PKK & Turkey: Iraq Takes Action PKK Offices Closed, Assets Frozen

[photo:getty]
by Mondoreb

Iraq has just shut down PKK offices in Iraq and frozen their assets. This may help to de-escalate tensions in the on-going PKK problem with Turkey.

One now wonders: why wasn't this done before? Did it really have to take Turkey moving military units to the border and cross-border raids to move the Iraqis to action?

More from the AP:

Iraq's government, under growing pressure to crack down on Kurdish rebels using the country's north as a base for guerrilla attacks in Turkey, ordered their offices closed Tuesday and promised to curb their movements and block their funds.

Turkish troops were massing along the border, with military helicopters airlifting commando units into the area overnight. Earlier Tuesday in London, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that his country cannot wait forever for the Iraqi government to move.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the offices of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Turkish acronym PKK, closed, and said the government will "not allow it to work on Iraqi territory."

So a positive step has been taken. Will it be enough to calm the anger on the Turkish side? Does this reward actions, not words? Are the Turks also asking why this wasn't done before this?

This action by the Iraqis answers a few questions, but raises others. Hopefully, the right questions have been answered for now and a little breathing space achieved.




Back to Front Page.

Even Closer to the Brink: The New York Times Syndrome

[image:gisarah]
by Mondoreb

UPDATE:

The Turks move troops toward the border to deal with the PKK out of Iraq. This is a problem, but you just knew how the New York Times, ever the optimist, would handle the story.
1-It was Bush's fault; 2-The news out of Iraq is terrible; and, 3-It was Bush's fault. All that in the lead paragraph and then a bit of concern over what it all might mean.

The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse. Now Turkey is threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases, after guerrillas killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers. This latest crisis should have come as no surprise. But it is one more widely predicted problem the Bush administration failed to plan for before its misguided invasion — and one more problem it urgently needs to deal with as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq.

Wake Up America makes a good point about the Times' rigid adherence to their political agenda and their bottom line.

Previously we showed how the second biggest shareholder in the NYT dumped all their shares, we showed graphs of the last 2 and 5 yrs, showing their advertisers and readership going down the proverbial toilet as well as their paid service Times Select making so little they had to start offering it for free.

It is not only how they report the news or their refusal to report any news that doesn't fit their political agenda, but their lousy writers in the opinion section aka editorials.

Their subscribers and ex-readers have already voted on the Times' methods; perhaps the Time's stockholders are now doing the same.

This reporting of every problem as a fault of President Bush is one sign of the Times. Maybe it's a sort of NY Times Syndrome. On the subject of Iraq, the Times would spin the sudden discovery of an Iraqi Fountain of Youth into an insidious Bush plot to rid the world of old people.
Back to Front Page.

Turks, Kurds and the US: "Let the US Try and Stop Us"

[image:Getty]
UPDATED:
"Let the U.S. Try and Stop Us"
"Transform[ing] the Kurdish Dream into a Turkish Nightmare"
by Mondoreb

Another world problem promises to get thornier in a hurry. The Turks are tired of their soldiers being picked off as the U.S. works to head off an escalation on the Turkey-Iraq border. As more Turkish soldiers head to the border area, politicians on both sides seek a solution.

The troubles from the Kurdistan area that encompasses Iraq, Turkey and parts of several other countries are updated. From CNN:

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan rejected reports of an apparent cease-fire offer from Kurdish separatists Tuesday after arriving in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi leaders aimed at defusing tensions along the countries' shared border.

Babacan was responding to Iraqi claims that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey accuses of launching attacks on its territory from bases in Iraq, was ready to declare a unilateral truce.

But he said cease-fires were only possible between "states and regular forces," The Associated Press reported. "The problem here is that we're dealing with a terrorist organization."

Babacan's visit comes after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband jointly urged Iraq to take "immediate steps" to prevent Kurdish separatists from carrying out attacks against Turkey.

There's obviously no easy answers here. The Turks want the incursions from the PKK to stop. This is entirely reasonable. If Canadian terrorists were coming across the US border and murdering civilians and soldiers, the outcry would be deafening. With the al-Qaeda problems abating in Iraq, the U.S. doesn't need another security worry. The Kurdish north of Iraq has been relatively quiet, but the PKK can't leave the Turks alone.

One hopes that a solution can be reached before more blood is shed, but it doesn't look very promising at this point.

Not helpful are voices like this:

"What if American F-16s come in front of us to block us? Let them try, that's their business. … Our targets will be on Barzani's military and economic targets. Our goal will be to transform the 'Kurdish dream' into a 'Turkish nightmare.'"

To say 'passions run deep on both sides' is an understatement. Strong passions on both sides are what war is all about.

UPDATE:

You just knew how the New York Times, ever the optimist, would handle this news. 1-It was Bush's fault; 2-The news out of Iraq is terrible; and, 3-It was Bush's fault. All that in the lead paragraph and then a bit of concern over what it might all mean.

The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse. Now Turkey is threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases, after guerrillas killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers. This latest crisis should have come as no surprise. But it is one more widely predicted problem the Bush administration failed to plan for before its misguided invasion — and one more problem it urgently needs to deal with as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq.

On the subject of Iraq, the Times would spin the sudden discovery of an Iraqi Fountain of Youth into an insidious Bush plot to rid the world of old people.



Back to Front Page.