Turkey mainly, Iraq and the Kurds (2006-2014)

[T. Jefferson]

Turkey has 140,000 troops on Iraq border, foreign minister says

“Turkey is building up forces on the border. There are 140,000 soldiers fully armed on the border. We are against any military interference or violation of Iraqi sovereignty," Zebari said during a news conference in Baghdad.

Turkey has been pressuring the United States and Iraq to eliminate PKK bases in Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq and has said it's ready to stage a cross-border offensive if necessary.

Zebari said that any problem should be solved through dialogue adding that "Turkey's fears are legitimate but such things can be discussed."
"The Iraqi government try to diffuse the situation," said Zebari, a Kurd from northern Iraq. "The perfect solution is the withdrawal of the Turkish forces from the borders."

"No one wants a new military conflict in the region. These matters should be solved through dialogue and direct negotiations ... there hasn't been any Turkish military violation until now. There are some artillery shelling and some surveillance by Turkish plane."

Turkey has long complained of U.S. inaction against separatist rebels, who have escalated attacks inside Turkey in recent months. Last week, Turkey's military chief asked the government to set political guidelines for an incursion into northern Iraq.

[SteveMetz]

Turkey has 140,000 troops on Iraq border, foreign minister says

In turnabout is fair play for 2003, I think we ought to promise them to resolve the problem and then at the last minute change our mind.

[wm]

In turnabout is fair play for 2003, I think we ought to promise them to resolve the problem and then at the last minute change our mind.

Revoking our support to the Turks worked real well when they invaded Cyprus in 1974.
By the way, I don't think we have anything like the Habur Gate or a twisty little road from the Mediterranean to the Turkey-Iraq border that we can close to the Turks, or do we?

[tequila]

Turkey says its troops can cross Iraq border - NYTIMES, 10 Oct.

Turkey took a step toward cross-border military action in Iraq today, as a council of the country’s top political and military leaders issued a statement today allowing troops to cross to eliminate separatist Kurdish rebel camps in the mountainous northern region.

Turkey’s move toward military action comes in the face of strong opposition by the United States, which is anxious to maintain peace in that area, one of the rare regions of stability in conflict-torn Iraq.

All government offices and institutions have been ordered “to take all economic and political measures, including cross-border operations when necessary, in order to end the existence of the terror organization in a neighboring country,” said the statement, which was released by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office ...

[tequila]

Turkey strikes suspected Kurdish rebel positions - AP, 11 Oct.

Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships attacked suspected positions of Kurdish rebels near Iraq on Wednesday, a possible prelude to a cross-border operation that would be likely to raise tensions with Washington.

The military offensive also reportedly included shelling of suspected Turkish Kurd guerrilla hide-outs in northern Iraq, which is predominantly Kurdish. U.S. officials are preoccupied with efforts to stabilize other areas of Iraq and oppose Turkish intervention in the relatively peaceful north. The White House issued a warning Wednesday against such an incursion "at this time."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters that a motion authorizing a cross-border operation was being prepared and might reach parliament today. An opposition nationalist party said it would support the motion ...

Also:

Turkey plans long stay in northern Iraq - Today's Zaman, 11 Oct.

The government will send a motion to Parliament next week requesting authorization for a cross-border operation into northern Iraq to deal with a terrorist threat based there, with a possible incursion expected to involve up to 15,000 troops, government and security sources said.

If it takes place as planned, this will be the largest-scale cross-border operation on Iraqi soil since 1997, when 50,000 soldiers entered northern Iraq. Sources said the military measures on the Iraqi side of the border will not be confined to a one-time operation carried out by a massive number of troops, as authorities are also planning to boost the existing Turkish military presence in northern Iraq to increase the Turkish military's ability to deal with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) threat over the border. A 150-member Turkish military base in the Bamerni area near Dohuk in northern Iraq will be reinforced with professionally trained personnel so that operations against PKK bases in the region can be conducted on a more regular basis.

[wm]

Why would the Turkiye Cumhuriyeti agree to a United States request to stay out of northern Iraq? The US, in the person of its House Foreign Affairs committee, has chosen to ignore Turkey's request not to proceed with a legislative action regarding 1915's Armenian events. Seems like a quid pro quo to me.

[georgev]

Turkish warplanes and helicopter gun-ships attack Kurdish rebels along Iraqi border Wednesday, order troops to cross over in pursuit

October 24, 2007, 4:12 PM (GMT+02:00)

A Turkish lawmaker disclosed that the Turkish attack began Sunday, Oct. 21, after more than 12 Turkish troops were killed in an ambush by rebel Kurdish PKK guerrillas. He said F-16 jets and artillery pounded at least 63 rebel positions inside the Kurdish-controlled region and 300 Turkish commandoes were dropped by helicopter into Iraq to hunt down PKK fighters.

There were other reports of Cobra and Super Cobra attack helicopters chasing Kurdish rebels three miles into Iraqi territory after Sunday’s deadly PKK ambush. According to earlier reports, the Turkish counter-attack left 32 Kurdish rebels dead and eight soldiers fell into PKK hands and are still missing.

While the US continues to urge restraint, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government faces angry demonstrations in Turkish towns demanding an immediate military incursion into Iraq to wipe out the PKK strongholds. Military action was overwhelmingly approved by the parliament in Ankara last week. This month, PKK fighters killed 42 Turkish soldiers and civilians in hit-and-run cross-border raids. Washington has also urged Iraq and its Kurdish leaders to crack down on the PKK hideouts.

Iraqi officials are due in Ankara Thursday to discuss the crisis after Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan held talks with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari in Baghdad Tuesday.

[goesh]

http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm

lists 461 attacks, many minor, on and in relation to pipelines and refineries since 2003 - PKK may well play this card and inflate the number

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

"Oct 25, 2007 5:49 | Updated Oct 25, 2007 10:53
Gates: More intel needed on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq"

Rebels? I thought they were insurgents simply wanting a homeland of their own, much like the palestinians? A small slice of Iraq, a tiny piece of Turkey, a bit of Iran and presto! there is a Kurdistan, it even sounds almost like Palestine. An insurgency against Turkish economic, political and social oppression, 3 acres and a donkey for every Kurd, a perfect environment for COIN, smaller and more readily managed, no religious plurality to contend with, oil reserves, etc. Maybe Iran could convince them to settle for just a piece of Iraq and Turkey and be a partner in peace in the upcoming struggle with the US and Israel. Aftrer surviving Saddam and US double-dealing and more of Saddam's iron heel after the double-dealing, I really doubt they are going to passively lie down and fade away

[redbullets]

That incident was a disaster for the Kurds, resulting in the pullout of all USAID OFDA/DART teams from northern Iraq along with the multi-national MCC - with a comcomitant loss of NGO assistance to the rebuilding of Iraqi Kurdistan. Significant lessons learned on all sides.

In addition, OFDA was looking for a good reason to end this mission - it had evolved, in some folks' opinions, into a development scenario as opposed to a protracted crisis, and there was a good deal of institutional angst at USAID over the fact that DoD funds were being employed - too much "military taint" I suppose for the crew back there.

By coincidence, I'm sitting in front of the computer tonight wearing my OFDA DART NIRAQ t-shirt that I've managed to keep in one piece all these years.

Cheers,

[redbullets]

Don't the Kurds provide sanctuary and support to the MEK, PKK/Kongra Gel, and Ansar al Sunnah? I believe all three of these groups are on the US FTO list. If we are truly serious about the GWOT, how about we ask the Kurds to hand these folks over? Even better, in an effort to gain increased influence with the Turks and Iranians, how about we turn them over to those nations for prosecution?

BTW - didnt Barazani assist Saddam against Talabani during the 90s?

President Talabani's PUK lost 30 or 40 Pesh'merga to an Ansar al Islam (Ansar al Sunnah precursor, more or less) in 2001 or 2002, quite a few of them beheaded. Also during that period there was a nearly successful attempt on Barham Salih's life in which his personal secretary/relative, and several body guards were killed.

Following the attack on the Pesh'merga there was quite a bit of talk among the Kurdish expatriate community about an offer made by Barzani to load up the lads and come on down to assist the PUK in wiping out Ansar al Islam. If memory serves, the PUK had been conducting some form of demobilization then, and didn't have as many Pesh under arms as they might have liked.

I was involved in some work around Halabja from the late-1990's through the beginning of the current conflict, and met with the Mayor and several doctors from the area a number of times during those years. Everyone wanted the Ansar al Islam knuckleheads eliminated. When I visited Halabja in 2004 and 2005 I was struck by how far behind the rest of Kurdistan the region lags, due in large part to the mini-Caliphate that operated there for several years.

Cheers,

[tequila]

Iranians attack Kurdish rebels in Iraq - McClatchy Newspapers, 23 Aug.

Iranian soldiers crossed into Iraq on Thursday and attacked several small villages in the northeastern Kurdish region, local officials said.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said he couldn't confirm the attacks, but five Kurdish officials said that troops had infiltrated Iraqi territory and fired on villages.

The Iranian military regularly exchanges artillery and rocket fire with Kurdish rebels who've taken refuge across the border, but Iraqi Kurdish officials worried that Iran's willingness to cross the border raises the possibility of a broader confrontation that would draw the Iraqi government and U.S. forces into an unwanted showdown.

One Kurdish legislator said that if reports of the attacks were true, then Iraq must "stand firmly" against future Iranian encroachments.

Details of the incursion were sparse. Abdul Wahid Gwany, the mayor of Choman, a village 250 miles north of Baghdad, said Iranian troops crossed the border in 10 places and traveled approximately three miles into the mountainous Iraqi region, bombing rural villages in the process. He didn't say how many Iranian troops were involved.

Jamal Ahmed, the police chief of Benjawin, a village a little more than 200 miles north of Baghdad, said the attacks killed some residents.

"We don't know the amount of casualties as the bombing was continuous and so severe," Ahmed said. Gwany said the attacks also killed many cattle and left villages and farms burned to the ground.

Gen. Jabbar Yawr, a spokesman for the Kurdish militia, said Iranian troops have been lobbing artillery at Iraq from across the border since Aug. 16, though Thursday was the first time that Iranian troops crossed the border.

He said that a statement issued by the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is also known as the PKK, claimed credit for the recent assassination of an Iranian intelligence official. Yawr said the Iranian raid was in retaliation ...

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, 18 Sep 07:

Iran Moves Against PJAK in Iraq

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard's most recent campaign of shelling Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, which allegedly targeted members of the outlawed Kurdish opposition group the Party for Freedom and Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), eventually culminated with Iranian troops entering Iraqi Kurdish territory on August 23. According to Iraqi TV Channel al- Sharqiya on August 24, the most recent bombardments by Revolutionary Guard commandos (Pasdaran) led to the evacuation of more than 10,000 Kurds from their villages in the Pishar, Penjwin, Khurmal, Hajj Umaran and Qandil mountain range areas in the Iraqi governorates of Arbil and Sulaymaniyah.

The Pasdaran's hunt for PJAK fighters and activists comes at a critical juncture in Iran's foreign relations and domestic politics. The Iranian government is increasingly isolated internationally over the nuclear issue as well as faces widespread domestic dissent over economic mismanagement, increased political repression and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's foreign policy track record. Far from fulfilling his election promises of ending the country's crony capitalist structures and corruption and thus actually catering to those who had voted for him, Ahmadinejad maintained the economic and political status quo of the country and brought the Pasdaran closer to the government than any other president has done before him. Far from only representing an elite military unit, the Pasdaran now constitute a significant political and economic power in Iran, with an estimated control of more than $12 billion in business, construction and energy ventures.

While sporadic violence in the Kurdish-populated provinces of Iran is nothing new, the Pasdaran's most recent incursion into Iraqi territory, which according to a Kurdish official destroyed several villages, demonstrates the top brass and elite's willingness to defend the integrity of Iran's central government at all costs....

[Jedburgh]

Jamestown Foundation, 17 Sep 07: An Outline of Kurdish Islamist Groups in Iraq

A great number of Iraqi Kurdish Islamist groups, including militant Islamist movements, have emerged in the last 20 years. Despite the fact that politicized Islam never seemed to enjoy as much broad popularity in Iraqi Kurdistan as it has amongst some neighboring Arab populations, a number of small Kurdish Islamist groups keep multiplying, splintering and occasionally reuniting.

This study pays particular attention to links between various Iraqi Kurdish Islamist movements, their history, their transformation or splintering into new organizations, and the role of the non-Kurdish Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood in spawning these movements in the fi rst place. A historical “map-tree” of the movements is presented in order to better understand various groups’ roots and their relationships with other Islamist movements in Iraq. In some cases, the support of outside states and foreign Islamist organizations appears crucial to explaining what success political Islam in Iraqi Kurdistan has enjoyed.

Based on fi eldwork and personal interviews conducted in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, this study presents a signifi cant amount of never-before published details about these movements. The conclusion addresses possible strategies for containing radical Islamist movements, and the dilemmas inherent in constructing such strategies.....

[Rex Brynen]

A possible indicator of potential Iranian leverage over the KRG (and especially the PUK):

SULEIMANIYYA: Iran's closure of its frontier with Iraq is costing the autonomous Kurdish region $1 million a day, a government minister said on Wednesday, as trucks remained stuck at the border.

...

Iran said on Monday it was closing its frontier with Iraq in protest at the detention last week of Iranian national Mahmudi Farhadi by US troops.

Full AFP story here. Reuters account here.

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, 15 May 08:

PJAK in Northern Iraq: Tangled Interests and Proxy Wars

The Kurdish area in northern Iraq has become one of the most complex fronts in the war in Iraq, a place where Iranian, Turkish, Kurdish, Iraqi and American interests clash. An often perplexing role in the region’s conflicts is played by the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that engages in frequent clashes with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. PJAK claims its aims “are to unite the Kurdish and Iranian opposition, to change the oppressive Islamic regime in Iran and to establish a free democratic confederal system for the Kurds and the Iranian peoples”. Iran regularly accuses the movement of being a U.S.-funded proxy, but recent PJAK claims that Turkey used U.S. intelligence and U.S.-made bombs in an air raid on a PJAK target have brought the U.S.-PJAK relationship into question.....

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, 10 Jun 08:

Turkish Generals Admit Military and Intelligence Coordination with Iran

....Although it has long been assumed that security cooperation between Turkey and Iran has included both intelligence-sharing and the coordination of military operations against the PKK and PJAK, Basbug’s statement is the first public confirmation by a high-ranking Turkish military official. Turkey and Iran first signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on security cooperation on July 29, 2004, three months after PJAK’s inaugural congress in April 2004 and two months after the May 2004 decision by the PKK to return to violence following a five-year unilateral ceasefire. This agreement was reinforced on April 17, 2008, by a new MOU which foresaw a broadening and deepening of security cooperation between the two countries.

Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of an international conference in Istanbul organized by the Strategic Research and Study Center (SAREM), a think-tank established by the Turkish General Staff (TGS), Basbug dismissed suggestions that the two countries’ militaries had conducted any joint operations: “Iran and Turkey have been conducting coordinated, simultaneous operations on their respective borders,” said Basbug. “We are sharing intelligence with Iran. We are talking and making plans”....

[Schmedlap]

I was watching the Mosaic: World News from the Middle East program from Link TV this morning (podcast available from iTunes). I nearly spit my Irish Coffee all over my heart-clogging breakfast when I saw this report: EU to Remove Iranian Opposition Group from Terror List (translated by Mosaic from Al Arabiya TV, UAE). More at al-Arabiya (English) here.

PMOI (People's Mujahideen of Iran) / MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq) Wiki

I don't know if it would be prudent to operationally leverage MEK against Iran anytime soon, but it sure would be nice to have that leverage available as a bargaining chip. If the EU takes them off the FTO list, then maybe we will as well? And then we would have the option of openly working with them?

From an earlier piece from Jamestown: "Iran's military will engage Kurdish separatists whenever encountered, in exchange for Turkey's cooperation against the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq movement"

And this from a more recent report: "Iraq plans to close a camp for Iranian dissidents who used to cross into Iran to mount assassinations and sabotage - a decision that has sharpened political differences between Baghdad and Washington."

More recently:

Iraq plans to extradite members of an Iranian armed opposition group who have "Iranian blood on their hands," Iraq's national security adviser said Friday during a visit to Tehran.

"Among the members of this group, some have the blood of Iraqi innocents on their hands (and) we will hand them over to Iraqi justice, and some who have Iranian blood on their hands we can hand over to Iran," said Muwafaq al-Rubaie.
- al-Arabiya

I wonder what the near-term fate of the MEK will be?

The latest news:

"Iran said the European Union would be committing a "political" act and may worsen relations if it struck the exiled People's Mujahedeen of Iran from a blacklist of terrorist groups... The EU will decide whether to take the group off the terror list this week."
- Bloomberg

It seems that there was (and possibly still is) a view within our camp that MEK, while Iran's terrorist, could have been (and maybe still is) our freedom fighter. Given the possible cooperation between Turkey and Iran to crack down on "their" mutual terrorists, and the pressure now being exerted upon MEK by Iraq, it seems that this long, drawn-out issue is now approaching an endgame of some sort. Is this an ally whom we want? I guess, more relevant - is this a group whom the new administration is willing to associate with?

[Surferbeetle]

From wikipedia A Time for Drunken Horses, which can be seen on Cinemondo...

A Kurdish family is trying to survive after the death of its parents. Ayoub, the eldest boy in the family, becomes the head of the household and must do whatever work available to survive. Madi, Ayoub's handicapped brother, is in need of a medical operation. Ayoub goes to great lengths to collect money for the operation by smuggling truck tires with a group of Kurdish villagers near the Iran-Iraq border. Ayoub ultimately falls short of his intended goal and his uncle decides to marry off his sister in return for the groom's family financing Madi's operation on the Iranian side of the border. When they arrive the mother of the groom refuses to accepts Madi and agrees to give Ayoub and his uncle a mule as compensation. The smugglers use mules to carry goods and feed them liquor allowing them to better survive the harsh mountain winter. Near the border, Iranian soldiers seize the villagers'(and Ayoub's) merchandise.

[Ken White]

I wonder what the near-term fate of the MEK will be?
...Is this an ally whom we want? I guess, more relevant - is this a group whom the new administration is willing to associate with?

Panetta if he gets confirmed. Hayden is from the old admin...

[Schmedlap]

I was thinking of a decider higher up. I think the President has come into office with unrealistic expectations. Certainly this is the case among the most shrill and ideologically-stubborn of his supporters. To not only fail to meet those expectations, but to then collude with MEK? I think that would just be too much for them. On the other hand, now he has to make decisions instead of speeches.