Syrian Kurds Need a No-Fly Zone

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Like many more recent U.S. presidents, George H.W. Bush was prone to promises and rhetoric with little thought about the impact of his words. So it was when, on February 15, 1991, Bush, riding high from Kuwait’s liberation, called upon the Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Iraqi Kurds and Shi’ites listened.

On March 4, 1991, Kurds in the town of Ranya rose up against Saddam’s tyranny. Within 15 days, the peshmerga controlled Iraqi Kurdistan’s major towns and cities.

While Bush rhetorically encouraged the Iraqis to press for their freedom, he also sought to hasten the U.S. exit from Iraq itself, while some within his State Department sought a hastened return to normality. Accordingly, U.S. forces released their Republican Guard prisoners of war, just in time for Saddam to rally to put down the Kurdish and Shi’ite rebellions.

As Saddam’s helicopter gunships began attacking Kurdish villages, and with his chemical weapons a recent memory, millions of Kurds began trekking across snowy mountain passes to cross into Turkey.

President Ozal of Turkey seated next to his wife meeting the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga delegation newly arrived in Turkey, 1988. The photo was copied to Sheri Laizer from the collection of Akram Mayi at the time/handout to iKurd.net

The last thing the Turkish government wanted was more Kurds inside Turkey, and so President Turgut Özal suggested the idea to create a “safe haven” in northern Iraq. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 678 and 688 provided a legal foundation.

Özal allowed U.S., British, and French jets to use Turkish air bases to patrol a “no-fly zone” in Iraqi airspace above the 36^th parallel, and U.S. forces also secured a 36-square-mile safe haven centered around the Iraqi Kurdish town of Zakho. As Kurds poured into the safe haven, American forces expanded it to 9,300 square miles, roughly the size of New Hampshire.

History rhymes, even if it does not repeat. President Joe Biden, like the elder Bush, could encourage rebellions he had no intention of backing. The State Department, meanwhile, is willing to rush reconciliation. The Biden administration’s decision to lift the bounty on Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Golani) normalizes him just as he and Turkey’s current Islamist government announce their goal to eradicate the Kurdish self-government in northeastern Syria.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s offer to take over guard duty at Al-Hol prison camp, where thousands of Islamic State fighters and their families remain under guard, is risible, the equivalent of an arsonist offering to guard the gasoline depot and match factory. The situation would be worse, however, as the thousands of Islamic State fighters would spread out not only across Syria and the Middle East, but also into Europe—with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan happily extorting concessions from weak European and NATO leaders in exchange for promises not to turn on the spigot of illegal immigration.

Erdogan is no Özal. He sees the West as weak and, while Özal sought acceptance of Turkey’s Kurds and Islamists, Erdogan looks at the world as a zero-sum game: He believes his God-given mission is to eradicate the Kurds just as the late Ottoman officials, after whom he models himself, decimated the Armenians.

Nor, unlike in 1991, do the Syrian Kurds have anywhere to go. To flee into Turkey would be the equivalent of digging their own mass graves. Iraqi Kurdistan is no option. Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party is today less a Kurdish nationalist party than a party of Jash [collaborators] whose leaders—Massoud, Masrour, Waysi, and Areen Barzani—have sold Kurdish nationalism for personal profit. Their vision of Iraqi Kurdistan is essentially a duplicate of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, an occupied zone and money laundering hub pretending to be a functioning state.

Simply speaking, a Turkish move into “Rojava,” as the Syrian Kurds often call their region, would both stain Biden’s legacy and guarantee failure to the Trump administration’s goals of expanding the Abraham Accords, ending terror, and protecting Israel’s security.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, September 7, 2024. Photo: Turkish Presidency/tccb.gov.tr

It is time, therefore, to borrow a page from Özal’s playbook and establish a no-fly zone and safe haven stretching from Afrin to Semalka and from Qamishlo to Deir ez-Zour. Turkey would not cooperate, and Erdogan would not acquiesce, but the United States does not need Turkey’s air bases nor Erdogan’s permission given the Özal precedent.

The goal will be humanitarian. Erdogan talks about diplomacy, so who is he to argue? His Syrian proxies, frankly, may welcome the excuse not to be pushed into a devastating conflict with non-threatening Kurds when other groups in southern Syria have yet to accept Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s dominance.

The U.S. military can supply the safe haven by land from Jordan, because much of the desert region between the two is lightly inhabited and easily secured. It would be in Jordan’s interest to prevent an Islamist, anti-Hashemite, and pro-Hamas regime like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham from advancing to its borders.

Israel can prove its rhetoric sincere by allowing the use of its air bases and perhaps even its own pilots. Saudi Arabia, which quietly has established relations with Syrian Kurds, due to the Kingdom’s own concerns about Erdogan’s expansionism and his ideological aggression, might also participate from its air bases, as could European powers

Iraqi Kurdistan region prime minister Masrour Barzani, February 2024. Photo: Barzani’s Press Office/via iKurd.net

Iraqi Kurds, too, may not like the political competition their co-ethnicists in Syria represent, but if they want the security of U.S. forces in Erbil, it simply may be the price they must pay. Masrour Barzani dreams of his own fiefdom but apparently has not paid U.S. taxes over the 21 years since he acquired his U.S. green card.

As much as he blusters on his own television channel, he acts like a lamb in his Washington meetings for fear of antagonizing those Americans whom he has not bought. Likewise, Erdogan talks like a bully, but it is one thing for his military to bomb lightly armed Kurds and Armenians who have no air defense; it is quite another for him to move against neighbors or modern air forces.

There can be no delay. Whether Biden-era National Security Council aid Brett McGurk, Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, or likely Trump team members Joel Rayburn or Morgan Ortagus, it is time to set up a no-fly zone and tell Turkey “No more” to its expansionism, ethnic cleansing, and support for radical Islamism.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.