THE IRAQ MESS: KURDISH SEPARATISTS ARE ADDING TO THE WITCH’S BREW

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
April 9, 2006 Sunday
Region Edition

Last week another Iraq war-related problem turned up. In southeast
Turkey, near its border with Iraq, ethnic Kurd separatists encouraged
by the growing independence of Kurdistan in northern Iraq battled
with Turkish security forces, leaving 15 dead.

The United States has leaned on Iraq’s Kurds for support since the
beginning of the Iraq war. In the beginning it was because the Kurds
were opposed to Saddam Hussein’s Arab regime. Later, it was because
the Kurds were the only important Iraqi group that appeared to like
the United States.

The Sunnis, who with Saddam Hussein had ruled Iraq for decades, hated
the United States for its invasion and overthrow of their rule. The
Sunnis now form the core of insurgent resistance to U.S. rule. The
Shiites always were lukewarm on the Americans, even though they
advocated the democracy and majority rule that would put them in
power during the occupation.

That left the Kurds. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani became president.

As Iraq has failed to put together a central government, three years
after the U.S. invasion, nearly four months after the elections,
the Kurdish north of the country has become increasingly autonomous.

Ethnic Kurds in neighboring Turkey, Iran, Syria and Armenia have
remarked on the growing strength and independence of Iraqi Kurdistan,
and have become heartened in their desire for their own country by
developments there.

In U.S. NATO ally Turkey, where an estimated 25 percent of the
population are ethnic Kurds, and where an estimated 30,000 were killed
in previous conflict in the 1980s, the issue blew up recently.

The United States told Turkey in early 2005 that it wouldn’t do
anything about Kurdish separatists acting against Turkey from Iraq.

Given other U.S. preoccupations in Iraq at this time and continued
U.S. reliance on the Kurds, it is unlikely to change that position now.

In the meantime, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made
it clear that he will put up with no nonsense from Kurdish separatists
in Turkey.

This is another very old problem that the Bush administration should
have taken into account before crashing into Iraq, and particularly
before signing up the Kurds as America’s principal ally there.

In the meantime, the snarl in naming an Iraqi government four months
after the elections remains. The Kurds and the Sunnis won’t agree to
the Shiites’ choice of Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister, selected
by the Shiite majority in February. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and her travelling partner, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw,
visited Baghdad last week and sought to advance the candidacy of Vice
President Adel Abdul Mahdi for the prime minister slot in place of
Mr. al-Jaafari. It doesn’t appear to have worked.

Meanwhile, reconstruction is stalled in Iraq, proceeding in only
four of 18 provinces. Religious conflict between Sunnis and Shiites
proceeds. Another bomb in a Shiite mosque killed 71 on Friday. If the
strife cannot be called civil war — a term the Bush administration
resists despite the growing ethnic cleansing — it is quacking like
that duck.

U.S. deaths in Iraq continue to rise above 2,300. The cost of the war
to the United States is estimated at about $300 billion. President
Bush continues to assure Americans that we are winning.

If we are winning it is hard to imagine how bad it would be if we
were losing. The regional expansion of the trouble in Iraq into Turkey
through the Kurds is one of the worst developments to occur yet.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress