A Tenuous Peace in the Persian Gulf
OREN, STEPHEN
IRAQ, IRAN AND THE KURDS A Tenuous Peace in the Persian Gulf BY STEPHEN OREN After 17 years of tension, the agreement signed last March 6 between Iraq and Iran-resolving their territorial...
...Then, too, Baghdad's support for extremist Palestinian groups was causing tension with Cairo, a situation Teheran exploited after the Yom Kippur War through offers of economic assistance...
...As the largest Persian Gulf state, it has long wished to achieve dominance in the area...
...A new Arab-Israeli war could have erupted at any moment, and, as in 1973, Damascus would have needed Iraqi help...
...and British aid was enabling Sultan Qabus of Oman to push the guerrillas back to the South Yemeni border...
...One manifestation of Iraq's position was its insistence on upholding the 1937 agreement granting Baghdad exclusive control of 'the Shatt el Arab, the confluence of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers that forms the border between Iran and Iraq...
...There were rumors of Israeli backing, but such assistance would have had to pass through Iran, and geography, in any event, would have kept it to a quite small scale...
...After all, Barzani began his international career as the leader of an autonomous Soviet-supported Iranian Kurdish state...
...There was a spate of executions and imprisonments of "terrorists" recently, and the last possibility of legal opposition was destroyed not long ago with the establishment of a one-party state...
...The USSR has really been very cautious...
...The reason, simply put, is that Iraqi policy was not working...
...would not be allowed to place missile sites in Iran, Moscow-Teheran relations have steadily improved...
...Indeed, during the final few months before March 6, the Egyptians were themselves working with the Kurds...
...Though land reform and other social changes of the past decade, and the repressive measures of savak, the Iranian secret police, have weakened the dissidents, the Shah remained apprehensive...
...Hence, the two neighbors have a common long-term interest in preserving opec unity and a more immediate interest in halting their expensive arms race...
...Iranian, U.S...
...Except in the period 1959-63, the USSR preferred Egypt as its principal Middle East client...
...Yet even if that report had been true (and the closed Syrian-Iraqi border did not support the story), Syria was hardly about to involve itself in a major confrontation with Iraq...
...Why...
...Oil-rich lands like Oman and some of the constituent states of the United Arab Emirates are already experiencing financial difficulties...
...For the moment, therefore, the ailing al-Bakr and Iraq's de facto ruler, Saddam Hussein, have decided to accept the world...
...At one point relations between Iran and Afghanistan showed signs of deteriorating because of Kabul's encouragement of Baluchi nationalism in both Pakistan and Iran...
...Yet under the new pact, Baghdad has given up all this and indicated its willingness to live in a Persan Gulf dominated by Iran...
...Iran, with three times Iraq's population and oil revenues, has confirmed its military superiority in over a decade of arms races...
...If the March agreement thus appears to benefit Iran and Iraq equally, at another level Iran has been victorious...
...Yet Umn al-Qasr appears to have few resemblances to a Soviet base (the real center of the Soviet Navy in the area is Berbera in Somalia), and the Iraqi Communists are very junior partners in the regime...
...Since Iran itself contains about 2 million Kurds, 6 per cent of its population, the Shah never wanted an independent Kurdish nation in Iraqi Kurdistan...
...Their only hope for reviving the Kurdish issue and forming a Kurdish entity (aside from the always-present possibility that the Iraqi-Iranian agreement will break down) is a Greek-Turkish war over Cyprus in which Barzani could try to organize the Turkish Kurds...
...Significantly, despite its "radicalism," Iraq increased production during the embargo...
...For 17 years there was tension...
...Arab and Baluchi separatists in Iran have similarly received modest Iraqi support...
...Stephen Oren teaches government at New York University and at Baruch College of the City University...
...In particular, Iraq aligned itself with the guerrillas in Oman and their main supporter, South Yemen...
...The oil price hike and the nationalization of oil company holdings by the producer states have stimulated increased production and exploration, along with conservation measures, among the consumer nations...
...Ever since the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the Shah has feared that Baghdad's "military Socialist" system might prove an attractive model for the Iranian opposition, and that Iraq might become a base for their operations...
...In reality, whatever the statements Prime Minister Indira Gandhi may make about her country's great power status, particularly now that it has exploded a nuclear device, India's internal problems leave no room for external ventures much beyond low-level support for Pakistan's National Awami party...
...Nor can the two men be expected to always act with the moderation they showed in reaching the March 6 settlement...
...Throughout their 1961-70 revolt and the 1970-74 cease-fire, the Kurds could be supported simply with light arms (up to the machine gun level...
...Where a year ago the problem seemed to be scarcity, today men talk of glut...
...Now, in return for Teheran's abandonment of the Kurds and other anti-Ba'ath elements in Iraq, Baghdad has agreed to halt its support of anti-Shah forces...
...In addition, while Iraq called for no compromise with Israel, Moscow was urging Palestinian leaders to accept a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...
...One may now legitimately wonder, for how many years will there be calm...
...When Moscow received Palestinian leaders, the delegation was headed by the Syrian-Egyptian-backed Yasir Arafat, rather than Iraq's favorites, George Habash and Achmad Jibrail...
...On Iraq's "Arab front," conditions were similarly depressing...
...The Syrian government, controlled by a faction of the Ba'ath (Arab Socialist Resurrection party) that dislikes the Ba'athist group ruling Iraq, was said to be aiding the Kurds...
...The Arab sheikdoms of the Gulf (Kuwait, Bahrein, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) gave no indication of falling, despite Iraq's efforts...
...Politically, the Iraqis were doing little better...
...But once the fighting resumed in March 1974, the Iraqi Army began making use of heavy Soviet and British weapons to reconquer areas of the north the Kurds had held since the 1960s...
...Nor did any other patron exist who was able or willing to give Barzani's insurgents the support they required...
...Finally, New Delhi has turned to Iran and the Arab sheikdoms for financial backing, something it has received in very limited amounts in return for its formal promise not to disturb Pakistani territory...
...Analysts have focused primarily on the most obvious result of this settlement, the dooming of the Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq...
...It may not be a coincidence either that Algeria, another oil state with a large population, acted as go-between for Iraq and Iran...
...None of this, however, helped the Iraqis get substantial Soviet help...
...Iranian support of Sheik Mustafa Barzani and the 1.5 million Kurds who make up 17 per cent of Iraq's population was always a means, not an end...
...His success in Iraq could have awakened nationalist feelings among Iran's Kurds, as well as among the other non-Persian ethnic minorities-the Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis-who constitute about one-third of the country's inhabitants...
...This will free that land-locked state from dependence on either Pakistan or the USSR...
...Both Iran and Iraq rely on income from oil...
...As for Indo-Iraq cooperation, Indian Air Force pilots no doubt flew missions for the Iraqi Air Force against the Kurds, but Indian equipment delivered to Baghdad in return for oil tended to be shoddy and arrive late...
...A third was Iraq's sympathy for efforts to overthrow the governments of other wealthy Persian Gulf Arab states...
...Second was its claim to oil-rich Kuwait, leading to minor clashes in 1960 and 1973...
...Besides, Syria has a small (2 per cent) but important (since it sits on the country's limited oil reserves) Kurdish minority of its own that it has been trying to Arabize...
...Not only is Oman important as an oil producer, but it holds the southern side-with Iran on the northern side-of the narrow Straits of Hormuz, through which oil tankers from the Persian Gulf must pass...
...Unlike Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, they have relatively large populations and therefore cannot afford to cut back output to maintain the $10.50-a-barrel price...
...Whatever Iraq's legal rights in the Shatt, it could not stop the Iranian Navy from escorting Iranian ships up the waterway...
...The Iraqi cities of Karbala and An-Najaf, holy places in the Shia faith that 95 per cent of Iran professes, have traditionally been refuges for anti-government Iranians...
...Iran's trade with the USSR has been expanding, especially the swapping of Iranian natural gas for Soviet help with industrial development-and the Shah recently stated that he is buying at least modest amounts of Soviet military equipment...
...Turkey, encouraged by growing Iraqi aid (e.g., an oil pipeline to spur development of the Iskanderoun port) and apprehensive about its own 2 million Kurds, also 6 per cent of the population, sealed off its border with Iraqi Kurdistan...
...In any case, Iran's interests, as opposed to those of an independent Kurdistan, are well served by the accord...
...Most have as their takeoff point the existence of facilities for Soviet ships in the Iraqi port of Umn al-Qasr, and the presence of Communists in Ahmand Hasan al-Bakr's Baghdad government...
...Even during the winter, when snow makes ground fighting in Iraqi Kurdistan impossible, the Kurds needed an increasing degree of Iranian help (Hawk antiaircraft missiles, artillery support from Iranian units across the border), and the arrival of spring would have brought further requests...
...Many lurid scenarios have been written about Soviet-Iraqi cooperation...
...In effect, the entire Persian Gulf, from the Shatt to the Straits of Hormuz, had already become, by virtue of Iranian air- and sea-power, an Iranian lake...
...IRAQ, IRAN AND THE KURDS A Tenuous Peace in the Persian Gulf BY STEPHEN OREN After 17 years of tension, the agreement signed last March 6 between Iraq and Iran-resolving their territorial disputes and ending their subversion against each other-has dramatically transformed the Persian Gulf...
...The Iraqis opposed this, arguing that the Gulf was an Arab lake (they call it the Arab Gulf) and that Iraq, as the largest Arab state on it, should be the region's leading power...
...To some extent, Pakistan's hostile neighbors, Afghanistan and India, fit the role (with the USSR acting as superpower patron), since the Shah regarded Pakistan's integrity as vital to Iranian dominance in the Persian Gulf...
...President Anwar el-Sadat's pro-Western attitude after the Yom Kippur War shook the Soviets, but toward Damascus, not Baghdad...
...It would be well to remember, though, that neither the Shah nor Hussein is immortal...
...Faced with these circumstances, Iraq sought allies against Iran outside the Arab world...
...In fact, the Baghdad-Teheran concord reflects a shared concern about the future of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec), and is related not only to the Kurds but to several webs of international politics extending from Ankara to New Delhi...
...To be sure, the Shah still distrusts the Kremlin, and one cause of Iranian concern about Afghanistan, India, Iraq, and South Yemen is their ties to the USSR...
...Moreover, the struggle had become an expensive proposition for Iran...
...The Kurdish refugees who have recently arrived in Iran (about 250,000) and the bitter-enders still holed up in Iraqi Kurdistan are well aware that, at least for the time being, the game is over for them...
...The lack of "revolutionary" success in the Persian Gulf, together with the common Iranian and Iraqi interest in staying united under opec as it tries to maintain oil revenues, have brought calm to the once stormy region-except, of course, for the few Kurds still holding out in the north of Iraq and the Dhofar guerrillas in the south of Oman...
...But while Afghani-Pakistani tensions continue, as Islamabad's outlawing of the pro-Afghan National Awami party shows, Iranian-Afghani ties were solidified through substantial Iranian aid and the promise that Afghanistan could use Iran's ports on the Persian Gulf once they are developed...
...Since 1962, when the Shah promised that the U.S...
...Pipelines are idle not for political reasons but because no one will buy what is pumped through them...
...For opec's star is fading...
...Actually, one of the holds that Barzani had on the Shah as long as Iranian-Iraqi hostility persisted was the Kurdish threat to accept limited autonomy in Iraq and form an Arab-Kurdish front against Teheran...
Vol. 58 • April 1975 • No. 9
