20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY DECEMBER 14-20, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Harm Done Unseen victims of Henry Kissinger’s legacy live all over the world and deserve a chance to be heard. By Ava Homa FORUM The passing of Henry Kissinger has sparked conversations about a figure both revered and reviled. While elite Americans extol him, millions worldwide recoil in disgust. Kissinger’s Nobel Prize glossed over the countless shattered lives in Kurdistan, Cambodia, Chile, Timor, Bangladesh, and beyond. According to historian Greg Grandin’s calculations in Kissinger’s Shadow, his tenure from 1969 to 1976 led to the loss of 3-4 million lives due to his policies. Yet, this figure barely encapsulates the immeasurable suffering of survivors, including my own family, the Kurds. “My earliest memory is of an explosion down our street, shattering the windows, killing two women,” recalls my cousin, who was 7 at the time. “We escaped. Saddam burned our village and many others. It’s all a fog now. But I still shake every time I remember.” Kissinger’s family history bears scars of wartime tragedy too, with grandparents killed by Nazis, and parents barely escaping. Ironically, when positioned to protect the vulnerable, he ruthlessly overlooked lives resembling his ancestors. My family wasn’t as lucky as his. They were among the 200,000 displaced when Iraq attacked the Kurds in 1975. The Algiers Agreement regarding the border between Iraq and Iran preceded this offensive. Still, the war-stricken weren’t certain how one led to the other at the time. Decades later, while researching my book Daughters of Smoke and Fire, I uncovered the U.S.’s role in this tragedy. All the documents are public records now. In 1972, at the Shah of Iran’s request, Kissinger and President Nixon sanctioned a covert operation supporting a Kurdish insurrection against Saddam’s regime. This operation was intended to aid the Kurds’ fight for autonomy. Despite being one of the region’s largest ethnic groups, the Kurds were denied statehood by a stroke of colonial powers’ pens, left under the rule of hostile central governments in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Survival meant struggling for rights denied to them by geopolitical decisions. The CIA, under U.S. directives, funded the Kurdish resistance not to champion their cause but to manipulate conflicts and weaken Iraq. The abrupt withdrawal of support after the Shah’s deal with Iraq left the Kurds defenseless. Appeals for aid and asylum in the U.S. were disregarded. The Kurds’ plight stands as a glaring example of how political expediency eclipses human lives. Kissinger’s involvement in betraying the Kurds remains a distressing chapter in American foreign policy. The betrayal of Kurdish allies was repeated most recently in 2019, when President Trump pulled troops from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to attack Kurds, the same people who lost 11,000 lives to defeat ISIS. Descendants of those broken by Kissinger’s actions need to be heard. Whether this becomes a reality depends on humanity’s willingness to heed the silenced voices of his victims and pledge never to repeat such atrocities. Ava Homa is the author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire and a faculty member at CSUMB. OPINION “My earliest memory is of an explosion.” PRESENTED BY
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