Why single out the Kurds? First, because no group in Iraq has suffered so many U.S. betrayals. In 1975, Henry Kissinger helped Baghdad and Tehran resolve a long-standing border dispute. As part of the deal, the United States and Iran suddenly withdrew their backing for the Kurdish rebels in Iraq. The rebels were crushed, and tens of thousands of civilians fled across the border. Thirteen years later, the horrors had only increased, with Saddam Hussein murdering roughly 100,000 Kurds in his ghastly "Anfal" campaign. When Senator Claiborne Pell tried to impose sanctions on Iraq in 1988, the Reagan administration scuttled his legislation. And, when George H.W. Bush took office the following year, he doubled U.S. agricultural loans to Baghdad--money Saddam partially diverted to his military. Finally, at the close of the Gulf war in 1991, Bush famously called on Iraqis to rise up, only to watch as Saddam butchered them by the tens of thousands. Most of those killed were Arab Shia, but more than a million terrified Kurds became refugees again, escaping into Turkey or Iran.
The second reason we owe a special obligation to the Kurds is that, in the rest of Iraq, we are trying (with great difficulty) to build a democracy. In Kurdistan, we are protecting one that already exists. It's a lot easier to advocate withdrawal if you suspect Iraqis don't really want Western-style democracy anyway. But, in the Kurdish north, they want it with a vengeance. The two major Kurdish parties are both, by Middle Eastern standards, secular and liberal. Protected from Saddam by a no-fly zone, they contested a free election in 1992 and today co-exist peacefully in a regional parliament. That parliament has voted to punish honor killings and disregard aspects of the Iraqi transitional law that undermine women's rights. As Barham Saleh, prime minister of Eastern Kurdistan, recently told The Wall Street Journal, "If Iraq turns into an Islamic state, or an [Arab] nationalist state, we'll have no way to accept such a country."
It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the Kurds don't want the United States to leave. One of the key arguments for withdrawal is that the Iraqis are demanding it. But, while a February ABC News poll found that 60 percent of Arab Iraqis opposed the U.S. military presence, only 12 percent of Kurds did. Indeed, 82 percent of Kurds wanted us to stay.
