The Fall of Kirkuk

[Jack the Bodiless]

Kurdish peshmerga forces have "taken" Kirkuk.

Not sure yet what that means. There is likely to be some ongoing resistance, as Kirkuk has been subject to "Arabization" under Saddam's regime: Kurds driven out, property ownership documents destroyed, property given to Arab settlers. There will be disputes, possibly bloody ones, about who now owns what.

And the Turks will be nervous. They've been supporting the Turcoman minority in the region. They wanted the Kurds to stay out of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Sorting out this mess will not be easy, but at least the Kurds can begin to reclaim their city.

But will they be allowed to keep it?

[James Adams]

Re: The Fall of Kirkuk

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Kurdish peshmerga forces have "taken" Kirkuk.

Not sure yet what that means. There is likely to be some ongoing resistance, as Kirkuk has been subject to "Arabization" under Saddam's regime: Kurds driven out, property ownership documents destroyed, property given to Arab settlers. There will be disputes, possibly bloody ones, about who now owns what.

And the Turks will be nervous. They've been supporting the Turcoman minority in the region. They wanted the Kurds to stay out of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Sorting out this mess will not be easy, but at least the Kurds can begin to reclaim their city.

But will they be allowed to keep it?

That is difference to sort out, oh dear!

[Urban Ranger]

The Turks won't want the Kurds to have controls over the cities. The new government, whatever it is, probably don't want it either.

[Tolls]

So now it's the Kurds turn to pull down a statue...at least this time they might be allowed to get on with it by themselves, even if it will take a while before it topples.

Which has got me wondering...doesn't anyone in Iraq have access to some heavy machinery? Farming? Construction? It would make this statue toppling a lot faster. At this rate they'll still be pushing them over this time next year!

[Jack the Bodiless]

Update: now they have Mosul too.

Which means that they have Iraqui Kurdistan, whether the Turks like it or not.

[Tolls]

Apparently they're going to leave Kirkuk...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Which means that they have Iraqui Kurdistan, whether the Turks like it or not.

The Turks have a big army, the Kurds don't.

[CerberusIV]

On the surface they have agred to pull out of Kirkuk but any attempt to put together a group of local leaders to run the area will have to include a strong Kurdish element.

The Turks have only themselves to blame. If they had allowed US troops through then it would have been US troops occupying these cities and the Peshmerga would have stayed in the background. As it is the Kurds have had a bigger role than would have otherwise been the case, and presumably a bigger influence on what happens next.

[Jack the Bodiless]

The Peshmerga have apparently agreed to hand over control, but obviously the predominantly Kurdish population is still there (and a lot of the Arab immigrants have fled). So the city is "Kurdish".

And the US is already talking about inviting Peshmerga forces back, as policemen "under US control".

Expect a lot of face-saving and cosmetic changes. In every respect that really matters, Kirkuk and Mosul are Kurdish, and will remain so, unless there's either a new Iraqui dictatorship (or an anti-Kurd "democratic" regime, like Turkey) or a Turkish invasion.

[Tolls]

And this wasn't an obvious outcome because...?

This would have happened if the 4th div had been allowed through...I probably should have used some sort of "cynic" smiley on my last post. All this stuff is simply to hold off Turkey, but in the end there will be a Kurdistan, albeit as a part of an Iraqi union (if the whole thing doesn't fall apart before then that is). What happens then...?

Well....

[Bereta_Eder]

To put it quite blantly, the Turks will massacre the Kurds. Again.

[Bereta_Eder]

Iraqi Kurds are more than 4 million

Turkey Kurds are more than 10 million

Turkey simply will do whatever it can to stop a kurdish state from being formed. And since it already has the weapons and noone is going to stop her it will do just that.

Now if the geostrategic importance of Turkey has fallen so much vis a vis the US that thelatter will support the Kurds, I find it a very remote possibility.

The best Kurds can hope for (for which I express my wholeheart solidarity) is a limited autonomy inside Iraq.

[Bereta_Eder]

of course they can choose not to "learn"...

others have done it with good results.


and I bet they will never learn untill they're free

20 million people is a lot of crowd.

[Lincoln]

This will be a mess that will take years to sort out. The best thing to do is to let the Greeks supervise.

[Shi Huangdi]

The Kurds won't be getting their own state here. If they did, we could simply allow the Turks to come in. It's in our best interest to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq.