NICOSIA, Cyprus The rebellion by Iraq's Kurdish minority may wellbe the last hurrah in a decades-old struggle for autonomy, closing achapter of history for a people who repeatedly have been betrayed andabandoned.
By all accounts, Saddam Hussein's troops have recaptured most ofthe territory seized by the Kurds in their revolt and the guerrillasare being driven back relentlessly into their mountain strongholds.
The Kurds launched their campaign against Hussein hoping toexploit the turmoil in Iraq after its defeat by the U.S.-led alliancethat liberated Kuwait in February.
But Hussein had enough forces left to quell a revolt by ShiiteMuslims in the south and hammer the Kurdish guerrillas, as he didthree years ago in a scorched-earth military campaign.
At least two divisions of his Republican Guard escapedrelatively intact from the allied blitzkreig in southern Iraq.Without them, it's questionable whether Hussein would have been ableto quell the Shiite rebellion.
Amid mounting international concern over the Kurds, Iraq saidFriday it was offering amnesty to Kurdish rebels, except for thosewho had carried out acts of "premeditated murder, rape or theft."
Despite that statement, it remains unclear how far Hussein isprepared to go in punishing the Kurds. The Iraqi dictator isnotorious for showing no mercy. In his last campaign against theKurds, he used poison gas that killed thousands, including 4,000 inthe Kurdish town of Halabja.
Unless Hussein has an uncharacteristic change of heart andoffers the Kurds the kind of autonomy they seek, the guerrillasprobably will disperse into their mountains as they have done manytimes before. They probably will fight on with hit-and-run raids,hoping to keep their cause alive until they can gather strengthagain. But whether there will be a next time is questionable.
Kurdish sources said as many as half of Iraq's 3.5 million Kurdsmay flee into neighboring Iran, preferring refugee camps to Hussein'swrath.
The Kurds have appealed for help as they retreat beforeHussein's tanks, rockets and helicopter gunships. While medicine andfood have been provided, military support has not been extendedbecause the United States and its partners do not want to get boggeddown in factional turmoil.
Guerrilla leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani have littlechoice but to fight on. Hussein has a price on their heads andconsiders them traitors.
Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, saidrecently, "Saddam Hussein's plan is genocide. He wants to destroy usas a people. We're fighting for survival. It's him or us."
He and Talabani have emphasized that they are not seekingindependence, but autonomy for their region within a federal,democratic state, preferrably without Hussein at its head.
Baghdad granted limited autonomy in March, 1970, after anearlier rebellion. But Barzani's father, the legendary warriorMustafa Barzani who then led the Kurds, accused the government ofreneging and took up guns once more.
There are about 20 million Kurds, mostly Sunni Muslims, in whatis now northern Iraq, southeast Syria, northwest Iran, southeastTurkey and the Soviet Union. They have their own culture andlanguage.
They descend from the Medes and Scythians, Indo-European tribeswho settled in the region ages ago, and are now the largest ethnicgroup in the world denied self-determination.
It wasn't always so. They were a major power in the MiddleAges, along with the Turks. The legendary Saladin, who recapturedJerusalem for Islam from the Crusaders, was a Kurd from what is nowIraq.
But Kurdish power waned in the 13th century, when the Turksswarmed down from the north. Later, the Ottomans gave the Kurdsautonomy for backing them against the Persian shahs.
In the mid-19th century, influenced by the revolutionarydoctrines sweeping Europe, the Kurds engaged in about 50insurrections to establish an independent Kurdistan. The Kurdscontend that during World War I, in which Kurds fought on both sides,the Turks massacred 700,000 of their people.
With the Ottomans' downfall after World War I and the carving upof their empire by Britain and France, their traditional homeland wasfragmented.
The colonial powers promised a Kurdish homeland in the 1920Treaty of Sevres. But it was never ratified because the British, whocontrolled Iraq, wanted the oilfields around Kirkuk.
After World War II, the Kurds established the short-livedMahabad republic in Iranian territory held by the Soviets. But whenthe Red Army withdrew in 1947, the Iranians attacked and Barzani hadto retreat into the Soviet Union.
Another Iraqi Kurdish rebellion in the 1970s, backed by Iran,helped provoke the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
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