Tuesday, December 18, 2007
UH-OH. . . . .
Looks like Turkey has invaded Kurdish-held Iraq. Its been overnight but they're still there, about 1.5 miles into territory near the Iranian border. This follows aerial bombing of Kurdish PKK bases in Iraq yesterday.
And in other news, Condi Rice made a 'surprise' visit to the disputed Kurdish city of Kirkuk, center of northern Iraq's oil industry. Call me a cynic, but methinks there just might be a connection between that visit and the incursion. No doubt Rice is there as TeamBush's 'Man on the Ground' trying to desperately keep Kurdish Peshmergas (our seemingly best Iraqi allies) from joining the battle against the neighboring Turks (also strong US allies) who have invaded their country, albeit seeking to destroy PKK elements and not take over territory, one hopes.
Even so, it remains very unclear how long Iraqi Kurds will stomach attacks on their territory that are killing their ethnic brethren, and no doubt eventually some Iraqi Kurdish civilians. I'm sure Condi is begging for their restraint and offering many financial and military carrots while in Kirkuk. It might just work if the Turks are efficient and highly restrained. Or it could turn into another Israeli-Lebanon incursion of last summer.
The moderate Siniora government, once praised by TeamBush as the salvation of democracy in the Mideast (correctly so), was forced to sit idle as Israel destroyed what infrastructure Lebanon had managed to build up following years of civil war, and killed scads of Lebanese civilians as well. At the UN, TeamBush strawman John Bolton resisted cease-fire attempts for two weeks, giving Israel the time to 'wipe out' its Shiite Hezbollah targets. But hardly anything went according to plan. The more Israeli troops bombed bridges, airports, refineries, and residential neighborhoods, the more the elected Lebanese government lost respect among its people, as it became clear that being TeamBush's 'Man in Beirut' didn't earn Siniora enough clout to have the US intervene to stop the slaughter. And Hezbollah hung tough, fighting the IDF hard on the ground and launching rocket attacks against civilians deep into Israel.
Final score: Hezbollah became darlings of the Arab world for bloodying the Zionists nose for the first time in decades; Israel and its vaunted IDF looked ineffective and lost some serious face; and the political scene in Lebanon, once a beacon of potential arab democracy, devolved into factional murder choas and is once again teetering on the brink of civil war.
Regardless of Condi's promises don't think the Iraqi Kurds have forgotten these events, even if most Americans have. Keep a close eye on this one, it could get real ugly, real fast.
Looks like Turkey has invaded Kurdish-held Iraq. Its been overnight but they're still there, about 1.5 miles into territory near the Iranian border. This follows aerial bombing of Kurdish PKK bases in Iraq yesterday.
And in other news, Condi Rice made a 'surprise' visit to the disputed Kurdish city of Kirkuk, center of northern Iraq's oil industry. Call me a cynic, but methinks there just might be a connection between that visit and the incursion. No doubt Rice is there as TeamBush's 'Man on the Ground' trying to desperately keep Kurdish Peshmergas (our seemingly best Iraqi allies) from joining the battle against the neighboring Turks (also strong US allies) who have invaded their country, albeit seeking to destroy PKK elements and not take over territory, one hopes.
Even so, it remains very unclear how long Iraqi Kurds will stomach attacks on their territory that are killing their ethnic brethren, and no doubt eventually some Iraqi Kurdish civilians. I'm sure Condi is begging for their restraint and offering many financial and military carrots while in Kirkuk. It might just work if the Turks are efficient and highly restrained. Or it could turn into another Israeli-Lebanon incursion of last summer.
The moderate Siniora government, once praised by TeamBush as the salvation of democracy in the Mideast (correctly so), was forced to sit idle as Israel destroyed what infrastructure Lebanon had managed to build up following years of civil war, and killed scads of Lebanese civilians as well. At the UN, TeamBush strawman John Bolton resisted cease-fire attempts for two weeks, giving Israel the time to 'wipe out' its Shiite Hezbollah targets. But hardly anything went according to plan. The more Israeli troops bombed bridges, airports, refineries, and residential neighborhoods, the more the elected Lebanese government lost respect among its people, as it became clear that being TeamBush's 'Man in Beirut' didn't earn Siniora enough clout to have the US intervene to stop the slaughter. And Hezbollah hung tough, fighting the IDF hard on the ground and launching rocket attacks against civilians deep into Israel.
Final score: Hezbollah became darlings of the Arab world for bloodying the Zionists nose for the first time in decades; Israel and its vaunted IDF looked ineffective and lost some serious face; and the political scene in Lebanon, once a beacon of potential arab democracy, devolved into factional murder choas and is once again teetering on the brink of civil war.
Regardless of Condi's promises don't think the Iraqi Kurds have forgotten these events, even if most Americans have. Keep a close eye on this one, it could get real ugly, real fast.
Labels: Iraq, Kurds, TeamBush, Turkey
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Turkish Two-Step Knuckle Under
Follow up to the recent post: Under pressure from both TeamBush and fellow Congressional Democrats, it appears Nancy Pelosi will not bring to the floor a resolution condemning the 1915 Ottoman Turk slaughter of ethnic Armenians as a genocide. The motion, for years brought up in every Congress by Armenian activists, was approved by a House Foreign Affairs Committee headed for the first time by Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only member of Congress who is also a holocaust survivor (Hint! Hint! He might actually know it when he sees it!!).
As noted previously, it is both a complicated and simple issue. The Turks have been a mostly quite stand-up ally to the US for years; their potential (on the bubble?) EU membership may well ride on the line of this vote to incur into Iraq, even more so if shooting starts inside Kurdish-held northern Iraq. So they're well aware of what's on the line. Mostly, to them, it's the notion of modern Turkish national identity.
Think of it. . . how would Americans feel if they knew that on the verge of their independence our founding fathers had been complicit in the slaughter of an innocent civilian populace, one who had the unfortunate distinction of being foreign to the colonial majority and thus potential allies to military adversaries?!
Oh. . . right. . .
See? It doesn't feel so bad to admit it.
C'mon modern Turks, step up. Just fess that it happened and we can all move on. I know that you're worried about potential reparations (another thing in common with the US-- as we waited for 50 years to acknowledge the whole Japanese internment camp thing until most of the internees had gone to that big Shinto temple in the sky), but reparations are realistically a matter for your parliament in about 30-40 years (Trust us, we know).
Your main complaint, as far as I can tell, is that Armenians were Russian sympathisers; an imperial dynasty which was already in its death throes internally, by revolution, and externally, by the Kaiser's army, by 1915; though truth to tell, so was the Ottoman Empire. But note, a main argument espoused by German Nazis was that Jews were not loyal to the nation; a commonly accepted belief that led to the rise of Hitler, the approval of the Nuremberg Laws, and the so-called Final Solution.
That's a pretty slippery slope.
Still, it looks like upstanding morals (ask the GOP if that's important?!) have been trumped once again by the necessity of kowtowing to the strategic importance of a foreign country.
Not that that might not, in fact, be the best policy choice of the US at this very moment. But it's sad that the choice of starting an unnecessary, and potentially disastrous, war has had the effect of denying an obvious truth. Once again.
Follow up to the recent post: Under pressure from both TeamBush and fellow Congressional Democrats, it appears Nancy Pelosi will not bring to the floor a resolution condemning the 1915 Ottoman Turk slaughter of ethnic Armenians as a genocide. The motion, for years brought up in every Congress by Armenian activists, was approved by a House Foreign Affairs Committee headed for the first time by Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only member of Congress who is also a holocaust survivor (Hint! Hint! He might actually know it when he sees it!!).
As noted previously, it is both a complicated and simple issue. The Turks have been a mostly quite stand-up ally to the US for years; their potential (on the bubble?) EU membership may well ride on the line of this vote to incur into Iraq, even more so if shooting starts inside Kurdish-held northern Iraq. So they're well aware of what's on the line. Mostly, to them, it's the notion of modern Turkish national identity.
Think of it. . . how would Americans feel if they knew that on the verge of their independence our founding fathers had been complicit in the slaughter of an innocent civilian populace, one who had the unfortunate distinction of being foreign to the colonial majority and thus potential allies to military adversaries?!
Oh. . . right. . .
See? It doesn't feel so bad to admit it.
C'mon modern Turks, step up. Just fess that it happened and we can all move on. I know that you're worried about potential reparations (another thing in common with the US-- as we waited for 50 years to acknowledge the whole Japanese internment camp thing until most of the internees had gone to that big Shinto temple in the sky), but reparations are realistically a matter for your parliament in about 30-40 years (Trust us, we know).
Your main complaint, as far as I can tell, is that Armenians were Russian sympathisers; an imperial dynasty which was already in its death throes internally, by revolution, and externally, by the Kaiser's army, by 1915; though truth to tell, so was the Ottoman Empire. But note, a main argument espoused by German Nazis was that Jews were not loyal to the nation; a commonly accepted belief that led to the rise of Hitler, the approval of the Nuremberg Laws, and the so-called Final Solution.
That's a pretty slippery slope.
Still, it looks like upstanding morals (ask the GOP if that's important?!) have been trumped once again by the necessity of kowtowing to the strategic importance of a foreign country.
Not that that might not, in fact, be the best policy choice of the US at this very moment. But it's sad that the choice of starting an unnecessary, and potentially disastrous, war has had the effect of denying an obvious truth. Once again.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Brewing Trouble in the "Good" Region
For the last few years the one region of Iraq that consistently caused few problems for TeamBush has been the northern most Kurdish areas. As primary benefactors of the GW I era no-fly-zone imposed by the US-UK, the Kurds essentially ran their own independent state since 1992. Protected from occasional land forays by Saddam's weakened army by the well-armed and -organized Peshmerga, they developed institutions and a semblance of civil society in Iraq's north. They managed to put aside, for the most part, political differences between the two primary Kurdish factions, the PUK and the KDP, and jointly rule the region in the post-Saddam era; leaving the Bush-Blair coalition the worry largely about the on-going self destruction of the sunni and shi'a areas to the south. Recent events, however, may change this success story quite rapidly.
Neighboring Turkey has always been wary of Kurdish independence in the Iraqi region, fearing that it will fuel greater calls of autonomy from its restive Kurdish minority of about 15 million. For decades Turkey's homegrown Kurdish separatist groups carried out raids against Turkish military and civilian targets, most notably the PKK led by militia leader and folk hero Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured by the Turks in 1999 and remains jailed there.
Beginning in June of this year and continuing unabated ever since, PKK raids in Turkey have increasingly tested the patience of the Ankara government. Despite a recent security arrangement with Iraq's government concerning border security in the region, Turkey maintains that roughly 3,000 members of the PKK militia responsible fro these attacks are being sheltered across the border in Kurdish-held Iraq; the relatively-weak central government in Baghdad, it is thought, is unable to stop the attacks or support in the northern region where it has limited power or credibility.
To date the US-UK has been able to deter Turkey, a NATO ally and de facto supporter of the Coalition since the Iraq War if not prior, with financial and political considerations, including support for its inclusion in the EU. This rising escalation of PKK attacks, however, comes at a time when the US House of Representatives has approved, at this point only at the committee level but a floor vote is said to be impending, a resolution calling the slaughter of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century "a genocide."
This vote has been along time in coming. As a student in DC during the 1980s I worked in a residence hall that each year housed a delegation of young Armenians who came to lobby the Congress for such a resolution. And each year the vote failed to materialize, opposed as it was by steadfast official Turkish propaganda and fears of upsetting a key ally against the Soviets/ in the Gulf War/ in the Iraq War/ of the Global war on Terror. It is indeed a complicated issue, as eloquently stated by Richard Cohen in an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post.
The impact of this conflict, once known only to history buffs and those of the various ethnicities with an agenda, is already being felt. The impending Turkish vote authorizing incursion, scheduled for today in Ankara, was one of the primary factors that sent crude above $87 a barrel and thus world stocks tumbling. Should TeamBush allies get into a violent shooting war with one another in what is currently the world's least stable and arguably most critical part of the world, Condi Rice will be wistfully wishing for the days when all she had on her plate was the comparatively easy task of piecing together consensus for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan.
For the last few years the one region of Iraq that consistently caused few problems for TeamBush has been the northern most Kurdish areas. As primary benefactors of the GW I era no-fly-zone imposed by the US-UK, the Kurds essentially ran their own independent state since 1992. Protected from occasional land forays by Saddam's weakened army by the well-armed and -organized Peshmerga, they developed institutions and a semblance of civil society in Iraq's north. They managed to put aside, for the most part, political differences between the two primary Kurdish factions, the PUK and the KDP, and jointly rule the region in the post-Saddam era; leaving the Bush-Blair coalition the worry largely about the on-going self destruction of the sunni and shi'a areas to the south. Recent events, however, may change this success story quite rapidly.
Neighboring Turkey has always been wary of Kurdish independence in the Iraqi region, fearing that it will fuel greater calls of autonomy from its restive Kurdish minority of about 15 million. For decades Turkey's homegrown Kurdish separatist groups carried out raids against Turkish military and civilian targets, most notably the PKK led by militia leader and folk hero Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured by the Turks in 1999 and remains jailed there.
Beginning in June of this year and continuing unabated ever since, PKK raids in Turkey have increasingly tested the patience of the Ankara government. Despite a recent security arrangement with Iraq's government concerning border security in the region, Turkey maintains that roughly 3,000 members of the PKK militia responsible fro these attacks are being sheltered across the border in Kurdish-held Iraq; the relatively-weak central government in Baghdad, it is thought, is unable to stop the attacks or support in the northern region where it has limited power or credibility.
To date the US-UK has been able to deter Turkey, a NATO ally and de facto supporter of the Coalition since the Iraq War if not prior, with financial and political considerations, including support for its inclusion in the EU. This rising escalation of PKK attacks, however, comes at a time when the US House of Representatives has approved, at this point only at the committee level but a floor vote is said to be impending, a resolution calling the slaughter of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century "a genocide."
This vote has been along time in coming. As a student in DC during the 1980s I worked in a residence hall that each year housed a delegation of young Armenians who came to lobby the Congress for such a resolution. And each year the vote failed to materialize, opposed as it was by steadfast official Turkish propaganda and fears of upsetting a key ally against the Soviets/ in the Gulf War/ in the Iraq War/ of the Global war on Terror. It is indeed a complicated issue, as eloquently stated by Richard Cohen in an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post.
The impact of this conflict, once known only to history buffs and those of the various ethnicities with an agenda, is already being felt. The impending Turkish vote authorizing incursion, scheduled for today in Ankara, was one of the primary factors that sent crude above $87 a barrel and thus world stocks tumbling. Should TeamBush allies get into a violent shooting war with one another in what is currently the world's least stable and arguably most critical part of the world, Condi Rice will be wistfully wishing for the days when all she had on her plate was the comparatively easy task of piecing together consensus for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan.
Labels: Iraq, Kurds, Oil, Turkey
