Our Kurdish Problem
This article is a cause for concern. Turkey is getting restless about the PKK (Kurdish Worker's Party), a group that has conducted terrorist acts against Turkey for years as part of an effort to create an independent Kurdish state. The PKK is not the official government of the Kurdish area in northern Iraq, but they do use that territory as a staging ground and the official government has failed to rein them in.
Turkey amassed a lot of troops on the norther Iraq border earlier this month and now in the wake of the successful elections of the leading party in Turkey, they are pressuring the US to deal with the Kurds or they might. This is real touchy because we have sacrificed the Kurds in the past and they could be very wary of us doing it again. Also, the Kurdish area is both stable (at the moment) and home to a lot of oil in Kirkuk. A Turkish invasion would blow apart all of our plans in Iraq.
What will our response be? Bob Novak thinks he might know, covert action to eliminate the leaders of the PKK. This is dangerous stuff. It might be the second most dangerous situation we face right now behind Pakistan and ahead of Iran, though all of them are significantly problematic. Like in the earlier post about the Russian arms sales to Iran, the Middle East is a powder keg. Any of these thingshas great potential to ignite a major conflgration across the whole region.
Turkey amassed a lot of troops on the norther Iraq border earlier this month and now in the wake of the successful elections of the leading party in Turkey, they are pressuring the US to deal with the Kurds or they might. This is real touchy because we have sacrificed the Kurds in the past and they could be very wary of us doing it again. Also, the Kurdish area is both stable (at the moment) and home to a lot of oil in Kirkuk. A Turkish invasion would blow apart all of our plans in Iraq.
What will our response be? Bob Novak thinks he might know, covert action to eliminate the leaders of the PKK. This is dangerous stuff. It might be the second most dangerous situation we face right now behind Pakistan and ahead of Iran, though all of them are significantly problematic. Like in the earlier post about the Russian arms sales to Iran, the Middle East is a powder keg. Any of these thingshas great potential to ignite a major conflgration across the whole region.
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