quote:

Originally posted by Ronald Rutherford:
Kurdistan war: the lesser of two evils?

A reminder:

quote:

Sue N Posted 25 October 2007:
If you want people to know what you are talking about, you need to explain it in your own words. This not only makes it clearer what you see as the relevant aspects of your linked material, but allows people to decide whether or not they think it will be worth going to look. Only if I know from experience that it will be worth my while following links posted by an individual, do I do so without question.

Just being sent to link after link after link is rather like spam - the headlines may look interesting, but I get pretty tired of it very quickly if the content is not of immediate interest or relevance, and soon learn to simply ignore it.

From my experience with you, Ronald, I wouldn't do anything without question. Especially now that I know about your discussion theory for throwing data up against the wall and looking for pictures to form as it drips down.

My the nihilistic authoritarian breeze is getting mighty windy in here...
And now for a word salad that I shall call my book report on the following article. Seems that we have two rules here now. Those that can post links with the top portion of the article posted or the other type with the complete copy and paste and of course the other with complete stories and multiple links for even the simplest link.

My Book Report on: Kurdistan war: the lesser of two evils?
Yes a nice catchy title that draws the reader to wonder about the issues. So let us begin: MOSCOW. Whoa. Stop there, is this some Russian conspiracy to brainwash us by them Commies? Is this some Pravda (semi-porno) article that has no basis in truth? Well let us carry on...Yevgeny Satanovsky. Holy mother of pearl, are you posting a link about:

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President of the Russian Jewish Congress, visited Washington, DC, May 6-8, together with Sergei Gitman, RJC Vice President for International Relations, and Olga Akmulina, RJC Driector of Resource Development. In addition to high-level meetings with White House and State Department officials, Mr. Satanovsky had the opportunity to address the U.S. Government's Religious Roundtable on Religious Freedom in Russia and Europe; a briefing at the headquarters of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty; annual National Leadership Conference of the Anti-Defamation League; and a working lunch with representatives of American Jewish organizations.

OMFW. Here I am passing a Russian Jew on to us unsuspecting readers. Well since I posted it, I might as well continue on with my book report salad shooter.

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Although Iraqi Kurdistan has not yet achieved independence, it is moving in this direction. Many experts predict that another regional war, the assassination of a political leader or the liquidation of an arch-terrorist could cause major problems. But the world would probably cease to exist if all these predictions came true.

Ok so spelling out the worst case scenario, but not very likely.

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The Kurdistan Workers Party's ten-year war against Turkey has claimed over 30,000 lives and pitted several thousand separatists against one of the strongest armies in the region. Over 3,000 Kurdish insurgents operate from Iraqi Kurdistan, and 2,500 more are fighting in Turkey.

We have already had data points about how the Turkish Police State has violated the human rights of Kurds in Turkey, but this also points out that the rebels (Amy Goodman word) are also located in Turkey. It sure is easier to fight the insurgents on other territory than it is on your home turf. This fact (data point) will more than likely come up later in our discussions.

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This war has serious political implications. Turkey, which was nearly dismembered by the Entente Cordiale after World War I, is doing everything possible to preserve its territorial integrity. Ankara does not recognize any ethnic minorities and considers the Kurds to be Mountain Turks, rather than a separate nation.

The Kurds probably had no choice but to revolt after being subjected to tough discrimination for many decades.

Their compatriots faced similar problems in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and in Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has not been tolerant towards the Kurds either.

Ok, so this talks about what Turkey feels they may be losing and how they frame it to be acceptable the human rights abuses.

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With no access to the sea and no state to represent them, the 25 to 35

million Kurds, part of whom also live in Armenia, have maintained their language, traditions and clan-based social organization. The situation is deplorable because the League of Nations had promised to establish an independent Kurdish state in the 1920s.

Ankara uncompromisingly retaliates against any terrorist attack, especially when Turkish soldiers are killed, and does not negotiate its territorial gains. This is why the international community continues to discuss the issue of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967, but does not ask Turkey about Iskenderun (Alexandretta), a seaport that had originally belonged to Syria. The reason is simply that Ankara does not discuss such issues.

More data points that will be important in the Geopolitical/Geostrategic analysis. We have land disputes in both cases now and a people that have been promised a land although land locked as it is.

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A recent resolution by the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee calling the massacre of Armenians in World War I by Ottoman Turks a genocide has caused outrage in Turkey and is said to have provoked the crisis. This is not so, because the resolution has merely increased Ankara's reluctance to consider the recommendations of its ally. The same happened in 2003, when the United States decided to invade Iraq and was denied permission to use Turkish air bases.

The Congressional panel overlooked the fact that Turkish military operations could jeopardize regional stability, the future of the Kurdish nation and Iraqi territorial integrity. As far as Ankara is concerned, Washington has to choose between Turkey and a hypothetical Kurdistan state with insurgent units.

So even if both nations are part of NATO, we see the conflicts of different aspirations. Also as noted before, the Turks gave up the opportunity to mold Iraq.

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Turkey will, most likely, conduct a military operation because Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani, who de facto controls the situation in north Iraq, will not disarm Kurdish militants or restrain them in any way.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani wants the Kurdistan Workers Party to withdraw from northern Iraq; however, Barzani is bent on repelling a Turkish aggression because he cannot afford a civil war in Kurdistan if a Kurdish-Iraqi militia tries to disarm militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party.

Similar concerns were also voiced in Lebanon, but the big difference was that the Lebanese army had no ability to stop Hezbollah. Here, we know the Kurds have legitimate grievances against the nations of Syria, Turkey and Iran.

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Problems in Turkish Kurdistan are not likely to cause any regional upheavals. A limited military operation conducted by Ankara would make things harder for U.S. forces in Iraq, aggravate the situation in the most stable Iraqi province and cause problems in Erbil and Suleimania, where part of U.S. units will be redeployed from central Iraq. But all this is Washington's problem.

In fact, Iraq, which has a national flag, a government, a budget, and which maintains embassies in various countries, can no longer be called an integral state because it cannot protect its citizens. Moreover, the U.S.-British-Georgian occupation authorities are unable to accomplish this objective. Consequently, a Turkish military strike will hardly change anything.

So problems self contained and only the problem of the Coalition Forces and the fragile Iraqi Government.

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The Iranian nuclear problem increasingly resembles the Cuban missile crisis. The resignation of pragmatic leaders such as Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme Security Council, shows that Tehran considers ideology to be more important than war.

In a bid to retain tough ideological control over the country, Iranian leaders are ready to face a possible U.S.-Israeli attack and the threat emanating from Pakistan whose nuclear arsenals are located near terrorist camps.

Against this backdrop, the Turkish operation in north Iraq is a mere trifle. Right now, the Middle East has to choose between a very bad scenario and an absolute disaster. The news from the Turkish-Iraqi border heralds a transfer from a bad to a very bad situation.

More talk about the regional player Iran and how their nuclear program could be affecting the dynamics of the situation.

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There is nothing the international community, including NATO and the European Union, can do. Brussels is dealing with Turkey, which knows that its allies and partners depend on it to an even greater extent.

Paraphrasing Prince Alexander Gorchakov, one of the most influential and respected 19th century diplomats, the Turkish army and navy are Ankara's only friends.

Ankara will never forget that the Entente Cordiale and the League of Nations wanted to divide Turkey in the past. It also realizes that the EU will never admit Turkey, which, at best, could become a privileged partner or could only cooperate with Mediterranean countries.

Turkey will uphold its territorial integrity and security, without paying attention to the interests of other countries. Russia and China, which are now building up their economic and military strength, should also learn this lesson.

So we have two countries that are vying for regional hegemony in different ways. It is possible that while they both are on the side against the Kurds their aspirations could boil over. And the weakened player Iraq along with semi-independent region Kurdistan could be pawns in the two powers.

Anyway this article was brought to my attention from the blog post: A Russian Analysis of Turkey-Kurdistan.

quote:

Reminder and newsflash: The rest of the world acts according to its own motivations, and sets plans/ reactions in motion without waiting for America. Being a big player doesn't make you the only player. Get over it. The rest of the world also plays by a pretty ancient and hard-edged set of rules, and let's not kid ourselves about that either.

As Joe wrote that in italics to bring it out, I too want to emphasize that part of his post. We basically navel gaze way too much when the world moves on with or without us. Just last week I was wondering when the New York Times would end up being posted here. Lastly:

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"America is the center of God's creation, and everything happens because of us/ is just a reflection of our own petty concerns" mentality one finds among the standard set of ugly Americans and fools.

And might I add, nihilists also.

Now that wasn't so tough, was it?

And what do we have when we get past all the irrelevant references, and the inappropriate comparisons to unknown entities involved (such as nihilists) to anything else posted on this thread? A thread that raises the question of just what US foreign policy is really about in this latest, budding Middle East crisis?

Not much new, really, but at least some sense of what you saw in your article, complete with some color.

Yes, of course data points are important in a geopolitical/geostrategic analysis. The point is to draw out connections of data points to theory to see if the picture makes any sense. Not throw them up against the wall and read the drippings as patterns pretending that doesn't involve theorizing, as empiricists have sometimes tried to do. Of course the analysis itself has to have some sort of coherent framework, and there are many of those being framed by many sources, not just by the US, so which is this one? That's the way I tend to approach these things.

The question of how "Turkey" feels about what they are losing is of course historical, and that's why history has already been brought in. More relevant details to flesh that out can always be useful, if explained. There are many ways that history could be interpreted, this opinion is only one.

That there has been a tension between Kurds and Turks in how the Kurds are treated by Turks is already a part of this thread. That goes into the very matrix of the reason there is a conflict to begin with. So that's certainly not new.

Interesting frame: Turkey gave up "the opportunity to mold Iraq" -- yes, they "gave that opportunity up" because they disagreed with the premise the US had for the invasion. As did NATO, as a whole, disagree with it. There's a whole set of structural dynamics that go with that, very much involved with the current state of affairs in Iraq. That's also a possible attitudinal factor in this situation that actually may have something to do with the way US foreign policy negotiations work themselves out. Instructions from the top in Washington may very well continue to have an acknowledgment of unrequited will from its "friends" embedded in its instructions when its negotiator is sent out. We can only guess at that when we see the dogged determination of policy setting by our "decider" in chief. Indeed, the world is a complex set of actors with a history and sets of soap operas all their own, apart from the US, but to what extent do our elected leaders recognize that? A serious question I ask myself daily as I try to expand my own understanding.

quote:

quote:

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani wants the Kurdistan Workers Party to withdraw from northern Iraq; however, Barzani is bent on repelling a Turkish aggression because he cannot afford a civil war in Kurdistan if a Kurdish-Iraqi militia tries to disarm militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party.

Similar concerns were also voiced in Lebanon, but the big difference was that the Lebanese army had no ability to stop Hezbollah.

The situation has already been shown to have much more complexity than that simple statement of opinion from the opinion piece. The PKK appears to have both a positive and a negative relationship with the Iraqi Kurdistan governate for a number of reasons, and beneath it all we have seen the map of a regional Kurdistan that goes into those other nation states, Iran and Turkey. I would say that simple "because" is not so simple. What that statement tells me is what some of the ingredients are in the negotiation problems between the central government in Iraq and its northern regional governate, where this impending invasion by Turkey happens to be focused. You make the beginning of a comparison between the Lebanese army and the Kurds, but with no follow up. The follow up should include a likeness comparison factor that's already been mentioned above, from an above post:

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Fayeq Mohamed Goppy, a leader in the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party, an offshoot of the P.K.K. that still operates freely, argues that Iraqi Kurdish leaders are only paying lip service to wanting the P.K.K. to leave. In reality, the politicians want the separatists around as protection against Sunni Arab extremists, who most Iraqi Kurds believe will move in if the P.K.K. leaves the mountains.

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Throughout its history in northern Iraq, which dates back to the early 1980s, under an agreement with Mr. Barzani, the P.K.K. has had contentious relations with Iraqi Kurdish leaders. It fought in their civil wars, against Mr. Barzani in 1997, and three years later, against Jalal Talabani, a powerful Kurd who is now the president of Iraq.

But since the American invasion in 2003, the political landscape has changed. Iraqi Kurds, emboldened by their secure position, have stopped fighting each other and turned their attentions to other threats like Turkey, a state that has long oppressed its Kurdish population, and Islamic extremism from Baghdad.

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“They don’t want to be sidelined,” Ms. Marcus said. “That’s really what’s driven them since 2004,” when attacks resumed after a five-year cease-fire. “They want to say, ‘Turkish Kurds are important too — don’t think the Kurdish problem has been solved.’ ”

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To Iraqi Kurds, Turkey’s approach is pure politics. There is no military solution to the problem of the P.K.K., they say, because the terrain would never permit victory, and Turkey’s leaders know that.

The solution, Mr. Mustafa argued, lies with moderates in Turkey, who must push for an amnesty for the rebels. Militant Kurds, for their part, should take advantage of the political opening in Turkey — 20 Kurdish deputies are now serving in Parliament there.

“When you have the door to the Parliament open, why are you going to the caves?” he said.

I think he's about as far off on the Iran nuclear crisis being like the Cuban missile crisis as the US "deciders in chief" are of conjuring up an imminent nuclear threat that requires the potential of destabilizing the entire world economy at this moment. Plenty of non US rational analyses of Iran's nuclear bomb making capabilities -- not to mention many experts within the US -- indicates Iran to be years from achieving the basic ingredients, with not clear evidence they are even trying that hard.

quote:

UN nuclear chief attacks hostile US claims on Iran

Sun Oct 28, 4:18 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.


"We haven't received any information there is a parallel, ongoing, active nuclear weapon program," the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.

"Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons ... they are at least (a) few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments.

I'm still wondering what you deem to be nihilistic, Ronald. Nothing you ever reference to it gives me any sense of it.

If we are exploring what official US foreign policy is about, certainly the Nation's leading paper of record, the NYTimes, should have its voice represented. What I wonder is this, when something is posted to consider, do you always take it as a binary position intended by the poster? I mean... always? Can you never possibly look at it as something to consider as a perspective? This is unnecessary and smacks of a certain kind of framing if you can't do that:

quote:

Just last week I was wondering when the New York Times would end up being posted here.

A final note:

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Seems that we have two rules here now. Those that can post links with the top portion of the article posted or the other type with the complete copy and paste and of course the other with complete stories and multiple links for even the simplest link.

We have this suggested "rule," now, Ronald, that's the only one that pertains to my request that you make some sense of your data as part of a discussion:

quote:

Sue N Posted 25 October 2007:


If you want people to know what you are talking about, you need to explain it in your own words. This not only makes it clearer what you see as the relevant aspects of your linked material, but allows people to decide whether or not they think it will be worth going to look. Only if I know from experience that it will be worth my while following links posted by an individual, do I do so without question.

Just being sent to link after link after link is rather like spam - the headlines may look interesting, but I get pretty tired of it very quickly if the content is not of immediate interest or relevance, and soon learn to simply ignore it.

"Rule sets" can be hard and fast, set by an enforcing body of some sort, or they can be loose and flexible. A creative and positively exploratory anarchy can occur with the latter, a chaotic and destructive anarchy tends to result in the rising up of the former. But with either, rule sets will become involved because rules are at the very basis of communication. Grammars we create are our basic, perhaps even fundamentally inherited gift of communication, and they are understandable as what can be ultimately understood to be "rule sets." They can be rules of agreement for language play, or rules of enforcement by the Grammar Nazis we all had as one or more of our so called "English teachers."

Regarding what I suggested about the complex relationship between the PKK and the Iraqi Kurd regional government above:

quote:

The PKK appears to have both a positive and a negative relationship with the Iraqi Kurdistan governate for a number of reasons, and beneath it all we have seen the map of a regional Kurdistan that goes into those other nation states, Iran and Turkey. I would say that simple "because" (in the quote from Ronald's opinion piece) is not so simple. What that statement tells me is what some of the ingredients are in the negotiation problems between the central government in Iraq and its northern regional governate, where this impending invasion by Turkey happens to be focused.

The following is what I found to be the most recently derived official position from the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government:

quote:

Statement: PUK and KDP leadership spare no efforts for right solution

Erbil, Kurdistan – Iraq (KRG.org) – Mr Masoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region, today chaired a joint meeting of the political bureaux of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the two major parties in the Kurdistan Region's coalition government.

The meeting addressed the Iraqi political process and the current situation in the Kurdistan Region. It focused on the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) responsibilities and considered the democratic process in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region in terms of diplomatic, political, economic, and good neighbourly relations. The discussions addressed the current problems between the Republic of Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). They also assessed Turkey's position, policies and conditions towards Iraq.

The joint political bureaux arrived at the following decisions issued in their signed joint statement:

1. The Kurdistan Region has not been a part of Turkey's internal political and military problems in the past, and is not so today. The PKK has illegally stationed itself in the border areas between Iraq and Turkey without any legal license or political agreement with the Iraqi Government, the KRG or any political parties. From those border areas the PKK has created various problems for us.

2. We are ready, together with the Iraqi Federal Government and the US Government, which in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions has a responsibility to protect Iraq, to adopt a correct approach to protect the borders and prevent any use of these areas for activities against our neighbours.

3. We restate that after the Kurdish uprising of 1991, the election of the Kurdistan National Assembly and the formation of the KRG in 1992, the KRG and its political parties have been, and still are, a factor for peace and stability in the region. We do not support the PKK, or allow any assistance to be provided to them. We hope that all parties, especially the United States, the Iraqi Government, our neighbours and all friendly countries who support the people of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, will spare no effort at this difficult time to find appropriate solutions to diffuse the current tense situation at our borders. The KRG stands ready to fulfil its responsibilities, as part of federal Iraq, to contribute positively in this process. We are committed to continuing our political and diplomatic efforts to solve this problem. We desire the success of these legal, diplomatic, political and reform efforts and endeavours.