A few days ago, I mentioned one of the baleful consequences of the U.S. pullout from Iraq: our current inability to stop the flow of arms from Iran to Syria via Iraqi airspace. This article highlights another worrying issue: the tensions between Arabs and Kurds. Two New York Times correspondents write:
When federal police agents sought to arrest a Kurdish man last month in the city of Tuz Khurmato in the Kurdish north of the country, a gunfight ensued with security men loyal to the Kurdish regional government.
Kurdish security forces, called the Peshmerga, have been in a standoff with the Iraqi Army near Kirkuk, a northern city claimed by Arabs and Kurds. When the bullets stopped flying, a civilian bystander was dead and at least eight others were wounded.
In response, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, rushed troop reinforcements to the area, and Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, dispatched his own soldiers, known as the Peshmerga, and the forces remain there in a tense standoff.
Prior to December 2011, such a dispute would have been mediated by U.S. troops positioned on both sides of the disputed Green Line dividing Kurdish territory from Iraq proper. American troops were even running joint patrols with the Iraqi army and the peshmerga in a confidence-building measure. But now the American buffer has been removed and tensions are predictably flaring.
Odds are that the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, wily survivors both, will step back from the brink. But you never know–they could miscalculate and, amid surging emotions on both sides, an actual war could break out. Certainly the odds of such a dangerous outcome have been appreciably increased by the White House’s irresponsible failure to secure an extension of the Status of Forces Agreement keeping U.S. troops in Iraq.
"…they could miscalculate and, amid surging emotions on both sides, an actual war could break out…" n nYour tone suggests that war is always a bad, Max. True in the abstract sense but a conflict that contributes to Kurdish independence may not be such a bad thing
With Maliki et al running, in every sense, a gangster state, allowing Kurds to be arrested by Maliki forces, or indeed allowing them unsupervised access to Kurdish areas in Kirkuk or Mosul would be a bad idea.
so what's the problem? n nLet them figure it out.
The Kurds do not need the USA to mediate with anyone. Especially a USA that enables Turkey to continue to 'cleanse' the most betrayed people of the 20th century. nBetrayed by the USA under the feckless Woodrow Wilson. n nWhen Kurdistan gets their moment at the UN, I bet the vote will reveal exactly how bankrupt the whole idea of a United Nations is.
And one must ask why hasn't an independent Kurdistan ever been subjected to a vote in the UN, that sewer into which all human immorality is poured? Why hasn't the Human Rights Council ever taken up the matter? Or why isn't there a UN Kurdistan Solidarity Day? At least the Kurds are a real people with their own language and own history dating back until time immemorial.
Kurds don't want to be anywhere near Obama. The last thing anyone wants is his attention.
yeah. I know. when was the last time any msm noticed that UNPO.org even exists?
Iraq's PM Maliki is Iran's little 'boo'. That said, the Sunni Kurds in the North, are fast becoming the 'boo' of Turkey's Islamist thug Erdogan. There is a whole lot more going on behind this, than the author of this piece touched on. It's just one more front in the little regional competition between Iran's sheet clad thugs, and the rising Sunni Axis in the region.
Yes, the Kurds go way back. Xenophon called the mountain folk harassing his 10,000 "Gurdiene" [or some such name in the Anabasis].