As Usual, The Kurds Are Sold Out Again! But They Will Never Learn.

Turkey's offensive comes at a price

An Important Article
By M K Bhadrakumar
Asia Times

"Turkey is clearly acting in concert with the United States and Israel over its incursion into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish rebels. As a result, Ankara can shrug off international - including Iraqi - condemnation of its actions. But there will be a cost: Turkey will be expected to play a major role as the guardian of the stability of northern Iraq, and as important, to play a bigger role in Afghanistan.....

Iraqi Kurdish ambitions no longer match US interests. A devastating recent essay by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute titled "Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?" analyzed the shifting alignments......

Rubin concluded, "As Turkish warplanes bomb terrorist bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, it is time for both Washington and Irbil [capital of the KRG] to reassess their policies. Washington has many cards to play...... It is time to take a tough-love approach to Iraqi Kurdistan. There should be no aid and no diplomatic legitimacy so long as Iraqi Kurdistan remains a PKK safe haven, sells US security to the highest bidder, and leaves democratic reform stagnant."

Nothing like this has ever been said by a leading American analyst about the Iraqi Kurds, who were the darling of US policymakers through the past 17-year period since Saddam's catastrophic Gulf War in 1991. Rubin sent out a deadly message - Washington has no more critical need of Iraqi Kurds.....

Washington has abandoned any plans of setting up a permanent military base in northern Iraq.....But, interestingly, the Bush strategy virtually leaves Iraq's northern side without any significant American military presence. Such a security vacuum is unsustainable. Clearly, Washington expects Turkey to play a major role as the guardian of the stability of northern Iraq.....

Thus, all in all, Washington has estimated the urgent need to accommodate Turkey's aspirations as a regional power. The Bush administration seems to have undertaken a major policy review toward Turkey in the October-November period last year around the same time it considered the follow-up on the troop "surge" in Iraq. It concluded that for a variety of reasons, abandoning Iraqi Kurds to their fate is a small price to pay for reviving Turkey's friendship.....

However, for Washington, it is not Ottoman Turkey's legacy in the Balkans, which is all very well as misty history, but what Ankara can tangibly do for it in Afghanistan that becomes the number one priority. Frank Hyland, a former US intelligence official (who served in the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter-Terrorist Center, the National Security Agency and the National Counter-Terrorism Center) wrote recently that Washington has requested Turkey to step up its troop deployment in Afghanistan and, more importantly, to deploy the troops in active combat missions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. (The 1,000-strong Turkish contingent is presently deployed in non-combat duties in and around Kabul.).....

Hyland says, "Washington is well aware of the strong hand it brings to negotiations with Turkey, considering the latter's need to locate and track PKK guerrillas in support of Turkish military operations.....After making a general appeal for additional troops across the entire NATO community, the United States appears to have chosen Turkey as the 'best-chance' ally to focus on for immediate results....Turkey's success against the PKK since real-time intelligence made it possible to hit targets in Iraq with pinpoint precision, is a considerable inducement in the ongoing discussions......"