omg Iran 'attacks Iraq Kurdish area'

[Tattila the Hun]

As US is occupying Iraq, aren't attacks by foreign nation against Iraq also attacks against US? Even if US personnel isn't hurt.

[chequita guevara]

PKK
Turkey
Iran

[TCO]

Turks ain't going to do ****. If they try anything, Markos will be a very happy man.

[Barnabas]

I think the kurds should be given kurdish iraq as their own country, but they should in exchange no longer claim territory from other countries.

[GePap]

Turkey is more important to the US than Iraq. If the Turks go in, the US will demand they stop, but the US will not take action against the Turks.

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Cyclotron
The problem is that the US needs the PKK and others like them to maintain Kurdish commitment to the Iraqi state. If the Americans take action against the Kurds, the Kurds might try to secede - and wouldn't you agree that an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq would be far more of a problem for Turkey than some PKK raids launched from northern Iraq?

Originally posted by Arrian For reasons that should be fairly obvious, we can't pick a fight with the Kurds, even if they are being terrorist bastards.

Fair enough . There are two major factions among Kurds in northern Iraq, one is the one following Talabani, who was made president of all of Iraq to give Kurds in general a stake in maintaining inside Iraq, and the other one is headed by his rival Barzani, who became the president of the Kurdish entity in the north to compansate for Talabani's Iraqi presidency. They have enough rivalry to not to leave room for a third player in the region, which in this instance is the PKK, which has its own terrorist army.

So on the one hand I would think Talabani and Barzani should be happy to see an uncontrolled element get destroyed. On the other hand, if what you say here is true, then it means they are happy to have the PKK around for some reason.

One of the few reasons that I can think of is that they see PKK as not enough of a threat for their own authority, but as some extra military force which they would benefit from in case Iraqi Kurds decide to declare independence and Turkey moves in in reaction to this.

Another reason would be that they are extremely allergic to any Turkish presence in the region, on very emotionally charged grounds.

Enter the US here. So, why would they eschew from attacking PKK strongholds? Only if the above assumptions are actually true and that T and B are so strongly against this, the US can't risk to earn their resentment...

What I don't further understand is, the continuing presence of the PKK actually gives Turkey an excuse to meddle in Kurdish affairs in northern Iraq (Turkish army acknowledges that it has unspecified elements operating in the area for years..Probably special forces teams et al?)...So it's not a winning situation either way for Iraqi Kurds.

Also, if the US needs the support of these Kurdish feudal lords so desperately badly, then their control over events in Iraq overall should be even flimsier than the anti-Bush movement in the US try to portray it....

In any case, a price the US pays for playing the game of the Kurds is that it's losing precious moral and diplomatic capital with regard to Turkey in order to secure Turkey's support for actions that it may in the near future consider as vital to its interests, such as getting Turkey on board for an economic embargo against Iran (despite heavy Turkish dependence on Iranian natural gas and in the face of many billions of Dollars' worth of bilateral trade), let alone support for any kind of military action against Iran.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Zkribbler

WTF are the Iranians up to?? They're attacking anti-Turkisih Kurds? These Kurds have some ties to anti-Iranian Kurds, sure, but is that enough to motivate an mini-invasion?

They won't "invade".

As I said before the Kurds love to hate their neighbors as large numbers of their people are forced to live under the rule of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq with a small minority living in Armenia and Azerbijian. If you ever sit down with Kurds, as I did when I worked in psyops in Iraqi Kurdistan speaking to local politicos of the PUK and PDK, then you'd see it. These people love the west, they love western political ideals (seperation of church & state, freedom of expression, democracy, etc) but they absolutely have a blinding hatred for Arabs, Turks, and Persians. To be sure the Kurds have suffered horriblely under these governments who have tried to wipe out Kurdisk culture but the Kurds take their revolution for national independence to far. You can hardly take on every country in the region when you're a disorganized insurgent group.

The post 1992 semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan was their first taste of independence since the 15th century and they know full well that Saddam would have reconquored them if the US and UK had not bombed the hell out of Saddam every time he tried. That is why they love the Anglo-Saxons. It maybe funny but I heard several of them say negative things about France and Russia who they saw as being pro-Saddam; in my opinion that was unfair of them to say so.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Jon Miller

Kurds took part in the armenian genocide



JM

Kurds very uch took part in the Armenian genicide but if it matters they routinely revolted and killed large numbers of Turks too. As I said the Kurds are a very nationalist people who seem to dislike all of their neighbors equally (or at least like killing all of their neighbors equally).

[Dinner]

The history of Kurds is a tragic one. They were an independent people who originated in central Asia, like the Turks, who invaded the Middle East slightly before the Turks, and who took over eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and north western Persia in the 13th century. They were a very proud people but one who quickly got over run by the stronger Turks and Persians. In WW1 the British promised them independence in exchange for rebelling against the Turks but after the Kurds, like the Arabs, rebelled they found the British had changed their minds and decided to let the Turks keep most of Kurdistan and to subordinate the Kurds to Arabs in Iraq (the French did the same in Syria). The Kurds had a very long history of being autonomous in the Ottoman Empire and they rebelled constantly when the new Turkish Republic and the British controlled Iraq attempted to subject them to the power of the central government. Iraq's military was founded by the British mainly to suppress the Kurds but later to also use the Sunni Arabs to repress the Shi'a Arabs. Post independence Iraq seemed to have Kurdish rebellions every ten years and in the early 1970's the Kurds turned to Israel for help against the Arabs of Saddam's Iraq.

The Israelis trained the Kurds in modern guerrilla warfare and gave them weapons which the Kurds used in their rebellion but the Israelis never gave them enough stuff so that they'd be independent of Israeli help. The Shah saw the Kurds as useful and gave them limited help and allowed them to build bases just across the Iranian border from which they could attack Iraq but never enough stuff that they could survive on their own. The Shah wanted to increase pressure on Saddam to settle a border dispute along the shat al Arab (the water way formed after the Tigress and Euphrates rivers flow together and then flow to the gulf) so he wanted to up the ante and get the Kurds to stop making hit and run attacks and start holding ground against the Iraqi army.

Naturally the Kurds were reluctant to abandon their traditional way of making war and they didn't trust the Iranians so they turned to the US. Kissinger was totally against helping the Kurds, but the Shah knew the Kurds wouldn't really start holding ground and fighting unless they got assurances from the US so the Shah asked Nixon to give such assurances. Nixon didn't know a damn thing about Kurds but he told Kissinger to give the Shah what ever he wanted so Kissinger told Barzani (the lead general of Kurdish forces in Iraq) that the US would assist the Kurds and prevent them from being over run by the Iraqi army.

The plan was that the US would send military aid to the Iraqi Kurds through Iran but since Vietnam was going on and was very unpopular in the US Nixon didn't want US troops directly involved in Kurdistan. Thus Kissinger hatched the idea that the US would train Iranian military forces who would then go and train Kurdish forces (thus the US could say it never was involved) and supposedly everyone would be happy. At first things seemed to go well as American weapons traveled through Iran and went to the Kurds, however, the Shah had dynastic plans of his own in which the Kurds were just a pawn to be played. The Shah started negotiations with Saddam in which Saddam agreed to give half of the Shat al Arab to the Shah (expanding the southwest portion of Iran several miles) and in exchange the Shah would cut off the flow of weapons and ammunition to the Kurds.
The Kurds then found themselves on hill tops and in trenches with the latest American artillery but without ammunition. Their troops were used to fighting guerilla style and living off of the land so when holding frontlines they didn’t have food for everyone without resupply; resupply the Americans were sending but which the Shah was keeping and not sending on to the Kurds. The Kurds were massacred. Kissenger went to Nixon to beg for an American invasion but Nixon wouldn’t hear it since Vietnam was so unpopular. Nixon instead asked the Shah to reopen the supply lines but the Shah wasn’t interested since he’d gained land. The Kurds died by the hundreds of thousands and the death toll got worse since the Iraqis burned every Kurdish village they captured. 1/3 of the Kurdish villages in Iraq were destroyed to teach the Kurds never to rebel. The Shah was over thrown in just a few years and Saddam tried to regain the land he’d bargained away thus starting the eight year long Iran-Iraq war.

During the Iran-Iraq war the Kurds again tried to rebel. They’d suffered so badly in the 1970’s that massive rebellions were supported to drive the Arabs out. Saddam’s response was Al Anfal. Named after a chapter of the Koran Al anfal was designed to purge all Kurds from iraq and leave only Arabs. This was when “Chemical Aoli” used poison gas to kill as many Kurdish civilians as possible and ethnically cleans the rest. Those that remained were resettled to majority Arab areas and far away from economically important places like Kirkuk. This is why in 1992 the Kurds accepted George Bush Sr.’s call to rebel. The Kurds were massacred when faced against tanks and helicopters and it was only the US and UK’s use of their air forces, along with a threat to restart the gulf war, which prevented Saddam from driving them all from Iraq.

Since 1992 it is the Americans and the British who have kept the Kurds of Iraq safe and so the Kurds love the Anglo-Saxons

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ancyrean


Actually, Turkish army has amassed more than 200.000 troops along the entire length of the Turkish-Iraqi border in the past two weeks, and i'm totally amazed at the lack of mention of this in the international media.

Turkish newspapers speculated that the army was in for a massive incursion into Northern Iraq with the aim of destroying a number of PKK bases still active in the area. These bases act as a springboard for a string of recent attacks on Turkish military patrols and the unwillingness of the US to do something about them is being an increasing point of tension between Turkey and US.

The Americans, despite the fact that they have recognised PKK and its phoney-named affiliates as terrorist, declare nonchalantly that they are not the authority in Iraq so that Turkey should instead seek the help of the Iraqi government. Right... They also say that they have their hands tied against the insurgency in the south so they have no troops to spare against any operation in the north. Again, as if they have no more guided bombs or cruise missiles to visit these bases...Right....

Furthermore, nevermind the fact that there's no credible Iraqi government whatsoever to talk to in the first place and if there were, they don't have anything remotely near to an army who would manage a coordinated attack on a crack rebel stronghold. And even if they could pull it off, it is as if the Kurdish government in the north would watch an Arab army start fireworks deep in its territory. What a joke....

Public opinion here is simmering with accusations of treacherous hypocrisy on the part of US (as in "my terrorist: Bad bad bad. Your terrorist which I also recognise: suck it up") and frankly I'm not convinced at all by the American explanations about their inaction against the PKK.

Condi Rice was here just last week and she was reassured that the Turkish army was deployed along the border just to stop fresh PKK incursions to come with the oncoming spring thaw. However, Turkish media was awash this week with reports of Turkish army units having crossed the border numerous times up to 15 km in pursuit of fleeing PKK groups...Speculation still abounds here that soon the army will launch a major invasion of norhtern parts of North Iraq.

...

Three years too late, but welcome to Gulf War 2!

[Sikander]

LoL, Chemical Aoli!

[TCO]

Originally posted by GePap
Turkey is more important to the US than Iraq. If the Turks go in, the US will demand they stop, but the US will not take action against the Turks.

They are not "going in" while we are in. One dick in an ******* at a time.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sikander

Three years too late, but welcome to Gulf War 2!

I saw a few Turkish soldiers at the air field in Kirkuk.

[Cyclotron]

Enter the US here. So, why would they eschew from attacking PKK strongholds? Only if the above assumptions are actually true and that T and B are so strongly against this, the US can't risk to earn their resentment...

The key interests of the US at this point are the security and stability of Iraq. Attacking the PKK would accomplish neither of those things; the PKK is currently not dangerous to Iraq's security (at least, not any more than any of the other Kurdish militias), and armed action against any Kurdish party could upset the Kurds and damage stability. The US has an overwhelming incentive to not "rock the boat" by attacking anyone except the insurgents, who by their very nature threaten the stability and security of the new regime.

I would guess that it is not so much a matter of the US needing the PKK per say, but the fact that the US needs the Kurds in general, and more "meainstream" Kurds might still be upset by US action against the PKK.

As damaging as this stance may be for US relations with Turkey, the US administration simply will not take actions that will hamper their efforts to achieving a "stable" Iraq, which is ultimately the benchmark by which the US's war and subsequent occupation will be judged. Turkish support can be rebuilt over time; if Iraq collapses, the US will likely not get a second chance.

[Zevico]

Public opinion here is simmering with accusations of treacherous hypocrisy on the part of US (as in "my terrorist: Bad bad bad. Your terrorist which I also recognise: suck it up")

Welcome to Israel.