The U.S. Must Not Repeat Past Mistakes Regarding Iraqi Kurds

A Kurdish leader in Iraq states that his forces will not participate in any U.S. actions to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein until the U.S. provides guarantees. Masoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, stated on Thursday to Reuters that his people want the future security and autonomy of the Kurds to be publicly declared and guaranteed within a united Iraq. Barzani and leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, another major Kurdish opposition group, are set to meet with U.S. officials in Washington next week to discuss the situation in Iraq. A senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan also emphasized the need for such guarantees in a separate interview with Reuters. Bahram Saleh stated that his people have suffered greatly from being pushed into vulnerable conditions that were unnecessary. Many Iraqi Kurds feel frustrated and hopeless because, following the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. encouraged them to revolt against Saddam Hussein, but when Baghdad sent major forces to suppress the Kurdish uprising, the U.S. did little to intervene. Iraqi Kurds have previously faced repression and persecution from the Iraqi government, with thousands killed in 1988 during a campaign of ethnic cleansing and the attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja with chemical weapons.