Today, that trusting leader’s son is the calculating realist Massoud Barzani, 56, one of the two great tribal warlords of Iraqi Kurdistan. He has sometimes fought Saddam, sometimes made peace with Saddam, and even invited Saddam to help him thrash his longtime Kurdish rival, the bluff and impetuous 69-year-old Jalal Talabani. But today the two Kurds are united once again against the Baghdad regime. And this time they know Washington may need them as much as they need it.
Since the last round of intramural bloodletting in 1996 and 1997, Barzani and Talabani have taken advantage of U.S. and British air cover to create the closest thing to an independent state Iraq’s 4 million Kurds have ever had. And de facto Kurdistan is a natural asset for any U.S. push against Saddam’s regime. But what do the Kurds want if the tyrant is gone? Their stated ambition is for Kurdish autonomy, but their undisguised wish is for independence. In the Kurds’ long history as victims, they have clung to two mottos. One holds that their “only friends are the mountains.” The other, that “fighting is better than idleness.” But Barzani and Talabani will have to look beyond their craggy strongholds to make, and be, reliable friends. And the United States will have to encourage constructive peace if it wants to avert endless war.
