Keeping the Kurds safe

After the war, the allies began protecting what Saddam sought to destroy

(CNN) -- Before the Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein conducted a campaign of suppression in the 1980s against the Kurd people living in northern Iraq, including a March 1988 poison gas attack in Halabja, Iraq, in which an estimated 5,000 Kurds were killed.

The Gulf War itself proved to be a momentary lull in Hussein's war against Kurds in northern Iraq. The Kurds were emboldened by the allies' victory in the war and used that victory to assert their own case for independence, but they were quickly defeated by the Iraqi armed forces. The offensive resulted in some 1.5 million Kurds scrambling through the mountains, headed for Turkey. The United Nations created what it called a "safe haven" in northern Iraq. Since the end of the Gulf War, U.S. and British military forces have enforced a "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq. This restricted zone was created to prevent Iraqi attacks against the Kurds. A similar zone in the South is meant to protect Shiite Muslims.

The U.N. also set up a humanitarian relief campaign, called Operation Provide Comfort. It officially began on April 7, 1991, when four U.S. Air Force C-130s took off from an airbase in Turkey to airdrop food and water to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq.

Although the first phase of the operation ended in July 1991, the second phase began that same month and lasted for five more years. The U.S. armed forces, and other allies, flew more than 60,000 flights into the area, not only dropping off supplies but also patrolling for hostile aircraft.

However, several clashes have occurred as Iraq has protested the viability of the no-fly zones. In 1996, Iraq moved against Kurds in the north under the guise of carrying out routine military exercises and installed pro-Saddam Kurds into positions of power in the Kurdish town of Irbil. On September 3, 1996, the U.S. struck 14 targets in southern Iraq with 27 cruise missiles in response.

In December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer recognize the no-fly zones, a declaration which came after a four-day U.S. and British bombing campaign, called Operation Desert Fox. That operation came in response to Iraq's continued obstruction of U.N. weapons inspectors, and was followed by several months' worth of scattered airstrikes. Iraq continues, for the most part, observing the no-fly zones, however.

Although their long-term safety may one be assured through intervention of the U.S. and other allied forces, the Kurds have begun considering a political future for themselves. The U.S. State Department has been involved in recent efforts in unify the two rival Kurdish factions which operate in northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They operate together under a September 1998 agreement brokered by the United States, which, at the time, promised elected government after a transitional period of power-sharing.

In June 1999, Elizabeth Jones, principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Just last week, leading members of [the two major Kurdish factions in northern Iraq] came to Washington for talks aimed at strengthening the reconciliation process. The two major Kurdish leaders, the Turkomans and other groups from northern Iraq, have played a very positive role in reunifying and reviving the Iraqi National Congress."

The U.S. also aims to involve the united Kurd factions into an opposition coalition against Hussein. In March 2000, the U.S. Congress approved $100 million for the Clinton administration to aid the Iraqi opposition.

The Kurds consider themselves the world's largest ethnic group without a homeland, one that has been promised nationhood in the past, specifically after World War I, only to have that promise taken away. Turkey is home to more than half of the world's 25 million Kurds, and the rest live in rugged, mountainous areas of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Syria.