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2 THE ROVING
EYE Double-crossing in
Kurdistan By Pepe Escobar
The George W Bush administration would not
flinch to betray its allies in Iraqi Kurdistan if
that entailed a US "win" in the Iraq quagmire. And
it would not flinch to leave its Turkish North
Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in the
wilderness as well - if that entailed further
destabilization of Iran. Way beyond the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) vs Turkey skirmish, one of these
two
double-crossing scenarios will inevitably take
place. Washington simply cannot have its kebab and
eat it too.
The Bush administration's
double standards are as glaring as meteor impacts.
When, in the summer of 2006, Israel used the
capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah to
unleash a pre-programmed devastating war on
Lebanon, destroying great swathes of the country,
the Bush administration immediately gave the
Israelis the green light. When 12 Turkish soldiers
are killed and eight captured by PKK guerrillas
based in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration
urges Ankara to take it easy.
The "war on
terror" is definitely not an equal-opportunity
business. That has prompted Slovenian philosopher
Slavoj Zizek to mischievously remark, regarding
Turkey, "It's as if an intruder has gatecrashed
the closed circle of 'we', the domain of those who
hold the de facto monopoly on military
humanitarianism."
The US and Israeli
establishment regards Hezbollah as a group of evil
super-terrorists. But the PKK consists of just
"minor" terrorists, and very useful ones at that,
since the US Central Intelligence Agency is
covertly financing and arming the PJAK (Party for
Free Life in Kurdistan), the Iranian arm of the
PKK, whose mission is to "liberate" parts of
northwest Iran.
Not accidentally, the new
PKK overdrive coincides with US - and also Israeli
- covert support for the PJAK. Israel has not only
invested a lot in scores of business ventures in
Iraqi Kurdistan, it has also extensively trained
Kurdish peshmerga special commandos, who
could easily share their knowledge with their PKK
cousins.
The new PKK offensive coincides
with a PKK flush with new mortars, anti-tank
weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and even
anti-aircraft missiles. And most of all, the PKK
drive coincides with the mysteriously vanished
scores of light weapons the Pentagon sent to Iraq
with no serial numbers to identify 97% of them.
The person responsible for this still
unsolved mystery is none other than the
counterinsurgency messiah and top commander in
Iraq, General David Petraeus. The suspicion that
the Pentagon never wanted these weapons to be
traced in the first place cannot be easily
dismissed. Either that or the PKK has been very
active lately in the black market for light
weapons.
The Turkish-Israeli plan US corporate media totally ignore the
US/Israeli coddling of the PJAK - and by extension
the PKK. The larger context is lost. No one
bothers to ask how come the Bush administration
seems to be such a huge fan of a greater
Kurdistan.
As much as the PJAK - and the
PKK - use American largesse for greater Kurdistan
ends, the Bush administration uses especially the
PJAK for its wider "war on terror" target: the
destabilization of Iran. Turkish-US relations in
this case are no more than a casualty of war. Now
the Turks are up not only against Massoud
Barzani's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), but
also the US and the European Union in Brussels.
And in addition, the PKK denies it has attacked
Turkey out of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey has
angrily reacted to the US Senate proposal for
"soft" partition of Iraq. This is the famous US
"Plan B" for Iraq - more an "A" than a "B" because
it was floated years ago. And the authors are
Israel and ... the Turks themselves.
The
plan has been extensively documented, among
others, by the Center for Research at the Kurdish
Library in New York. According to its "Kurdish
Life" newsletter, "Back in 1990, Turkey's then
prime minister Turgut Ozal made a deal with the US
and Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani. Masterminded by an Israel obsessed with
breaking up the 'sea of Arabs' in the Middle East,
the plan has proceeded apace ever since,
influencing and directing virtually all of
Washington's political and military tactics in
Iraq. And yet even today it remains nobody's
business."
The Israeli mastermind was
Leslie Gelb, a relatively moderate Zionist. The
plan duly featured in the Turkish press at the
time. It proposed a federal Iraq, with a
Kurdistan, a section of Kirkuk and Mosul for the
Turkomans; and the rest, in fact most of the
country, for "the Arabs", Sunni and Shi'ite alike.
To get their autonomous mini-state, the
Iraqi Kurds just had to guarantee to smash the
PKK. As for Turkish Kurds, the Turkish prime
minister's spokesman said at the time that since
"two-thirds of Turkey's Kurds are scattered
through the country" and the rest "fully
integrated into Turkish society", they would have
no business dreaming about autonomy.
Barzani and Jalal Talabani, Iraqi Kurdish
leaders, rival warlords and wily opportunists,
duly fulfilled their part of the deal - especially
in October 1992 during a joint offensive with the
Turkish army against the PKK. They may have sold
out the PKK 15 years ago, but that won't happen
again; at least that's what the two have vocally
promised. For their part, the PJAK-PKK have been
tremendously helpful for the Bush administration
agenda of "destabilizing" Iran.
The
Kurdish Life newsletter argues that the cause of
Turkey's current woes is not the US or the Iraqi
Kurds. It's a self-inflicted wound, all spelled
out in Ozal's plan. "With his untimely death in
1993, the plan was revised, with an autonomous
Iraqi Kurdistan to include Kirkuk, and more, and
the remainder of Iraq to be divided between Sunni
and Shi'ite Arabs. The Republicans of the Bush
administration cemented it into the Iraqi
constitution under the rubric 'federation'."
That's no less than the "soft" partition
the US Senate recently voted for. That's the
future Washington wants for Iraqi Kurdistan. And
that's the scheme the US - and Israel - don't want
their ally
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