Kurds left out of the picture

President Bill Clinton declared on Sunday that the U.S. would not allow an attack by Saddam Hussein on the main Kurdish town of Arbil in northern Iraq to go unnoticed. As international outrage mounted against Iraq, Saddam ordered his troops to withdraw after installing a puppet Kurdish regime loyal to Baghdad.

Early Tuesday, the U.S. said it had launched 27 cruise missiles at Iraq to punish Saddam Hussein's intransigence. U.S. officials later said they had launched a further 17 missiles at targets not destroyed in the first attack.

In a gung-ho address to the American people, Clinton said: "Three days ago, despite clear warnings from the U.S. and the international community, Iraqi forces attacked and seized the Kurdish-controlled city of Arbil in northern Iraq. The limited withdrawals announced by Iraq do not change the reality. Saddam Hussein's army today controls Arbil and Iraqi units remain deployed for further attacks."

The Kurds and other Iraqi dissidents stand no chance in their struggle against Saddam. Whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offers the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than the Shi'ite rebels who can open a Pandora's box in their self-determination claims.

It has to be realized that there are other actors too in this whole "Beast of Baghdad" scenario, the two most important being Turkey and Israel -- erstwhile American allies.

Turkey is concerned about its own brutally repressed Kurdish population and Israel fears that Kurdish autonomy in Iraq might create a territorial Islamic fundamentalist military contiguity between Tehran and Damascus -- a potential Jewish threat.

In the next few days, the guns will fall silent. Clinton's ratings will be soaring and Saddam will still be around.

The Kurds have a saying: "We have no friends but the mountains." There are strategic interests involved in the Gulf, and sadly the Kurds are not part of this picture.

-- The Nation, Bangkok