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2 Turkey's offensive comes at a
price By M K Bhadrakumar
The high Qandil mountains and deep gorges
on the northern Iraqi border region with Iran must
be one of the world's most ideal terrains for
guerrilla war. That is where the fighters of the
separatist Turkish Kurdish movement the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) have set up its headquarters.
The PKK is close enough to the Turkish border to
stage its guerrilla attacks and can easily
frustrate "hot pursuits" by the Turkish army.
There is a popular saying that Kurds have
no friends but the mountains. The region offers
one of the world's spectacular natural fortresses,
virtually impossible to penetrate. Especially so
in the winter with heavy snowfall, frequent
treacherous avalanches and howling icy winds
mercilessly ransacking anything out in the
open.
Without doubt,
the seasoned military commanders in Ankara know
that the Turkish military incursion into northern
Iraq, which began last Thursday just after sunset,
can settle nothing. The Pashas are highly
professional men and are hard realists who act
with deliberation. They would know that it will
not be easy to find the Kurdish guerrillas who
know every inch of their mountain strongholds and
evaded for decades even a skilful predator like
Saddam Hussein.
More so, since the current
Turkish operation lacks the all-important element
of surprise. It has been in the making for months
- visibly and meticulously. It has been on the
drawing board at the military, political and
diplomatic level. Besides, the world knows it is
not in the Turkish character to back off, looking
weak, when provoked. The first stage of the
Turkish incursion into northern Iraq began last
December when the Turkish air force started
attacking PKK camps and insisted this was a
prelude to a ground offensive to follow.
Turkey's General Staff said that 33 PKK
rebels, including a leader, and eight soldiers
died in heavy fighting in poor weather conditions
on Sunday. It said at least 112 rebels and 15
soldiers had died since the operations began.
Turkish domestic reaction The
Kurdish guerrillas knew they had provoked Turkey
too far this past year and retribution wouldn't be
long in coming. They could have gone into hiding.
Therefore, the Turkish incursion on Thursday is to
be evaluated not for its military results but for
its political and strategic implications. A few
hundred Turkish troops on search-and-destroy
missions in the Iraqi mountains cannot solve the
Kurdish problem. They may render a blow to PKK
morale, but when the snow melts and the passes
open, it is a wide open question whether the PKK
cadres will resume their bloody business.
Meanwhile, the switch to the military
track may scotch prospects of any serious national
reconciliation with Turkey's Kurdish population
that the ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
has been seeking. Indeed, Erdogan realizes that
Turkey has a Kurdish problem which needs to be
politically addressed. Enlightened sections of
Turkish opinion share his view.
They
realize, as one of Turkey's senior editors, Ilnur
Cevik, wrote, "There are millions of Kurds living
in Turkey and a sizeable majority has integrated
into our society. But there are also those who do
not feel a part of us and demand to be treated as
first class citizens of the Turkish republic. They
feel discriminated, persecuted and
underprivileged. They believe the reason for this
is their ethnic background." The cross-border
operations into northern Iraq might end up
hardening grievances. But then that is looking
ahead.
In immediate terms, the Turkish
nation has rallied in patriotic fervor as powerful
images come flooding home of brave lads in smart
military fatigues heading for the battlefront, of
tanks and heavy armor menacingly advancing towards
the border and of F-16 aircraft pounding the
staggering Kurdish mountains. Even grumpy sections
of Turkey's corporate media have fallen in line,
including some whom Erdogan lately antagonized by
not accommodating their business interests. "Ten
thousands heroes in northern Iraq," hailed the
mass circulation Hurriyet newspaper belonging to
the Dogan group.
The secular "Kemalists",
who were appalled by Erdogan's latest
constitutional reform lifting the ban on Turkish
women wearing headscarves at universities, have
shifted their attention to national security. The
dark rumors of a military coup against the
Islamist government have scattered. The staunchly
secular-minded Turkish judiciary may now hesitate
to uphold appeals against Erdogan's reform over
headscarves.
All in all, the acute
political polarization in Turkey in recent weeks
between the Islamist and secular camps takes a
back seat. True, the mounting economic
difficulties arising out of slowing economic
growth, falling investment rates, mounting
unemployment, inflation and widening income
disparities will not easily go away. But
historically, the working class too becomes
susceptible to nationalism.
Shifting
alignments in Iraq However, the timing of
the incursion has a far wider significance. It is
obvious that the timing has much to do with
political alignments within Iraq. For the first
time since 2003, Iraqi Kurds are politically
isolated. The Kurdish parties have come under
pressure from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
government, as it pushes through a US$45 billion
budget that substantially reduces the share of
income of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG)
from 17% to 14.5%. Baghdad also refuses to pay the
salary of the 80,000-strong Kurdish militia
(Peshmerga) or to allow the provincial legislature
to remove federally appointed provincial
governors. Equally, Baghdad is firm on the federal
government's prerogative to be the sole authority
to award contracts to foreign oil companies.
Sunni parties, the Shi'ite Sadrist
movement, the Turkomen party (supported by Ankara)
and possibly the Iraqi List headed by former prime
minister Iyad Allawi (who has links with the West)
are arrayed as a majority grouping within the
Iraqi Parliament, which seeks strengthening of
Baghdad's central authority over the Kurdish
provinces. The US remains supportive of Maliki.
Iraqi Kurdish ambitions no longer match US
interests. A devastating recent essay by Michael
Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute titled
"Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?" analyzed the
shifting alignments. Rubin thoroughly questioned
the assumptions regarding the Iraqi Kurds'
"pro-Americanism". He underscored that Iraqi
Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani would turn out to
be like former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as
a thorn in Washington's side. Rubin alleged
double-dealings by the Iraqi Kurds with Iran. He
suggested the rampantly corrupt and decadent
leadership in Kurdistan could only lead to a
strengthening of the forces of religious
conservatism and the growth of Islamist parties.
Rubin concluded, "As Turkish warplanes
bomb terrorist bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, it is
time for both Washington and Irbil [capital of the
KRG] to reassess their policies. Washington has
many cards to play. Sympathy to Kurdistan is
understandable, but is increasingly based on myth.
US goodwill should never be an entitlement.
Barzani may remain an ally, but he has
disqualified himself from any substantive
partnership. It is time to take a tough-love
approach to Iraqi Kurdistan. There should be no
aid and no diplomatic legitimacy so long as Iraqi
Kurdistan remains a PKK safe haven, sells US
security to the highest bidder, and leaves
democratic reform stagnant."
Nothing like
this has ever been said by a leading American
analyst about the Iraqi Kurds, who were the
darling of US policymakers through the past
17-year period since Saddam's catastrophic Gulf
War in 1991. Rubin sent out a deadly message -
Washington has no more critical need of Iraqi
Kurds.
He was spot on. The US military in
Iraq has concluded that the best means of
countering the Sunni insurgency is by bribing the
militants. The success of the policy has sharply
reduced US dependence on the Kurdish Peshmerga. As
the US military works on a similar deal with the
Shi'ite Sadrist militias as well, the use of
Peshmerga as foot soldiers of counterinsurgency
operations further diminishes.
The US's
Iraq strategy The shift in US thinking is
already manifesting. The referendum on the status
of the Kirkuk area, which was due last December,
stands postponed until June - perhaps,
indefinitely. Washington may listen to Ankara's
plea that Kirkuk must be given a special status
under a United Nations mandate, as the Turks do
not want to see it incorporated into Iraqi
Kurdistan.
Washington has abandoned any
plans of setting up a permanent military base in
northern Iraq. William Arkin, a prominent US
security analyst, wrote in his Washington Post
blog last week that President George W Bush is
pressing ahead with a period of "consolidation and
reorganization" and "the likelihood of any
significant change in Iraq is slim".
Arkin
substantiates that Bush is "quietly putting in
place the pieces that will indeed tie the next
president's hands". The emphasis is on contracting
US combat forces in Iraq to a fewer number of
combat forces and special operations forces and to
fight the war in Iraq from other locations.
Thus, in Kuwait, the US is completing
finishing touches on a permanent ground forces
command for Iraq and the region, which is capable
of being a platform for "full spectrum operations"
in 27 countries around southwest Asia and the
Middle East. In Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates,
Qatar and Oman, the US Air Force and navy have set
up additional permanent bases.
According
to Arkin, "tens of billions have been ploughed
into the American infrastructure", and
"permanently deployed with the new regional
headquarters in Kuwait will be a theater-level
logistical command, a communications command, a
military intelligence brigade, a 'civil affairs'
group and a medical command".
But,
interestingly, the Bush strategy virtually leaves
Iraq's northern side without any significant
American military presence. Such a security vacuum
is unsustainable. Clearly, Washington expects
Turkey to play a major role as the guardian of the
stability of northern Iraq. This is logical
thinking. Turkey is perfectly capable of keeping
at bay the two other prowling powers in northern
Iraq's neighborhood - Iran and Syria. It suits
American - and Israeli - interests if Ankara
doesn't advance its entente cordiale any
further with Tehran and Damascus.
Ankara
also welcomes the role of being a pivotal power in
US regional policies. To quote Gungor Uras of the
liberal Milliyet newspaper, "The US is now
reshaping the Middle East. While this is
happening, Turkey has the choice of either sitting
on one side and watching developments, or taking
an active role. US support has great importance
for ending terrorism in Turkey, resolving the
Kurdish and Armenian issues, our relations with
our neighbors, and keeping the military strong ...
Do not forget that the US carried us to the
waiting room of the European Union ... Foreign
capital and loans come through New York.
Washington's green light is important to prevent
jams on the road to New York."
Moreover,
the transportation routes of the oil and gas
resources of northern Iraq pass through Turkey.
Ankara has a genuine interest in keeping the area
stable. Several inter-linkages have already
appeared around energy security. The growing
regional energy interdependence places Turkey at
an advantage. Turkey has always prided itself as
Europe's energy hub. Washington will encourage a
key role for Turkey in proposed trans-Caspian
energy pipeline projects, which will also put the
brakes on swiftly expanding Russia-Turkey
cooperation. The Arab Gas Pipeline connects Turkey
with Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
Turkey is working on an energy linkup with Israel.
Again, it is the oil and gas supplies from
Iraq that will help realize the viability of the
3,300-kilometer Nabucco pipeline (running from the
Caspian Sea via Turkey and the Balkan states to
Austria), without which Russia's tightening grip
over the European energy market cannot be
loosened, which, in turn, holds profound
implications for Russia's relations with Europe
and for the US's trans-Atlantic leadership.
US policy review on Turkey Thus,
all in all, Washington has estimated the urgent
need to accommodate Turkey's aspirations as a
regional power. The Bush administration seems to
have undertaken a major policy review toward
Turkey in the October-November period last year
around the same time it considered the follow-up
on the troop "surge" in Iraq. It concluded that
for a variety of reasons, abandoning Iraqi Kurds
to their fate is a small price to pay for reviving
Turkey's friendship.
The turning point
came during the visit of Erdogan to the US in
November. Almost overnight, the body language of
US-Turkey relations began to change. The chilly
rhetoric abruptly changed to warm backslapping.
The emphasis was on the commonality of interests
in the struggle against terrorism. There was an
unmistakable impatience in the US calls on the
Iraqi Kurdish leadership to restrain the PKK
through concrete steps.
Immediately after
Erdogan's visit, deputy chief of the Turkish
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