by Armanj Ahmad
On 5 April 1991, the UN Security Council adopts Resolution 688, following written requests from France, Turkey and Iran, which were concerned about Iraq's political repression of its own civilian populations, especially in the Kurdistan Region. With this Resolution, the Security Council condemns the repression, which represents a threat to international peace and security, and calls on Iraq to put an end to it and to respect the fundamental rights of its population.
In addition, the United Nations Security Council insists that Iraq allow international humanitarian organizations access to the affected areas, asking the Secretary-General to report on the Iraqi and Kurdish populations affected by the repression by the authorities, using all possible resources to meet the needs of the populations. It also calls on Iraq to cooperate with the General Secretariat and international organizations to assist in humanitarian efforts.
The resolution was adopted by ten votes in favor, three against (Cuba, Yemen and Zimbabwe) and two abstentions (People's Republic of China and India).
France, the United Kingdom and the United States have used Resolution 688 to establish Iraqi no-fly zones to protect humanitarian operations in Iraq, although the resolution makes no explicit reference to no-fly zones.
France's decisive role in the Resolution
In fact, it is France that is at the origin of this resolution and the no-fly zones in Iraq, particularly in favour of the Kurds. French diplomacy has pushed behind the scenes to get these measures adopted. This position of France is the result of the support and support of certain personalities who pleaded for the Kurdish cause with the government and the president of the time, François Mitterrand. At the forefront of this support for the Kurds are Bernard Kouchner and Danielle Mitterand.
BERNARD KOUCHNER
Kouchner visited Iraqi Kurdistan for the first time in September 1974, accompanied by his Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleagues Max Récamier and Jacques Bérès. There is a fortnight left in the areas controlled by Mustafa Barzani where about two million people live. There he met Idriss, Mustafa's son, and found that the Kurds lacked more medicine than doctors. In France, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein is supported by jacques Chirac as well as by a fringe of the Socialist Party where we find Jean-Pierre Chevènement.
Aid to the Kurds also creates a rift within MSF, which sees it as an alignment with American and Israeli positions. Philippe Bernier, pro-Iraqi, was put in the minority, but Kouchner did not get permission to publish an article in Le Monde. Thereafter, Kouchner always maintained relations with the Kurds. He made several other clandestine trips to Kurdistan. In 1983, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, he met Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader who became president of Iraq in 2005.
In 1991, following Saddam Hussein's military defeat in the Gulf War, Kouchner, then Secretary of State for Humanitarian Action, demanded in Le Monde that coalition armies push as far as Baghdad to overthrow the tyrant. During the Gulf War, the Kurds and Shiites revolted, and the ceasefire allowed Saddam Hussein's army to go and quell the revolts. A pressure group formed around Kouchner, André Glucksmann, Yves Montand and Danielle Mitterrand, obtained that France vote in the United Nations Security Council resolution 688 which paved the way for a military operation to protect civilian populations.
Post-Resolution 688
Kouchner then made several trips to Turkey and Iran from where parachutes were organized on Iraqi Kurdistan. Then, under Resolution 688, the American and British air forces ensure the security of a Kurdish sanctuary in Iraqi territory. It was in this sanctuary that Kouchner went with Danielle Mitterrand in July 1992. In 1994, when Barzani's supporters and those of Talabani were tearing each other apart, he convinced François Mitterrand to invite the two Kurdish parties to Rambouillet, which did not prevent the war between Kurds from lasting another two years.
Kouchner went to Kurdistan again in October 2002, when the Kurdish civil war had ended and George W. Bush's Americans were preparing for the Iraq war. There he met Talabani, who assured him that the Kurds wanted American war.
On February 4, 2003, he published an editorial with Antoine Veil in Le Monde entitled "Ni la guerre ni Saddam" (Neither war nor Saddam) in which he declared himself opposed to the imminent war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein having to be forced to give up power by diplomatic pressure, via the UN.
However, as the prospect of a negotiated departure of the Iraqi dictator recedes, and in the face of the stiffening of positions between the supporters of the war, grouped around the United States and the United Kingdom, and their opponents, led by France, Russia and China, his position evolves, and he denounces the possibility of a veto by France in the UN Security Council. In the spring of 2003, he was, with André Glucksmann, Pascal Bruckner, Alexandre Adler, Romain Goupil, Alain Madelin, Pierre Lellouche, Hervé Mariton, one of the few French personalities not to disapprove of the war waged by the United States and its allies against Iraq.
Bernard Kouchner, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, will travel again to Iraqi Kurdistan on 1 June 2008 to inaugurate the first Consulate General of France in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region. He will deliver a speech thus closing a friendship with the Kurds of nearly forty years. Two years later, in June 2010, he welcomed President Massoud Barzani to Paris alongside President Sarkozy.
On 25 September 2017, Bernard Kouchner was one of the international observers of the referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, alongside Dr Frédéric Tissot, former French consul in Erbil.
