Double-crossing in Kurdistan

A MUST READ

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"The United States plan for Iraq all along has been no less than a "soft" partition, including an autonomous Kurdish mini-state and Shi'ite and Sunni regions. Even Turkey had signed on to this, provided the Iraqi Kurds cracked down on Kurdish militants striking into Turkey. With the militants running wild, though, Ankara has to take care of matters itself - and risk throwing the whole grand scheme into jeopardy, including the US's designs on Iran.....

The George W Bush administration would not flinch to betray its allies in Iraqi Kurdistan if that entailed a US "win" in the Iraq quagmire. And it would not flinch to leave its Turkish North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in the wilderness as well - if that entailed further destabilization of Iran.Way beyond the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) vs Turkey skirmish, one of these two double-crossing scenarios will inevitably take place. Washington simply cannot have its kebab and eat it too.....

Not accidentally, the new PKK overdrive coincides with US - and also Israeli - covert support for the PJAK. Israel has not only invested a lot in scores of business ventures in Iraqi Kurdistan, it has also extensively trained Kurdish peshmerga special commandos, who could easily share their knowledge with their PKK cousins......And most of all, the PKK drive coincides with the mysteriously vanished scores of light weapons the Pentagon sent to Iraq with no serial numbers to identify 97% of them.....

US corporate media totally ignore the US/Israeli coddling of the PJAK - and by extension the PKK. The larger context is lost. No one bothers to ask how come the Bush administration seems to be such a huge fan of a greater Kurdistan.....

Turkey has angrily reacted to the US Senate proposal for "soft" partition of Iraq. This is the famous US "Plan B" for Iraq - more an "A" than a "B" because it was floated years ago. And the authors are Israel and ... the Turks themselves.....

....Masterminded by an Israel obsessed with breaking up the 'sea of Arabs' in the Middle East, the plan has proceeded apace ever since, influencing and directing virtually all of Washington's political and military tactics in Iraq. And yet even today it remains nobody's business.".....The Israeli mastermind was Leslie Gelb......

Barzani and Jalal Talabani, Iraqi Kurdish leaders, rival warlords and wily opportunists, duly fulfilled their part of the deal - especially in October 1992 during a joint offensive with the Turkish army against the PKK.....

So what kind of Kurdish "sovereignty" is this? Iraqi Kurds detest, and ignore, the Baghdad government like the plague, and prize their independence; but as soon as they're threatened, they instantly seek refuge under Baghdad's (clipped) wings.

.....Following Barzani's logic, since Iraq is under occupation, the Turks would be actually invading a colonial possession of the US. Thus it should be Petraeus to confront the Turks about what they're up to. Washington in a way has proved its point: Iraqi Kurdistan is a fragile entity that only exists because it always depended on American protection......

US plans for Iraqi Kurdistan, stretching back to that 1990 Israeli-devised Turkish plan, are in jeopardy. And once again all because of the enemy within......

There's no evidence these lessons have been learned. No matter what happens in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration will still insist on the ethnic card to precipitate regime change in Iran. "