Iraq too fragile for Turkish incursion

Financial Times ^ | 2/25/2008 | N/A

[a_Turk]

Turkey’s decision to send ground forces into northern Iraq, its biggest incursion into the Kurdish territories across its border for a decade, may be an understandable response to the reviving campaign by rebel separatists hiding there. But it is the last thing an Iraq trying to claw itself back from the precipice needs.

The palpable improvement in the security situation in Iraq over the past year is fragile and uneven. Any destabilisation of Iraqi Kurdistan, the only relatively calm area of the country, could put paid to what is only a small chance that improvement can be turned into a political settlement enabling Iraqis to live together in peace.

Ankara should end its incursion – and has the right to expect closer co-operation from Iraq and its US allies in fighting the PKK. Its best protection, nevertheless, is to continue the modest but tangible progress the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made in reconciling Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Force alone will not resolve this. The rebels are well dug in in the near-impregnable Kandil mountains and Turkey’s attempts to cut them off are already taking its troops close to open confrontation with Iraqi Kurds. If that happens, the Kurdish peshmerga forces used by the US to hold down parts of central Iraq will be redeployed northwards.

The situation in Iraq hangs by a thread, or rather several threads. The “surge” of US troops of the past year, though hailed as a triumph by the Bush administration, is only one of four factors behind the relative fall in violence from very high levels.

US recourse to Sunni tribal militias to fight al-Qaeda, the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to stand down his Mahdi army (for reasons of mainly intra-Shia politics), and the fact that ethno-sectarian cleansing in Baghdad and central Iraq has largely been completed are at least equally important reasons. Yet all these factors are temporary.

The US will not maintain force levels much beyond the summer. The minority Sunni are stronger now that the US is using them militarily – and are still violently opposed to Shia supremacy in Iraq. Mass sectarian killing could resume if millions of refugees start returning. True, Mr Sadr has extended his ceasefire, a plus. But US forces are arming other Shia tribal militias against the Sadrists in south Iraq, where they also back the Iran-allied Badr militia against the Mahdi army, itching to resume fighting both the Americans and its rivals.

There is precious little room already for national reconciliation and governance to emerge in Iraq. Turkey must not further reduce it.

[a_Turk]

Rotsa Ruck

[joebeth]

Who let these Turks in? I want to know. Was it some one world piece of crud. Here is the deal. The PKK was our friend!! They went into Mosul when we wouldn’t. What the hell is going on. This is BS!!!!

[a_Turk]

Lady, the PKK is a terror organization responsible for the deaths of about 40,000 Turkish citizens. They are not the Peshmerga of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Please unbunch that which seems bunched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers_Party

[Eyes Unclouded]

Don’t bother most ‘muricans only see brown past greece till you hit china.

[Octar]

Lady, the PKK is a terror organization responsible for the deaths of about 40,000 Turkish citizens. They are not the Peshmerga of the Kurds in northern Iraq.

You are correct. The sooner the PKK is gone, the better. They only serve to make the situation worse. For us, for Iraqis, for Turks, and for the Kurds.