“…the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
This aphorism, from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, is often quoted (albeit with stylistic and literary variation) in discussions concerning the political, military, and economic actions by nation-states. The central issue raised by the phrase remains a simple, perennial, and perhaps irresolvable aspect of international – and not only international – affairs: What is the place of morality – can there even be a place for morality? – when a nation-state or people of lesser power is confronted and acted upon by a nation-state of greater power, when that “greater” power feels fully confirmed in the logic, rationality, and justice of its own decision-making?
The above phrase appears within passage 89 of the last chapter of Book V of The Peloponnesian War, otherwise known as “The Melian Dialogue”. In essence, this passage represents dialogue and negotiations – as imagined, reconstructed, and dramatized by Thucydides – between representatives of the Athenians, and the Melians, a people inhabiting the Aegean island of Melos.
The Athenians demanded that the Melians surrender, pay tribute to Athens, and join the Delian league (an alliance of city-states led by Athens, juxtaposed against the Peloponnesian League, a parallel and opposing city-state alliance led by Sparta). Insistent on retaining their independence, the Melians refused. Already occupying the island, the Athenians set siege to the city of Melos, which surrendered during the winter of 416 or 415 B.C.E.
Upon the Melian surrender, the Athenians killed all the adult males, and sold the surviving women and children into slavery.
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Inevitably, the world has changed since the war between Athens and Sparta. Nations and have arisen and fallen; peoples maintained their identity – with the great majority – through gradual and voluntary acculturation and assimilation, demoralization, conquest, or worse – passing out of existence and blending into surrounding societies. That technology has changed and is changing the world; how man looks at the world; how man looks at fellow man – assuming that in the FaceBooked and Twitterfied world 2018 he yet remains capable of “observing” his fellow man – is a given.
Yet withal, human nature – the nature of “man” as an individual; the nature of mankind as a whole, has not changed. And, neither has the issue embodied in the Melian Dialogue: The seeming perennial irreconcilability of morality and realpolitik.
This was addressed by the Jewish Frontier in the late 1940s, in two articles that addressed the history, political situation, and future of the Kurdish people.
Certainly it’s no coincidence that these articles appeared in the late 1940s; one before, and one after, Israel’s Declaration of Independence – and thus, its re-establishment as an autonomous Jewish nation-state – on May 14, 1948. While the parallels between the geopolitical position and historical experience of the Kurds and Jewish people are obviously not identical (no historical parallels ever are; ever can be) their situations shared enough commonalities for the Jewish Frontier to merit their publication.
Thucydides confronted us with the observation:“…the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept,” which, based on the lived experience of nations and even individuals, seems to be true.
But, this observation carries within its own negation, for it does not address the fact that the very qualities of “strength” and “weakness” are neither absolute, guaranteed, or indefinite.
Whether or not the path of history embodies a sense of justice is highly debatable. Yet, what is not debatable is that if the strong do not remain forever strong, neither do the weak remain weak, forever.
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This first article, written by Zev Sherf and published in March of 1946, focused upon the situation of the Kurds since the First World War, in terms of their historical experience in geographic areas and nation-states manifesting a significant Kurdish historical and demographic presence (Iran, Turkey, and Iraq), and in terms of the foreign policies of Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
In a passage still strikingly relevant in 2018 (and for the future…?), Sherf quotes a “well-known British officer” (who?) who stated – in words both prophetic and cautionary – ““On the day when the national consciousness of the Kurds matures and they become united, the states of Turkey, Persia and Iraq will be shattered to bits.” But one should not expect to find more than a part of the truth in any prophecy, and certainly there is some truth in this one. Even a partial truth of this kind is enough to disturb the rest of the rulers of all these kingdoms, as well as their sponsors and guides.”
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The Kurds in Iraq and Iran
by Zev Sherf
Jewish Frontier
March, 1946
IT IS HARD to avoid the impression of a close connection between the Kurdish revolt which was suppressed late last year in Iraq and the more successful Azerbaijanian autonomist movement in Iran. Unquestionably, local factors specific to each case must be recognized in these two movements, but they had two basic causes in common. One cause was the general tendency, in all the independent and quasi-independent Middle Eastern kingdoms, to make the interests and will of the majority people the sole guide to government policy. This tendency in Iraq resulted in attempts to force the Arabic language and culture upon Iraqi minorities of a different tongue, in an effort to establish the majority religion as the dominant faith, and in neglect of regions inhabited by minorities. What little was done in the way of health service, education, and public works in Iraq or Iran was chiefly concentrated in the capitals and their vicinity and in other favored districts, chosen either as show windows to the outside world or because their leaders are influential at court. All other districts have been neglected completely.
A second basic cause of the unrest in Iraq and Iran is the failure to have carried out an agrarian reform. Feudal relations prevail with particular effect precisely in those regions which have been neglected by the government. In Kurdistan, for example, the Turks had destroyed the old stratum of Kurdish princes during the nineteenth century by means of exile and murder. They were replaced by tribal chiefs, who have continued to rule as in days past, despite the fact that their tribesmen have long changed from shepherds to settled farmers. The ruling Arab clique will not abolish the feudal agrarian relations of Iraq, because thereby they would chop off the limb on which they sit. For this reason they accept the feudal order among both the Shiites and the Kurds, together with all the dangers involved.
In Iran, to be sure, the previous Shah, Reza Pahlevi, worked toward the establishment of a strong, centralized administration, but he undertook no fundamental social reforms. In Azerbaijan and in other sections, a group of landlords, who are unfailing sources of intrigue and exploitation, is opposed to a group of peasants, suffering from the extreme of poverty and oppression. It is not surprising, therefore, that a tribal chief should be able to transform his local ambitions into a national movement and a matter of international concern, as happened in Kurdistan; or that a foreign power should be able to arouse exploited workers and peasants against their government and place the very existence of the state in question, as happened in Azerbaijan.
History sometimes stages a spectacle of retribution. Iraq and Iran are now paying for the blindness of having staked everything on the exclusive interests of the majority people and upon the thin layer of-the upper class. That class may be useful in making an appearance before the outer world, but it cannot long claim the loyalty of the working mass, which is becoming increasingly evident upon the political arena of these countries, both through an inner development and the growing influence of external” forces.
THERE ARE NO more persistent rebels than the Kurds. At a time when the Arab world was slavishly submissive to the Turks, with only a small group of intellectuals and officials plotting obscurely in secret, the Kurds repeatedly broke out in open rebellion against Turkish rule. From the end of the 13th through the whole of the 19th century, Kurdish princes raised the standard of revolt against the hated Turk. The years 1830, 1842, 1879-80, 1889, were high water marks in these attempts, which deserve to be placed in the same category with the wars of liberation of the Balkan countries. As Christian peoples, living close to the sea upon which Western trade was carried, the Balkan countries found sympathizers and support, and were thus able to achieve what they achieved. The Kurds were Sunnite Moslems, residing in an isolated hill country, and they were beaten down with the systematic ruthlessness characteristic of Turkey. In the middle of the 19th century, the rule of the Kurdish princes was ended; but their descendants continued the warfare, until it 1913 they were completely destroyed and ceased to be a significant force. In their place came the tribal chieftains, cooperating in broad “confederations” like that which carried out the recent revolt in Iran.
World War I was used by the Turks as an excellent opportunity to expel complete tribes and peoples who were troublesome to them. The Kurds suffered no less than the Armenians and the Assyrians – and for their part, the Kurds helped the Turks persecute the neighboring Christian tribes. At the peace conference the Kurds were recognized as a nation with a problem requiring a solution. The treaty of Sevres with Turkey provided for the independence of the Kurds. This treaty was short-lived, owing, among other reasons, to the interest in the oil of the Mosul region, which caused that area to be annexed to Iraq at that time under British rule. From a formal point of view the treaty of Sevres received its death blow by the revolt of Kemal Ataturk, as a result of which it was never ratified. The treaty of Lausanne, which recognized the results of the Kemalist upheaval, did not mention the Kurds or the Kurdish problem.
The signatory powers accepted this, but the Kurds in Turkey did not make peace with it. They rebelled in the years 1925-6, and once again in 1930, and for the third time in the years 1937-8. During the recent rebellion in Iraq, too, there were reports of unrest in Turkish Kurdistan, and on the other hand, of cooperation of the Turkish Army with the Iraqis. If this report was true (for it was never officially confirmed) it would not be an unprecedented fact. One of the few cases of Turko-Persian cooperation was their common action in putting down the Kurdish rebellion of 1880-1883.
It may be that a well-known British officer was exaggerating slightly when he said: “On the day when the national consciousness of the Kurds matures and they become united, the states of Turkey, Persia and Iraq will be shattered to bits.” But one should not expect to find more than a part of the truth in any prophecy, and certainly there is some truth in this one. Even a partial truth of this kind is enough to disturb the rest of the rulers of all these kingdoms, as well as their sponsors and guides.
THE KURDISH-ARABIC MARRIAGE in Iraq has not been a happy union. It is not clear whether the Arab wanted this connection at the start, but the Kurds certainly never dreamed of it. The forty tribal chiefs of Kurdistan who asked that they be attached to Iraq did so hoping to “enjoy British protection.” They asked that a British representative and staff be sent to them “in order to permit the Kurdish people to progress peacefully in the path of civilization under British guidance.” The leader of these tribes asked the British to send them officers to assume top responsibility and to place Kurds, but not Arabs, in the minor posts. In those days the Kurds did not anticipate what was to happen to them, just as the Jews in the days of San Remo never dreamed of the road that was to lead to the anti-immigration patrol off the coast of Palestine.
The Kurds are bitterly resentful of the intervention by the Baghdad rulers in their internal affairs and they firmly oppose every effort to force the Arabic language upon them. As we noted, tribal leaders frequently use the general grievances in the interest of their private ambition.
The core of Kurdish resistance is in the area where Iraq borders upon Turkey and Iran. The confederation of local tribes rose in revolt in 1931-2 and was “pacified” only with difficulty. The rebel leaders were exiled at that time, but one of them, Mullah Mustafa, left his place of exile in 1943 and raised the tribes in renewed outbreaks. This uprising ended in a semi-official truce with the authorities, which lasted until the revolt at the end of 1945. After that was put down, it is understood that the leaders of the rebellion fled to neighboring Persian Azerbaijan, where the Kurdish tribes of Iran reside.
This last rebellion was marked by certain novel features. The Kurds were far better armed than ever before. The rumor is that they were equipped from that part of Iran which has been under Soviet military control since 1941. On the other hand, the Iraqi government brought into play against the rebels for the first time army units that had been especially trained in mountain warfare. These units were created at about the same time that the Arab Legion and Frontier Force in Palestine and the Transjordan began to be expanded and retrained.
The press has reported that the British military adviser in Iraq opposed using these units in emergency action against the Kurds, but it may be assumed that his objections were purely tactical in nature. It is likely that he feared that a defeat might break the prestige of the outfit. Something similar happened in the early days of the Arab Legion, when it was defeated in a clash with a rebellious Transjordan tribe. As a result most of the soldiers of the Legion deserted and the organization was practically dissolved. The British officer in command had very strenuous work cut out for him in trying to reestablish the Legion. It is possible that the British adviser to the Iraqi government was mindful of this experience when he cautiously demanded that the new units should not be sent on a decisive mission until spring. Iraqi officers, however, refused to wait and were successful in carrying out the operation.
It is not clear where the Iraqis got the air force which they needed for that expedition. The possibilities are that the air support was obtained on loan from Britain, or that it was one of the first fruits of the visit of Abdul Illah in Ankara on his way home from London.
It is beyond all doubt that the firm attitude of the Iraqi government towards the Kurds was approved by British advisers. This, too, is something of a novelty. The British had always demanded a moderate and tolerant attitude towards the Kurds in the past. There had always been close relations between the Kurds and British representatives. The conclusion may plausibly be drawn that the expedition against the Kurds at the end of 1945 falls in with a British tendency to stake their policy entirely upon the Arab majority in the Middle East: whether because they have decided to reward the present Baghdad rulers for their services, or they have decided that the Kurds can no longer be relied upon in the international struggles beginning in the Middle East.
The rebellion having been put down, Iraqi leadership is now in a position to try to develop friendly relations directly with the Kurdish peasants. It is doubtful whether they are capable of such a policy, since the Baghdad clique does not serve the true interests of even the Arab peasants in their immediate vicinity. The more probable effect will be an intensified campaign of Arabization of the Kurds, with respect to culture as well as economic and social affairs. The Kurds would deny their long history and act contrary to their nature if they accepted this submissively.
THERE IS A STORY told in Palestine that during the 1936 outbreaks a woman was riding in a bus that was being fired upon. “All I need, with my weak heart,” she protested, “is a bullet in my head.” The rebellion in Azerbaijan could easily become such a bullet in the head for a Persia suffering so badly from a weak heart. This unhappy country has long been divided into spheres of influence of the major powers. After the Russian Revolution, international competition in this country ceased for a while, but the Iranians did not show the energy and capacity for utilizing this respite to bring about a national revival.
To be sure, the tyrannical rule of Reza Pahlevi followed closely in the footsteps of the Kemalist revolution in Turkey. The influence of the clergy was greatly curbed, child-marriage was abolished, and women were allowed to abandon the veil. Theoretically, compulsory education was instituted. The railway network was expanded and local industries were developed. All this was accomplished, however, by the repression of all opposition, the exile of dissident leaders, and general disregard for civil rights. At the same time, German influence, which had been quite strong before World War I, again became noticeable.
The pro-German attitude of the Shah and his coterie was much more a matter of hostility to certain other powers than of sympathy with the Germans. Germany appeared to be a remote country, and there was no fear of the consequences of accepting financial and other economic aid from it as there was in connection with strengthening relations with Britain or initiating relations with the Soviet Union. Intelligent Persians, who are concerned with the welfare of their country, would prefer today, on more or less the same grounds, that the United States take over the position previously occupied by Germany. In 1941, after British and Soviet troops entered Iran, the government requested President Roosevelt to send advisers for its various departments, and for a certain time, the Iranian government was practically conducted by American officials and officers. This was a transient phenomenon because the United States did not wish to become too much involved in Iran, and because American officials speedily encountered difficulties in administering a state which was to all intents and purposes divided into two separate occupation zones, one of them completely sealed off.
The border dividing the Soviet zone from the British also cuts off the fertile grain fields of Northern Iran from the region of poverty and starvation in the south. The Iranian government has been prevented from exercising any significant influence in the northern region. It could not appoint even a single policeman without Russian approval. The Soviet refusal n permit Persian soldiers to be sent to the north was not without precedent. This had been the situation for close to four years.
The government which came into office after the downfall of Shah Reza was discredited in the eyes of the people from the very beginning. The foreign armies occupying Iran inevitably brought about an enormous inflation and a rise in the cost of living which aggravated the poverty of the masses. The old regime had not left behind it any parliamentary parties capable of educating the people and guiding its will in constructive channels. Corruption was widespread in the ranks of Iranian officials. The Persian Parliament, the Majlis, had no parties except the small “Tudeh” party, which was founded with the support of the Russians and constituted the only organized political grouping in Iran, and particularly in the northern part of Iran. This should not be surprising. The intrigues of foreign powers in the past, the tyrannical rule of Reza Pahlevi, the intervention of occupying powers during the past war, the poverty, disease, and general neglect of the country – all these have left their mark.
The pro-Russian Tudeh movement did, of course, benefit from Soviet support, but it was also the fruit of local conditions. Whereas the neighbors of the Soviet Union on its European frontiers enjoy a standard of living superior to that of the U.S.S.R. (Red Army soldiers became convinced of this to their own great surprise, and Kalinin found it necessary to warn them against drawing hasty conclusions from this fact), on its Asiatic frontiers the U.S.S.R. appears to many of the citizens of neighboring countries as the bearer of the promise of cultural autonomy and material advancement. As a result, movements of rebellion across the Soviet border tend to take on a separatist character, with some inclination towards the Soviet Union.
SUCH AN INCLINATION was obvious in the development of the Tudeh Party, but it was checked and suppressed upon the appearance of the Democratic Party, the new incarnation of the pro-Soviet group in Iran. This party calls for a reform in government policy over the whole of Iran and for autonomy in Azerbaijan, but it does not demand the union of this part of Iran with Soviet Azerbaijan. The assistance it is receiving from the Soviet Union is not concealed. What then can be the purpose of the Soviet Union in supporting such a movement?
One suggestion that is made in answer to this question is that oil is the major consideration. The Soviet periodical War and the Working Class carried an article on the oil problem at the beginning of 1945. It contends that the question of oil was not raised in Persia until British and American companies began to operate there. Russia had a concession in Persia, which the Bolsheviks gave up officially in 1921, on condition that it should not be given to any other power.
There is probably considerable truth in this version. The Russians would certainly not agree to the establishment of a British or American oil concession at their very frontier. The Iranian government’s reply to this argument, that it will not grant any additional concessions in, Iran to any power so long as it continues to be occupied, is immaterial to the issue. The only possible solution, if there be one, would be an agreement for the division of oil rights among the various powers. In reply to the article cited above, the London Economist suggested that Great Britain and the United States retain the right to exploit the oil fields in the south of Persia, and give up altogether any attempt to operate in the north.
A second problem in Iran is the Soviet drive to set up security zones around its frontiers. This plan has become quite obvious in Eastern and Central Europe. The old system of the cordon sanitaire has I been reversed and pointed against the West. But the Soviet Union is sensitive not only in regard to its western frontiers. In the last years before World War II, great industrial developments were begun in Asiatic Russia. These projects were accelerated and expanded during the war through the transfer of many industries from the war zone. Not all such plants were reestablished in their original homes after the war.
Just as the Ukraine and the Great Russian Republic need buffers against the outside, so the oil fields and industries of Transcaucasia and the new industries of Turkestan and Central and Eastern Siberia need security. It seems likely that the Soviet Union will try to set up a buffer zone with its western anchor in Azerbaijan and its eastern anchor in Northern Korea, which like Azerbaijan is divided between a Soviet and Anglo-Saxon occupation zone, with the former hermetically sealed off from the latter. In this huge area belong Northern Iran, the province of Sin-kiang in China, Outer Mongolia and Manchuria. It will be sufficient for Soviet needs if these territories are under the rule of governments friendly to the U.S.S.R. If an attempt should be made to set up a regime too dependent upon another power or hostile to the Soviet Union, one may anticipate the outgrowth from time to time of separatist movements in this area.
It may be, however, that there is a third explanation for current Soviet policy. Skobelev, the Russian military commander who pushed the frontiers of Russian Turkestan southward in the 1880’s, once said: “The stronger Russia becomes in Central Asia, the weaker England will become in India, and the more it will be inclined to compromise in Europe.” The Soviet Union is trying to take advantage of the present transition stage in the relations between the great powers to secure good bargaining positions. What is happening in Azerbaijan may prove as useful to the Soviet Union in the future as, to cite an example in quite a different field, the victory of the Communist Party in France.
Suggested Reading
Berman, Paul, “Realism and the Kurds – Bernard-Henri Lévy presents his extraordinary documentary Peshmerga at the United Nations, but civilization isn’t listening”, Tablet, November 29, 2017
Cohen, Ben, “Western Powers Must Protect Kurds, Urges Iraqi Jew Escorted to Freedom by Masoud Barzani”, Algemeiner, November 6, 2017
Kedar, Mordechai, Lt. Col. (res.), “The U.S. Betrayal of Kurdistan Is a Warning Sign for Israel”, BESA Center, November 22, 2017
Levy, Bernard-Henri, “The Kurds, Trump, and the Decline of American Power – Why the United States’ inexplicable abandonment of the Kurdish people is ‘the geopolitical equivalent of a stock-market crash’”, Tablet, October 30, 2017
Rozhbayane, Rebin, “The Assault on Kirkuk: A Firsthand Account – A frontline Kurdish peshmerga officer describes what it was like to be abandoned by the West in Iraq in October of 2017”, Tablet, May 9, 2018 (Originally appeared in La Règle du Jeu (“The Rules of The Game”), under title “La bataille de Kirkouk, au Kurdistan, racontée par l’un de ses principaux témoins”, May 3, 2018)
Warner, Rex (translator), Thucydides’ History of The Peloponnesian War, Penguin Books, New York, N.Y., 1954 (1980 edition)