by Jacques N. Couvas - Nov 8, 2007
Triumphalism, which generally prevails in official communiqués and the Turkish media following Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visits abroad, was dimmed Monday night at the end of the meeting between him and US President George W. Bush.
The meeting was called to discuss the crisis in northern Iraq. The expectation of editorialists and the masses in Turkey was that the United States would either commit to an iron-fist crackdown against the militias of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) operating in Iraqi Kurdistan jointly with the Turkish armed forces (TSK), or give their blessing to Ankara to launch a large-scale offensive on Iraqi soil.
But at the end of the 90-minute encounter, all Erdogan appears to have received is George Bush's assurances of friendship and his declaration of the PKK as an enemy common to both countries. Not much for the PM to write home about, as the presidential pitch was identical to the one delivered last Friday in Ankara by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
President Bush, trying to avert an invasion of Iraq by TSK, announced a new three-way military partnership grouping the United States, Turkey and Iraq to improve the sharing of intelligence, and said Washington was considering additional steps.
"We understand there's transit issues at airports," Bush said. "We understand that there's issues with money. We're taking some steps along those lines."
"Step one is to make sure that our intelligence sharing is good," Bush added. "Faulty intelligence means that we can't solve the problem. Good, sound intelligence, delivered on a real-time basis, using modern technology, will make it much easier to deal effectively (with the PKK)," he said.
Erdogan, talking to reporters before departing for Washington, had insisted that his objective was to return from the visit with concrete measures committed to by his ally. "The Turkish people are tired and impatient," he had said, alluding to the lukewarm position of the US administration in the face of escalating violence by the PKK.
Bush's pledges can be interpreted as tangible, but lack the boldness the public had hoped for.
Although no emphasis was given officially to the military alternatives by Turkey, these were certainly discussed during the meeting, as Erdogan had brought with him to the White House defense minister Vecdi Gonul and deputy chief of general staff General Ergin Saygun, in addition to foreign minister Ali Babacan. At the press conference that followed the meeting, he reiterated that an incursion into Iraq remained an option, having been approved by the Turkish parliament in early October.
This crisis is unwelcome by, and potentially risky, for both heads of state. Erdogan is under strong pressure by the population in general, and TSK and the opposition parties in particular, to send troops to northern Iraq and crush the PKK. His preference, however, has throughout his tenure as PM been to find a negotiated solution.
Paradoxically, his followers, including influential members of the Justice and Development (AK) Party, which he chairs, favor a show of might, regardless of its possible length and cost.
Bush is also in an unenviable position on this. As occupation of Iraq becomes a long term endeavor, he cannot forego the support of Kurds, who are influential in Iraqi politics – the country's President, Jalal Talibani is a Kurd – and control about a third of the country's territory, including rich oil fields. His strategy is, therefore, likely to maintain their loyalty while accommodating Turkish nationalism by letting Erdogan save face with his people.
The first moves in this direction became visible just hours before the Turkish PM's visit to the Oval Office. During the weekend, Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki solemnly declared that his government will take all necessary steps to stop PKK activities in Turkish border areas.
His intent was shortly thereafter confirmed by the closing of a number of the organization's offices, and tighter control of the crossing points between the two countries in order to limit guerrilla movements. Then, miraculously, eight Turkish soldiers, abducted in October by PKK, were released.
The suspicion for the sudden change of Iraqi attitude naturally falls on Washington. Erdogan was deprived from arguments which would have given him a stronger negotiating position in his talks with Bush. He had, therefore, to leave the initiative for resolution of the crisis to Washington and its Iraqi friends, letting a threat of incursion float, for the principle.
Carpet selling, however, is not yet over. Each one of the allies, Turkey and the United States, possesses something the other party wants.
Ankara needs to secure stability on its southeastern flank at a time of unprecedented economic growth and growing demand for energy. In addition, it is betting on the Bush administration's support to scrap the US House of Representatives' plan to declare as genocide the 1915-1916 massacres of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkey.
Washington, on the other hand, wants to keep its supply routes to Iraq open, and also convince Turkey to abstain from developing a close relationship with Iran. So, some bargaining has already started.
The meeting on Sunday probably marked its kick-off. For the moment, however, the most likely US course of action seems to be to tolerate a few rounds to be fired by TSK at the borderline mountains, already vacated by PKK, and persuading Erdogan's government and Massoud Barzani's northern Iraqi autonomous authority to put aside bitterness and find a creative compromise.
There are other factors that neither Bush nor Erdogan can overlook. For instance, the Arab states are becoming increasingly suspicious of Turkey's real motives to attack northern Iraq, whose ownership of oil fields it has claimed in the past.
The Arabs, who endured a 500-year long Ottoman rule until the end of World War I, see the development of Turkey into a regional military and economic power as a bad sign, and even fear a Turkish permanent occupation of other Iraqi provinces. Only the US can convince both camps to abstain from any initiatives that might be detrimental to the regional balance of power.
But right now, Iran is at the center of interest, both for Ankara and Washington. The former has in recent months set the stage for a rapprochement with the Shi'ite state. This looks part of a larger plan by Turkey to become a significant player in the Muslim world and particularly in the Middle East.
As negotiations with the European Union for membership are stalling, common citizens and think-tanks alike are pleading for a change of direction as a suitable alternative to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's doctrine of looking towards the West. Ataturk was the founder of the Turkish republic.
In July, Turkey and Iran signed, against protests by the US, a memorandum of understanding that would pave the way to 3.5 billion dollars of Turkish investment in Iran's South Pars gas field.
Iran, in return, has given proof of its friendship by clamping down on PKK separatists living in the country, and by offering mediation in the northern Iraqi crisis. This proposal was politely turned down by Ankara on Saturday, after a quick visit there by Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Mottaki has on occasion accused the US and Israel of conspiring to form an independent Kurdistan, uniting around 25 to 30 million ethnic Kurds living in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria.
Although the plans of the United States on this are difficult for the moment to fathom, friendly relations with Iranian Kurds are part of the US State Department's strategy to keep Tehran in check.
In spite of the Bush administration's classification of PKK as a terrorist group and its promotion on Monday to "common enemy for the US and Turkey", Washington has stopped short of outlawing the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an extension of the PKK based in Iran. Turkish Kurds fleeing northern Iraq will, in the minds of US strategists, gross up PJAK's ranks and give a hard time to the Iranian regime.
Showing posts with label PKK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PKK. Show all posts
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Kurdish Crisis Boxes In Neocons
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, Global Research - November 2, 2007
When Secretary of State Condi Rice descended the stairs of her plane in Ankara on November 2, she must have been thanking her lucking stars that her security detail was shielding her from the massive groups of Turkish demonstrators, who were wielding aggressive signs, some showing her face as the backdrop for a target practicer's bulls-eye, and others saying, "Terrorist Condi: Hands Off Turkey." Condi may have been spared the embarrassment, but the signs and pickets were prominently shown on international television news stations. And public opinion polls reported that the popularity of the US among the Turks is about as low as that of the US Congress among American voters.
The reason for the rising tide of anti-Americanism in Turkey is simple: Washington is seen as the sponsor of the Kurdish terrorists who have been killing Turkish soldiers, from their safe haven in US-occupied northern Iraq.
Turkey is a long-term US ally and staunch NATO member, whose Incirlik military base has functioned as a vital launching pad for US operations into Afghanistan and Iraq. Thanks to the insanity emanating from the Bush-Cheney cabal in Washington, this crucial regional ally has turned into not only a leading critic of their botched Iraq policy, but potentially also a "break-away ally" who will challenge the US in the region, in pursuit of aims it rightly defines as in its own vital national self-interest.
"Kurdistan"
The name of the game is "Kurdistan." Since the terrorist Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, has recently initiated a new wave of attacks against Turkish targets, killing dozens of soldiers in southeastern Turkey and abducting others, the conflict between the Kurdish insurgents, who aim at establishing an independent "Kurdistan" in a region overlapping Turkey, Iran and Syria, on the one hand, and the sovereign Turkish nation, on the other, has reached such a point that memories of the tragic 23-year-long struggle and its 30,000 dead, have been vividly awakened. No one in Turkey wants that deadly process to be repeated.
This time around, however, the conflict takes on a strategic dimension: it is not "only" Turkey vs. a domestic insurgent force--the PKK--, but, potentially, a new conflict in Southwest Asia as a whole, vectored on war-torn Iraq. For, the PKK, which has recently raised its ugly head again, is operating not out of Turkey, but out of northern Iraq, in what is known as the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). And this region, which enjoys relative autonomy, is under the control of the United States, the occupying power. Thus, since the PKK renewed its terrorist attacks against Turkish military targets, {from inside Iraq}, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the military establishment, have demanded that the US intervene to disarm the PKK, apprehend its leading figures and extradite them to Turkey. Paying demonstrative lip service to the fable that the Iraqi government be "sovereign," Ankara has also pressed the government of Nouri al-Maliki to move against the PKK.
The crisis reached an initial climax in mid-October, when, following PKK killings of Turkish troops, the Turkish parliament voted to approve a government plan to organize cross-border incursions into northern Iraq, in hot pursuit of the terrorists. Impetus for the vote had been provided by passage of a resolution in the US House Foreign Relations Committee, on October 10, which acknowledged the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Turkey as "genocide." Turkey saw the committee vote as an affront, as demonstrating an "irresponsible attitude" which could jeopardize US-Turkish relations, and responded by recalling its ambassador from Washington. Furthermore, it was mooted that Turkey could close the vital Incirlik base to US operations.
After another 17 Turkish soldiers were killed by PKK terrorists on October 21, the Turkish cabinet went into emergency session. Prime Minister Erdogan, under tremendous domestic pressure to move against the threat, told the London {Times} on October 22, that his country would move to smash the PKK in northern Iraq. "The target of this operation," he explained, "is definitely not Iraq's territorial integrity or its political unity. The target of this operation is the terror organization based in the north of Iraq" which "must be driven out ... its training camps ... dismantled and its leaders ... handed over." Erdogan minced no words regarding the US reponsibility. "In northern Iraq," he said, "we feel that both the terrorist organization and the [Kurdish regional] administration there are sheltering behind America." He went on to speak about a "trilateral mechanism" which had been discussed, among the US, Iraq and Turkey to deal with the problem, but lamented that it had led nowhere.
The decision by the Turkish parliament to approve cross-border incursions into northern Iraq, sounded an alarm bell in Washington. The well-grounded fear among government officials was that, if Turkey were to make good on its threats of incursions into northern Iraq, that would provoke a reaction of the part of the Kurds inside Iraq. Not only: Kurds in Iran and Syria (as well as Turkey) could join forces with their compatriots in Iraq, and strive to establish their independent state, Kurdistan. This would be the realization of a nightmare vision hatched by the 1916 British-French deal known as the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which carved up the Ottoman Empire among the imperial powers in the aftermath of World War I. The ethnic Kurdish population, dispersed among the regions to become newly defined "states" of Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, would come together in an entity, whose emergence would challenge the very existence of those states.
The Founding Fathers of Kurdistan
If Sykes-Picot were the result of a rotten deal between imperial France and Britain, the threat of a Kurdish entity in the region today must be chalked up to imperial-thinking factions in Britain and the United States. It is now an open secret, which the Bush crowd thought it had been able to keep under wraps, that W. and his crew have been long-term sponsors of the PKK, and worshipped as such by the terrorist group itself. On October 30, the {International Herald Tribune} ran an article reporting on the fact that supplies for the group are allowed to pass through a government checkpoint in Raniya. Former American Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris was quoted saying, "That couldn't have happened without their permitting them to be there. That's their turf. It's as simple as that." The IHT piece went on to report how the PKK-linked Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (KDSP), which operates freely in Raniya and Sulaimaniya, has a leader, Fayik Muhamed Ahmad Golpi, who is an outsp oken fan of George W. Bush. After the 2004 US elections, Golpi sent W. a letter, congratulating him and wishing him luck in his plans for transforming the Middle East. The IHT article also noted the role of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), the branch of the group seeking independence from Iran.
Turkey has long accused the US of supporting the PKK and allied Kurdish separatists, on the obvious grounds that the terrorist group has lived and flourished under American occupation in Iraq. It is a well-documented fact that, since the 1991 Desert Storm war against Iraq, the US had set up the notorious "no fly-zones" in the north (and south), which provided air cover to the Kurds (and the PKK). On July 20 of this year, then-Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reported on Turkish television, that PKK terrorists had been arrested in possession of weapons manufactured in the US. Gul said, "US officials told us those were the weapons they handed over to the Iraqi army. 1,260 weapons captured from the PKK," he said, "are American made. We documented it to the US." According to the {New York Times} in August, US Defense Department officials confirmed that weapons provided by the US to Iraqi military and police trainees in 2004 and 2005 had indeed ended up in the hands of the Kurds. On October 28, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki joined with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babcan, in a press conference, to denounce the foreign sponsors of the Kurdish groups threatening to detonate an explosion in the region. Mottaki cited the PKK, the PJAK (or PEJAK) and the MEK/MKO (Mujahideen e-Khalq), an Iranian terrorist group operating also from Iraqi soil against the Islamic Republic. In November 2006, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had reported to the {New Yorker} that "In the past six months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has also been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran."
Ankara: US, Iraq Must Rein PKK In
The Turks have rightly demanded that the US, as the occupying power in northern Iraq, take action to curb the PKK, and have asked the allegedly sovereign Iraqi government to do the same. They have also stated that the KRG, led by Massoud Barzani, has protected the PKK. Erdogan was quoted by {Hurriyet} as saying outright, "[Barzani] is in a position of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization in that region." For his part, Barzani has repeatedly refused to hand over PKK elements to Turkey, "no matter what the cost." Orders to the KRG to close all PKK offices have been cheerfully ignored.
However, as it became evident in late October, that the Turks would make good on their threats to send some of the 100,000 troops they had amassed on the border, into northern Iraq, to seek out and kill PKK terrorists, the Iraqi Kurdish authorities changed their tune. One reason is that Turkey made good on its threat to impose economic sanctions on northern Iraq. Flights between Istanbul and Irbil were stopped beginning November. As reported by {BBC}, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said after a cabinet meeting October 31, that they had started "military, political and diplomatic measures" against the PKK. "The targets of these measures are the terrorist organization and those groups which are supporting, aiding and abetting it," he said. Though no details were released, the measures could entail a boycott of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This could mean a cutoff of food imports, electricity supplies, and other imports. Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari announced a t the same time, that checkpoints were being set up on the Turkish-Iraqi border to cut off the PKK supply lines.
Not surprisingly, the PKK began to cry uncle. Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of foreign relations for the KRG, said November 2, that he hoped Turkey would "reconsider its position and work for a peaceful solution." He claimed the KRG did not support PKK terrorist activity. On November 2, it was reported that a PKK leader, Abdul Rahman al-Chadirchi, was calling on Turkey to present a peace plan to overcome the crisis. This came after Turkish troops had succeeded in hunting down and killing dozens of PKK elements in Turkey.
Whether or not Turkey will move militarily into northern Iraq, will be decided officially, only following talks that Prime Minister Erdogan will hold with President Bush in Washington on November 5. Statements made by Rice, as well as US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, on November 2, stressed Washington's desire that the Turks desist from any such military cross-border incursions. Ankara, however, has argued: if the US waged war on Afghanistan and invaded Iraq, on grounds that elements from those distant countries had been involved in terror attacks against the US, why should Turkey not do the same in a country on its borders? Speaking at a parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) at the end of October, Erdogan said that he would ask President Bush to "clearly define [the US] road map" to deal with the PKK. He said it was a "test of sincerity, and that if the US failed to act, "we will do our own job" i.e. invade Iraq and mop up the PKK.
Regional Peace Efforts
The dangers inherent in a Turkish military incursion across Iraq's borders, are best appreciated by Turkey's immediate neighbors, Iran, Syria and Iraq itself. These three countries host Kurdish minorities who could be catapulted, by a Turkish attack, into a military campaign to establish an independent Kurdistan, thus detabilizing all three nations. It is for this reason, that the three have taken steps to defuse the crisis before it blows up. In a coordinated effort, Syria and Iran have been consulting to eliminate the PKK threat, preferably without Turkish military action inside Iraq.
On October 28, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan was in Tehran to discuss his country's option of invading Iraq to pursue the PKK. The Iranians told him they did {not} support such a military move. This was an important move, since Tehran had earlier supported Turkey's military moves, and even participated in joint attacks against the Kurdish terrorists. On October 29, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki visited Damascus for talks with President Bashar al-Assad, and his counterpart Walid Muallem. The latter stated after the talks, "The Iranians have initiated efforts which complement those of Syria, because we want to give a political solution a chance." Mottaki was quoted by the {Turkish Daily News} saying, "The PKK terrorists threaten not only Turkey but also Iran and Syria," and added, "The terrorist operations from the north of Iraq create a destabilizing effect throughout the region." Mottaki went on to Baghdad, for talks there. A meeting was held in Istanbul November 2-3, of the foriegn ministers of the region, and included all Iraq's neighbors, plus the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and some G8 members. It is in this context that Condi Rice travelled to Turkey. As of this writing, the meeting is taking place, and no results have been announced yet. However, it was expected that Iran could play a major role. Mottaki had announced that Iran would present a plan to solve the c risis. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, after meeting with Mottaki in Baghdad October 31, "urged Iran to help defuse the border crisis between Turkey and the PKK and to give its entire support at the Istanbul conference," according to a statement from his office, reported by {Tehran Times}. At the same time, Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari said he and Mottaki agreed that the conference should not be "highjacked" by this issue, and should address Iraq's security overall.
Significantlz, Zebari also called on the US and Iran to continue the tripartite (Iran, Iraq, US) talks which had taken place in Baghdad at the ambassadorial level. Mottaki, according to a report in the Lebanese paper {Daily Star}, said the reported "readiness of the Americans for a new round of talks" was something Iran did "consider positively." It was in this congtext that Mottaki announced that Iran would "deliver a plan regarding the situation in Iraq," at the Istanbul meeting.
This would be key, since the US is the occupying power and chief ally of the Kurds. If the Kurdish terrorist threat is to be eliminated and therefore a Turkish military move prevented, the US must shift gears and move credibly against the PKK. Thus far, the US has merely claimed it is "sharing intelligence" with Ankara. On November 1, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morell was quoted by the IHT saying, "The key for any sort of military response, by the Turks or anybody else, is actionable intelligence. We are making efforts to help them get actionable intelligence." But such claims lack credibility, given past performance. As Erdogan complained in an interview to the {Times} of London on October 22, a "trilateral mechanism" had been set up among the US, Iraq and Turkey to deal with the problem, but it "yielded absolutely no results." Essentially the same point was made by former NATO supreme commander in Europe Ralston, who said on October 29, that a diplomatic effort which h e had led, to stop the terrorist PKK, had failed. During his one-year tenure functioning as special envoy on the PKK issue, Ralston had tried to set up such a tripartitie mechanism, but failed, and this prompted his resignation. Iranian sources have told me that intelligence Tehran had supplied to Baghdad, on the PKK (presumably "actionable") had been welcomed, but that the Iraqis had been prevented by the US from acting on it.
Thus, the key to defusing the Kurdish crisis, which threatens to blow up the entire region, lies in Washington, and in US willingness to cooperate with Iran, the regional power with considerable influence in Iraq as well as Turkey. The simmering Kurdish crisis, therefore, is putting the neocon cabal in Washington on the spot. It cannot have its cake and eat it too. It cannot maintain the PKK and the entire Kurdish separatist apparatus as an asset, and at the same time ask Turkey to continue its role as a regional ally. It cannot pretend that Iraq be stabilized, and at the same time demonize and threaten military action against Iran, the key regional power capable of contibuting to stability. In Washington, the chickens have come home to roost.
When Secretary of State Condi Rice descended the stairs of her plane in Ankara on November 2, she must have been thanking her lucking stars that her security detail was shielding her from the massive groups of Turkish demonstrators, who were wielding aggressive signs, some showing her face as the backdrop for a target practicer's bulls-eye, and others saying, "Terrorist Condi: Hands Off Turkey." Condi may have been spared the embarrassment, but the signs and pickets were prominently shown on international television news stations. And public opinion polls reported that the popularity of the US among the Turks is about as low as that of the US Congress among American voters.
The reason for the rising tide of anti-Americanism in Turkey is simple: Washington is seen as the sponsor of the Kurdish terrorists who have been killing Turkish soldiers, from their safe haven in US-occupied northern Iraq.
Turkey is a long-term US ally and staunch NATO member, whose Incirlik military base has functioned as a vital launching pad for US operations into Afghanistan and Iraq. Thanks to the insanity emanating from the Bush-Cheney cabal in Washington, this crucial regional ally has turned into not only a leading critic of their botched Iraq policy, but potentially also a "break-away ally" who will challenge the US in the region, in pursuit of aims it rightly defines as in its own vital national self-interest.
"Kurdistan"
The name of the game is "Kurdistan." Since the terrorist Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, has recently initiated a new wave of attacks against Turkish targets, killing dozens of soldiers in southeastern Turkey and abducting others, the conflict between the Kurdish insurgents, who aim at establishing an independent "Kurdistan" in a region overlapping Turkey, Iran and Syria, on the one hand, and the sovereign Turkish nation, on the other, has reached such a point that memories of the tragic 23-year-long struggle and its 30,000 dead, have been vividly awakened. No one in Turkey wants that deadly process to be repeated.
This time around, however, the conflict takes on a strategic dimension: it is not "only" Turkey vs. a domestic insurgent force--the PKK--, but, potentially, a new conflict in Southwest Asia as a whole, vectored on war-torn Iraq. For, the PKK, which has recently raised its ugly head again, is operating not out of Turkey, but out of northern Iraq, in what is known as the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). And this region, which enjoys relative autonomy, is under the control of the United States, the occupying power. Thus, since the PKK renewed its terrorist attacks against Turkish military targets, {from inside Iraq}, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the military establishment, have demanded that the US intervene to disarm the PKK, apprehend its leading figures and extradite them to Turkey. Paying demonstrative lip service to the fable that the Iraqi government be "sovereign," Ankara has also pressed the government of Nouri al-Maliki to move against the PKK.
The crisis reached an initial climax in mid-October, when, following PKK killings of Turkish troops, the Turkish parliament voted to approve a government plan to organize cross-border incursions into northern Iraq, in hot pursuit of the terrorists. Impetus for the vote had been provided by passage of a resolution in the US House Foreign Relations Committee, on October 10, which acknowledged the 1915 massacres of Armenians in Turkey as "genocide." Turkey saw the committee vote as an affront, as demonstrating an "irresponsible attitude" which could jeopardize US-Turkish relations, and responded by recalling its ambassador from Washington. Furthermore, it was mooted that Turkey could close the vital Incirlik base to US operations.
After another 17 Turkish soldiers were killed by PKK terrorists on October 21, the Turkish cabinet went into emergency session. Prime Minister Erdogan, under tremendous domestic pressure to move against the threat, told the London {Times} on October 22, that his country would move to smash the PKK in northern Iraq. "The target of this operation," he explained, "is definitely not Iraq's territorial integrity or its political unity. The target of this operation is the terror organization based in the north of Iraq" which "must be driven out ... its training camps ... dismantled and its leaders ... handed over." Erdogan minced no words regarding the US reponsibility. "In northern Iraq," he said, "we feel that both the terrorist organization and the [Kurdish regional] administration there are sheltering behind America." He went on to speak about a "trilateral mechanism" which had been discussed, among the US, Iraq and Turkey to deal with the problem, but lamented that it had led nowhere.
The decision by the Turkish parliament to approve cross-border incursions into northern Iraq, sounded an alarm bell in Washington. The well-grounded fear among government officials was that, if Turkey were to make good on its threats of incursions into northern Iraq, that would provoke a reaction of the part of the Kurds inside Iraq. Not only: Kurds in Iran and Syria (as well as Turkey) could join forces with their compatriots in Iraq, and strive to establish their independent state, Kurdistan. This would be the realization of a nightmare vision hatched by the 1916 British-French deal known as the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which carved up the Ottoman Empire among the imperial powers in the aftermath of World War I. The ethnic Kurdish population, dispersed among the regions to become newly defined "states" of Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, would come together in an entity, whose emergence would challenge the very existence of those states.
The Founding Fathers of Kurdistan
If Sykes-Picot were the result of a rotten deal between imperial France and Britain, the threat of a Kurdish entity in the region today must be chalked up to imperial-thinking factions in Britain and the United States. It is now an open secret, which the Bush crowd thought it had been able to keep under wraps, that W. and his crew have been long-term sponsors of the PKK, and worshipped as such by the terrorist group itself. On October 30, the {International Herald Tribune} ran an article reporting on the fact that supplies for the group are allowed to pass through a government checkpoint in Raniya. Former American Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris was quoted saying, "That couldn't have happened without their permitting them to be there. That's their turf. It's as simple as that." The IHT piece went on to report how the PKK-linked Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (KDSP), which operates freely in Raniya and Sulaimaniya, has a leader, Fayik Muhamed Ahmad Golpi, who is an outsp oken fan of George W. Bush. After the 2004 US elections, Golpi sent W. a letter, congratulating him and wishing him luck in his plans for transforming the Middle East. The IHT article also noted the role of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), the branch of the group seeking independence from Iran.
Turkey has long accused the US of supporting the PKK and allied Kurdish separatists, on the obvious grounds that the terrorist group has lived and flourished under American occupation in Iraq. It is a well-documented fact that, since the 1991 Desert Storm war against Iraq, the US had set up the notorious "no fly-zones" in the north (and south), which provided air cover to the Kurds (and the PKK). On July 20 of this year, then-Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reported on Turkish television, that PKK terrorists had been arrested in possession of weapons manufactured in the US. Gul said, "US officials told us those were the weapons they handed over to the Iraqi army. 1,260 weapons captured from the PKK," he said, "are American made. We documented it to the US." According to the {New York Times} in August, US Defense Department officials confirmed that weapons provided by the US to Iraqi military and police trainees in 2004 and 2005 had indeed ended up in the hands of the Kurds. On October 28, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki joined with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babcan, in a press conference, to denounce the foreign sponsors of the Kurdish groups threatening to detonate an explosion in the region. Mottaki cited the PKK, the PJAK (or PEJAK) and the MEK/MKO (Mujahideen e-Khalq), an Iranian terrorist group operating also from Iraqi soil against the Islamic Republic. In November 2006, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had reported to the {New Yorker} that "In the past six months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has also been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran."
Ankara: US, Iraq Must Rein PKK In
The Turks have rightly demanded that the US, as the occupying power in northern Iraq, take action to curb the PKK, and have asked the allegedly sovereign Iraqi government to do the same. They have also stated that the KRG, led by Massoud Barzani, has protected the PKK. Erdogan was quoted by {Hurriyet} as saying outright, "[Barzani] is in a position of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization in that region." For his part, Barzani has repeatedly refused to hand over PKK elements to Turkey, "no matter what the cost." Orders to the KRG to close all PKK offices have been cheerfully ignored.
However, as it became evident in late October, that the Turks would make good on their threats to send some of the 100,000 troops they had amassed on the border, into northern Iraq, to seek out and kill PKK terrorists, the Iraqi Kurdish authorities changed their tune. One reason is that Turkey made good on its threat to impose economic sanctions on northern Iraq. Flights between Istanbul and Irbil were stopped beginning November. As reported by {BBC}, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said after a cabinet meeting October 31, that they had started "military, political and diplomatic measures" against the PKK. "The targets of these measures are the terrorist organization and those groups which are supporting, aiding and abetting it," he said. Though no details were released, the measures could entail a boycott of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This could mean a cutoff of food imports, electricity supplies, and other imports. Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari announced a t the same time, that checkpoints were being set up on the Turkish-Iraqi border to cut off the PKK supply lines.
Not surprisingly, the PKK began to cry uncle. Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of foreign relations for the KRG, said November 2, that he hoped Turkey would "reconsider its position and work for a peaceful solution." He claimed the KRG did not support PKK terrorist activity. On November 2, it was reported that a PKK leader, Abdul Rahman al-Chadirchi, was calling on Turkey to present a peace plan to overcome the crisis. This came after Turkish troops had succeeded in hunting down and killing dozens of PKK elements in Turkey.
Whether or not Turkey will move militarily into northern Iraq, will be decided officially, only following talks that Prime Minister Erdogan will hold with President Bush in Washington on November 5. Statements made by Rice, as well as US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, on November 2, stressed Washington's desire that the Turks desist from any such military cross-border incursions. Ankara, however, has argued: if the US waged war on Afghanistan and invaded Iraq, on grounds that elements from those distant countries had been involved in terror attacks against the US, why should Turkey not do the same in a country on its borders? Speaking at a parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) at the end of October, Erdogan said that he would ask President Bush to "clearly define [the US] road map" to deal with the PKK. He said it was a "test of sincerity, and that if the US failed to act, "we will do our own job" i.e. invade Iraq and mop up the PKK.
Regional Peace Efforts
The dangers inherent in a Turkish military incursion across Iraq's borders, are best appreciated by Turkey's immediate neighbors, Iran, Syria and Iraq itself. These three countries host Kurdish minorities who could be catapulted, by a Turkish attack, into a military campaign to establish an independent Kurdistan, thus detabilizing all three nations. It is for this reason, that the three have taken steps to defuse the crisis before it blows up. In a coordinated effort, Syria and Iran have been consulting to eliminate the PKK threat, preferably without Turkish military action inside Iraq.
On October 28, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan was in Tehran to discuss his country's option of invading Iraq to pursue the PKK. The Iranians told him they did {not} support such a military move. This was an important move, since Tehran had earlier supported Turkey's military moves, and even participated in joint attacks against the Kurdish terrorists. On October 29, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki visited Damascus for talks with President Bashar al-Assad, and his counterpart Walid Muallem. The latter stated after the talks, "The Iranians have initiated efforts which complement those of Syria, because we want to give a political solution a chance." Mottaki was quoted by the {Turkish Daily News} saying, "The PKK terrorists threaten not only Turkey but also Iran and Syria," and added, "The terrorist operations from the north of Iraq create a destabilizing effect throughout the region." Mottaki went on to Baghdad, for talks there. A meeting was held in Istanbul November 2-3, of the foriegn ministers of the region, and included all Iraq's neighbors, plus the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and some G8 members. It is in this context that Condi Rice travelled to Turkey. As of this writing, the meeting is taking place, and no results have been announced yet. However, it was expected that Iran could play a major role. Mottaki had announced that Iran would present a plan to solve the c risis. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, after meeting with Mottaki in Baghdad October 31, "urged Iran to help defuse the border crisis between Turkey and the PKK and to give its entire support at the Istanbul conference," according to a statement from his office, reported by {Tehran Times}. At the same time, Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari said he and Mottaki agreed that the conference should not be "highjacked" by this issue, and should address Iraq's security overall.
Significantlz, Zebari also called on the US and Iran to continue the tripartite (Iran, Iraq, US) talks which had taken place in Baghdad at the ambassadorial level. Mottaki, according to a report in the Lebanese paper {Daily Star}, said the reported "readiness of the Americans for a new round of talks" was something Iran did "consider positively." It was in this congtext that Mottaki announced that Iran would "deliver a plan regarding the situation in Iraq," at the Istanbul meeting.
This would be key, since the US is the occupying power and chief ally of the Kurds. If the Kurdish terrorist threat is to be eliminated and therefore a Turkish military move prevented, the US must shift gears and move credibly against the PKK. Thus far, the US has merely claimed it is "sharing intelligence" with Ankara. On November 1, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morell was quoted by the IHT saying, "The key for any sort of military response, by the Turks or anybody else, is actionable intelligence. We are making efforts to help them get actionable intelligence." But such claims lack credibility, given past performance. As Erdogan complained in an interview to the {Times} of London on October 22, a "trilateral mechanism" had been set up among the US, Iraq and Turkey to deal with the problem, but it "yielded absolutely no results." Essentially the same point was made by former NATO supreme commander in Europe Ralston, who said on October 29, that a diplomatic effort which h e had led, to stop the terrorist PKK, had failed. During his one-year tenure functioning as special envoy on the PKK issue, Ralston had tried to set up such a tripartitie mechanism, but failed, and this prompted his resignation. Iranian sources have told me that intelligence Tehran had supplied to Baghdad, on the PKK (presumably "actionable") had been welcomed, but that the Iraqis had been prevented by the US from acting on it.
Thus, the key to defusing the Kurdish crisis, which threatens to blow up the entire region, lies in Washington, and in US willingness to cooperate with Iran, the regional power with considerable influence in Iraq as well as Turkey. The simmering Kurdish crisis, therefore, is putting the neocon cabal in Washington on the spot. It cannot have its cake and eat it too. It cannot maintain the PKK and the entire Kurdish separatist apparatus as an asset, and at the same time ask Turkey to continue its role as a regional ally. It cannot pretend that Iraq be stabilized, and at the same time demonize and threaten military action against Iran, the key regional power capable of contibuting to stability. In Washington, the chickens have come home to roost.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Turkey: US stance on PKK will determine future ties
by Agence France Presse - Oct 31, 2007
Smoke from artillery fire could be seen above the rugged hills while at least one Sikorsky transport helicopter dropped off troops and a convoy of military trucks headed for the Iraqi border.
The fighting comes after about 100 members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were surrounded Monday in neighboring Hakkari Province after the army blocked their escape routes to Iraq.
And on the weekend one soldier was killed during a large-scale crackdown on the rebels in Tunceli Province to the north. The army has not confirmed reports that 15 PKK militants were also killed in the clashes.
In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the United States that its failure to help end the PKK safe haven in northern Iraq would harm the relationship between the two long-standing NATO allies.
Scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House on November 5, Erdogan called for "concrete, urgent steps" against the PKK, which Washington, like most of the international community, considers a terrorist group.
"The problem of the PKK terrorist organization is a sincerity test for everybody," Erdogan said. "I will tell him [Bush] this test carries great importance for the region and in determining the fate of our future relations."
He said he would discuss "the groups on which the terrorist organization relies" - an apparent reference to the Iraqi Kurds, who administer northern Iraq and are accused by Ankara of tolerating and even supporting the PKK.
"Our talks [with Bush] will make them better understand Turkey's patience has run out and that we are determined to unhesitatingly take all the steps to finish off terrorism," he said.
The Turkish Army has reportedly massed about 100,000 troops along the Iraqi border after Parliament gave approval for a military incursion into northern Iraq to root out the militants.
Tensions at the frontier escalated after October 21 when PKK rebels, who Turkey says infiltrated from northern Iraq, ambushed a military unit and killed 12 soldiers. Eight troops were captured.
The army has confirmed killing 65 rebels since then.
The crisis will enter a crucial diplomatic stage Friday when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Turkish leaders in Ankara before Erdogan's Washington visit.
She will hold talks with Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and President Abdullah Gul, a US Embassy official said. The State Department had initially said she would be in Ankara Thursday.
Rice will then participate in a multilateral conference on Iraq in Istanbul on Friday evening and Saturday, which Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari will also attend.
Washington is stuck in an awkward position between two key allies - NATO member Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds.
Defying Turkish pressure, Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, said he would take no "orders" from Ankara to crack down on the PKK bases.
"I am a friend of Turkey but I am not taking orders from Turkey or anyone else," he told Turkey's Milliyet newspaper in an interview published Tuesday.
He urged the PKK to lay down arms and called on Turkey to consider a political solution to the Kurdish problem, including a general amnesty for the rebels.
Smoke from artillery fire could be seen above the rugged hills while at least one Sikorsky transport helicopter dropped off troops and a convoy of military trucks headed for the Iraqi border.
The fighting comes after about 100 members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were surrounded Monday in neighboring Hakkari Province after the army blocked their escape routes to Iraq.
And on the weekend one soldier was killed during a large-scale crackdown on the rebels in Tunceli Province to the north. The army has not confirmed reports that 15 PKK militants were also killed in the clashes.
In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the United States that its failure to help end the PKK safe haven in northern Iraq would harm the relationship between the two long-standing NATO allies.
Scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House on November 5, Erdogan called for "concrete, urgent steps" against the PKK, which Washington, like most of the international community, considers a terrorist group.
"The problem of the PKK terrorist organization is a sincerity test for everybody," Erdogan said. "I will tell him [Bush] this test carries great importance for the region and in determining the fate of our future relations."
He said he would discuss "the groups on which the terrorist organization relies" - an apparent reference to the Iraqi Kurds, who administer northern Iraq and are accused by Ankara of tolerating and even supporting the PKK.
"Our talks [with Bush] will make them better understand Turkey's patience has run out and that we are determined to unhesitatingly take all the steps to finish off terrorism," he said.
The Turkish Army has reportedly massed about 100,000 troops along the Iraqi border after Parliament gave approval for a military incursion into northern Iraq to root out the militants.
Tensions at the frontier escalated after October 21 when PKK rebels, who Turkey says infiltrated from northern Iraq, ambushed a military unit and killed 12 soldiers. Eight troops were captured.
The army has confirmed killing 65 rebels since then.
The crisis will enter a crucial diplomatic stage Friday when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Turkish leaders in Ankara before Erdogan's Washington visit.
She will hold talks with Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and President Abdullah Gul, a US Embassy official said. The State Department had initially said she would be in Ankara Thursday.
Rice will then participate in a multilateral conference on Iraq in Istanbul on Friday evening and Saturday, which Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari will also attend.
Washington is stuck in an awkward position between two key allies - NATO member Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds.
Defying Turkish pressure, Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, said he would take no "orders" from Ankara to crack down on the PKK bases.
"I am a friend of Turkey but I am not taking orders from Turkey or anyone else," he told Turkey's Milliyet newspaper in an interview published Tuesday.
He urged the PKK to lay down arms and called on Turkey to consider a political solution to the Kurdish problem, including a general amnesty for the rebels.
Hezbollah, PKK and American Hypocrisy
by Gwynne Dyer, Arab News - Oct 30, 2007
Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, leveled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.
Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.
So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where the PKK’s bases are, for any more than one month. It would be quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more than a small part of Baghdad — say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey’s own border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground, they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip where the PKK’s bases are.
What’s that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
Never mind. At least the United States officially classes the PKK as a terrorist organization and refuses to let its officials have any contact with it. But what’s this? There is a parallel terrorist organization called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), essentially a branch office of the PKK, also based in northern Iraq, which carries out attacks into the adjacent Kurdish-populated region of Iran, and the United States does not condemn the PJAK? It even sends its officials to have friendly chats with the PJAK terrorists? How odd!
The PJAK’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, paid an unofficial visit to Washington last summer. One of his close associates, Biryar Gabar, claims to have “normal dialogue” with US officials, according to a report last Tuesday in the New York Times — and the American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye, issued a carefully structured nondenial saying that “The consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the PJAK.”
Biryar Gabar also said that PJAK fighters have killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in the past three months. That’s a lot more people than the PKK have killed in Turkey in the same time, and yet neither Washington nor any other Western country has expressed sympathy for Iran. Could it be that Iranian lives are worth even less than Turkish lives?
And here’s something even more peculiar. Iran, like Turkey, is already shelling Kurdish villages on the Iraqi side of the frontier that it suspects of sheltering or supplying the PKK/PJAK. How come President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney simply ignore these actions, when they have been working hard for the past year to build a case for attacking Iran? As Pat Buchanan noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last week: “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how.”
The US military “assets” for an attack on Iran are all in place, so it can’t be that. Maybe the delay means that Bush and Cheney are having difficulty in persuading the military professionals to go along with this hare-brained scheme. Most senior American military officers see an attack on Iran as leading to inevitable failure and humiliation for the United States, and the last thing the White House wants is a rash of US generals resigning in protest when it orders the attack.
On the other hand, Bush is still the commander-in-chief, and how many American generals resigned when he committed the somewhat lesser folly of invading Iraq? Only one, and he did it very quietly.
Fifteen months ago, the armed wing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, attacked Israel’s northern border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight more. Israel replied with a month of massive air attacks all across Lebanon that destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, leveled a good deal of south Beirut, and killed around a thousand Lebanese civilians.
Washington, London, Ottawa and some other Western capitals insisted that this was a reasonable and proportionate response, and shielded Israel from intense diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks even when Israel launched a land invasion of southern Lebanon in early August, 2006. The operation only ended when Israeli casualties on the ground mounted rapidly and the Israeli government pulled its troops back.
So what would be a reasonable and proportionate Turkish response to the recent attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and most other Western countries, from northern Iraq into southeastern Turkey? More than forty Turkish civilians and soldiers have been killed in these attacks over the past two weeks, and a further eight Turkish soldiers were captured.
Well, it would be unreasonable for Turkey to bomb Iraq, where the PKK’s bases are, for any more than one month. It would be quite disproportionate for the Turkish Air Force to level more than a small part of Baghdad — say, 15,000 homes. Ideally, it should leave Baghdad alone and restrict itself to destroying some Kurdish-populated city in northern Iraq near Turkey’s own border. Moreover, when the Turks do invade Iraq on the ground, they should restrict themselves to the northern border strip where the PKK’s bases are.
What’s that? Washington is asking Turkey to show restraint and not attack Iraq at all? Even after the Kurdish terrorists killed or kidnapped all those Turkish people? Could it be that Turkish lives are worth less than Israeli lives?
Never mind. At least the United States officially classes the PKK as a terrorist organization and refuses to let its officials have any contact with it. But what’s this? There is a parallel terrorist organization called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), essentially a branch office of the PKK, also based in northern Iraq, which carries out attacks into the adjacent Kurdish-populated region of Iran, and the United States does not condemn the PJAK? It even sends its officials to have friendly chats with the PJAK terrorists? How odd!
The PJAK’s leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, paid an unofficial visit to Washington last summer. One of his close associates, Biryar Gabar, claims to have “normal dialogue” with US officials, according to a report last Tuesday in the New York Times — and the American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye, issued a carefully structured nondenial saying that “The consensus is that US forces are not working with or advising the PJAK.”
Biryar Gabar also said that PJAK fighters have killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in the past three months. That’s a lot more people than the PKK have killed in Turkey in the same time, and yet neither Washington nor any other Western country has expressed sympathy for Iran. Could it be that Iranian lives are worth even less than Turkish lives?
And here’s something even more peculiar. Iran, like Turkey, is already shelling Kurdish villages on the Iraqi side of the frontier that it suspects of sheltering or supplying the PKK/PJAK. How come President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney simply ignore these actions, when they have been working hard for the past year to build a case for attacking Iran? As Pat Buchanan noted on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last week: “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how.”
The US military “assets” for an attack on Iran are all in place, so it can’t be that. Maybe the delay means that Bush and Cheney are having difficulty in persuading the military professionals to go along with this hare-brained scheme. Most senior American military officers see an attack on Iran as leading to inevitable failure and humiliation for the United States, and the last thing the White House wants is a rash of US generals resigning in protest when it orders the attack.
On the other hand, Bush is still the commander-in-chief, and how many American generals resigned when he committed the somewhat lesser folly of invading Iraq? Only one, and he did it very quietly.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Who's Behind the PKK? In a word: Washington
by Justin Raimondo - Oct 29, 2007
The recent threat by the Turks to invade Iraq in hot pursuit of PKKterrorists has the administration scrambling to appease Ankara and stave off a major blow to its claim that the U.S. occupation has provided "stability" to the region. Kurdistan, after all, has been touted up until now as a model of peace, prosperity, and unalloyed happiness – a foretaste of the country's golden future, provided "defeatists" in the U.S. don't pull the rug out from under our imminent victory. To see this veritable utopia smashed by Turkish force of arms would be a disaster for Washington – but even worse would be the revelation of how we got ourselves into this wholly untenable position to begin with. Worse, that is, for whoever would be indicted and prosecuted for pulling off what may turn out to be one of the most ambitious, and dangerous, "rogue" operations since Iran-Contra.
The serial numbers of arms captured from PKK fighters have been traced back to U.S. shipments to Iraqi military and police units. Responding to Turkish complaints, the Americans claim these arms were diverted by the Iraqis – presumably the Kurdish regional government – but the Turks aren't buying it: if the large quantity of U.S.-made arms (1,260 seized so far) turns out to have been directly provided to the PKK by the Americans, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned, U.S.-Turkish "relations would really break apart." U.S. diplomats immediately rebuffed this suggestion, and Washington dispatched the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes, to the scene, where he met with top Turkish military leaders. According to at least one report, "The meeting discussed an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Defense into reports that U.S. arms were being sold by U.S. troops in Iraq."
Another clue to what is really going on here is provided by the news that the FBI has volunteered to help the Turks find out where the PKK is getting its funding and weapons – and doesn't that strike you as odd? FBI director Robert Mueller said, "We are working with our counterparts elsewhere in Europe and in Turkey to address the PKK and work cooperatively, to find and cut off financing to terrorist groups, be it PKK, al-Qaeda," or whatever. Yet why would the FBI get involved at all, unless, of course, Americans were somehow involved? Foreign Minister Gul confirmed this to the Turkish media, stating:
"1,260 weapons captured from the PKK are American-made. We documented it to the U.S. These are of course not given directly to the PKK by the U.S. These are the ones that were given to the Iraqi army. Unfortunately some U.S. officers were corrupt. The Department of Defense informed us that a serious investigation is underway."
Is it that a few bad apples are "corrupt" – or something else?
As Seymour Hersh has reported, the U.S. and Israel are financing and otherwise aiding the Kurdish Party of Life, otherwise known as "Pejak," founded to "liberate" western Iran, which has a large and restive Kurdish population. Furthermore, the ties between the PKK and Pejak are more than merely fraternal: they are basically the same organization, sharing not only bases in the mountainous Quandil region of Kurdistan, but also common personnel and leadership.
The sudden outbreak of PKK violence – two spectacular ambushes, one of which resulted in the killing of 12 Turkish soldiers and the capture of eight, who are now being used as bargaining chips – also requires some explanation. Up until this point, the PKK had carried out low-level operations, with groups of six to eight militants planting bombs and generally harassing the Turks on a small scale. In recent months, however, the overall level of attacks has undergone a radical increase, with hundreds of PKK fighters deployed in a single attack and a new sophistication in terms of both firepower and the technical equipment required to pull off complex operations such as the recent ambush-and-capture.
Ever since the Syrians stopped supporting the PKK in the late 1990s, the group was largely incapable of launching major operations and had to content itself with terrorist actions directed at tourist facilities. Membership was down, cut virtually in half, and the capture of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, demoralized large sections of the PKK, amid reports of splits. The revival of the group's fortunes coincided with news of the Pejak-U.S. connection and – tellingly – the disappearance of U.S. munitions and other equipment from Iraq.
Nearly one out of every 25 weapons provided to the Iraqis by the U.S. has disappeared. Furthermore, the system for tracing them never functioned. 370,000 light weapons have been sent to Iraq by the U.S. since 2003, yet just 3 percent had their serial numbers recorded by the U.S. Defense Department prior to being handed over. For some unfathomable reason, the general who was in charge of that particular task – by the name of Petraeus – has never been held accountable for what is one of the biggest scandals of the war.
The idea that "corrupt" U.S. soldiers sold weapons on the black market to PKK guerrillas is not all that far-fetched, but the absence of any system to account for all these guns invites larger-scale suspicions. Could it have been set up that way precisely because the Pentagon – or someone else – wanted to make sure the weapons couldn't be traced? This would certainly facilitate the arming of groups like Pejak, to put pressure on the Iranians and give the serial regime-changers in the Pentagon a huge weapons cache from which to draw at will.
We know that both the U.S. and Israel have been aiding Pejak, and surely this allowed the PKK to feed off of the arms pipeline, albeit "indirectly." The Israeli factor is yet another angle to this story: Seymour Hersh also reported that the Israelis have taken out a rather large stake in Kurdistan, not only investing in several major business operations but also involving themselves in the training of Kurdish "commandos." Could some of these commandos possibly be PKK operatives?
Both Iran and Turkey have pledged to cooperate in eradicating the Kurdish threat, and this cooperation is yet another reason for the general decline in relations between Ankara on the one hand and Washington and Tel Aviv on the other. What was once a tight alliance started to unravel when the Turks refused to let the U.S. use their territory as a launching pad for the invasion of Iraq, and things have gone rapidly downhill since. The regime-changers inside the administration, centered around Dick Cheney's office and the civilian upper reaches of the Pentagon, may have decided that the Turks have to be thrown overboard now that the campaign to target Tehran is going full-gear. If the Kurds' price for subverting the Iranian regime is covert aid for their continuing assault on Turkey, then it hardly beggars belief that the War Party is willing to pay it: loyalty is not one of their strong suits, as Iraq's Shi'ites can readily attest.
I have a great deal of difficulty believing that the large number of confiscated American weapons that apparently found their way into the hands of PKK fighters just happened to show up on the black market, without any knowledge or complicity by higher authorities. How high the "corruption" goes, remains to be seen. What we do know is this: the War Party isn't shy about engaging in "rogue" operations and doing end-runs around the properly constituted authorities when it suits their purposes.
A recent demonstration by Turkish students against PKK terrorism had the protesters denouncing both the Kurds and the U.S. government: "Down with the PKK!" – they shouted – "Down with the U.S.!" In Turkey, at least, they seem to know who and what is behind the wave of terrorism that has shaken the country.
In America, however, it's a different story altogether: the "news" media hasn't really said anything about the FBI investigation and the possible involvement of Americans, nor do we hear much about the U.S. – or Israeli – connection to the Kurdish "liberation" groups, such as Pejak, except from Hersh and a few others. As far as the "mainstream" media is concerned, what's going on between the Turks and the Kurds is just another of those ancient, endless Middle Eastern blood feuds. No one bothers to ask: Why is this old problem escalating now?
That the PKK and Pejak have turned themselves into pawns of the War Party is quite understandable: after all, they want to liberate their people and unite them in the age-old dream of a "Greater Kurdistan." Like Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, they are ready, willing, and able to use the Americans in order to advance their own agenda. The question for the U.S. Congress, however, is whether the American taxpayers are now subsidizing terrorism directed at the Turks in order to further the War Party's agenda.
The recent threat by the Turks to invade Iraq in hot pursuit of PKKterrorists has the administration scrambling to appease Ankara and stave off a major blow to its claim that the U.S. occupation has provided "stability" to the region. Kurdistan, after all, has been touted up until now as a model of peace, prosperity, and unalloyed happiness – a foretaste of the country's golden future, provided "defeatists" in the U.S. don't pull the rug out from under our imminent victory. To see this veritable utopia smashed by Turkish force of arms would be a disaster for Washington – but even worse would be the revelation of how we got ourselves into this wholly untenable position to begin with. Worse, that is, for whoever would be indicted and prosecuted for pulling off what may turn out to be one of the most ambitious, and dangerous, "rogue" operations since Iran-Contra.
The serial numbers of arms captured from PKK fighters have been traced back to U.S. shipments to Iraqi military and police units. Responding to Turkish complaints, the Americans claim these arms were diverted by the Iraqis – presumably the Kurdish regional government – but the Turks aren't buying it: if the large quantity of U.S.-made arms (1,260 seized so far) turns out to have been directly provided to the PKK by the Americans, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul warned, U.S.-Turkish "relations would really break apart." U.S. diplomats immediately rebuffed this suggestion, and Washington dispatched the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes, to the scene, where he met with top Turkish military leaders. According to at least one report, "The meeting discussed an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Defense into reports that U.S. arms were being sold by U.S. troops in Iraq."
Another clue to what is really going on here is provided by the news that the FBI has volunteered to help the Turks find out where the PKK is getting its funding and weapons – and doesn't that strike you as odd? FBI director Robert Mueller said, "We are working with our counterparts elsewhere in Europe and in Turkey to address the PKK and work cooperatively, to find and cut off financing to terrorist groups, be it PKK, al-Qaeda," or whatever. Yet why would the FBI get involved at all, unless, of course, Americans were somehow involved? Foreign Minister Gul confirmed this to the Turkish media, stating:
"1,260 weapons captured from the PKK are American-made. We documented it to the U.S. These are of course not given directly to the PKK by the U.S. These are the ones that were given to the Iraqi army. Unfortunately some U.S. officers were corrupt. The Department of Defense informed us that a serious investigation is underway."
Is it that a few bad apples are "corrupt" – or something else?
As Seymour Hersh has reported, the U.S. and Israel are financing and otherwise aiding the Kurdish Party of Life, otherwise known as "Pejak," founded to "liberate" western Iran, which has a large and restive Kurdish population. Furthermore, the ties between the PKK and Pejak are more than merely fraternal: they are basically the same organization, sharing not only bases in the mountainous Quandil region of Kurdistan, but also common personnel and leadership.
The sudden outbreak of PKK violence – two spectacular ambushes, one of which resulted in the killing of 12 Turkish soldiers and the capture of eight, who are now being used as bargaining chips – also requires some explanation. Up until this point, the PKK had carried out low-level operations, with groups of six to eight militants planting bombs and generally harassing the Turks on a small scale. In recent months, however, the overall level of attacks has undergone a radical increase, with hundreds of PKK fighters deployed in a single attack and a new sophistication in terms of both firepower and the technical equipment required to pull off complex operations such as the recent ambush-and-capture.
Ever since the Syrians stopped supporting the PKK in the late 1990s, the group was largely incapable of launching major operations and had to content itself with terrorist actions directed at tourist facilities. Membership was down, cut virtually in half, and the capture of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, demoralized large sections of the PKK, amid reports of splits. The revival of the group's fortunes coincided with news of the Pejak-U.S. connection and – tellingly – the disappearance of U.S. munitions and other equipment from Iraq.
Nearly one out of every 25 weapons provided to the Iraqis by the U.S. has disappeared. Furthermore, the system for tracing them never functioned. 370,000 light weapons have been sent to Iraq by the U.S. since 2003, yet just 3 percent had their serial numbers recorded by the U.S. Defense Department prior to being handed over. For some unfathomable reason, the general who was in charge of that particular task – by the name of Petraeus – has never been held accountable for what is one of the biggest scandals of the war.
The idea that "corrupt" U.S. soldiers sold weapons on the black market to PKK guerrillas is not all that far-fetched, but the absence of any system to account for all these guns invites larger-scale suspicions. Could it have been set up that way precisely because the Pentagon – or someone else – wanted to make sure the weapons couldn't be traced? This would certainly facilitate the arming of groups like Pejak, to put pressure on the Iranians and give the serial regime-changers in the Pentagon a huge weapons cache from which to draw at will.
We know that both the U.S. and Israel have been aiding Pejak, and surely this allowed the PKK to feed off of the arms pipeline, albeit "indirectly." The Israeli factor is yet another angle to this story: Seymour Hersh also reported that the Israelis have taken out a rather large stake in Kurdistan, not only investing in several major business operations but also involving themselves in the training of Kurdish "commandos." Could some of these commandos possibly be PKK operatives?
Both Iran and Turkey have pledged to cooperate in eradicating the Kurdish threat, and this cooperation is yet another reason for the general decline in relations between Ankara on the one hand and Washington and Tel Aviv on the other. What was once a tight alliance started to unravel when the Turks refused to let the U.S. use their territory as a launching pad for the invasion of Iraq, and things have gone rapidly downhill since. The regime-changers inside the administration, centered around Dick Cheney's office and the civilian upper reaches of the Pentagon, may have decided that the Turks have to be thrown overboard now that the campaign to target Tehran is going full-gear. If the Kurds' price for subverting the Iranian regime is covert aid for their continuing assault on Turkey, then it hardly beggars belief that the War Party is willing to pay it: loyalty is not one of their strong suits, as Iraq's Shi'ites can readily attest.
I have a great deal of difficulty believing that the large number of confiscated American weapons that apparently found their way into the hands of PKK fighters just happened to show up on the black market, without any knowledge or complicity by higher authorities. How high the "corruption" goes, remains to be seen. What we do know is this: the War Party isn't shy about engaging in "rogue" operations and doing end-runs around the properly constituted authorities when it suits their purposes.
A recent demonstration by Turkish students against PKK terrorism had the protesters denouncing both the Kurds and the U.S. government: "Down with the PKK!" – they shouted – "Down with the U.S.!" In Turkey, at least, they seem to know who and what is behind the wave of terrorism that has shaken the country.
In America, however, it's a different story altogether: the "news" media hasn't really said anything about the FBI investigation and the possible involvement of Americans, nor do we hear much about the U.S. – or Israeli – connection to the Kurdish "liberation" groups, such as Pejak, except from Hersh and a few others. As far as the "mainstream" media is concerned, what's going on between the Turks and the Kurds is just another of those ancient, endless Middle Eastern blood feuds. No one bothers to ask: Why is this old problem escalating now?
That the PKK and Pejak have turned themselves into pawns of the War Party is quite understandable: after all, they want to liberate their people and unite them in the age-old dream of a "Greater Kurdistan." Like Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, they are ready, willing, and able to use the Americans in order to advance their own agenda. The question for the U.S. Congress, however, is whether the American taxpayers are now subsidizing terrorism directed at the Turks in order to further the War Party's agenda.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
PJAK admits to having US relations
Kurdish rebels holding a US flagPress TV News - Oct 24, 2007
A member of PJAK terrorist group has admitted to the organization's relations with the US government, New York Times reported.
Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group's leadership, said Tuesday that there had been 'normal dialogue' with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards confirmed the group's officials had met with Americans in Kirkuk last year, the Times reported.
Gabar, who was shown lying on a slab of rock with 27 other guerillas on top of a 3,000m mountain near Iran borders where Iranian military vehicles were at range, also adds that there are diplomatic relations and movements between US government and the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, otherwise known as PJAK.
Iranian officials have accused the US of supplying the terrorists and using them in a proxy war against their country, a claim that Washington denies.
However Iran isn't the only country that accuses the US of aiding the PKK and other Kurdish separatists. The Turkish government has basically said the same thing. The suspicions grew even stronger when Turkish soldiers found American-made weapons lying next to killed PKK terrorists. The Iranians believe that the US is aiding Kurdish terrorists for several reasons one of them is because Kurdish leaders themselves admit they regularly have "direct or indirect discussions" with US officials.
The PJAK and the PKK appear to be mostly one and the same organization, both fighting to win autonomy for Kurds in Iran and Turkey and sharing leadership, logistics and allegiance to Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader in jail in Turkey.
Differentiating between the two, however, is politically smart for the US because the PKK "is fighting Turkey, an important American ally, while the PJAK is not labeled as such because it is fighting Iran."
The leader of the PJAK, Rahman Haj-Ahmad, an off-shoot of a terrorist group, was allowed to visit Washington last summer.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
NATO, U.S. Aiding PKK Terrorists In Turkey
Attempt to crush democratic process, say newspapersby Paul Joseph Watson - Oct 10, 2007
Turkish newspapers have slammed NATO for its support of the PKK terrorist organization, while also alleging that U.S. forces are arming the militant group in Iraq, as part of an agenda to crush the democratic process and prevent the election of a populist government in Turkey.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU and NATO itself. The group espouses Marxist leanings and its goal is to create a socialist Kurdish state encompassing south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and north-western Iran. The group has been fingered as the culprit of thousands of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and acts of sabotage over the past 20 years.
Allegations of international support to the PKK are long-standing. According to a report in the London Telegraph, Kurdish guerrillas are being funded by the U.S. to wage a clandestine war in north-western Iran.
The Turkish daily Zaman has accused NATO of supporting the PKK as part of a plan to destabilize Turkish elections and prevent a new Turkish constitution from being drawn up.
"Forces linked to NATO are trying to crush the democratic process of the Turkish presidential election by pushing the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) to increase its attacks," reports Press TV. "During the two months leading to the presidential election, around 100 Turkish soldiers or security personnel have been killed in clashes with the PKK. PKK's most recent attacks have left 26 people dead, 12 of them civilians."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's demand that NATO target the PKK has consistently fallen on deaf ears, leading Turkey to threaten an invasion of northern Iraq to quell the crisis.
NATO has a long and bloody history of fostering terrorism in order to safeguard its geopolitical agenda.
Parliamentary investigations in Italy confirmed that NATO had created "stay-behind armies" during and after the Cold War, ostensibly to repel a Soviet invasion of the west, but that this was merely a smokescreen for perpetrating violent acts of terrorism in order to install right-wing governments around Europe, in accordance with a CIA directive to launch a "strategy of tension."
'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security," testified former Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra.
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