2.

4. Shatt al-Arab to the Iraqis — “River of the Arabs” in Arabic.

5. Why does that sound familiar?

6. A repeating pattern in the — quite frankly — schizophrenic American Foreign Policy.