Communist party in 1963 and 1968) and clearing the bourgeoisie to wage a genocidal war on the Kurdish people. way for the Iraqi This twist of history raises three important issues. First, the national question in the Arab East is extremely complicated. Its revolutionary solution requires not only a relentless battle against imperialism and Zionism, but also a concomitant and interwoven struggle against Arab nationalism. How is this reflected in the case of the Kurdish struggle in Iraq? Kurdistan is a mountainous region of western Asia that has been the home of the Kurdish people -- one of the oldest peoples of the region -- for more than 5,000 years. After the first world war, Kurdistan (like the entire Arab East) was divided by imperialism. The Kurdish population was parcelled out among Turkey (with a Kurdish population at the time of 2 million), Iran (2 million), Iraq (1 million), and Syria (1.5 million). The question of national independence for this fragmented and subjugated people was thus posed as a democratic task of the Kurdish revolution. For more than half a century, divided Kurdistan has been the scene of continual armed uprisings, generally led by tribal, feudal, or urban bourgeois leaderships. In Turkey and Iran the rapid and early centralization of the state structures led to brutal massacres of the Kurdish freedom fighters and to a temporary stamping out of the organized Kurdish liberation movement. The establishment in 1946 of the short-lived Mahabad Republic in Iranian Kurdistan was followed by one 32
La history of betrayal of the most infamous of these state-engineered slaughters. In Iraq the situation was different. The relatively large size of the Kurdish population (which made up 25 percent of the total Iraqi population), the high degree of Kurdish organization, the extremely mountainous terrain in Iraqi Kurdistan, and the extended period of general political instability led the various Iraqi regimes to an impasse in their repeated attempts to liqvidate the Kurdish revolution. The complexity of the national question in this part of the Arab East in a result of the fact that fragmented Kurdistan is partially enmeshed within another artificial imperialist creation: the Iraqi state itself. Thus, as the class struggle of the Arab part of the Iraqi population moved in the direction of fighting for the reunification of the Arab world as against its dividers -- imperialism and Zionism -- the Kurdish national liberation movement was objectively fighting for secession from the Iraqi state. But under no circumstances could the Iraqi bourgeoisie afford to lose the rich oil wells and agricultural resources of Kurdistan. The question for the Iraqi bourgeoisie thus became: How to derail the class struggle in Iraq and simultaneously galvanize the Iraqi Arab masses into opposing the forces of the Kurdish revolution, thus dealing blows against the Kurdish struggle and at the same time weakening the struggle of the Iraqi masses, who had a powerful potential ally in the Kurdish movement? The answer of the Iragi bourgeoisie was to try to mobilize the Iraqi masses behind the ideology of Arab nationalism (in its Baathist form) -- an ideology that appears to the Arab masses as having been derived from their progressive drive toward unification. To undermine the projects of the Iraqi bourgeoisie in this regard, Arab revolutionaries are faced with the task of pointing out that it is exactly the upholders of these bourgeois forms of consciousness and action who have proven themselves incapable of uniting the Arab world and effectively fighting Zionism and imperialism. The ideological guns of the Arab bourgeoisie are being turned against the only force in Iraq that can not only achieve but also go beyond the democratic tasks confronting the Arab and Kurdish peoples: the unity of the Arab and Kurdish workers and peasants. But the historic need for this unity can be realized only on the basis of an uncompromising battle against the oppression of the Kurdish people and the ideology that seeks to justify
that oppression, Arab nationalism. It is the duty of Arab revolutionaries to do this by supporting in both words and action the right of the Kurdish nation to self-determination, including the right of secession from the Iraqi state. For Arab revolutionaries this is a means both of opposing the designs of the Arab bourgeoisie and of helping to forge links with Kurdish revolutionaries by undermining the basis of the hegemony of the Kurdish bourgeois and feudal leaders over the Kurdish masses. The second important issue raised by the current civil war in Iraq is precisely the failure of the traditional leaderships of the Communist movement in the Arab East to understand these interwoven processes. The ICP was founded in 1934. Unlike its counterparts in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria (including Palestine), it has played a major role in political life ever since the 1940s. It survived the severe strains of an underground existence under the Hashemite monarchy that had been installed in Irag by British imperialism in the 1930s. After the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of an Iraqi republic in 1958, the ICP grew into a mass party with decisive influence among the workers, peasants, and students, especially in Kurdistan, where for a time it managed to replace the Kurdish Democratic party as the major pole of attraction for Kurdish militants. But later, when it supported the regime against the Kurdish uprising in 1961, it lost that position and now has even gone so far as to initiate what promises to be the most barbaric war ever waged against the Kurdish people. In 1967 the ICP split into a reformist, pro-Moscow wing (called the Central Committee faction) and a revolutionaryminded current (the Central Command faction). But the latter group was incapable of breaking decisively with its Stalinist past, and it thus fell victim to spontanéism and Maoism. The Central Committee faction entered the Baathist government of "national unity, "while the Central Command proceeded to tailend the bourgeois leadership of the Kurdish movement. The history of these developments is dealt with in detail in the article below. Here it is sufficient to stress that the practical capitulation to the Iraqi or Kurdish bourgeoisie was of course accompanied by theoretical apologia. In the case of a historically important party like the ICP this apologia exerts great pressure on the consciousness of Kurdish and Iraqi revthe fight to build a revolutionary-communist leadership in the Arab world. Finally, the third issue raised by the new civil war derives from the first two. The Barzani land-owning clique owes its hegemony over the Kurdish movement largely to the policies followed by the ICP. This is amply demonstrated in the article below. The successive defeats of the Kurdish uprisings are related to the character of this leadership, which because of its class interests cannot afford to link up with the forces of the Arab revolution, whose participation is essential for the liberation of Kurdistan. Barzani's recent statements calling for American and Israeli military aid and promising to grant American oil companies concessions in a future independent Kurdistan are clear proofs of this.
bellion in Kurdistan is once again doomed to failure. At best, it will result in a new stand-off and new compromises that will set the stage for the next outbreak of fighting. The Arab and Kurdish masses will thus pay in blood for the defaults of their respective leaderships.
The article below detailing the attitude of the Iraqi Communist party to the Kurdish movement was originally serialized in the October-November and December 1973 issues of el-
Mounadil (The Militant), organ of the Revolutionary Communist Group, Arab sympathizing organization of the Fourth International based in Lebanon. The version below is slightly abridged, translated from the Arabic.
INPRECOR * * In August 1945, two years after the emergence of an armed movement in Iragi Kurdistan (in the Barazan region) under the leadership of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi government, supported by the British air force stationed in Kirkuk and el-Habaniya, launched an all-out assault on the centers of the Kurdish revolution. Hundreds of villages and many small cities were destroyed. A blockade was clamped on much of Kurdistan. Under the impact of this barbaric assault and the retreat of large numbers of Kurdish "leaders" -- including a section of leaders who were landowners and agas, who actively went over to the central government -- the Kurdish revolutionaries were forced to withdraw to the Iranian part of Kurdistan and to concentrate themselves in areas in which Soviet armies were still stationed. In this way the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan (the Mahabad Republic) was created on January 22, 1946. But after the Soviet armies withdrew in compliance with the terms of the Potsdam agreements, Persian armies moved in and crushed the young and isolated republic on December 15, 1946. With the defeat of the Barzani uprising, the Kurdish revolution came to the end of a long stage of its development -- a stage that had been marked by the hegemony of the propertyowning classes within the Kurdish liberation movement. This leadership had failed to work out a revolutionary national program and had made use of the Kurdish mass movement to further its own class interests. Constant tribal feuds and struggles were a continual drain on the energies of the movement and frequently allowed the Baghdad regime to isolate revolutionary peasant uprisings in Kurdistan and to keep them restricted to limited and local contexts. This was especially important in that the countryside was the main starting point of revolutionary uprisings during this period of the Kurdish revolution. Tribal and family relations played a decisive role in directing the development of the movemeni, and this led to the deepening of the hegemony of the existing leaderships, which were in turn supported by religious circles and the clergy. While the defeat of the Barzani uprising marked the end of one phase of the Kurdish revolution, it also opened up new opportunities during the nearly sixteen-year period of relative quiet that prevailed in Iraqi Kurdistan. If was during this transitional period that the ob¡ective conditions crystalized and the cadres were formed that were later to lead the next Kurdish uprising, which broke out in the autumn of 1961. Crisis of leadership After Kurdistan was divided, the ruling classes of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, with the assistance of Anglo-French imperialism, tried to link the various parts of Kurdistan economically and politically to their respective state structures.
This process of integration took various forms, from air attacks to national assimilation (Turkization, Persianization, Arabization). The principal objective of the process was to integrate the Kurdistan economy and link it to the world market in order to better organize imperialist plunder of the resources and labor of the area.
33
KURDS In Iragi Kurdistan British imperialism paid special attention to the integration process, for important oil deposits are located in Kurdistan (in Kirkuk, Khanaqain, and Ain Zalah). The most important Kurdish cities were linked to the central and southern parts of Iraq by a whole network of roads and rail lines. A subsection of this network was devoted to linking the Kurdish countryside, where the fields for tobacco, wheat, and fruit and the larger portion of animal resources were located, to the commercial centers. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Kurdish peasants were deprived of their small agricultural holdings, which resulted in the strengthening of the hegemony of the Kurdish tribal sheiks and agas. This process was aimed at winning a social and political base for the Baghdad regime that would guarantee continuous organized plunder of the Kurdish countryside. These important changes in the mode of production led to violent shakeups in Kurdish society. The traditional socioeconomic formations were undermined and a new class structure began to emerge, leading to the intensification of contradictions between the hundreds of thousands of poor and impoverished peasantry and proletariat on the one hand and a handful of feudalists, property owners, and large merchants on the other, the latter side naturally being supported by the bureaucratic bourgeois state. The processes of combined and uneven development were at work in Kurdistan, for large and modern industrial concerns employing tens of thousands of workers in the oil fields of Baba Kurkur, Jambur, and elWand and in related services and communications sectors grew up side by side with a traditional, and craft economy. One agricultural field might be using the ancient wooden plough, while a neighboring field would be using modern tractors and other agricultural innovations. Probably the single most important result of these structural changes was widespread rural-urban immigration. Kurdish cities doubled in size within ten years. The towns had already begun to play an important role in the national and class struggles during the 1930s. The September 6, 1930, uprising in Sulaymaniyah is an illustration. In the mid- 1930s an urban leadership based on political and intellectual groupings among the students, craftsmen, and urban proletariat began to appear side by side with the tribal and religious leaderships. But these groups did not begin to have real effects on the Kurdish revolutionary movement until the early 1940s. This was clearly reflected in the formation on August 16, 1946, of the Kurdish Democratic party, which began to become an alternative pole of attraction. Alongside the feudal-bourgeois parties, small grouplets taking the form of cultural and social organizations began to emerge among the intellectuals. The first new layer of revolutionary leaders came out of this milieu. Furthermore, the general radicalization that swept Iraq in the mid-1930s, especially after the Bakr Sidqi coup of 1936, helped deepen the crisis of revolutionary leadership in Kurdistan. The Iraqi Communist party (ICP) was founded in 1934. A large number of Kurdish militants soon joined its ranks and subsequently played an important role in building the party. Kurdish youth in the cities were generally attracted to the ICP, and the strongest Communist organizations in the early 1940s were to be found in Arbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Rawanduz, all Kurdish cities. But the positions taken by the ICP on the Kurdish national question disillusioned large sectors of the Kurdish masses who had seen the CP as the one representative capable of fighting against the double (national and class) oppression of the Kurds. 34
Black Sea SOVIET UNION TURKEY SYRIA Kirkuke Baghdade ARAN IRAQ JORDAN KUWAIT Areas where Kurds live From the first national congress (1945) to the second party conference (1956) The first national congress of the ICP, held in 1945, consolidated the party's position on the Kurdish question. From that point on, all the positions of the ICP remained within the framework defined by the so-called National Charter, which had been drawn up by Yusuf Salman (Fahd). The theoretical innovations that were later occasionally adopted remained generally faithful to the original charter. The central feature of this charter was. its denial of the existence of the Kurdish nation on the grounds that the Kurds failed to fulfill Stalin's definition of nationhood. This conception argues that the artificial division of Kurdistan has differentiated the various parts of Kurdistan socially and economically. In this sense, the artificial division has changed "the nature of the development of the Kurdish question, creating a qualitatively new situation. ... Before the division, and especially immediately after World War I, the Kurdish national liberation movement put forward the demand for a Kurdish state including the whole of Kurdistan. " (From The Kurdish National Question in Iraq, by Majid Abdel Rudha, a member of the Central Committe of the ICP). However, with the division of Kurdistan by imperialism "it is no longer possible to put forward the slogan for a Kurdish state as a direct and practical proposition that can be achieved for all of Kurdistan or even for part of it." But in reality, the artificial division of the Kurdish nation by Anglo-French imperialism in no way negates its existence. On the contrary, it spurs the Kurdish masses on and elevates national and class consciousness, as was reflected in the way that the Kurds -- especially the peasantry -- resisted the imperialist operation by force. Kurdistan was the scene of a continual series of revolutionary mass uprisings beginning at the start of the twentieth century that were essentially touched off by this heightened national and class consciousness. The imperialists and their agents have been able to divide up many nations and consolidate the division, but in Kurdistan the division was not completed. This is illustrated by the continued social and economic intercommunication among the various parts of Kurdistan and by the fact that the Arab, Turkish, and Persian bourgeoisies have not been able to prevent Kurdish herdsmen and agriculturalists from crossing state
borders constantly. There is no doubt that the heroic stand of the Kurdish people in face of the division is rooted in the deep common interests that they share. Moreover, the geographical terrain of Kurdistan provides an obstacle to the fragmenting dynamic initiated by imperialism. The ICP views Kurdistan as booty that has already been divided among thieves, and it therefore demands that the Kurds cease asserting the unity of Kurdistan as expressed in their demand for a unified Kurdish state. All this because of a "qualitatively new situation" that allegedly "over the years has created different ties (economic, political, and social) among the Kurdish people in each of the different parts of Kurdistan and the corresponding nations living in those parts. " (Majid Abdel Rudha.) There is no denying such economic and social fies. But they are extremely weak, and the ruling classes are not strong enough to complete their task of assimilating "their" parts of Kurdistan to the economies of their countries. Furthermore, the development of the sorts of ties that the ICP is talking about in no way explains the propositions of these "communists." Since when have revolutionary Marxists spoken of the political, economic, and social relations that develop between oppressor and oppressed nations as somehow doing away with the national rights of the oppressed as expressed in their right to self-determination? Tsarist Russia was able to establish such relations between itself and all the nations suffering under the yoke of its imperialist domination for four long centuries. But the Bolshevik party did not put forward these "various ties" as an excuse to justify forced annexation. In fact, the Bolsheviks adopted the slogan of self-determination up to and including the right of total secession for all the nations suffering under the dead weight of tsarism. Under capitalism and the capitalist world market, the existence of such relations has become inevitable. And exactly to the extent that they will inevitably emerge today these relations must not become an excuse to deny the right of all nations to self-determination. All that the ruling bourgeoisie in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria have been able to do so far is rob and plunder Kurdistan. Political relations have meant militarization of Kurdistan; economic relations have meant annihilation of hundreds of villages and small cities and the burning of the fields of poor peasants; social relations have brought about total illiteracy and the mass extermination of people combined with maiming and mutilation of hundreds of children, old men, and women. The reality of the Stalinist position is that it calls for assimilation of the Kurds to the ruling classes! The National Charter and the Kurdish question "We struggle for true equality in rights for the Kurdish national minority and the other minorities like the Turkumans, Armans, and Yazidiyyeen." (Point 10 of the National Charter of the Iraqi Communist party, 1945.) Is the ICP really for the equality of rights of all national minorities? In the November 1945 issue of the ICP's central clandestine newspaper, el-Qa'ida, we find these rights explained in an extremely confusing and obscure way: "What is our position on the question of Kurdish national rights? We struggle for the freedom of everyone, for the freedom of organization, of democratic life, and for a democratic regime and state apparatus. We struggle to extend education
THIETA for everyone, for complete equality between all Iraqis. In short, we are struggling for the happiness (sic) of the Kurds. The working masses have the necessary organization that allows them to express their preference as to whether to remain or to separate on the basis of the interests of the Kurdish people and the working masses. ... But the slogan of the separation of the Kurds from the Iraqi state is completely wrong. The Kurdish masses cannot benefit from it at all. " (Emphasis added.) If the right of the Kurds to secede from the Iraqi bourgeois state is considered wrong and reactionary, ail the talk of true equality in rights and freedom for all and of the "necessary organizations" that supposedly would enable the Kurdish people to express themselves becomes absolutely meaningless. Revolutionary Marxists do not aspire to secession, but neither do they stand on the side of the bourgeois chauvinists who reject the right of self-determination to a people, including the concomitant right to secede. As el-Qa'ida was developing the ICP's opportunist positions, the columns of smoke and fire were still rising out of the ruins of hundreds of Kurdish villages and small cities in the Barazan and Mazoori Bala areas. And only a few months later, Kurdish, Arab, and Turkuman workers were waging a revolutionary struggle against the oil companies in Kirkuk, a struggle that culminated in the strike of the workers of the Iraq Petroleum Corporation and that finally ended with the infamous massacre of workers at Kawarbaghi. It was in Kawarbaghi that the Arab, Kurdish, and Turkuman workers joined hands to oppose the bourgeois repressive apparatus. That is true unity. It takes place on the field of revolutionary struggle and not under the aegis of the "Iraqi state." The tragic irony of the ICP's positions is that they were especially consolidated during the years 1949-1951, when a majority of the ICP Central Committee members were Kurds! The Bassim program In 1953 Baha el-Din Nuri, secretary of the ICP, presented a draft program that was later referred to as the Bassim program. In it Nuri adopted a correct Marxist-Leninist position on the Kurdish question, as is shown by the program's "recognition of the Kurdish people's right to self-determination, including the right to secession. " This program was soon defeated within the ICP. But its brief existence did help a number of Communist organizations in Kurdistan to flourish. During the second conference of the ICP, held in 1956, the old Stalinist attitude toward the Kurdish question was affirmed once again. A new slogan was adopted: "self-government for Iraqi Kurdistan within the Iraqi state. " But even this was never seriously implemented in the party's day-to-day political practice or in its subsequent political positions. In reality, all progaganda and agitational work was confined to the previous mistaken conceptions on the national question as codified in point number 10 of the National Charter. This total retreat from the Bassim program had serious repercussions for the organizations of Kurdish communists, which were no longer able to make tangible progress whether on the internal organizational or the mass levels. But the July 14, 1958, coup-revolution opened up a new situation.
35
KURDS July 14,1958 to July 17,1903: confusion and treachery The two years prior to July 1958 were years of total confusion among the ranks of Kurdish Communists. The crisis of the CP deepened as its isolation from the masses intensified. This general situation led a number of Communist formations to enter the KDP during the mid-1950s. In addition, a large number of the best Kurdish militants left revolutionary politics disillusioned. All the CP had left in Kurdistan was a grouping of militants scattered among a number of Kurdish cities. The phenomenal mass upsurge that followed the establishment of the republic in July 1958 enabled the CP to regain some of its former popularity and to reestablish significant bases in Kurdistan. The most prominent leaders of the party, many of them of Kurdish origin, began tours of Kurdistan. This had a big effect in strengthening the party's position in these
These shifts and changes were accelerated by the sharpness of the class struggle, which led an important number of friends, supporters, and members of the KDP to line up with the property-owning classes. The change in the balance of forces led to losses for the KDP, most of these losses being picked up by the CP. In the winter of 1959 thousands of poor peasants and rural proletarians under the leadership of Communist militants crushed an uprising led by the feudalists Rashid Lolan and Salim Agha in the Qala'at Durzah region. This revolutionary stand weakened the influence of the KDP and opened fresh opportunities for the CP. But this development did not last long. The CP's support to the Bonapartist regime, which was implementing anti-Kurdish policies, shifted the dynamic back toward the KDP. Under the impact of the CP's alliance with Qassim's bourgeois regime, the masses once again turned their backs on the Communist party, and so did hundreds of Communist militants who had failed in their attempts to alter the party's opportunist line. These elements began to fight to defend the gains that had been made during Iraq's "red winter" of 1958-59. It was exactly during this period that the KDP was able to regain its previous position, as it resolutely stood against all the regime's attempts to deprive the Kurdish masses of their democratic and social achievements.
The third article of the provisional constitution of Iraq, issued only two weeks after the July 14 coup, states: "The Arabs and Kurds are partners in this land. " The CP welcomed this article and considered it sufficient. But the KDP considered it a first step that had to be followed by tangible policies that would go toward actually implementing self-government for the Kurdish people. During the mass upsurge of the winter of 1958-59, the bourgeois regime tried to play up to the
Kurdish masses, but after the rise of the power of the reactionary forces in the summer of 1959, it began to try to restrict all the national and social gains that had been won. While the Bonapartist regime had some success in strangling the revolutionary movement in the southern and central parts of Iraq, in Kurdistan it met with fierce resistance. To counter the resistance Qassim was forced to militarize a number of dissident
Kurdish tribes (Zibaris, Rikanis, Jaaf) and set them against the Kurdish national movement (Barazanis, the KDP), thereby utilizing traditional tribal enmities among the Kurds themselves.
The Stalinist CP maintained silence in face of these developments, contenting itself with calling for "unity of the national front" and issuing warnings about "imperialist intrigues and designs, " emphasizing for the thousandth time the need for the capitulationist concept of "self-restraint."
After the CP finally perceived the inevitability of armed conflict due to the further deterioration of the situation in the
36 north, it swung into the camp of the regime and demanded that the Kurds "stop causing disturbances. " The motivation for this shift was the notion that the existing regime was a patriotic one that was siding with the national bourgeoisie! On the basis of this notion the CP called on the Kurdish movement to struggle to develop the national-democratic government and to put pressure on the government to extend democratic freedoms! This right-wing policy on the part of the Stalinist leadership met with vigorous resistance from the party's rank and file, which called for the adoption of a revolutionary policy on the Kurdish question and fiercely denounced the right-wing reformist policies of the leadership. But the voices of protest and denunciation were answered with an all-out campaign of liquidation and mass expulsion that hit hundreds of members and revolutionary cadre. Still worse wa: the distortion of the facts of the battles going on in Kurdistan by the CP papers Itihad el-Sha'ab (People's Unity) and Aazadi (Freedom, in Kurdish). The impression given in the CP press was that the fight in Kurdistan was an intertribal battle between the Barazanis on the one side and the Zibaris and Sorgi tribes on the other that was raging in the very limited area of Qadha'i Mirka and Agrah. In reality the struggle was part of a plan of the ruling bourgeoisie to subjugate all of Kurdistan by force. It was the prelude to the all-out bloody civil war that was launched on September 11, By the end of 1960 the areas of struggle had broadened to include the territory from the banks of the Zab Bahwanan to the countryside of Qala'at Durzah. While the Stalinists were pursuing their capitulationist line, the bourgeois Kurdish Democratic party was standing at the head of the revolutionary masses throughout the Kurdish countryside. The KDP was leading a fierce armed struggle against the tax collectors of the bourgeois regime, who, after the growth of the reactionary forces, had once again reappeared to rob the peasants of their crops under the pretext of a land tax and the restriction of tobacco agriculture. When the government organized military expeditions to some rural centers to extract these taxes by force, thousands of peasants organized an armed resistance against the government forces. The resistance was led by members and cadres of the KDP. Once the government's operation with the Kurdish mercenary tribes had failed, the regime was faced with a stark alternative: accept the fait accompli or invade Kurdistan. It chose the latter course, and on September 11, 1961, the most vicious war in the history of Iraqi
Kurdistan was launched. The CP and the Kurdish revolution until February 8,1963
Toward the end of May 1961 the CP issued an apologetic statement asking the "patriotic regime" to put an end to the
"extraordinary situation" in Iraq and to stop the persecution of Barazanis, patriots, and Communists. The response of the
"patriotic regime" was to take further measures in the opposite direction. On August 22, 1961 (that is, two weeks before the outbreak of hostilities), the political bureau of the
ICP published a political proclamation precisely defining the party's policy in the event of war.
in part: "By relying on their agents working on the inside, the Anglo-American imperialists, the oil companies, and their allies, the governments of Turkey and Iran, are doing their best to exploit the new situation in Kurdistan that has been created by the government's practices; they are intending to deepen the divisions in the ranks of the patriotic forces
. and are threatening the unity and national independence of the country. "
Backhandedly, the CP tried to suggest that this movement was directed by imperialism and that in the final analysis the armed struggle served imperialist designs. But let us see. Today it is a patently obvious and well known fact that the leadership of the Kurdish movement was not the true representative of the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of poor peasants and urban workers who made up the armed forces of the Kurdish uprising of September 11, 1961 (be this leadership the notorious feudal-tribal wing or the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois one, that is, the KDP). Moreover, the Kurdish masses extended their support to that leadership only after the betrayal by the Communist party and its stand in favor of Qassim's "patriotic" government. Were these not the same masses that had given their support to the CP militants in the winter of 1959? Was it not the same masses that fought under the leadership of Communist militants to crush the rebellion of the feudalists precisely because the CP militants had proven in practice their capabilities as revolutionary leaders, although most of them were forced to leave the party and take to the hills of Kurdistan to defend their villages and crops from tax collectors sent by the "patriotic" government? The CP asked the Kurdish masses to welcome Qassim's soldiers and mobile police units. It was demanding "moderation" of the urban workers without expressing the slightest anger at the numerous security and investigative officers who were "defending the unity of the patriotic ranks. " Furthermore, it wanted the masses to leave the sides of the Pesh Merga and al-Ansar (the Kurdish armed forces) and to stop supporting them when they tried to fight the provocations of the police and administrative agents and when they were liberating the prisons. The masses learn from experience and not from the intentions of parties. They march behind the leadership that demonstrates in practice that it is the real defender of their national and class aspirations. By defending the peasants and organizing armed resistance against the tax collectors and the restrictive laws on tobacco cultivation and by heroically defending Kurdistan against the barbaric attacks of the government army, by the end of 1961 the KDP had given living proof of its ability to lead the peasant masses and the urban workers. For these reasons the proclamation issued by the CP met with nothing but contempt and disgust. The same proclamation hinted at threats against the leadership of the Kurdish revolution if it drifted into a more developed form of armed struggle: "The isolation of the Kurdish movement from the movement of the whole Iraqi people weakens the Kurdish movement in the first place and deprives it of its strong allies represented by the deeply rooted democratic and national movement. ment" means the Communist party itself. And in fact the Stalinist leadership carried through on its threats in no more than a few months. Nor was it alone in this activity. The Kremlin and the Prague bureaucracies rushed to support bourgeois rule in Iraq by sending tons of military equipment and large numbers of Soviet Migs that had the "honor" of transforming 80 percent of the Kurdish countryside into ruins. The Stalinist leadership heaped further abuse on the KDP because it "did not see all the complexities of the situation, only the aspect of repression and oppression that the Qassim government was practicing against the Kurdish people and its patriotic forces, beginning with the idea that Qassim's role was 'the most dangerous direct threat to the Kurdish people and its national liberation movement at the present time. " (The Kurdish National Question, Majid Abdel Rudha.) Shameful! It is not enough for the Stalinist leadership to carry out its own betrayals. It also wants a petty-bourgeois party defending the national aspirations of its people to throw down its arms and follow the path of betrayal and capitulation. In fact, Qassim confirmed the fears of the KDP by waging two years' of debilitating war that destroyed thousands of villages and wide areas of farmland, creating tens of thousands of rural refugees in the cities. Throughout the years of the war (September 1961-February 1963) the CP maintained its traitorous positions in support of the Qassim government and contented itself every now and then with issuing a watered-down statement calling for "peace in Kurdistan" -- but a capitulationist peace. At a time when the bourgeois army was raining death, destruction, and misery throughout the Kurdish lands, many units of the army were being led by "Communist" officers. (*) The February 8,1963 reactionary coup Within a year and a half after the outbreak of the Kurdish revolt, the forces of the Pesh Merga (al-Ansar) had managed to liberate more than one-third of Iraqi Kurdistan. The revolutionary forces inflicted severe blows on the government army, and this deepened the crisis of the bourgeois regime. Discontent and a spirit of mutiny began to permeate the military units in Kurdistan. This weakened the army's fighting capabilities to the point that whole units and sections would surrender in face of the attacks of the Kurdish revolutionary movement. Amidst the decisive advances of the Kurdish revolution came the reactionary coup of February 8, 1963. The new regime, led by the Baath party, initiated a terrorist campaign that forced most of the Kurdish Communists and many of the other leaders of the ICP to take refuge in the liberated Kurdish territories. The Kurdish leadership, in search of the aid of the countries of the "socialist bloc, "received their enemies of yesterday and offered them refuge. The refugee Communists were formed into independent alAnsar units commanded by Communist officers, among whom were a fair number of officers who under Qassim had commanded the units that attacked Kurdistan. From the beginning of April 1963 the propaganda produced by the "socialist" countries started to mention Kurdistan in the course of offering news on the repression against the Iraqi Communists. The position of the Communist party began to change. But the honeymoon did not last long. On October 18,1963, there was another coup in Baghdad and in February 1964 a truce was concluded between the government and the Kurdish movement. The Kurdish leadership began to hem in * Tahael-Sheikh (head of military intelligence) and Jalal el-Awqati (head of the air brigades) were CPers. The Second Brigade was led by a member of the CP, Hashim Abdel Jabar, who was stationed in Kurdistan (Darbendi Khan) and was the first to begin the military assault. He was exceptional in the severity and barbarism of his actions, razing hundreds of villages around Sulaymaniyah and Halbaja. It is an irony of history that after the February 8, 1963, coup that overthrew Qassim, this same officer was compelled to take refuge in the Kurdish hills! CP air-force pilots were also at the top of the list of officers who played a shameful role in the wiping out of hundreds of villages.
KURDS the Communists in the liberated territories, turning them into soidiers in a regular army under their leadership. The Communist units were also engaged in unequal battles with the government forces, which were attempting to liquidate them, as happened in the battle around the Mawa fort. In August 1964 the Communist party made another shift on the Kurdish question. In the interest of getting close to the nationalists and Nasserite forces with whom the CP was trying to organize the Socialist Union (and liquidate the CP), the CP leaders stopped mentioning the Kurdish question at all. This shift was codified in the liquidationist line adopted in August 1964, a line that the Central Committee faction later had to back away from because of the refusal of the ranks and cadre of the party to comply with the line. From the middle of 1964 to September 1967 the CP placed all its attention on reconstructing its organization and working ouf its own internal crisis, which ended in the split in the party and the emergence of the Central Command faction in September 1967 The Central Committee faction The Kurdish policy of the CP (Central Committee) did not change after the July 17, 1968, coup d'etat. Even at the peak of the anti-Communist assault waged by the Baathists in the spring of 1969, the CP position was only further consolidated. The Baathist regime was forced to sign the March 11, 1970, agreements (granting limited autonomy to Kurdistan) because of the deepening of its own internal crisis and the spread of opposition in the southern and central parts of Iraq. The Central Committee unreservedly supported the March agreements despite the fact that the agreements were insufficient for solving the Kurdish national question and even conflicted with the publicly-declared positions of the CP itself. The CP's 1970 congress had formally adopted the slogan of Kurdish self-determination, but in practice the CP held to its previous position, discarding its program in word and deed and putting itself at the service of the Baath party. And the Central Committee insisted in participating in the March 11 games. It criticized the government for not allocating some of the available posts in Kurdistan to members of the CP instead of to members and supporters of the KDP. The Central Committee drew up a list of "Communist" lawyers to be appointed district heads and governors in Kurdistan on the grounds that the CP was a neutral party in the dispute between the Baath and the KDP! Furthermore, the slogan of self-determination loses all meaning when the Iraqi "people" is considered one people and when minority nationalities are considered "... to live in one state and within the framework of one people, which is the Iraqi people. It faces a united fate as one people. " (El-Fikr el-Jadid.) Thus is achieved the unity of the "national front" and the united Iraqi people is born of national oppression! When conflict between the Baathist regime and the Kurdish leadership intensified, the Central Committee turned sharply to support the government, demanding that the Kurdish leadership give way to the Baathists because the important thing was the "patriotic front. " "As for the subject under dispute, " wrote the December 17, 1972, el-Fikr el Jadid, "it is of little importance and can be left for another time. Life will decide the fate of many questions that abstract discussion is helpless to solve. " It was not long before "life" did decide the fate of those matters that could not be solved through "abstract discussion. "They were settled at gunpoint instead. The Central Committee's lining up with the repressive and terrorist bourgeois regime reached the point of factional ac-
38 tivities against the Kurdish leadership not aimed at replacing the feudal-bourgeois Barzani with a revolutionary leadership but rather at defending and reinforcing the Baathist regime. Barzani responded with a vicious attack on CP militants in Kurdistan, imprisoning and kidnapping people and holding public firing-squad executions on the streets of Zakho and Sulaymaniyah. Once again, we have the final verdict of "life." The logical culmination of the capitulation of the ICP Central Committee was its acceptance of the so-called National Progressive Front on July 16, 1973. In the final analysis, the "front" means transforming the CP into an organization tail-ending the Baath party and the bureaucratic Bonapartist regime. The Kurdish Democratic party, on the other hand, refused to capitulate. The Central Command faction One of the most important mistakes made by the Central Command faction is that it did not undertake a critical review of the previous positions and policies of the Iraqi Communist party, whether on general questions of revolutionary strategy or on the Kurdish question in particular. This resulted in the Central Command wing remaining a prisoner of its Stalinist conceptions of the revolution. The failure of the Central Command wing to become a revolutionary-communist pole to the left of the reformist, right-wing Central Committee can on the whole be attributed to this. Moreover, the Central Command entered into a struggle with the Central Committee over the heritage of the Communist party. It proceeded to emphatically defend all the previous mistaken policies. Two positions of the Central Command can be distinguished. The first concerns the period between September 1967 and March 11, 1970. During this period, the policy of the Central Command was not substantially different from that of the Central Committee. In a statement issued July 31, 1968, for example, we find the following: "2. To lay out a clear program for solution of the Kurdish question based on self-government for the Kurdish people within the Iraqi Republic, a primary right of the Kurds. It is also necessary to take first steps toward withdrawing the army from Kurdistan... and developing the Kurdish area and raising the level of its population. " This statement, which was adopted at an expanded meeting of the Central Command held in late August 1968, called for granting the Kurds self-government, by which was meant, according to the previously mentioned statement, allow the Kurdish people of Iraq to administer the local affairs of the Kurdish region of Iraq in freedom, including the election of their own legal and executive councils which spring from the framework of the Iraqi Republic." But the Central Command also registered an important advance on the Kurdish question by recognizing that the "Kurdish question is a question for the masses of workers and peasants in Kurdistan who form the overwhelming majority of the population... and the struggle is linked to a progressive agricultural reform and to a raising of the material, social, and cultural level of the masses and to a liquidation of economic backwardness and to a spreading of wide democracy for the Kurdish people. " Unfortunately, however, this analysis ended up with the following absurd formulation: "A revolutionary democratic people's state.
as revolutionary marxists we defend self determination the right of of the kurdish nation' In April 1969 the emigré organization of the Central Command moved to a revolutionary- Marxist position on the Kurdish question. It issued a "clarification" that declared: "It is clear that the Kurdish people cannot acquire their complete and stable national rights under the shadow of any dictatorial, reactionary, bourgeois regime. This can only come about under the auspices of a revolutionary popular regime led by the working class, not under the control of the reactionary, bourgeois Kurdish leadership. " The formulation "revolutionary popular regime led by the working class" is far clearer than "revolutionary democratic people's state. " But the emphasis of the comrades of the emigré organization that national rights must not be granted to a bourgeois Kurdish regime has emptied the text of its revolutionary content. Revolutionary Marxists formulate the right of self-determination of oppressed nations without conditions.
Furthermore, at an expanded meeting of the leadership of the Kurdish section of the Central Command held January 25, 1970, a formulation similar to that of the emigré comrades was agreed on: "The democratic and just solution to the Kurdish question in Iraq is conditional on the establishment of a popular democratic government led by the working class and based on the widest support, working to find solutions to the main problems facing the country. " (Issue No. 1 of Rikai Kurdistan.) So we can see that by the beginning of 1970 the positions of the Central Command had measurably progressed, a result of the rise of young proletarian elements to positions in the leadership after the capitulation of the conservative grouping around Aziz el-Haj. The progress in position is also reflected in the fact that the Central Command denounced the March 11,
39.
KURDS 1970, agreements as a shell-game aimed at gaining time. The organization also struggled to prevent the accords from being enacted. The leadership of the armed Kurdish movement began a witch-hunt against the Central Command and constricted the organization's activities. This brought about a more flexible attitude toward the Kurdish leaders on the part of the Central Command leaders and ended up in their complete capitulation to the Barzani leadership. When disputes again broke out between the leadership of the Kurdish revolution and the regime, the road was opened for the Central Command to resume its activities in Kurdistan. But this activity did not go beyond certain limited areas defined by the Kurdish leadership, the limits being determined by the state of relations between the regime and the Kurdish leadership. In the end the Central Command joined the "patriotic grouping, " which raises the slogan of "democracy in Iraq and self-government in Kurdistan. " The "patriotic grouping" consists of a contradictory mixture of political orientations with violently conflicting class interests; it holds a chauvinist policy opposed to the aspirations of the Kurdish people. Beginning with this date the positions of the Central Command fit in with the positions of all the political formations in Iraq that adopt this confused position, from the Central Committee wing and the Barzani leadership to the mélange of the "patriotic grouping" to the Baathist authorities. The position of the Central Command leadership never broke out of its frozen Stalinist conceptions, and the Central Command was consequently unable to differentiate itself from the reformist Central Committee wing by raising a revolutionary-communist program. This remains true despite the revolutionary-sounding phrases that run through the literature of the Central Command. The Central Command in practice A few months after the 1967 split, relations of the Central Command with the leadership of the Kurdish revolution improved, while those of the Central Committee deteriorated. The reason was that the Central Command adopted the slogan of armed struggle; layers of the party had already opened a dialogue with a revolutionary foquista group operating in the southern marsh areas of Iraq led by the since-martyred Khalid Ahmed Zaki. But the attempts of the Central Command to coordinate with the leadership of the Kurdish revolution were based on completely wrong notions: that the CP should fight in the central and southern areas while the armed Kurdish movement fought in the north, in Kurdistan. This mechanical military division led to a devastating defeat. It reflected the lack of seriousness of the Central Command in waging the armed struggle in that it did not seek to create armed Communist forces in Kurdistan independent of the forces of the Kurdish revolution that were under the hegemony of the bourgeois-feudal grouping. After the March 11, 1970, agreement, this opportunistic approach had the worst consequences for the future of revolutionary struggle in Iraq. On June 1,1968, the Central Command had issued a statement announcing the formation of the Popular Armed Struggle Front. The statement pointed to a revolutionary perspective.
"People of Kurdistan! The dictatorship that is fighting you is weak and sitting on a volcano. It is incapable of resisting a revolution ranging from the south to the Kurdish mountains. " But, as we know, there is quite a difference between statements and actions. This correct formu40 lation becomes meaningless if the leadership in Kurdistan is handed over to a bourgeois-feudal grouping. The CP did not attempt to build communist armed units in Kurdistan; this was an attempt to "preserve the alliance between our party and the KDP. " Nor did the Central Command direct any criticism at the Kurdish leadership or educate the Kurdish working masses in a proletarian socialist perspective. The response that the Central Command gave to an attack from the Central Committee over this conciliationism is revealing: "The Kurdish revolution has its limitations, and these are the subject of criticism from all Iraqi revolutionaries who are committed to the victory of the cause of the Kurdish people. But the reformist leaders of the Central Committee are the very people who were silent about these limitations in 1964. ... So their sudden concern now cannot be explained by any concern over the program and policies of independent Communists on the Kurdish revolution. " (The Party Militant, June 1968.) In early January 1970, two months before the March 11 agreements, the Kurdish branch of the Central Command held an extended meeting in which a warning was issued to the Kurdish leadership about the stupidity of making an agreement with the Baathist regime. The warning passed unheeded. In this same meeting, the deteriorating relations between the Central Command and the Kurdish leadership were pointed to: "The methods of pressure, constriction of work, insults, imprisonment, and disregard of repeated promises are not going to accomplish the desired goal of alliance. " (Rikai Kurdistan, January 25, 1970.) The same statement goes on to say, "The correct relations between national party alliances cannot be built except on the basis of mutual respect and equality and noninterference in the internal affairs of any of the concerned parties." Despite the direct interference of the Kurdish leadership in the organization of the internal life of the Central Command in Kurdistan (which, after the liquidation of the Central Command sections in the central and southern parts of Iraq remained the only viable section of the organization), the Central Command continued to talk about the "existing relations of alliance between our Communist party and the KDP, which constitute an important cornerstone of our national alliance."
This open deception intensified the leadership crisis within the Central Command and finally led the group into the swamp of the "national alliance, " as the Central Command followed the worn-out proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The only way to have avoided this pitiful end to the ICP Central Command would have been to adopt a revolutionary-communist program breaking out of the ossified Stalinist framework and delineating a strategic perspective with clearly defined practical lines of implementation. In the forefront of these practical steps should have been:
1. Formation of independent armed communist units in Kurdistan in addition to the forces of the Kurdish movement under bourgeois leadership.
2. Implementation of a revolutionary program of land reform in the areas controlled by the Communist forces.
3. Agitation among the ranks of the government forces calling for revolutionary defeatism and for joining up with the forces in the liberated areas.
This would have polarized broad masses of peasants who had carried arms on the side of the bourgeois Kurdish Democratic party in the hope of winning land and freedom. Further, any attempt by the Kurdish feudalists and bourgeoisie to crush the
red areas (as happened after the March 1970 agreements were signed) would have brought defeat to the property-owning classes. One final word. Beginning with the revolutionary upsurge in the winter of 1958-59, the history of the Iraqi Communist party has been marked by a continuous line of division between the leaderships of the ICP and the revolutionary rank-and-file, between the right-wing reformist policies of the leadership and the positions of the party militants. After 1964, this left opposition took on increased importance, finally leading to the 1967 split and the emergence of the Central Command wing. All the revolutionary elements moved to the Central Command, and these militants played the decisive role in implementing the positive steps that were later taken by the Central Command. But the bureaucratic centralism that marked internal party life held back the transformation of a large number of revolutionary decisions into tangible material force. The sad fate of the Central Command was the final result of all this. A large number of party cadres adopted spontanéist, terrorist, and Maoist positions. Other sections were isolated from practical work and dropped out of revolutionary politics after all entries into the crisis of leadership became closed to them. Revolutionary communists and the Kurdish question It is very clear that the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan has led a large number of Arab revolutionaries to think that under present conditions there is no hope in the short run of overcoming the leadership crisis in the Kurdish revolution. Today this crisis is no longer confined to the absence of a revolutionary leadership, but also extends to the existence of "communist" organizations that are weak and isolated from the masses and that either provide strong support for the regime (the Central Committee wing) or tailend the Barzani leadership of the Kurdish Democratic party (the Central Command wing). Add to this the treacherous and opportunist "heritage" that these Stalinist leaderships have left behind and the full complexity of the situation facing revolutionaries intent on building a revolutionary-communist nucleus is indicated. The situation is further complicated by the existence of an experienced feudal-bourgeois leadership with a long history of struggle that controls one-third of Kurdistan. This leadership is fully equipped with armed forces (the Pesh Merga and alAnsar) that number more than 25,000 fighters. But despite all these obstacles, it should be clear that this leadership has itself been racked by crisis for many years. The crisis has deepened especially during the past two years. Two main currents can be distinguished around the personality of Barzani. First there is the feudal-bourgeois current, with its tribal origins; and second there is the petty-bourgeois wing. Barzani's disappearance could trigger violent struggles between these two currents. The basic reason for the deepening of the crisis has been the failure of this leadership to solve the Kurdish question and its subsequent covering for this failure by resorting to all sorts of opportunist deals and truces that guarantee its class interests. But this seemingly hopeless situation is but one aspect of the real state of affairs in Kurdistan. For years there has been a constantly escalating revolutionary situation that the regime has proven incapable of crushing in the organized and decisive way that it did in central and southern Iraq. This gives a tremendous impetus to revolutionary work, and it makes the task of building a revolutionary leadership an objective need that cannot be delayed. The situation in Kurdistan has taken big steps forward since the signing of the March 1970 agreements. Hundreds of thousands of peasants and city dwellers who fought bravely for the Kurdish revolution find their conditions worsening while the agas, feudalists, and bourgeoisie profit from their misery. Any opposition is swiftly crushed in the name of security of the Kurdish revolution and unity in face of the strength of the state. Thousands of peasants and workers have begun to realize the bankruptcy of the Barzani and KDP leaderships. But in view of the lack of a revolutionary alternative, the betrayals of the Central Committee CP, and the opportunism of the Central Command CP, is it any wonder that we find the growth and flourishing of right-wing chauvinist organizations capitalizing on the demoralization of the Kurdish masses? The failure of the Kurdish bourgeoisie to lead the democratic revolution to victory was not exceptional. It fits into the failure of the bourgeoisie of all underdeveloped countries to carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution. This is a result of their economic and social ties to imperialism and their political weakness. This means that in the final analysis these tasks fall upon the working class and the poor peasantry under the leadership of a revolutionary-communist party that can build socialism through the process of permanent revolution. The experiences of the Kurdish revolution are proof of the accuracy of this analysis. The workers of Iraq must unequivocally reject and denounce all the maneuvers and reformist prescriptions proposed by the Stalinists and all the deformed bourgeois "solutions" to the Kurdish question, from the 1963 Baathist proposals for decentralization to the June 29, 1966, proclamations, to the March 11, 1970, agreements. In the fourth issue of el-Mounadil (published in August 1971) we said: "The right of the Kurdish nation to self-determination and for the completion of all the conditions for their national liberation and unification is a completely justified aspiration that must be supported by the revolutionary-communist party of the whole Arab world. But the March 11 agreements between the leadership of the armed Kurdish movement and the Baathist regime is no expression of this aspiration. ... In this sense the March 11 agreements reflect a distorted solution to the national question in Iraq." As revolutionary Marxists we defend and uphold the right of self-determination, including the right to secession, of the Kurdish nation. This is the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist position on the national question as against the social chauvinist positions of the Stalinist Arab Communist parties.
FOR THE UNCONDITIONAL RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINA-
TION, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO SECESSION, FOR THE
KURDISH NATION!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE ARAB AND KURDISH
WORKING CLASS FOR THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN
IRAQ!
FOR A UNITED SOCIALIST KURDISTAN!
LONG LIVE THE WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! •
41