US
Plans Military Strikes On
PKK Bases
By Peter Symonds
24 October, 2007
WSWS.org
With
the Turkish military poised to strike the guerrilla bases of the separatist
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, Washington and London
are engaged in frantic diplomatic activity to prevent a Turkish intervention
that would further destabilise the US occupation of Iraq. However, as
the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday, the Bush administration is also
drawing up plans for military attacks on the PKK, either by US forces
or jointly with the Turkish army.
The Turkish government has
seized on recent PKK attacks inside Turkey to justify a huge military
buildup along the border with Iraq. At least 60,000 heavily-armed soldiers,
backed by tanks, artillery, warplanes and helicopter gunships, have
been assembled to hit PKK camps in the rugged Qandil Mountains bordering
Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Last week, the Turkish parliament voted overwhelmingly
to authorise the government to order cross-border operations.
On Sunday, tensions reached
boiling point after some 200 PKK rebels attacked a Turkish army post,
killing at least 12 soldiers and capturing eight others. The Turkish
military counterattacked, pursuing the guerrillas over the border into
Iraq. According to the Turkish press, combat aircraft hit more than
60 targets inside Iraq. However, Turkey held back from launching a large-scale
invasion into Iraq’s Kurdish north.
The Turkish government is
insisting that the US and Iraq take action to destroy the PKK’s
bases, capture the PKK leaders and hand them over to Ankara. In response,
the US and Britain pressed the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional
government to deal with the PKK. A series of meetings over the past
two days in Washington, London and Baghdad has failed to the resolve
the issue.
After speaking to Prime Minister
Gordon Brown in London, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
ominously warned: “We cannot wait forever... We have to make our
own decision.” In Baghdad, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan,
while calling for a diplomatic solution, rejected out-of-hand the suggestion
of a ceasefire with the PKK, which he insisted was a “terrorist
organisation”.
US State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack described the frenzy of diplomatic activity as a “full-court
press” by Bush administration officials to prevent a Turkish invasion
of northern Iraq. The basketball analogy, however, implies a planned
strategy. It would be more appropriate to describe the US response as
one of sheer panic as the consequences of the Bush administration’s
criminal invasion of Iraq and its reckless preparations for a new war
on Iran come home to roost.
The Kurdish north of Iraq
is routinely hailed as the great success story of the US occupation.
In reality, it is a highly unstable house of cards. As the pay off for
their backing of the US invasion in 2003, the Bush administration allowed
the two major Kurdish nationalist parties—the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—to establish
an autonomous region in three northern provinces. From the outset, Turkish
leaders regarded the regional government as a threat that would encourage
broader Kurdish separatist sentiment. They were particularly hostile
to its demands for control of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which
has a sizeable Turkmen population, and the surrounding oil fields.
The failure of the US to
take any action against PKK guerrillas entrenched in the Qandil Mountains
has only heightened tensions with Turkey. The PKK and its sister organisation,
the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which operates inside Iran,
have been allowed to function freely in Iraq’s northern provinces,
obtaining supplies and finance through its major cities. Despite denials,
there is ample evidence that the US and Israel have been covertly arming
and training PJAK guerrillas as a means of gathering intelligence inside
Iran and destabilising the Iranian regime. The New York Times, for instance,
published a lengthy story yesterday citing a PJAK leader as saying there
was “normal dialogue” with American officials.
The lack of any clear cut
dividing line between the PJAK and PKK—both groups operate from
the same mountainous areas, share a similar Kurdish separatist program
and common origins—only underscores the Bush administration’s
hypocrisy and cynicism. To keep US ally Turkey on side, the US has branded
the PKK as a terrorist organisation, but not the PJAK.
Any Turkish attack on the
PKK/PJAK bases and Kurdish villages in Iraq would inevitably provoke
an angry reaction among Iraqi Kurds and threaten to draw in Kurdish
peshmerga militia units and the Iraqi army. Such a move would be deeply
destabilising, not only for the Kurdish regional government, but also
the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which relies heavily on PUK/KDP support.
US military preparations
Washington is clearly desperate
to prevent a Turkish military intervention in Iraq or a breach in the
US/Turkish alliance. Quite apart from long-term strategic considerations,
the US military funnels around 70 percent of its air cargo to Iraq via
a major US air base in southern Turkey. At the same time, more than
1,000 Turkish troops are in Afghanistan as part of NATO forces, helping
to prop up the US-led occupation of that country.
While publicly calling for
a diplomatic solution to the crisis, the Bush administration is also
making preparations for a military assault on PKK bases. President Bush
spoke to Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Monday via telephone. According
to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, Bush offered reassurances
to Gul that the US would work with Turkey and Iraq “to combat
PKK terrorists operating out of northern Iraq”.
The Chicago Tribune yesterday
reported that military action was discussed. An unnamed US official
familiar with the Bush/Gul conversation told the newspaper that the
US was seriously looking into options beyond diplomacy to deal with
the PKK. “It’s not ‘Kumbaya’ time anymore—just
talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough. Something
has to be done,” the official said.
A range of military options
were being considered, including air strikes and the use of cruise missiles
against PKK bases. Another option discussed was to persuade the Kurdish
regional government to use its militia forces to establish a cordon
around the mountains where the PKK is entrenched, in order to choke
off its supply routes. The deployment of US troops to hit the PKK was
considered to be a final resort.
Highlighting the fears in
Washington, the US official told the Chicago Tribune: “In the
past, there has been reluctance to engage in direct US military action
against the PKK, either through air strikes or some kind of Special
Forces action. But the red line was always, if the Turks were going
to come over the border, it could be so destabilising that it might
be less risky for us to do something ourselves. Now the Turks are at
the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing.”
Bush’s discussion with
Gul followed an urgent telephone call on Sunday by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, urging him to hold
back from an immediate military attack inside northern Iraq. Chicago
Tribune reported that Erdogan had given a 72-hour reprieve on any cross-border
attack. The Turkish government is under pressure from the military and
opposition parties, particularly extreme right-wing nationalists, to
launch a military operation. At the same time, however, it is deeply
concerned about an open breach with the US and the consequences of war
that threatens to be inconclusive and could become a broader regional
conflict.
An article posted on the
Thomson Financial web site indicated that the US and Turkey may be planning
a combined military operation against the PKK. As he flew to London
on Monday, Erdogan told reporters: “We may conduct a joint operation
with the United States against the PKK in northern Iraq... We expect
to work jointly, just as we do in Afghanistan.” Speaking of his
conversation with Rice the previous day, he added: “She was worried.
I saw she was in favour of a joint operation. She asked for a few days
time and said she would come back to us.”
The Iraqi Kurdish nationalist
parties are obviously alarmed. By slavishly supporting the US occupation
of Iraq, the PUK and KDP calculated that they would have American backing
to establish their own small political and business empire in northern
Iraq that would eventually include the oil-rich region around Kirkuk.
Having declared that it would resist any Turkish invasion, the regional
government is now under pressure from its American sponsors to take
action itself against the PKK. Its jealously guarded “autonomy”
is rapidly crumbling under the pressure of demands from Ankara and Washington.
After discussions at the
White House, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a member of the
PUK, told the Brookings Institute on Monday: “My worry is that
there are demands of the KRG and the Iraqi government to ‘fight
the PKK’. That could well be a recipe for an open-ended conflict
in which we will not win and will basically destabilise the only stable
part of Iraq.”
There is a long history of
the sordid manoeuvres by various Kurdish nationalist politicians with
the major powers ending in disaster for the Kurdish people. The present
situation is no different. The “stable” north of Iraq may
well become the new battleground for “an open-ended conflict”.
Those immediately responsible are the PUK and KDP leaders who tied the
fate of Iraqi Kurds to the Bush administration and its criminal occupation
of Iraq.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.