Iraq appeals to Iran for help defusing the Kurdish crisis

As tensions ratchet up between Turkey and Iraq over PKK terrorists who find safe haven in Iraq from which to stage cross-border raids and kill Turkish soldiers, and the United States stands by helplessly, unable to even comprehend the scope of the clusterfuck created by the hubris of George Bush, Iraq is reaching out to Iran for help.

That's gonna go over like a pregnant pole vaulter.

On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki met with Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and asked him to help present Iraq's positions at a regional summit meeting in Istanbul scheduled for Thursday. “The prime minister asked the Islamic Republic to present their full support to Iraq during the Istanbul meeting and also to participate in solving the border crisis between Turkey and the P.K.K.,” a statement from Mr. Maliki’s office said. The summit will be attended by representatives from countries in the region, including Syria, Iran, Iraq andTurkey. The United States will be represented by Condoleeza Rice, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and a number of other foreign ministers are also expected to attend.

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P.K.K. terrorists have killed over 35,000 Turks since launching their most recent separatist terror campaign in the 80's. For perspective, consider that in 2 decades, the P.K.K. has killed ten times the number of Turks that America lost on September 11.

Turkey, tired of the terrorists who attack them finding safe haven in Iraq, hiding beneath the petticoats of Turkey's NATO ally the United States in the Kurdish north of Iraq, has massed troops on the border and announced that they will pursue Peshmerga and P.K.K. fighters across the border, engage them and kill them.

Iran has been sympathetic to the Turkish position, because the P.K.K. launches terrorist raids into Iran as well. But the situation is not that simple. Iran and Iraq are both Shi'ite majority countries, and the Iraqi government is Shi'ite majority (al Maliki spent many of his years in exile in Tehran).

From the New York Times:

Iraqi diplomats said they were worried that after the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met with President Bush on Nov. 5, Turkey may take action against the Kurdish guerrillas, a step that could further antagonize Iraq’s Kurds.

“They are under a lot of pressure from the public, so we think they will do something,” said a senior Iraqi official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. “We hope they will not.”

Mr. Erdogan has asked the United States to help the Turks take “concrete steps” to reduce the P.K.K. threat.

In Washington, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the United States military was giving “lots of intelligence” to Turkey in its effort to halt the rebel attacks.

As if the situation were not complicated enough, the American forces are still holding five Iranians that were taken into custody in January. Iran says they are diplomats, the United States insists they are members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. “The arresting of Iranian consular officials is a very big strategic mistake,” said Mr. Mottaki. Mr. Mottaki also expressed his displeasure at a comment made by General Petraeus that the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad was a member of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard.

And I would like to point out, again, that Petraeus really hasn't done much, if anything, right. Last summer, he managed to piss Maliki off to the point that Maliki threatened to have the General recalled. Generals have to be politicians, that's how they get past the rank of Captain. But this is 4G warfare. They need to be diplomats. And lets differentiate right now: diplomacy and ass kissing are two completely different things. Petraeus has a handle on the latter, there's no doubt. But the former? Not so much.

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Turkish Parliament votes Overwhelmingly to Authorize Cross-Border Incursions in Pursuit of Kurdish Terrorists

The Turkish Parliament has voted to authorize the government to launch cross-border incursions into Iraq to pursue PKK terrorists that find safe-haven in the Kurdish areas of Iraq.

The motion passed with 507 votes in favor and 19 opposed, and the passage brings Turkey one step closer to entering the conflagration in Iraq and gives the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan one year in which to launch offensives against Kurdish terrorists who carry out attacks in Turkey from safe havens in Iraq. “After so many incidents, we’re at a point that our patience has run out,” said Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman and a member of a special council on terrorism, speaking in the parliamentary chamber.

Bear in mind that over the last two decades, Kurdish terrorists have inflicted at least ten times the toll America experienced on September 11, 2001 on the Turks. Under US law, the PKK is a terrorist organization, and militias are not – but the U.S. military attacks the militias and not the PKK. (This coddling of the PKK undermines the seriousness of a so-called war-on-terror, to say the very least.)

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Terrorist organizations are defined by a willingness to attack civilians in an effort to achieve political objectives via public pressure. The PKK routinely commits acts of terrorism against Turkey in order to promote their separatist agenda.

“We are making it very clear to Turkey that we don’t think it is in their interests to send troops into Iraq,” President Bush said at a news conference at the White House. “There’s a better way to deal with the issue than having the Turks send massive troops into the country.”

But Turkish officials say that recent diplomatic efforts have not succeeded. Turkey signed a security agreement with Iraq in September, but since then, more than two dozen Turks have been killed in rebel attacks, some of them civilians, and the government is under strong public pressure to act.

Turkey is out of patience and not at all interested in negotiating with the terrorists of the PKK. They are only interested in actions that would eliminate the PKK as a threat to the national security of the Turkish state.

This is going to be interesting, and the next few days will set the tone of Turkish-American relations for the remainder of the Bush administration. And keep in mind…The die for preemption was cast with the United States invasion of Iraq, and frankly, George ‘aWol’ Bush and his cast of cultural cretins have so degraded the status of the United States that their warnings and preening are about as effective as the Big Lebowski bellowing at the Dude “Get a job, Sir!”

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Scratch the oil law, it ain't gonna happen

The timing on this simply could not be worse.

This might have kept aWol awake, tossing and turning until 9:30 - possibly even 9:45.

The legislative process covering the Exxon-Mobile Enrichment Act Iraqi oil sharing law has finally, officially, collapsed. The oil law represented the last straw that the Bush administration had hope of grasping onto as Iraq slips away; and aWol’s position as Most. Pathetic. Excuse. For. A. Human. Being. Ever. is secured for time immemorial.

At the very moment in time that it is crucial to exhibit evidence of reconciliation, the flagship legislation fails. The collapse comes in the wake of conflict between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some of the nation’s largest fields are located.

I’m sure that the Kurds deciding to begin signing contracts with international oil companies before the law was passed had nothing to do with that conflict…

I’m sure that the decision by the Kurdish authorities last week to enter into an oil exploration contract with Hunt Oil Company of Dallas (the same Hunt family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs) had no bearing at all on the breakdown of the legislation. Of course not…

The language of the law was hammered out in February, but it has been unable to move forward through parliament ever since. This final collapse comes just as the American occupying power is desperately looking for any thing that can be latched onto as representing progress to parade before congress as the battle for funding the war for next year ramps up.

But instead of resolution, what we have at hand is dissolution.

The Sunni Arabs who removed their support for the deal did so, in part, because of a contract the Kurdish government signed earlier with a company based in the United Arab Emirates, Dana Gas, to develop gas reserves.

The Kurds say their regional law is consistent with the Iraqi Constitution, which grants substantial powers to the provinces to govern their own affairs. But Mr. Shahristani believes that a sort of Kurdish declaration of independence can be read into the move. “This to us indicates very serious lack of cooperation that makes many people wonder if they are really going to be working within the framework of the federal law,” Mr. Shahristani said in a recent interview, before the Hunt deal was announced.

Kurdish officials dispute that contention, saying that they are doing their best to work within the Constitution while waiting for the Iraqi Parliament, which always seems to move at a glacial pace, to consider the legislation.

“We reject what some parties say — that it is a step towards separation — because we have drafted the Kurdistan oil law depending on Article 111 of the Iraqi Constitution, which says oil and natural resources are properties of Iraqi people,” said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government. “Both Iraqi and Kurdish oil laws depend on that article,” Mr.

The Prime Ministers office, however, sees a simpler – and darker – reason for the Sunnis withholding their support. In Maliki-world, his opponents would rather betray the nation than give him a political victory. “I think there is a political reason behind that delay in order not to see the Iraqi government achieve the real agreement,” said a political adviser to Mr. Maliki.

Yes, I’m sure that’s it. In fact, I’m absolutely certain that that is absolutely all there is to it. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the de facto secession of Kurdistan, and the loss of the largest oil reserves in the country formerly known as Iraq.

But think about it this way – if Americans are willing to go halfway around the world and fight a war for access to those oilfields - does anyone in their right mind think that those who feel wronged, and who happen to be in the neighborhood, are going to let it go without a fight?

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Tripartite Iraq? Bipartite? Or still unified, with new boundaries?

Abu Aardvark’s excellent article on what appears to be the final collapse of Sunni participation in the government of Iraq got me to thinking about what the longer-term results might be.

I know that a number of pundits, some historians and even a few American politicians have bandied about the idea of a tripartite Iraq, on Shi’a/Sunni Kurd lines. It’s usually presented as if this were the only realistic option (by politicians and pundits), or the most likely actual option (by historians).

In any case, a tripartite Iraq vs. current Iraq are presented as the only two outcomes, usually. But, the Sufi philosopher Idries Shah once said, “There are never just two sides to any situation,” and that is the case here.

For example, what if Sunnis, Shi’as, Iranians and Turks combine to do a partition of Poland move on the Kurdish state? Then, we’re down to a bipartite Iraq.

Or, what if Kurds and Shia’s stay together, with a Sunni area making a formal declaration of independence? Then we have a bipartite Iraq.

Or, what if the Saudis get so frustrated they issue an invitation to the Sunni area to let itself be taken under the Saudi wing? To appease Bush, they could make this as innocuous as possible, but then complete the annexation during the heat of the presidential election season or just after, confident they can then get away with it. Then, we have a still unified, but shrunken, Iraq, with an enlarged Saudia Arabia now having even more of both oil reserves and Falafist fundamentalists in its midst.

Cross-posted at Socratic Gadfly and Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus.

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