http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF30Ak07.html
Jun 30, 2004
A clean break for Israel
By Sadi Baig
Israeli involvement with the Kurds is not a new phenomenon. In
its search for non-Arab allies in the region, Israel has supported
Kurdish militancy in Iraq since the 1960s. In 1980, Israeli
premier Menachem Begin publicly acknowledged that besides
humanitarian aid, Israel had secretly provided military aid to
Kurds in the form of weapons and advisers. Later on, that
relationship was kept low profile due to Washington's alliances
in the region; first with Iran during the Shah's monarchy, and
then with Saddam Hussein's Iraq when he fought Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini's Iran. Israel's partnership with Turkey that
was founded mainly to counter threats from Iran, Syria and Iraq,
was also a factor.
Israel and the Kurds also share a common bond through the
Kurdish Jews in Israel, who number close to 50,000. Prominent
among them is Itzhak Mordechai, an Iraqi Kurd who was
defense minister during Benjamin Netanyahu's last term as
prime minister.
Israeli-Kurd relationships soured a bit in February of 1999, when
the Kurds accused the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of
providing information that led to the arrest of Turkish Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya. Kurdish
protestors attacked the Israeli embassy in Berlin, resulting in the
shooting deaths of three protestors by Israeli security forces. In
an unprecedented public denial, the then Mossad chief Efraim
Halevy dissociated Israel from Ocalan's capture. Despite such
bumps and its alliance with Turkey, Israel succeeded in keeping
its relationship with the Iraqi Kurds intact, by keeping a safe
distance from the PKK, which is primarily a Turkish Kurd entity,
and not becoming a party to the bloody infighting between the
various Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish groups.
However, Israel does have a favorite - the Barzani family-
dominated Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), whose current
head, Massoud Barzani, inherited the mantle from his father, the
legendary Mullah Mustafa Barzani. Israeli television has in the
past broadcast photographs from the 1960s showing father
Barzani embracing the then Israeli defense minister Moshe
Dayan. In alliance with its erstwhile rival, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) party, the KDP in post-Saddam Iraq commands
the largest and most formidable of the Iraqi militias, the
Peshmerga, with estimates of anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000
battle-hardened fighters. In contrast, the next in line of militias is
the Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite political party, the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), with no more than
15,000 fighters.
So why in the post-Saddam Iraq has Israel chosen to
dramatically escalate the nature of its involvement with Kurdish
militants, and in so doing, risk its strategic alliance with Turkey,
while confirming its activities on record through individuals like
Patrick Clawson (one of the named sources in Seymour Hersh's
expose in the New Yorker), known to have close ties with the
Israeli government?
According to Hersh's report, "hundreds" of undercover Israeli
Defense Force intelligence officers and Mossad agents have
reestablished cooperation with Kurdish militiamen in northern
Iraq, with the aim of launching cells that might yield new
intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. Israeli operatives are
also said to be providing an ancillary role to the Kurds and are
aiding Kurdish elements in northern Syria. Kurdish riots and the
seeds of a minor rebellion in northern Syria have recently rocked
Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.
A questionable pretext
Quoting Clawson, the Hersh article presents a pair of weak
justifications for Israeli intervention in Iraq. The first one is the
fear of Iranian nuclear ambitions. This information is hardly new.
The latest revelations about the Iranian nuclear program were in
fact provided by an Iranian dissident group. Furthermore, Iran is
under constant US satellite surveillance and sustained political
pressure by the US, the United Nations' International Atomic
Energy Agency and European powers to roll back its nuclear
efforts. It is therefore doubtful as to what quality or value the
Israelis can add to such a formidable lineup.
The second motivation that the article talks about is the urgent
need for Israel to move on Iraq as a national security imperative
to counter the growing Iranian influence. A quick analysis,
however, reveals such urgency to be exaggerated, and any
Israeli surprise at the growing Iranian footprint in Iraq to be
unconvincing. One of the most predictable outcomes of the Iraq
conflict was the growth in Iranian influence in that country.
Besides a 1,500 kilometer border, the two neighboring Shi'ite-
majority nations share deep historical and religious bonds
making it almost impossible for the US to prevent the ascent of
Iranian-backed groups without inviting a full-scale Shi'ite
rebellion in Iraq. Realizing this, American officials moved quickly
during pre-war days to co-opt Iran-backed groups such as the
SCIRI, with tacit Iranian approval.
Would it not be naive to expect that Washington would create a
situation hospitable for growth in clout of its Iranian adversary in
a region key to American interests, and thereby limit its own
options?
Unclean break
To begin to answer the preceding questions, we need to take a
look at a now famous policy paper: "A Clean Break: A New
Strategy for Securing the Realm". This neo-conservative-
authored paper presented in 1996 to the then Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a bold strategy to provide
"the nation [Israel] the room to engage every possible energy in
rebuilding Zionism", and strengthen and increase its influence
in the Middle East. "Our claim to the land - to which we have
clung for hope for 2000 years - is legitimate and noble," the
authors proclaimed. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will
transcend them" through means including "reestablishing the
principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone".
The paper emphasized that Israel needed to enhance its
strategic position independent of the US, in order to deny the US
any leverage it may want to exercise on Israel to maintain
stability in the region under the "peace process". The paper
betrays a high degree of discomfort regarding US influence over
Israel and suggests ways to actively neutralize it. What is most
surprising are the names of its authors that comprise past and
present US civilian policy-makers, including ex-chairman of the
Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, present Under Secretary of
Defense Douglas Feith, and Vice President Dick Cheney's
adviser for Middle East Affairs, David Wurmser. How individuals
with such openly stated positions preferring Israeli interests over
those of the US became influential members of the US
government is quite mystifying.
The paper bemoans the status quo where Israel is asked to
follow European and American prescriptions for peace and
stability, and proposes that a key ingredient of the "US-Israeli
partnership" must be "mutuality" and that Israel must position
itself to be the protector of the "West's security" in the Middle
East rather than being a junior partner. Such strategic co-
dependence, specifically between Israel and the US, and to a
general degree between Israel and Western powers, would
imply dismissing the strategic status quo. Thus, to achieve a
"clean break", the security map of the Middle East would have to
be significantly re-built to assign Israel an apex role, rather than
being just a party to territorial disputes with its neighbors and
being treated as another ally, albeit a strong one, along with
Washington's oil-allies in the region.
The removal of Saddam Hussein, enunciated to be a key goal in
"Clean Break", was to be the first phase of this new strategy of
independence through co-dependence. As has been discussed
earlier (see Asia Times Online, All going according to plan? ,
May 12), under the pretext of regime change, the US quite
intentionally annihilated the Iraqi state and its military forces, the
largest in the Arab world. In his article titled "Beyond Fallujah: A
Year With the Iraqi Resistance" in the June issue of Harper's
Magazine, Patrick Graham, a freelance journalist, quotes a
resistance fighter's account of looting the Iraqi army's weapons
caches. "They [American soldiers] almost gave us the weapons.
They watched us taking RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and
other weapons," he continued, "They thought we were destroying
the Iraqi army."
An opening is created
The strategic space created from the ruins of the Iraqi state and
its pillars offers immense opportunities by employing
persecuted minorities as proxies that can provide a strong
foothold in a pivotal oil-rich nation hundreds of miles away from
Israel. Furthermore, the Kurdish beachhead in Iraq would serve
to project influence in key adversaries such as Iran and Syria.
In "A Clean Break", the authors called for signaling to the Syrians
that their "territory is not immune" to attacks "by Israeli proxy
forces". Kurdish unrest in Syria has been quite rare. In early
March of this year, northeastern Syria broke out in violent
protests that eventually reached the capital Damascus. The
Syrians were caught completely off guard. The riots lasted for
days and left scores of people dead before being brought under
control.
In a war viewed by the neo-conservatives as an unavoidable
course of action for protecting American interests, the growth in
Iranian influence was an inevitable consequence. But Iranian
reach would be dangerous only if it spread beyond southern Iraq
and a unified Iraq emerged. With uncertainty surrounding the
future of high levels of US troops in Iraq, the Israeli-backed
Peshmerga is the ideal proxy as a powerful rival to the Iranian-
inspired Shi'ite ascendancy in Iraq. With their superior numbers,
excellent training and materiel, thanks to the US and Israel, the
Peshmerga can set the terms for the Iraqi federation or for its
disintegration. Furthermore, the Kurds are completely
dependent on extra-regional players due to their isolation in the
area. The current situation in Iraq points to a nominal sovereign
existing in the shadow of armed militias competing for power,
with the most powerful of the militias aligned with the occupying
forces. The Peshmerga number more than the proposed Iraqi
Security Forces (an entity that closely resembles a highly
equipped police force rather than a proper military), and are
being trained by elite and highly secret Israeli commandos, the
Mistaravim according to Hersh's Central Intelligence Agency
sources.
To see these developments as just attempts in securing cheap
oil (Israel relies on expensive Western imports due to the Arab
boycott), would be to underestimate the resultant benefits to
Israel from the situation. Without engaging its military directly,
the Israelis have made themselves a major power-broker in the
region and a party to internal stability of important regional
states. Unable to confront the only regional nuclear power and
the military of its principal sponsor providing strategic cover in
Iraq, Israel's foes in the vicinity must acknowledge that they need
to deal with Israel in new ways and be ready to offer
concessions if need be.
A significant threat, albeit a remote one, emanates from a
possible strategic accommodation between Iran and Saudi
Arabia regarding Iraq and the future of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries. But such a scenario seems less
and less likely. The present leadership of Saudi Arabia is
battling with a series of high-impact acts of violence in areas key
to oil production. Furthermore, a carefully crafted ambiguity
surrounds Saudi Arabia's role in America's wider regional
ambitions, which when combined with recent signaling from the
US and the United Kingdom, is causing great alarm in Riyadh.
Conclusion
The spate of high profile bombings in Iraq, including the one that
killed the UN representative for Iraq and another that killed
Ayatollah Baqir Hakim, head of the Iran-backed SCIRI militia,
must now be viewed in the light of this new information.
A UN presence in Iraq would have led to an early rehabilitation of
a federal Iraqi state, something that would have led to the
disarming of the Kurdish militias, thereby denying a major
source of influence to Israel in the region. By ramping up armed
proxies devoted to a crypto-secessionist struggle and leaking its
support for them, Israel has delivered a masterstroke of
strategic foresight. It clearly knows that the creation of a Kurdish
republic in Iraq, let alone a greater Kurdistan, is not viable for
several reasons.
Some of the crucial factors include the religious and ethnic
diversity of Iraqi Kurds themselves (though mutually intelligible,
Iraqi Kurds speak two different languages and are religiously
quite mixed), lack of access to natural resources, recent history
of bloody strife within the Kurdish parties, and their autonomy
posing an existential threat to the Turkish state.
Nevertheless, by its plausibly deniable support for Kurdish
militias, Israel has declared to the regional power centers that it
is an indispensable power broker in the future stability of the
greater Middle East. Israel can manage its alliance with Turkey
as the Turks are mainly concerned with degrading the PKK and
denying it a safe haven in northern Iraq. Iran is gearing for a
proxy war with Israel in Iraq, but with the presence of US forces
has to work in a far stricter environment than it had in southern
Lebanon. Of all the three, Syria seems to be in the worst
position, with the least economic and political clout and unable
to turn up the heat in Lebanon without Iran's help; an Iran that is
engaged on multiple fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, apart from
its nuclear woes. The road to Iraq's future therefore, and by
extension that of the "New Middle East", now has a detour
through Tel Aviv.
Sadi Baig is a freelance political analyst.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.