Menace from the Mountains

"There are only three plagues in the world," says an old Arab proverb--"the rat, the locust, and the Kurd." While Arab opinion may be biased, it is true that through the centuries the Kurds have deserved their reputation as troublemakers. Living in the grandly forbidding mountain country that straddles the borders of Iraq. Turkey, Syria, Iran and Russia, they have always been in a state of rebellion against outside discipline. After World War II, Russia happily used the disgruntled Kurds to harass the other "host" countries. Last week the Kurds were at it again, waging war against the Iraqi government and the country's predominantly Arab population.

The revolt could not be dismissed as merely another example of Kurdish cussedness. The rebels have moved steadily south out of the Zagros Mountains to within 70 miles of Baghdad, now have a quasi hold on sizable parts of Iraq. Their continued victories have also aroused non-Kurdish, democratic opponents of Premier Karim Kassem. The opposition ridicules Kassem's claim that the revolt is the fault of "British imperialists and their American stooges." blames his own bumbling for provoking the Kurds into war. Buffeted within and without, Kassem's regime is in danger of collapse.

In High Gear. Leading the rebellious Kurds is veteran pro-Communist Mustafa Barzani, a onetime mullah (religious teacher) and military boss of a Red-supported puppet republic of Kurdistan just after the war. After the puppet state was dismantled in 1946. Barzani fled to Russia, returned only after Kassem staged his Communist-blessed revolution in Iraq in 1958. Kassem tried to curry favor among the Kurdish tribes to solidify his own power. He promised them Kurdish schools, Kurdish newspapers, a Kurdish political party. So that the Kurds would not get too strong, however, Kassem armed rival Kurdish clans, playing them off against each other in cutthroat wars.

But Kassem reneged on his promises, and at the same time Moscow cooled on him; the feuding clans patched up their quarrels and, under Barzani's expert direction, turned their guns on the government.

Barzani began last summer by leading his hotheads in raids on isolated Iraqi police outposts, recently shifted his rebellion into high gear after cutting down operations during the winter. Launching a major offensive at the end of March, the Kurds attacked army battalions at Dohuk and Zakho north of Mosul, leaving 50 dead and 150 wounded. When Kassem ordered air strikes near Sulaimaniya against Kurdish villages packed with women and children, the rebels retaliated by sacking some 200 Arab towns, raping the women inhabitants. In cities held by the government, the Kurds have embarked on S.A.O.-style assassination campaigns.

Night & Day. Kassem's military tactics against the Kurds have been almost totally ineffective. Because one-third of his soldiers are of Kurdish origin, Kassem is afraid to send some units against the rebels, never gives his forces more than two days' supplies and ammunition, lest they turn on him. As in most guerrilla wars, the army controls the roads, particularly during the day, while the Kurds control the countryside, especially at night. The army rumbles up and down with its Soviet armor, smashing rebel roadblocks, while the Kurds move swiftly cross-country in small bands, armed mostly with light machine guns and mortars.

Barzani, whose English-cut suits look out of place among the tasseled turbans, billowy pants and murderous khanjars (curved daggers) of his followers, was so encouraged by his successes that last week he boosted his demands from Kassem.

No longer content with mere equality with the Arabs, he now insists on an autonomous Kurdish state within Iraq, running along the mountaintops from southern Turkey to the Persian Gulf; for this state he demands minority rights similar to those enjoyed "by minorities in such liberated countries as Switzerland, Yugoslavia, India and Czechoslovakia." The Russians are delighted to back Barzani's plan, which would give them access to the Middle Eastern Arab states and bring them closer to the Mediterranean.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.