http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\06\09\story_9-6-2010_pg3_5
Wednesday, June 09, 2010 VIEW: Covert actions -Ralph Shaw The military aid that Iran provided the Kurds was precisely rationed out to deny the Kurds the freedom of action that might lead to victory. At least on one occasion, the US officials directly intervened to scupper a promising Kurd offensive that looked like it might succeed Covert operations are a recognised instrument of statecraft. Governments seeking to protect their perceived vital interests in other countries engage in a wide range of covert and overt activities, such as diplomacy, propaganda, manipulating elections, economic sanctions or support, and paramilitary operations. Direct military action is the last resort if a vital interest is at stake and all else fails. Covert actions and traditional clandestine activities such as espionage are amongst the murkier tools of foreign policy that attempt to achieve those objectives which cannot be achieved by regular diplomacy. However, covert actions are distinct from clandestine activities in that they are designed to keep the identity of the sponsoring governments a secret or at least to give the sponsors plausible deniability. The emphasis in clandestine activities, on the other hand, is on hiding the project itself rather than hiding the identity of the project sponsors. Pakistan has been under a relentless paramilitary covert action campaign for the last three years at least. It is ironic that instead of recognising the ongoing mayhem for what it is - a paramilitary covert action campaign against the nation of Pakistan - we are focused on events, incidents, and the manifest players. Deniability being the cardinal rule of covert activity, no foreign government is going to accept responsibility for creating chaos in Pakistan, but the identity of the culprits can be guessed at by analysing the suspect governments' national security policies and ascertaining their political friendships and putative enmities in the region. On another level, it is a pathetic comment on the state of our own intelligence agencies that so far have thoroughly failed to identify and expose the project sponsors. The US is one of the few countries in the world whose intelligence agencies' covert actions came under congressional scrutiny and eventual censure. The Senate and House special committees constituted to investigate spying activities uncovered scores of CIA covert actions in Third World countries. One such covert project was the secret support given to the Iraqi Kurds between 1972 and 1975 by the CIA and Iran, its ally at the time, to conduct an insurgency against the central government in Iraq. The case of the Iraqi Kurds is an interesting study in the darker aspects of US foreign policy. Like many other colonial creations, Iraq is a country of disparate ethnic groups "thrown together for the most part by the whims of imperial administrators". The Shia Basra in the south, Sunni Baghdad in the centre, and Kurd Mosul in the north were arbitrarily melded into one nation by the British in 1921. The religious and ethnic rivalries that were spawned as a result of this forced union ensured the country would be kept a weak state throughout its recent history. Not only were Kurd aspirations of forming an independent country snubbed, they were also discriminated against and oppressed by successive Iraqi regimes. Oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan was cheated out of its fair share of oil revenues and power in the central government, rendering Kurds amenable to suggestions of armed struggle. Between 1972 and 1975, the US and Iran secretly gave Iraqi Kurds $ 16 million and large quantities of weapons to conduct an armed struggle for an autonomous state. However, the Machiavellian twist in the US and Iranian strategy was that neither country wanted to see their protégés succeed. Instead of an all out victory for the Kurds or a total collapse of the Iraqi government, the sponsors simply wanted the hostilities to continue so as to achieve their own strategic goals. According to the Pike committee that conducted the investigation, the principals "hoped that our clients would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's (Iran's) neighbouring country. The policy was not imparted to our clients who were simply encouraged to keep on fighting." The military aid that Iran provided the Kurds was precisely rationed out to deny the Kurds the freedom of action that might lead to victory. At least on one occasion, the US officials directly intervened to scupper a promising Kurd offensive that looked like it might succeed. In spite of such hindrances, some 45,000 Kurdish rebels, with help from the Iranian military, were able to keep 80 percent of Iraq's military occupied in a fruitless struggle that drained the country's resources. The final tangible objective of the entire exercise was to bring Iraq to the negotiating table and extract a more favourable border deal out of Baghdad. The Sadabad Pact of 1937 had given Iraq a controlling position on the Shatt Al-Arab River. Additionally, the US hoped to demonstrate to other oil-rich countries in the region that being a Soviet client, like Iraq, was an unprofitable endeavour. Putting a damper on Iraq's anti-Israeli rhetoric was yet another minor goal. The Kurds had no idea that they were being used as pawns in a larger scheme and that they would be abandoned as soon as their sponsor's objectives were achieved. The Algiers Agreement was signed in March 1975, dividing the waterway in a more equitable manner and within eight hours all aid to the Kurds was cut off. The Iranian border was closed and the Kurds were bluntly told to come to a settlement with the Iraqi government on whatever terms they could get from the regime. Besides the casualties of war, the US and Iranian betrayal created 200,000 refugees to whom the US administration brazenly refused to extend even humanitarian aid. In retribution, the Iraqi government forced 250,000 Kurds to move to central and southern Iraq while many Arabs were moved to Kurdish areas to pacify the region. The Pike report was never released officially. The evidence it contained was so damning that the House of Representatives voted not to release the document. It was only through the efforts of a CBS correspondent, Daniel Schorr, that the contents of the report became public knowledge on February 16, 1976. Schorr was fired from CBS for his pluck. Ralph Shaw is the pen name of a freelance writer, who lives and works in Pakistan. He can be reached at ralpsha...@gmail.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
