Unfinished Business in Iraq

By Laurie Mylroie
The Wall Street Journal, 20 April 1994

Commenting on last week’s accidental downing of two U.S.
helicopters, Rep. Lee Hamilton (D., Ind.) remarked, “We’ve lost our
focus on Iraq.” Indeed we have. Diverted by other international
problems — this week the administration is wringing its hands over
what to do about Gorazde — and preoccupied with domestic issues,
the U.S. seems to have forgotten that it is conducting a major
military operation in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is protecting more than
three million people who are successfully administering their own
affairs and who are immensely grateful for America’s help.

Even the top-ranking U.S. officials who broke the news of the
crash seemed not fully up to speed. Defense Secretary William Perry
misspoke when he said, immediately after the accident, that the
downed helicopters were on a United Nations mission and then
repeatedly referred to U.N. officers aboard the helicopters. A U.N.
spokesman soon corrected that.

As it happens, the military operation that protects the Kurds,
called Operation Provide Comfort, is conducted by a multinational
coalition that includes the U.S., France, Britain and Turkey. It is
not under the auspices of the U.N.

That Provide Comfort is not a U.N. operation is particularly
important to note now, since the administration is about to present
a presidential directive proposing more U.S. involvement in U.N.
peacekeeping operations. Provide Comfort works partly because there
is authority, responsibility and accountability — characteristics
not always present in U.N. operations.

Mr. Perry also misspoke when he suggested that the U.S. and
allied officials who were killed in the accident — mostly members
of the coalition’s Military Coordination Center based in northern
Iraq — were on a visit to a village to meet with Kurdish “elders,”
as if the MCC’s interlocutors were to be quaint, primitive people.
The MCC staff members were flying from their headquarters in Zakhu,
near the Turkish border, to Salahuddin, deep in the Kurdish
interior. There they were to meet the Kurdish political leadership,
including Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and
the prime minister of the elected Kurdish government, Abdullah
Rasoul.

Contrary to a widespread impression that the MCC was established
to coordinate with the Kurds, it was originally formed, in 1991, to
coordinate with the Iraqi army on the removal of Iraqi forces from
the security zone. With later contacts, it evolved into a forum for
exchanging American and Iraqi concerns related to maintaining the
security zone in northern Iraq.

The two sides used to meet weekly at an Iraqi post near Mosul.
However, in early 1993 Baghdad broke off those talks at a time of
renewed U.S.-Iraqi tensions, as Saddam Hussein challenged George
Bush during his last days in office.

One of the MCC’s major functions now is to oversee the
humanitarian relief program in northern Iraq. The U.N., which first
had responsibility for such a program, proved incompetent, allowing
itself to be manipulated and used by Baghdad. The U.N. insisted on
changing foreign currency at a vastly inflated official rate. At one
point, it blocked the shipment of diesel fuel, urgently needed for a
winter planting, because it had not received Baghdad’s permission to
bring the fuel in. It took that stance although the fuel was coming
from Turkey directly into northern Iraq and Baghdad’s permission was
irrelevant.

Congress played a key role in preventing that humanitarian relief
program from becoming another U.N.-supervised disaster. In late
1992, it passed legislation cutting off money to the U.N. relief
program in northern Iraq and redirecting it to the Defense
Department, which was to run its own program. The relief program is
now divided among the Pentagon, the State Department and other
bureaucracies. In any case, it works.

For this, the Kurds themselves deserve much credit. In the three
years since the Gulf War, Iraq’s Kurds have demonstrated a capacity
for reasonably effective self-government, under very difficult
circumstances. They are subject to the U.N. embargo on Iraq, as well
as a secondary embargo imposed by Baghdad on the North. Despite
that, the Kurdish leadership is doing a better job administering
northern Iraq than Yasser Arafat is likely to do in Gaza and
Jericho.

Moreover, Kurdish society is remarkably cohesive. Despite
economic hardship, the crime rate in any Iraqi Kurdish city is less
than that in any American city. Above all, the Kurds are not
fighting each other. Were they to do so, they might lose the support
of the international coalition that protects them. The Kurds’
political maturity is part of Saddam’s legacy: They know that if
they fight each other, Saddam’s genocidal regime will return.

The downing of the helicopters is a reminder, as Mr. Hamilton
observed, that “we still have a lot of unfinished business, so far
as Saddam Hussein is concerned.” The sanctions regime is eroding.
France has bolted from the anti-Iraq coalition and is working
hand-in-glove with Baghdad to get sanctions lifted. If Saddam could
sell oil without constraints, he would have the means to feed his
army, restore its morale and attack the Kurds. Other U.S. goals in
the Mideast, such as the “peace process,” would also be imperiled by
Saddam’s resurgence.

There is a quick, easy way to increase the pressure on Baghdad:
Cut off Iraq’s oil sales to Jordan. They are the single most
important source of income for Saddam. Moreover, the oil tankers are
used to smuggle contraband from Jordan to Iraq, facilitating the
rebuilding of Saddam’s military establishment.

It may be objected that such a measure will threaten Jordan’s
stability. But surely other sources of oil can be found. Washington
should have enough influence with at least one of the oil-rich Gulf
states to cajole it into supplying oil to Jordan on concessionary
terms.

The Bush administration never liked to deal with the unfinished
business in Iraq, because it suggested that its splendid little war
ended less than brilliantly. What is the Clinton administration’s
problem?

Ms. Mylroie is writing a book with Kamran Karadaghi titled
“Kurds, Turks, Arabs and America: Developments in Iraqi Kurdistan
Since the Gulf Crisis,” funded by the U.S. Institute of Peace.