Another Monster Part 2

Back in April, I posted a diary entitled “We’ve Created Another Monster”. In that diary I discussed how the Kurds were making plans to secede from Iraq through annexing Kirkuk, negotiating independent PSA’s with oil companies, and destabilizing the northern region. This crisis as I predicted is continuing to intensify with the Iraqi Kurds unwillingness and the Iraqi and US governments unable to stop the cross-border raids of the PKK. The PKK is the terrorist wing of the Kurdish independence movement and has been designated as a terroristic organization by most governments including the US.

Well, true to the script that Iraq is a black hole from which there is no escape; the Kurds are on the move. In the past few weeks the PKK has been conducting deadly cross-border raids against the Turkish military culminating with the kidnap of 8 Turkish soldiers. This incident is causing great alarm in Turkey with demonstrations being held throughout the country calling for government action against the PKK. The PKK has been using northern Iraq to stage their raids against the Turks with the silent acquiescence from the Iraqi Kurds. The patience of the Turks is wearing thin and they are amassing troops on the border with Iraq, the Turkish military has also asked and received authority to cross into Iraq to quell the terrorist attacks and to locate its troops.

The ambush on Sunday was the most serious in recent memory by the militants, separatist fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., and came only four days after the Turkish Parliament formally approved contingency plans for military retaliation across the border.

The Turkish military struck back inside Turkey, killing as many as 34 Kurdish militants, the military said today, a higher number than had earlier been reported. But the Kurdish ambush still drew strong public outrage here, and its brazenness could effectively force the government to make good on its warning to send forces into northern Iraq.[1]

As the tensions continue to escalate the Iraqi Kurds seem content to allow events to spiral out of control. I believe this is part of their plan to destabilize the region and create a crisis for the Iraqi government. It will be during this crisis that the Kurds will make their play to try to break away from the Iraqi central government’s authority. As the past weeks have shown the Kurds continue to negotiate and sign PSA’s with oil companies despite calls from the government of al-Maliki and the US to stop the practice.

Saddam Hussein was hung for what he did to the Kurds; I wonder what punishment the current Prime Minister will receive for cracking down on the Kurds? The Kurdish problem has long been a thorn in the sides of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Prior to our setting up the Kurds in northern Iraq each country had initiated crackdowns in various forms to subjugate their minority Kurdish populations. Because we allowed the Kurds autonomy in Iraq, they are using that freedom to export terrorism and fan the flames of independence for Kurds in the region. It is these activities that will cause the war in Iraq to escalate into a broader regional conflict. The problem with not studying the country and region you are invading is that you have no perspective or history of the underlying conflicts of that region.

This Kurdish issue is not going to resolve itself quietly through diplomacy I’m afraid. The Kurds seemed to be determined to push this crisis to the breaking point. They have continued to talk of reigning in the PKK and yet have brought none of the leaders to justice. In what appears to be a strategy of forcing the hands of the Turks and the Iraqi central government, the Kurds appear to be playing a game of brinksmanship to take this situation beyond a regional issue into an international issue. I am not sure if the Kurds believe they can bring enough international pressure to form a separate independent Kurd nation or if they want to have the sovereignty of the state of Iraq but still be able to act independently.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who called on the PKK to cease fighting and to turn itself into a political organization, angered Turks further on Sunday by saying: "We will not hand any Kurd over to Turkey, not even a Kurdish cat," according to media.

At the same time, Mr. Talabani seemed to shrug off Turkish requests that the Iraqis hand over P.K.K. leaders hiding in northern Iraq.

“The leaders of P.K.K. do exist in Kurdistan’s rugged mountains, but the Turkish Army with all its power could not stem or arrest them, so how can we?” he said after the meeting which took place in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq. “Handing over P.K.K. leaders to Turkey is a dream that will never be realized.”[2]

It is obvious by these statements that the Kurdish officials in northern Iraq have no intention of reining in the PKK or of doing anything to lower tensions in the region. It is a dangerous game that they are playing and in the process whatever little success we have in Iraq could be the first casualty of a larger conflict. The US does not seem to have any leverage over the Kurds who are acting as if they are independent of Iraq and the US.

Due to their desperate need to show progress in Iraq and the region, the US has allowed itself to be co-opted by terrorists who have little desire for peace or a unified Iraq. It will be difficult to criticize the Kurds after having held them up as the model of democracy for the whole region. They have us by the short hairs and they know it. This is the monster created from removing a monster…

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/world/europe/23turkey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/world/europe/23turkey.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

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We Created Another Monster

There is a growing storm brewing in Iraq that no one seems to want to talk about. Although it may be a long ways off, it is brewing none the less. The storm I speak of is the Kurdish issue in Iraq and how it will affect its neighbors, specifically Turkey.

There is growing rhetoric and posturing on both sides concerning this volatile issue that has been simmering for a while now. It began when the US, after the first gulf war created a semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. For over 10 years the Kurds have had the run of northern Iraq under the protection of the US and have been held out by this administration as a model of democracy. In our usual benevolent way we have armed and financially backed the Kurds allowing them to have free rein in that region. Now granted this region has been a model of stability for Iraq, however considering the other regions in Iraq this is not really hard to do. It’s sort of like being the valedictorian of the “special class”. Your parents are proud, but you’re not going to get a call from Harvard. By allowing the Kurds to progress autonomous of the rest of Iraq, we have created a separate entity that does not seem to have much federalist or Iraqi nationalist fervor.

Fouad Masoun, a Kurdish legislator and deputy chairman of the parliament's constitution review committee, said: "There are some revisions which are necessary, but there are also demands by certain parties we reject, such as returning Iraq to a centralized government or reducing the powers of the Kurdistan region and other regions.

The Kurds do have nationalistic plans, but for the Kurdistan Republic and thus the tension with Turkey. For those that don’t know, Turkey has a large minority population of Kurds who have been trying to become autonomous. The idea of having a nation of Kurdistan on its border has always been unacceptable to Turkey. The issue has continued to complicate our relationship with Turkey whom we consider an ally in the region. Turkey does not want its Kurdish population to get any ideas of becoming autonomous, which is becoming more and more difficult as the Iraqi Kurds get more autonomy. Should the Iraqi Kurds complete their plan to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a serious diplomatic crisis would ensue. So far, the administration has been able to placate the Kurds through cash and concessions. Should the situation in Iraq continue to deteriorate the Kurds being the strongest and most organized force in Iraq could basically take the city and the oil revenues that it represents. If this were to happen the war would immediately escalate into a regional conflict that Washington could no longer manage.

The Kurds are doing their best to carve out enough oil revenue to fund their nationalistic plans. They have continued to resist having Iraq’s huge oil reserves under the authority of the central government which would go a long way to insure that Iraq remains unified. The Kurds have made their intentions known that they would prefer to have Iraq divided. They also are in favor of independent PSA’s for the oil reserves with foreign oil companies taking control and negotiated at the regional level, again to keep the oil revenues in their hands.

Currently we have a war of words and rhetoric between the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks, but history tells us this will not continue for much longer. Rather than spending some of the “political capital” he may still have, the President and this administration are hoping that this crisis will just go away. You know the same strategy they are prescribing for that whole “global warming” thing.

Mark it down people, we have not heard the end of this confrontation and as long as it is ignored it will continue to fester and spread. This is another of those worsening situations that invading Iraq has fostered. This will be no “Young Frankenstein” I’m afraid.

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Clowns To The Left, Jokers To The Right

There has been a subtle change going on in Iraq for the last couple of months. The change has been so subtle you may have missed it. In an effort to position itself in the event of a withdrawal from Iraq, this administration has been arming the Sunnis as they are also arming the Shiite government. Why would we be arming the Sunnis you might ask, aren’t they suppose to be the insurgents and Baathists? Yes, they are, but in the event that our current policy fails, it seems like the answer will be to arm all parties and keep Iraq destabilized for any foreseeable future.

How could this strategy benefit the Neo-Cons? The administration is convinced and with good reason that Iran is positioning itself to be a major power broker in Iraq whenever we leave. The thought of having another Shia led country in the region under Iranian influence has the Sunni led countries many of whom are our allies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan) a bit nervous.

The strategy appears to work like this; we arm the Saudis and Israel to the teeth and under the guise of arming the loyal tribesmen of Iraq we are arming the local Sunnis. Then of course there are all those missing weapons (190,000), just what a civil war needs is 190,000 unaccounted for weapons. My guess is that the plan is to ensure the Sunnis will be a thorn in the side of any central government until the Neo-Cons can come up with a new strategy or figure out a way to blame the failure on you peace-loving anti-war communists. This is part of the scorched earth fall-back plan, if you can’t win destabilize. Basically you’ll have the Saudis on one side and the Iranians on the other, fighting a proxy war for Iraq on our behalf and with our arms.

How awful it must be when your best strategy is to stoke the fires of sectarianism and arm both sides in a bloody civil war. This of course would prevent al Qaeda from setting up a base of operations and at the same time prevent the Iranians from setting up a client state. Throw into this mix the Kurdish rebels in the north attacking the Turks and you have the recipe for a successful conclusion to the invasion of Iraq. We are going to once again find ourselves in the middle of two warring factions playing both sides against the middle and pretending to be an objective arbitrator.

Now, there is even talk of bringing the ex-Prime Minister Allawi back for a second tour. Mr. Allawi an ex-Baathist and a secular Shia would play the role of strongman to offset the sectarian influence of the current government. The administration is becoming frustrated with the lack of progress of the current government, with many believing that PM al Maliki is too weak and too sectarian to resolve the current stalemate. With the surge in full effect the talk of political breathing room for this current Iraqi government is losing steam. PM al Maliki has made it clear recently in the press that he does not feel bound by any American benchmarks and is attempting to exert some independence from what is perceived as American pressure. Just how long the PM can holdout is up for debate, with defections from his coalition government occurring almost weekly he will be hard pressed to produce enough of a majority to appoint dog catchers in Baghdad let alone attack the issues that are currently dividing the country and fueling the insurgency.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the success or lack of success of the surge and what the ramifications will be in September. One’s position on the surge will of course depend on what that person’s goal happens to be. From a military standpoint the surge has managed to curb some of the violence in Baghdad, but this has only caused the violence to move. It should come as no surprise that increasing the troops would increase the security. I remember at the beginning of this fiasco a certain General Shinseki who stated the following:

Shinseki, who commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, testified in Congress in February 2003 that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with "the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."[1]

So, it was known from the beginning that an increase in troop presence would increase security, but what was the reason for the surge? A military victory was not and is not the purpose of the surge. The surge was to provide cover for the current Iraqi regime to unite behind reconciliation for the entire country. Well, this has been a disaster to all no matter what side of the issue they are on. So how anybody can come in September and claim success will be a mystery to me.

At the current time all we are is a buffer for all sides. We are giving all the players a chance to train and arm themselves for the upcoming battle for Iraq. We are the arms dealer and training facilitator for the Sunnis, Kurds, and the Shiites. Currently, we are showing loyalty to no one beyond our own failed policy. It is no longer about accomplishing the possible; it is about supporting the foolish. We have no one we can trust on any side and we are stuck in the middle of a further escalating crisis.

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[1] http://www.johnkerry.com/2006/11/16/shinseki-was-right-and-other-thoughts-on-iraq

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Armageddon 2

With the growing sentiments in Washington among lawmakers turning away from our continued presence in Iraq building momentum, it appears that the military strategists have been working on exit strategies. It is especially important to consider options as the President continues to play the Armageddon card to use fear tactics to coerce people to continue to support his Iraq policies. Because of my skepticism of this administration, I cannot accept at face value any predictions that they make, no matter how sincere they may appear on the surface.

So what do our brilliant military minds with the help of millions of tax payer dollars predict the outcome of our withdrawal will be? As usual that depends on who you talk to, some tend to side with the end of the world crowd, but many more tend to believe that while it will be bad, it will not be the apocalyptic scenario being bandied around the Beltway.

That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."

However, just as few envisioned the long Iraq war, now in its fifth year, or the many setbacks along the way, there are no firm conclusions regarding the consequences of a reduction in U.S. troops. A senior administration official closely involved in Iraq policy imagines a vast internecine slaughter as Iraq descends into chaos but cautions that it is impossible to know the outcome. "We've got to be very modest about our predictive capabilities," the official said.[1]

The consensus is that Iraq will be divided into the three ethnic groups that now comprise Iraq. We will have the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the west, and the Shia in the center and south. I listen to these predictions with a grain of salt, remember these are the same guys who predicted that we would be welcomed with garland wreaths, that the insurgency was dead, and that the mission was accomplished.

I have a different take on the outcome of our withdrawal. Now of course for all of us this is conjecture, but for what it’s worth here is my two cents. I think that the government is going to collapse shortly after our departure. This government has shown time and again that it is either incapable or unwilling to protect, govern, or enlist the support of the people. More and more Iraqis believe that this government in particular and politics in general have nothing to do with their day to day survival. An infant government cannot rule without the support of the people. So, the government collapses, then what?

I believe that after some sectarian violence and infighting, Mr. Moktada al-Sadr, the Shite cleric will emerge as the de facto leader of Iraq. Mr. Sadr has already been aligning himself to become the populist leader that the Iraqi people can rally behind. Mr. Sadr has been able to gain traction being on both sides, he appears as an outsider, but uses politics to advance his agenda, he appears as a peaceful man, yet his Sadr Brigade has been carrying out attacks against Sunnis. He already has a reputation for standing up against the Americans and he does not have a clear alliance with Iran.

BAGHDAD, July 18 — After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street while distancing himself from the increasingly unpopular government.

Mr. Sadr and his political allies have largely disengaged from government, contributing to the political paralysis noted in a White House report last week. That outsider status has enhanced Mr. Sadr’s appeal to Iraqis, who consider politics less and less relevant to their daily lives.

Mr. Sadr has been working tirelessly to build support at the grass-roots level, opening storefront offices across Baghdad and southern Iraq that dispense services that are not being provided by the government. In this he seems to be following the model established by Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite group, as well as Hamas in Gaza, with entwined social and military wings that serve as a parallel government.[2]

If I were working on the plan after withdrawal, I would be trying to rehabilitate the relationship with Mr. Sadr. He will be one of the main, if not the main player after our withdrawal. Of course our clowns in Washington will find a way to let another opportunity slip away. Once again they will allow short-sightedness and our relationship to Israel to ruin any chance we could have to continue to exert some level of influence in Iraq. Mark my words when this thing goes bad, it will deteriorate quickly. Once we withdrawal there will be a lot of people jockeying for position. My fear is that due to our inaction or maybe by our design we will end up with another Saddam. Another line in the dictator/strongman series that Washington and the Pentagon love to use for just such an emergency. There are many twists and turns waiting to be played out in this plot, but my money is on Mr. Sadr and short of his assassination I think he will be king. It’s good to be king!

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601680_2.html?hpid=topnews

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/world/middleeast/19sadr.html

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