Acts of War oc-4 Read online

  "If it's the Turks who are terrorizing the Kurds," said the President, "why did this mole turn on the Syrians?"

  "Because," said Rachlin, "the Syrian President has come to the conclusion, correctly, that his armed forces are full of Kurdish moles. Some of them in very high places. He's vowed to flush them all out."

  Lincoln sat back with disgust. "Steve, Larry, what's the point of all this?"

  "The point is that we can't start bleeding all over for the Kurds," Burkow said. "We've been good to them in the past. But they're becoming increasingly militant, they're ruthless, and they've got God-knows-how-many moles in the Turkish military as well. If we get mixed up in this those Turkish moles may start turning on NATO assets."

  "Actually, things could be a whole lot worse than that," Vanzandt said. "The Kurds have a lot of sympathizers among the Islamic fundamentalist parties in Turkey. Individually or together, those Kurds and their sympathizers could very well take advantage of the confusion of war to try and throw out the secular rulers in both governments."

  "Out of chaos comes more chaos," Lincoln said.

  "You got it," said Vanzandt. "Out with flawed democracy, in with religious oppression."

  "Out with the U.S.," Defense Secretary Colon said.

  "Out isn't the word for it," CIA Director Rachlin added. "Steve's right on the money. They'll start hunting us down not only in Turkey but in Greece. Remember all those Afghan freedom fighters we helped to arm and train to fight the Soviets? A lot of those people have thrown in with the Islamic fundamentalists. Many of them are being directed by Sheik Safar al-Awdah, a Syrian who is one of the most radical clerics in the region."

  "God, I'd like to see someone drop-kick that son of a bitch," Steve Burkow said. "His radio speeches have sent a lot of people on one-way bus trips into Israel with bombs tied to their legs."

  "His following in Turkey and Saudi Arabia in particular are very strong," Rachlin went on, "and it's gotten stronger in Turkey since Islamic Party Leader Necmettin Erbakan became Prime Minister of Turkey in the summer of 1996. Ironically, not all of the radicalism has to do with religion. Some of it has to do with the economy. In the 1980s, when Turkey went from being a relatively closed market to being a global one, only a handful of people got rich. The rest stayed poor or got poorer. Those kinds of people are easy converts to anything new."

  "The fundamentalists and the big urban underclass are natural allies," said Av Lincoln. "Both are minorities and both want things the wealthy, secular leaders have."

  "Larry," the President said, "you mentioned Saudi Arabia. What will the rest of the region do if things escalate between Turkey and Syria?"

  "Israel is the big question," said Rachlin. "They take their military cooperation agreement with Turkey very, very seriously. Israel's been flying training missions out of Akinci Air Base west of Ankara for two years now. They've also been slowly upgrading Turkey's 164 Phantom F-4s to the more sophisticated Phantom 2000s."

  "Mind you," Colon pointed out, "Israel didn't just do that out of the goodness of their hearts. They were paid six hundred million dollars to do that."

  "That's right," Rachlin agreed. "But in the event of war, Israel will still continue to provide spare parts, possibly ammunition, and certainly intelligence to Turkey. It's the same kind of arrangement Israel signed with Jordan back in 1994. There will probably be no direct military intervention unless Israel is attacked. However, if Israel permits Turkey to fly from its territory for a two-sided slam at Syria, you can be pretty sure that Damascus will attack Israel."

  "For the record," said Vanzandt, "that 'bracketing the enemy' idea works both ways. Syria and Greece have been talking about forging a military relationship so that either of them could hit Turkey from two directions."

  "Talk about a marriage made in Hell," said Lincoln. "Greece and Syria have virtually no other common ground."

  "Which should tell you how much they both hate Turkey," Burkow pointed out.

  "What about the other nations in the region?" asked the President.

  "Iran will certainly intensify efforts to promote their puppet parties in Ankara," Colon said, "calling for general strikes and marches, but they'll stay out of this militarily. They don't need to become involved."

  "Unless Armenia gets pulled in," Lincoln said.

  "Right," said Colon, "which we'll get to in a second. Iraq will almost certainly use the excuse of troop movements to attack Kurds operating on their border with Syria. And once Iraq is mobilized, there's always the possibility that they'll do something to provoke Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or even their old enemy Iran. But as Av said, the big question we have is about Armenia."

  The Secretary of State nodded. "Armenia is almost entirely Armenian Orthodox. If the government there fears that Turkey is going to go Islamic, they may have no choice but to jump into any conflict to protect their Own border. If that happens, Azerbaijan, which is mostly Muslim, will almost certainly use that as an excuse to try and reclaim the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which they lost to Armenia in skirmishes in 1994."

  "And which Turkey has publicly stated belongs to Azerbaijan," Colon said. "That creates tension within Turkey for those who support their religious brethren in Armenia. On top of everything else, we could have civil war in Turkey over events in two neighboring countries."

  "This might be a good time to push the expansion of NATO," Lincoln pointed out. "Bring Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the fold to keep them stabilized. Use them as a breakwater."

  "We'll never be able to make that happen in time," Burkow said.

  Lincoln smiled. "Then it's best to start right away."

  The President shook his head. "Av, I don't want us distracted by that now. Those countries will side with us and we'll support them. My concern is stopping this situation before it gets that far."

  "Fine," Lincoln said, raising his hands slightly. "Just a precaution."

  Hood looked at the new map which the Situation Room secretary had just put up on the screens. Armenia was situated with Turkey on its western border and Azerbaijan to the east. The Nagorno Karabakh region in Azerbaijan was claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

  "Obviously," said Lincoln, "the greatest danger isn't that Azerbaijan and Aremenia will go to war. The two of them put together are about half the size of Texas with a combined population of Greater Los Angeles. The danger is that Iran, located directly below them, and Russia, situated directly above them, will start moving troops to protect their own borders. Iran would love to get their hands on that region. It's rich in oil, natural gas, copper, farmland, and other resources. And the hard-liners in Russia would love to get it back."

  "There are also devout Christians in Armenia," said Vanzandt, "and Iran would love to clean them out. Without Armenia to serve as a counterbalance to the mostly Muslim population of Azerbaijan, the entire region becomes a de facto part of Islamic Iran."

  "Maybe," said Lincoln. "There are other hair triggers as well. For example, the fifteen million Azeris in the northern provinces of Iran. If they decide to secede, Iran will fight to hold them. And the five million ethnic Caucasians in Turkey will surely fight with their Iranian kin. That puts Iran and Turkey at war with one another. And if the Caucasians fight for independence, chances are good the North Caucasus will be ripped apart by other groups looking to resolve ages-old strife. The Ossetians and Ingush, the Ossetians and the Georgians, the Abkhazians and the Georgians, the Checkens and the Cossacks, the Chechens and the Laks, the Azeris and the Lezgins."

  "What's frustrating," said Colon, "'is that both Bob Herbert's team at Op-Center and Grady Reynolds's team at the CIA agree with my own people. Damascus probably had nothing to do with blowing up the dam. They'd have to be insane to cut off more than half their own water supply."

  "Maybe they want to generate international sympathy," Burkow said. "Videos and photographs of thirsty babies and dying old people would give Syria an instant image-remake. It would help to turn United States sympathy and foreign
aid away from Turkey and Israel to them."

  "It would also cause the much larger and better-armed Turkish Army to come marching down their throats," Colon replied. "This dam incident is an act of war. In such a war, the U.S. military and our financial institutions would be obliged by NATO treaty to support Turkey. Israel would also support the Turks, especially if it gave them a chance to hit Syria."

  "Only if Syria rises to the challenge of war," Burkow said. "Turkey might mass an army on the Syrian border. So might Syria. But if Syria chooses not to reply, there'll be no war."

  "And the Arab world would consider them dishonored," Colon said. "No, Steve, that's just too Machiavellian. This makes more sense if it's the work of Syrian Kurds."

  "Why would the Kurds seek to cause an international confrontation?" asked the President. "They've been desperate enough to attack host nations. But would they do something on this scale?"

  "We've been expecting the different Kurdish nationals to unite for some time," said Larry Rachlin. "Otherwise, they run the risk of getting picked off separately. This could be that unification."

  "Kurdistan in diaspora," said Lincoln.

  "Exactly," said Rachlin.

  "The truth is, Steve," said Lincoln, "General Vanzandt is right to worry about what the Kurds might do. As things stand, they're among the most persecuted people on Earth. Distributed throughout Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, they're actively oppressed by all three governments. Until 1991, they weren't even allowed to use their own language in Turkey. Under pressure from the other NATO nations, Ankara reluctantly granted them that but nor more. Over twenty thousand Turks have been killed since the rebels started fighting for sovereignty in 1984, and the Kurds are still banned from forming groups of any sort. I'm not just talking about political parties, but even choral clubs or literary societies. If there were a war, the Kurds would inevitably be part of the fighting, and then they'd also be part of the peace process. It's the only way they can ever hope to get autonomy. "

  The President turned to Vanzandt. "We have to support the Turks. And we also have got to prevent this thing from turning the other way, into Greece and Bulgaria."

  Agreed," said Vanzandt.

  "So we've got to try and contain this before the Syrians and Turks go at it," said the President. "Av, what are the chances that the Turks will enter Syria to hunt the bombers?"

  "Well, Ankara is pretty upset," Lincoln said, "but I don't think they'll go over the border. At least, not in force."

  "Why not?" said Vanzandt. "They've ignored national sovereignty before. In 1996 they mounted some pretty bloody cross-border air attacks on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq."

  "We've always believed that Turkey was acting with Iraqi approval in that case," said CIA Director Rachlin. "Since the U.S. wouldn't let Saddam attack the Kurds, he let the Turks do it."

  "Anyway," said Lincoln, "there's another reason the Turks are wary of going against Syria. Back in 1987, Turkey discovered that Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish guerrilla leader, was living in Damascus. He was sitting in his apartment and ordering attacks on villages in Turkey. Ankara asked Damascus to let a strike team in so they could take him. All Syria had to do was stay out of the way. But Syria didn't want to stir things up with the Syrian Kurds, so they refused. The Turks came very close to ordering a strike team into Damascus."

  "Why didn't they?" the President asked.

  "They were afraid that Syria had tipped Ocalan off,"' Lincoln said. "The Turks didn't want to raid the building and not find him there. It would have been politically embarrassing, to say the least."

  "I'd say that this dam blast is a helluva lot more provocative than what was happening in 1987," Vanzandt remarked.

  "It is," said Lincoln, "but the problem is the same. What if it turns out that Turkish Kurds did the hands-on work, not the Syrian Kurds? Turkey attacks Syria looking for enemies there, and it turns out their own Kurds were responsible. Syria's stock rises in the international forum and Turkey's plummets. Turkey won't risk that kind of an ambush."

  "You've got to remember, Mr. President," said Defense Secretary Colon, "this explosion hurts Damascus as much as it does Ankara. My feeling is that it's the unified Kurds who have turned up the heat. They're trying to trigger a war between Turkey and Syria by forcing Turkey to enter Syria looking for terrorists. And the Kurds will keep applying pressure until they get a major incursion."

  "Why?" asked the President. "Because they think they'll get a homeland as part of the peace process?"

  Colon and Lincoln both nodded.

  Hood was looking up at one of the maps. "I don't understand," he said. "What does Syria gain by preventing Turkey from finding Kurdish terrorists? Damascus has got to ensure the security of their other water sources, especially the Orontes River in the west. It looks like it comes right through Turkey into Syria and Lebanon."

  "It does," said Lincoln.

  "So if Turkey wants to stop the Kurds," Hood went on, "and Syria needs to stop the Kurds, why won't they join forces? This isn't like the Ocalan affair. Syria doesn't risk stirring up the Kurds. It looks like they're already on the warpath."

  "Syria can't join forces with Turkey," said Vanzandt, "because of the Turkish military cooperation pact with Israel. Syria would sooner support Kurdish political goals to stop them from blowing up other dams rather than join the Turks and eradicate the Kurds."

  "Syria would back one enemy rather than support the friend of another enemy," Colon said. "That's Middle Eastern politics for you."

  "But Syria would have to give up some of its own land to give the Kurds a homeland," the President said.

  "Ah, but would they?" asked Av Lincoln. "Suppose the Kurds eventually get what they want, a homeland straddling parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Do you think for a moment that Syria will stay out of there? They don't play by any rules. They'll use terrorism to exert de facto control over what used to be their territory, and also absorb some of the former Turkish lands into Greater Syria. That's exactly what they've done with Lebanon."

  "General Vanzandt, gentlemen," the President said, "we've got to find some way of guaranteeing the security of those other water sources and also of helping the Turks find the terrorists. What are your suggestions?"

  "Larry and Paul, we can talk about internal operations against the terrorists later," said General Vanzandt. "Present the President with some suggestions."

  Hood and Rachlin both nodded.

  "As for the water," Vanzandt went on, "if we move the Eisenhower Carrier Battle Group from Naples to the eastern Mediterranean, we can watch the Orontes while at the same time keeping the seaways secure for Turkish exports. We want to make sure the Greeks don't jump into this."

  "That leaves everyone happy," said Steve Burkow, "unless the Syrians suddenly decide in their paranoid way that this is all a United States plot to cut off their water supply. Which, if you ask me, wouldn't be the world's worst idea. That would put Damascus out of the terrorism business right quick."

  "And kill how many innocent people?" Lincoln asked.

  "Not many more than Syrian-backed terrorists will kill worldwide over the next few years," Burkow replied. He typed his password on the computer and brought up a file. "We were talking about Sheik al-Awdah before," Burkow said as he looked at the screen. "In yesterday's radio speech from Palmyra, Syria, he said, 'We call upon God Almighty to destroy the American economy and society, to transform its states into nations and turn them against one another. To turn its brothers against one another as penance for infidelic evil.' Now, to my ears that's a declaration of war. You know how many sickeroos out there are going to hear this and try to make that happen?"

  "That doesn't justify blind, preventative strikes," the President pointed out. "We aren't terrorists."

  "I know that, sir," Burkow said. "But I'm tired of playing by rules that no one else in the world seems to acknowledge. We pour tens of billions of dollars into the Chinese economy and they use that money to develop and sell military nuclear tech
nology to terrorists. Why do we allow it? Because we don't want American businesses to suffer by being shut out of China—"

  "The issue isn't China," Lincoln said.

  "The issue is a chronic goddamn double standard," Burkow shot back. "We look the other way when Iran ships weapons to Muslim terrorists around the world. Why? Because some of those terrorists are bombing other countries. In a perverse way, that gives us allies in the fight against terrorism. We don't have to endure all kinds of criticism for defending ourselves if other nations are defending themselves too. All I'm saying is we've got an opportunity here to hold Syria's feet to the fire. If we cut off their water, we choke their economy. We do that and Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist camps in Syria and even our Kurdish terrorists get squeezed."

  "Kill the body and you kill the disease," Lincoln replied. "Come on, Steve,"

  "You also keep the disease from spreading to other bodies," Burkow answered. "If we were to make an object lesson of Syria, I guarantee you Iran and Iraq and Libya would pull in their claws and count their blessings."

  "Or redouble their efforts to destroy us," Lincoln said.

  "If they did," Burkow replied, "we would turn Tehran and Baghdad and Tripoli into craters wide enough to be photographed from space."

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence. Visions of Dr. Strangelove flashed through Hood's mind.

  "What if we were to turn that around?" Lincoln asked. "What if we were to hold out a helping hand instead of a fist?"

  "What kind of hand?" the President asked.

  "What would really get Syria's attention isn't just a flow of water but a flow of money," said Lincoln "Their economy is in the gutter. They're turning out roughly the same amount of goods as they were fifteen years ago when the population was twenty-five percent smaller. They've gotten mired in an unsuccessful attempt to match Israel's military strength, there's been a big falloff in Arab aid, and they've got insufficient foreign exchange earnings to buy what they need to spur industry and agriculture. They have nearly six billion dollars in external debt."