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Originally Posted by powerclown
Yes, I can see the manipulation angle you point out roachboy, where the Kurds are using American technology and firepower to secure their own interests and spheres of influence, but I would say it works both ways. The Americans wouldn't be playing ball with the Kurds if they weren't reaping rewards as well. An entire area to the north of Baghdad (including Turkey) allied to the US is a highly desirable situation for the Yanks. I can foresee a time when this area could develop into a US (and allies)-friendly military/intelligence base of operations - an eagle's aerie so to speak - in the heart of the Middle East.........
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Turkey was much happier with the Kurdish situation when Saddam was firmly in control of northern Iraq, than they are now.
Turkey sees only two tolerable outcomes for the Kurds. One is incorporation inside an expanded Turkish border, and the other is marginaliztion of Kurdish nationalistic and political ambitions as in the policies towards the Kurds of Saddam's Iraq. For Turkey, this is not a problem confined to Iraq. There are Kurdish populations in contiguous Syria, Iran, and in Turkey itself that have ambitions of forming an independent Kurdistan with their cousins in northern Iraq. Bush and company apparently did not study history, and consequently, they appear to have us poised to repeat it.
(The earlier part of the entire article offers a description of Kurdish ambitions in the context of the current political vacuum. The point is made that now, things are probably as good as they will ever get for Kurds in a geographically intact Iraq, and they know it.)
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http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick05132005.html
The war will go on in Iraq because no community has got what it wants and none has given up hope of getting it. The Shias, 60 per cent of the population, want power. They turned out to vote in January despite suicide bombers. They now believe that the US, the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs are plotting to marginalise them. Political authority in Iraq has always been exercised through the security agencies. That is why, during the three months of negotiations to form a government, the Shias, under the new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, insisted on getting the Interior Ministry. The US is resisting a full Shia takeover and wants to stop them getting the Defence Ministry as well. Donald Rumsfeld flew in to Baghdad in April to make it plain that Jaafari's proposed purge of 'suspected infiltrators' would not be tolerated.
The Sunni Arabs are divided and unclear in their aims. They want the US occupation to end. But, having boycotted the election, they are not sure how they will relate to the new government. Despite the Sunni boycott, the government was elected by popular vote and has a legitimacy its predecessors lacked. The Kurds, almost to their own surprise, are the community which made the biggest gains after Saddam's fall: they hold Kirkuk; they are allied to the US; Jalal Talabani, one of their leaders, is president of Iraq; they enjoy a degree of autonomy close to independence. But they fear that this may be as good as it gets. The government in Baghdad will get stronger in time, and as it does so it may try to restore its authority over Kurdistan.
Politically and militarily strong for now, the Kurds are geographically isolated. It took me two days to travel from Kirkuk to Baghdad: the two-hour road journey is too dangerous, and I had to go by way of Turkey. The only airport in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Arbil, was closed: the central government claims it isn't properly equipped. Traffic between Iraq and Turkey passes over two bridges a few hundred yards apart on a fast-flowing river at Ibrahim Khalil. This might be the longest traffic jam in the world. Columns of trucks and petrol tankers waiting to cross the border stretch back 70 kilometres into Turkey. Sometimes drivers wait two and a half weeks to get across. Turkey, worried by the impact of events in Iraq on its own Kurdish population, tightens or relaxes the regulations for crossing the bridges to show the Iraqi Kurds that it controls their main link with the outside world.
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