Posted on 12/25/2007 3:01:00 AM PST by Wiz
President of Iraq's Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani refused to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday, protesting against Washington's stance on the Turkish shelling on northern Iraq, the Kurdish government said in its website on Wednesday.
The website quoted the Kurdish Prime Minister Negervan Barzani as saying that President Barzani was originally supposed to head for Baghdad to meet Rice and other officials but he changed his mind at the very last-minute.
Turkish warplanes two days ago shelled outposts of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Kurdistan. In a statement released yesterday, the Kurdistan presidency held the U.S. responsible for the recent Turkish shelling.
Turkey says that it wages operations targeting what is believed to be outposts of the (PKK), outlawed in Turkey, which Kurdish fighters use to start attacks against the Turkish state with the aim of establishing an independent state for the Kurds.
(Excerpt) Read more at iraqupdates.com ...
Can’t blame the Kurds, we are allowing Turkey to bomb the Kurds in Northern Iraq.
The Kurds have been one of the good spots in Iraq for us all along yet we throw them under the bus to kiss the asses of the betraying Turks?
Without the desires of nationalism, no one would give religious extremism the time of day. Folks want a separate nation for their ethnic group/subculture, usually based on some centuries-old blood feud, and religious extremists promise to help them achieve that end then try to swoop in and run the show.
I suspect religious extremists also fan the flames of nationalistic sentiment to promulgate their own efforts at upheaval. But I do not think the religious fanatics are very attractive in and of themselves.
There was also another nation which refused our request to launch our attack on Iraq from their soil. The turks should be told to pound sand.
“there was only one group of people in Iraq who bought television time to thank the U.S. of A. for their liberation and it wasn’t the Sunni or the Shia.”
It wasn’t the PKK Islamic Communist terrorists either.
condi rice....doing as well with the kurds as she is with the palis....
way out of her element!!!!
She’s highly overated as a diplomat, IMO.
Makes me shudder to think what might befall the NFL...
It wasn’t the PKK Islamic Communist terrorists either.
I'm aware of that. I was a bit hesitant to make my post and phrase it that way BUT we CANNOT lost the good will of the Kurdish population while placating those who stood in our way. It's high time for a realistic, smart response, real time, foreign policy.
Your post is very well stated,thank you. Merry Christmas
Turkey has been salivating over their "Kurdish problem" for a long, long, time. We, the Kurds, and every other Iraqi know that their Turkish border is a potential war zone.
This is about the worst time in their history to contemplate another front, with another enemy, who is technically a US ally, with a non-assimilated minority populace the middle.
The Turks are at war with Kurdish rebels. If all Kurds support Kurdish rebels the Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani is making sense, but they don’t and he ought to wake up and smell the oil.
“we CANNOT lost the good will of the Kurdish population while placating those who stood in our way. It’s high time for a realistic, smart response, real time, foreign policy”
I disagree and I also am not sure the first and second parts of that quote don’t contradict each other. What ‘the Kurds’ (if we must treat them as a monolithic block) did in the past (and, lets not kid ourselves, in the end Kurdish leaders have acted only in their own perceived national interests, as they always said themselves), this cannot give them carte blanche to support or ignore terrorists operating from their territory against a US ally and wuth extreme violence (PKK operations have killed tens of thousands over a couple of decades).
With regard to the second point, I think it’s arguable that retaining the good will of the Turks is more vital at this stage than that of the Kurds. A huge proportion of the logistical support for US troops in Iraq goes through Turkey. And the Kurdish goal of a self-governing state is not necesarily in line with US self-interest if we are taking a realpolitik approach.
Sorry for the profanity. But this is a complicated mess. Turkey has been a NATO ally for decades, even hosting American nuclear missiles during the Cold War, and has suffered acts of Kurdish separatist terrorism.
The Kurds in northern Iraq have been the staunchest US allies in that country since long before the 2003 invasion; they had an effective autonomous state under the US no-fly zone throughout the '90s, and their Peshmerga militias are invaluable in the field.
It's like when two of your life-long friends are having a nasty divorce. What you want more than anything is to smooth it over, to maintain some level of calm, and to be a friend to both and a fair broker -- but no matter what you do, one party or the other, or more likely both, will see it as taking sides.
The Kurds are mad because we condoned the shelling. The Turks are mad because we pressured them out of invading. We're stuck policing a domestic dispute, the last thing any cop wants to do.
Nationalism and religious extremism are both powerful motivators. in the Turkish revolution of the '20s, it was nationalism that propelled Attaturk to power; once in power, he pursued a secular democracy and abolished the caliphate.
From the '20s to the '50s, the forces of nationalism and militant Islam -- the causes of revolution and jihad, respectively -- fed on each other in the Arab world. You have religious, national, and ethnic movements competing with each other. The Iran-Iraq war of the '80s was painted by both sides as a continuation of the ancient wars between Arabs and Persians. Both sides, incidentally, Muslim.
Under Nasser, who was a champion of pan-Arab unity, Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic -- he thought it would attract other states and unite the Arab world as a rival to NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It lasted about three years. Nationalism and local politics swept right over common ethnicity and religion.
Rice had arrived in Kirkuk on Tuesday in unannounced visit before heading for Baghdad, where she met with Iraq's President Jalal Talabani . . .
President Talabani is a Kurd and the founder and Secretary General of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Crisis in our relations?
Why did the leader of one of the two ruling parties of the Kurdistan Regional Government meet with her? Crisis?
You added your editorial comment to the headline. I read the article and will quote the nature of the crisis:
The crisis on the Iraqi-Turkish borders unprecedentedly flared up during the past couple of weeks after the PKK, or Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, which is outlawed in Turkey, escalated operations against Turkish forces. Fighters of the PKK, holed up in mountainous areas in northern Iraq, had killed, wounded, and captured more than 40 Turkish soldiers as of late.
(As violence on our border with Mexicorruption increases would any American have us do nothing as drug smugglers murder, maim, and kidnap Americans?)
For the umpteenth time, the Marxist PKK has been denounced by our own government and most European governments as a terrorist organization. The Kurdish Regional Government wants the PKK to cease their attacks in Turkey but seem powerless (though it seems in some cases unwilling) to do anything but protest. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called on Turkey yesterday to seek a "peaceful" end to its conflict with the PKK.
Massoud Barzani, leader of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-run region in northern Iraq seems to be a frequent outspoken critic of Ankara and is the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) that shares power with PUK. Barzani is not happy that Ankara "interferes" by expressing opposition to an independent Kurdistan. Barzani has stated that he would indeed, short of arms, push for Kurd independence in eastern Turkey. Now your talking crisis!
Compared to that problem it seems to me that the PKK is a relative small problem that should once and for all be ended.
I wish everyone would refuse to meet this witch. Then maybe she’d resign. She is an atrocious SoS.
Spanish food is very good. And after a cafe con leche con Anis, you can chase those women around the beach there.
I think this is a mistake on the part of the Kurds.
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According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts
Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts
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