What They're Not Telling You About Iraq

It's bad enough we're escalating the violence in Baghdad. There's something they aren't talking about anywhere in the United States mainstream media. There's a whole new war-within-a-war coming to Iraq in the North - precisely Kirkuk.

It's been a long time in coming, but it's coming.

The problems surrounding Kirkuk involve the U.S., the Kurds, and Turkey. The Kurdish leadership in Iraq is split between Jalal Talibani’s PUK and Massoud Barzani’s KDP. [The KDP is the party that was, most curiously, taken on as a client by the K Street lobbyist firm Barbour, Griffith & Rogers just a month after there was $1.4bn in Iraqi oil revenues - cold hard cash - dumped by the US-led occupation authority from an airplane into Kurdish territory.]

Both the PUK and the KDP want the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which lies just outside the Kurdish region, to be part of their domain but they are at loggerheads over whose forces will control the city. Meanwhile Turkey, which has a large Kurdish population, does not want any Kurdish forces to control Kirkuk. It's looking to be quite possible that Turkey will intervene militarily under the guise of helping the ethnic Turkmen of the city. Turkey is also scared that the Kurds might declare an independent state in future, and is trying to put pressure on the U.S. to ensure that this does not happen.

An antagonized and outspoken Turkish AKP(Justice and Development Party) MP named Turan Comez has said that PKK terrorists, using identity cards given to them by the KDP are moving into the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, and bringing heavy weapons with them.

The Iranian influence complicates matters all the more, especially when President Bush refuses to conduct diplomatic relations with Iran. The worried Kurds of East Kurdistan have commented on their gratitude for the recent raid and arrest of Iranian "consulate members" in Arbil because the Iranian influence has made intelligence inroads into the KDP and PUK. (Please tell me why, once again, it's ethical for a K Street lobbyist to be making money by representating the interests of a political party that is one of many forces at war with one another in this horrid civil war in Iraq while our U.S. troops die for the faction-du-jour?)

The recent American arrest of the so-called Iranian consulate members in Arbil, demonstrated that the Iranians are still approaching PUK and KDP leaderships as intelligence interests. From this point of view the American action was very necessary and welcome. Iran has used its flexible approach to Barzani and Talabani after 1992 in order to silence its Kurdish opponents from East Kurdistan.

We must remember that the city of Kirkuk and the immediate region around consists of residents of diverse ethnicity. Rising inter-communal tensions in Kirkuk, exacerbated by recent car bombings and other violence, have now been aggravated further with the unveiling of a plan to relocate thousands of Arab residents.

There are so many forces at play here, and God help us, I do not trust that the Bush administration has the competence, vision, brainpower, or the ideological scope or flexibility to avoid disaster over Kirkuk.