The Empire Wants To Strike Back

This time around the "empire" is not the US, pace Comrades Hugo and Fidel.  The empire in question does not yet exist in its desired, reincarnated form.  But, given the ambitions of Turkish prime minister Erdogan and the almost done deal between his country and the mullahs next door in Iran, it is not unfair.

The jefe grande of the Ottoman Empire 2.0 is, like his predecessors, terribly upset by the Kurds.  Again in imitation of his non-Islamist forebearers, Erdogan is dreadfully keen on wiping the several groups fighting for Kurdish independence out of existence for once and all.  The Supreme Guardian of the Revolution, just like the Shah during the days of the ancien regime, shares the sentiment heart and soul.

The US as well as the (presumably) US backed regime in Iraq are caught somewhere in the middle.  Baghdad has a much larger dog in the fight to be sure.  Iraqi Kurdistan, which is legally semi-autonomous, is the most stable and prosperous place in the partially rebuilt country.  It is not simply Kurdistan's wealth and security that has raised hackles not only in Baghdad but through much of Iraq.  No.  Rather the deep distaste for Kurds and their region is about the only thing upon which the minority Sunnis and majority Shia can and do agree.

Way back in the mists of history (that is before World War I resulted in a massive exercise in creative cartography), Kurdistan was a territorial whole.  It had so existed for a mort of centuries both before and after the Ottoman Turks came to supremacy in Stamboli (or Istanbul, if that is your preference.)  The carving up of the old Empire was accomplished courtesy of the machinations of mid-level bureaucrats serving their masters in France and Great Britain.  In what was one of the greatest sins committed against the self-determination of nations principle dear to the heart of Woodrow Wilson, the Kurds found their tight little nascent state divided between French run Syria and English operated Iraq with small amounts allocated to the Turkey of Ataturk and the Shah of Persia.

Had this violation of American policy not been allowed to take place, Kurdistan would have long ago been recognized as the independent sovereign state its people wanted (and want) it to be.  But, as was so often the case, Wilson believed that the League of Nations (his centerpiece ideologically) would solve the injustice--an injustice he himself acknowledged.

For many decades, the issue rested silently in the mountains which constitute most of "Kurdistan."  But that came to an end when the respective "occupying" governments came to realize what resources resided in them thar hills.  Oil and hydroelectric resources to be precise.  Iraq battened fat off the oil while Turkey saw the rivers as the source of both agricultural and industrial riches.  The Iranians and Syrians saw potential in the fast running waters if not the oil and vowed to get their share.

With every passing year, the resources of "Kurdistan" have become more and more critical to Turkey and Iraq.  While the other two states have not profited so much, both Tehran and Damascus see the danger resident in a successful separatist movement.  The Syrian government both before and after the Baathist came to power sought to suppress the language, culture, and political identity of the Kurdish population.  The same has been the case in Iran under both secularist shah and Islamist grand ayatollahs.

Right down to the present day, the central government of Iraq has used all methods fair and foul alike to limit the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan.  The only thing keeping Baghdad from emulating the muscular methods of Saddam Hussein in the region has been the military capacity of the Kurdish peshmerga, which could fight the national army to a bloody standstill.

Over the past quarter century, the Kurds have been waging a low level defensive insurgency against both Iran and Turkey.  The PKK (shooting Turks) and PJAK (doing the same with Iranians down range) have been a thorn in the side of their target states.  Because Turkey is a NATO "partner," the US determined that the PKK is a terrorist organization.  Since Iran is a hostile state, the US has not yet made the same determination regarding the other group, the PJAK (aka "good terrorists.)

Comes now Recip Erdogan to announce an impending agreement with Iran to mount a joint effort presumably involving ground as well as air forces against those pesky Kurds and the heavily fortified base camps high in the mountains.  The reason to presume a ground effort is the abject failure of air assaults conducted by the Turkish air force to do more than move a few rocks around as well as kill a small number of civilians who did not find shelter in time but who in their deaths provided excellent propaganda material for the Kurds.

So far there has been no reported word from the Iraqi government regarding this proposed violation of sovereignty.  Perhaps the Iraqis are more easy going about such matters then are, say, the Pakistanis.  Or, the central government might be hoping for a good excuse to move large forces into Iraqi Kurdistan, forces which once there will not be quick to leave.

Nor has the Obama administration made comment on the proposed joint action--except implicitly.  For some while the US has been providing intelligence information to Ankara concerning the PKK.  This shared catch includes imagery and ELINT obtained by Predators.  Now, the word has leaked out that the Obama crew is contemplating basing Predators in Turkey.

Not one to be asleep at the switch, Erdogan has responded by offering to purchase or lease a few Predators so as to cut out the middleman.  Considering that the Paks have wanted to do this for a long while now, it would be quite a diplomatic and political coup for Erdogan to achieve the goal.

Not to put too fine a point on the Kurdish Question, there is ample evidence to the effect that the Kurds and their proposed state meet the tests provided in the UN Charter as well as subsidiary conventions.  With Iraqi Kurdistan as the linchpin, there is no doubt but the hypothetical Kurdistan would meet the requirements of the Montevideo Convention.  Considering this inconvenient context, US policy regarding the Kurds is flatly wrong.

The finding that PKK is a terrorist entity was based simply on the role Turkey theoretically plays in NATO while the similar act by the European Union dates back to the days when Turkey was knocking on the EU door.  In short, these actions had little if anything to do with "terrorism" per se and much to do with extraneous political considerations.

Silence in the Oval regarding the odd couple military plans must fall in the same category.  Arguably, the decision to share catch with Ankara and the basing of Predators in Turkey constitute another bribe to Erdogan for allowing the installation of the US X-band radar.  The decision to allow this anti-Iran move has resulted in severe blowback from Tehran, so the Turkish prime minister probably wants additional compensation.

There is only one open question.  No, that question is not will the US switch its policy regarding the Kurds and their right to and desire for a state of their own.  Nor does this question involve the notion of granting the government of Iraqi Kurdistan its request of redeploying US forces within its borders.  The present administration lacks both the depth of regional understanding and the political will to do either--even if each would be in American national interest.

The only remaining question is whether or not Obama and his "team" will cave and sell-lease a few spare Predators to Erdogan, and through him, the Iranians.

Wanna make a bet?

They Just Have The Wrong Enemy

Back in 1918, the Great Powers, victors over Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire did a bit of practical work, redrawing the maps of Europe and the Mideast.  Supposedly high on the list of priorities for this exercise in practical cartography was the uniquely American proposition called, "self-determination of peoples."  This noble bit of High Mindedness was honored more or less with respect to the splitting up of the old Hapsburg domains, but was it observed only in the breech when it came to dismembering the Ottoman lands.

When the hyper-idealistic Woodrow Wilson confronted the real world of secret deals and the fruits of wartime exigencies, he discovered that his notions of self-determination had been preempted by an assortment of understandings both formal and otherwise between Great Britain and France.  One of these rather under the table deals dealt with the area called Palestine.  This area along with the coterminous Trans-Jordan had been divided according to two contradictory undertakings.  One, the Balfour Declaration, promised Jews a "national homeland."  The other, an agreement between two bureaucrats, Sykes and Picot, created two protectorates, one under British rule and the other under French.

This exercise in international can kicking is still with us today in the form of the seemingly endless conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  (By the way a body of American experts on the region advised President Wilson to fight this one to the death as the result would be a century of bloodshed.  Rarely have experts been so right.)

Almost overlooked was the simultaneous division of Iraq and Syria into British (Iraq) and French (Syria along with its appendage, Lebanon) protectorates.  Embedded in both Iraq and Syria as well as in the rump state of Turkey and the country then called Persia was a people long separated from their neighbors by language, customs, and culture but not religion.  This nation now split among four states was the Kurds.

The Kurds were not at all happy with this division.  Nor should they have been.  According to the principle of self-determination, the Kurds merited their own state, the state of Kurdistan.  But, these unfortunate folk lacked any representative in Versailles.  Unlike the Arabs way down south, the Kurds had provided no service to the Allied cause.  Unlike the Arabs, the Kurds had no access to powerful British political figures.  Neither did they gain the attention of imperial minded bureaucrats.  As a result, they were casually and cruelly consigned to minority status within four states.

Almost immediately, the Kurds commenced a defensive insurgency in each and every of the four countries to which they had been so cavalierly assigned.  The insurgency has not ended to this day.  Like the conflict between Arab Palestinian and Israeli Jew, the conflict gives no hint of ending soon, or ever.

The Kurdish people are an ancient hill folk.  Like hill dwellers almost everywhere, they are excellent warriors.  It deserves mention that the great Muslim fighter who kicked Crusader butt with great effect, Saladin, was a Kurd.  While today's Kurdish fighters may not have either the military genius or bent to chivalry which marked the legendary Saladin, they are not slouches in the craft of guerrilla war as may be attested to by the marked lack of success enjoyed to date by Turks and Iranians alike.

Other than in Iraq where the Kurds have a semi-autonomous province under sole Kurdish control, it is accurate to say the Kurds live under occupation by a foreign force.  In Turkey, in Syria, and in Iran, the majority Kurdish areas are under direct military control.  Indeed, in at least two of these countries, the degree of military control equals or exceeds that exercised by Israel over the Palestinians of the West Bank and far outstrips that of Gaza.

The Kurds are denied equal treatment in all three states to a degree never reached in the West Bank or Gaza.  They are denied the use of their own language.  They are not allowed to conduct their own education.  They are not provided with the same level of governmental services including access to economic development as the majority populations in all three states.  In short, the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran have been pushed to the margins, had their culture and language robustly attacked as a matter of policy, and are subject to an array of legal disabilities as well as informal discrimination.

From any perspective, the Kurds have suffered far more deprivation of status, rights, and opportunities at the hands of the governments and majority populations of Turkey, Syria, and Iran than the Palestinians ever were during the years since June 1967.  At the same time, the Kurds have a claim on statehood which equals or exceeds that made by the Palestinians.

In sharp contrast with the Palestinians, the Kurds have waged their multi-generation insurgency with remarkable humanity.  Unlike the Palestinians down to the present day, the Kurdish fighters sharply limit their attacks to military and constabulary targets.  The intentional attack of civilians is almost unheard of.  Compared to the Palestinian way of war, the Kurds take care to reduce collateral damage to a minimum.  In the usually dirty business of insurgent warfare, the Kurds are relative good guys.  The Palestinians are very much of the opposite hue.

These ground truths demand a question or two.  Where are the liberal groups in the West?  Where are the groups espousing boycotts, divestiture, or deligitimatization of Iran, Syria, and Turkey?  Where are the UN resolutions condemning the suppression of the legitimate rights of the Kurds by Ankara, Damascus, Tehran?  Where is the UN Human Rights Council with resolutions, special rapporteurs, and other displays of condemnation or concern?

In the last few years, advocates of Palestinian statehood have proliferated with a speed which boggles the imagination.  Campaigns of boycotts, divestiture, and sanctions have spilled forth in mighty torrents.  The UN and its lesser creatures have shown a tender concern for the Palestinians without precedent.  The High Minded and Lofty Thinking of the West have taken the Palestinians--rockets, suicide vests, and AK-47s  included--into a warm embrace.

All blame for whatever happens in the Mideast between Israel and the Palestinians is quickly, automatically, ascribed to the evil doing, racist, Zionist occupiers.  Even when a Jewish infant dies, throat slit as it slept near the dead parents and elder siblings, it is seen as the direct result of the Zionist occupier.

Meanwhile, the Turkish air force bombs civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan while Iranian artillery does the same without even the mildest whimper coming from the assorted advocates of self-determination around the world who are so quick to condemn the Zionist occupiers.  Even Syria is exempt from criticism as it denies the most basic rights to Kurds resident in its borders.

Why?

Why two "victims" (one, the Kurds, arguably more deserving of the term) with two such wildly disparate responses from the "international community," the human rights congeries, and politicians around the world?

The answer is as simple as it is ugly.  The Kurds are predominantly Muslim.  So also are the oppressive majority populations in each and every of the four states.  The Palestinians are mainly Muslim.  Their putative oppressors are Jewish.

And, now the really nasty part, antisemitism is as rife in the West as it is endemic to the Muslim states.  In the West, this ancient, evil mindset hides behind the currently respectable facade of being "anti-Zionist" or, even better, as a euphemism, "opposition to aspects of Israeli policy."

It is OK in the West to look at Muslim oppression of Muslims with total indifference.  In the Muslim majority states, the same is true to an even greater extent because to condemn the Muslim majority for oppressing a Muslim minority is to commit that great Islamic sin of fitna, of introducing fission in the great Islamic ummah.  The single towering fiction in Islam is that of holding the community of believers to be one huge, happy family.  So, no hand is raised, no voice either, to stop the oppression of Kurds by Muslim Turks, Muslim Iranians, or Muslim Arabs.

The fiction of Islamic unity is nothing compared to the larger concoction in the West.  The concealing of antisemitism behind the thin and torn scrim of "anti-Zionism" or "opposition to aspects of Israeli policy" is not simply hypocritical, it is a moral delict of the highest order.

Any way you cut it, the groups and individuals in the West who brandish the cudgels on behalf of the Palestinians while maintaining a discrete silence with respect to the Kurds are examples of moral decay without equal.  It is a very severe indictment of the High Minded in the West who by their careful selection of who deserves support show themselves to be both dishonest and antisemitic to the core.

The people and groups so staunchly supporting the Palestinians (including the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, the assorted NGOs, and the individuals who espouse sanctions, boycotts, and divestiture) will deserve respectful attention when and only when they exhibit the same level of concern for the Kurds as they do the Palestinians.  Unless and until these worthies are as willing to condemn and seek to delegitimatize the Turks, the Iranians, and the Syrians, they merit no hearing.

Rather, these groups and individuals should themselves be blackguarded as the antisemites they are.  Any less is to endorse their wicked position.

Turkey's Foreign Policy--Clever Calculation Or Flat Out Stupid

Until very recently, the announced foreign policy of Turkey under the Islamist leaning AKP has been one of "zero problems" with its regional neighbors.  This exercise in fantasy started to crumble under the bitter winds of the "Arab Spring."

Ankara did not know whether to go with the new flow or stand resolutely alongside the embattled regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi.  The Erdogan government blew first hot and then cold on the uprisings in Bahrain.  The name of the Turkish diplomatic game regarding Syria was vacillation.

After a long period of agonizing indecision, Ankara finally did come down on the side of the Egyptian protesters.  Then, after more of the same, the Turks reluctantly sided with the Libyan rebels.  In the latter case, it is not trivial to note that Ankara robustly opposed the use of force--either to protect civilians or to provide the anti-government forces with an air capacity.

Only after the longest possible period of watching and waiting did the Erdogan government come out publicly against Bashar al-Assad.  The delay and equivocation in this case was due to a powerful desire in Ankara not to damage their rapprochement with Tehran.  Possibly this was enhanced by the pending announcement of the decision to host the basing of the new American X band radar on Turkish soil, a move which would raise the hackles of the ayatollahs.

The alternative to irritating Iran over Syria was to court further distancing from the majority of the Arab street which was strongly supportive of the "Arab Spring" movements and saw the Syrians as martyrs to the cause of freedom.  Biting the bullet, Erdogan and his fellow Islamists denounced the Assad regime as having lost Turkish governmental "confidence."

The Syrian demarch was too little too late to satisfy the pro-freedom groups proliferating in the Mideast to the disadvantage of Ankara's desire to recreate the Ottoman days.  At the same time, the twin moves of condemning Syria and accepting the X band radar did infuriate the ayatollahs and their frontmen.  By poor timing, the Turks fell between the two stools and emasculated the "zero problems" gambit.

The effect has been to put more pressure on Erdogan to take the strongest possible anti-Israel stance.  Only by Israel baiting of the highest sort could Turkey hope to keep or rebuild its stature not only on the Arab street but within the chanceries of the region.

The attractions of playing the Israel card are self-evident.  Erdogan came to prominence in 2009 by stalking off the stage at Davos while loudly accusing Israel president Peres of being a "murderer."  The next year the Israelis enhanced Erdogan's status as the champion of the Palestinians by a heavy handed but legal stopping of the bogus aid flotilla with nine fatal casualties among those on board the lead ship.  Ever since that day, the Erdogan government has made rich PR hay by flogging the dead horse of the Mavi Marmora.  Most recently his demand for an apology has been reinforced by a downgrading of diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey with highly positive results among the denizens of the Arab street.

The escalation of the diplomatic contretemps has assured Turkey's "zero problems" is not only defunct but stinkingly so.  The sickly sweet smell of death hangs around Turkey's regional diplomacy.

As if alienating the Iranians, the Israelis, the Libyans, the Egyptians, and the Syrians was not enough, Ankara has undertaken a number of high casualty attacks by air and artillery against targets in Iraqi Kurdistan.  The series of air strikes and artillery stonks was purportedly in retaliation for an ambush conducted on Turkish soil by members of PKK, the long lived Kurdish insurgent group seeking the creation of a true Kurdish state.

It is true that PKK has sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan.  So does the group PJK which has been waging low intensity war against the Iranians.  It is this geographic and political locus which gives Tehran and Ankara a coinciding national interest.  The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stages the same sort of hyperactive response to guerrilla attacks as does the Turkish army.

Stripped to its essentials, both Turkey and Iran have been waging undeclared international war against Iraq.  While the Shia dominated pseudo-government in Baghdad sheds no tears for dead Iraqi Kurds, the recent attacks by Turkey have produced an unacceptable number of civilian deaths and, thus, have cast doubt upon the Baghdad government's will and ability to guarantee the integrity of its national borders.  This is a very poor idea just months before the final expulsion of the Americans from Iraq.

One more problem for the Turks "zero problems" approach to regional life.

It is not out of line to wonder when the Iraqi Kurds will say, "Enough is enough" and move robustly to protect their own population regardless of what the Shias of Baghdad may want.  The Kurdish peshmerga are numerous, well armed, very well motivated, and reasonably well armed.  They have the advantage of fighting on home ground in terrain which favors the defense.

The Turks have deployed a regimental sized combat group near to the Iraqi border.  This as well as recent oratory from Erdogan's boys seems to indicate a ground assault may be in the offing.  The Turks have done this in the past with limited results--if any.  In the past they have gotten away with incursions but may find the going far more difficult in the future--if the Kurds allow the peshmerga to return fire.

Of course, this will present the Obama administration with a very real challenge.  They will have to placate the Turks, if such is possible.  They will have to deter the Kurds, if such is possible.  They will have to work overtime to prevent a defacto split of Iraq into an Arab Iraq and a Kurdish Kurdistan.  Given that the US has no leverage in Baghdad and the Turk's decision to allow basing of the X band radar gives them the whip hand, it is difficult to see what the US can do in the event the Turkish army moves into Iraqi Kurdistan and meets resistance from the provincial militia.

The "zero problems" stance bodes well to be replaced in reality with a "problems everywhere" policy.  The Deep Thinkers of the AKP have to decide where Turkey's national interests reside.  True, it would be best for Ankara if it could be the balancing point between the West and the Muslim states of the Mideast and Central Asia, but it seems the reach of Turkish ambitions far outstrips the competence of its policy grasp.  Thus, it seems appropriate that the Turks decide if it is better for their longer term interests to back down and align with the West as has been the case for the past sixty plus years or side with the mullahs, the ayatollahs, the imams of the Muslim states including Iran and Pakistan but against the Saudis and the other Gulf countries.

Erdogan is obviously a good politician in the context of Turkey.  But, like other good politicians he has made the mistake of conflating public adulation with total support.  As Woodrow Wilson learned nearly a century ago at Versailles, there is a world of difference between cheers on the street and cutting effective policy deals with foreign leaders.  Applause is nice, but policy success is much better.

Well, just one more problem for the "zero problems" guy.

Those Darn Pesky Kurds

The Kurds are ethnically, linguistically, and culturally different from the Turks, the Arabs of Iraq, and the Persians. That is a reality. It is also a reality that the Kurds have been forced by the winds of the past to live under the domination of the aforementioned Turks, Arabs, and Persians.

This leads to a third reality. The Kurds are not at all happy about having no country to call their own. In one way or another, the Kurds have been expressing their displeasure with the status quo for generations.

The goal of the Kurds is simple. They are a nation, self-conscious, aware of the ties of history, culture, language, and geography. But as such they are incomplete. To be complete, the nation must have a state to call its own. In this dynamic the Kurds are not different from the Palestinians.

There is a fair measure of irony in considering that the Kurds are kept down, divided, oppressed, even, in the estimate of many Kurds, "occupied" by the Islamic states of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. With an astigmatism endemic to Islamic regimes, no member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference seems at all perturbed by the willingness of Muslim majority countries to suppress their fellow Muslims.

Not surprisingly, Ankara which is ever ready of late to hurl rhetorical bombs at Israel over presumed Jewish wickedness in the Gaza Strip is not only silent on the plight of the Kurds, but quite willing to send troops and fighter-bombers over the border into Iraq with the intent of killing Kurds in large numbers. Over in Tehran, Orator-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not only unusually quiet regarding the Kurds but has shown himself eager to send Iranian shells and troops into Iraqi Kurdistan with the goal of killing as many of those pesky people as possible.

In Baghdad, the current political stasis is in no way lessened by the role adopted by the Kurds who seek any and every advantage at the expense of the national government. In all probability, there are more than a few members of the new Iraqi government who wish they had the freedom to deal with the Kurds as bluntly and terminally as did Saddam Hussein.

The most aggressive of the several Kurdish insurgent groups, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is aimed at Turkey where nearly fifteen percent of the population is Kurd. PKK is of the view that a Kurdistan comprising the Kurdish majority portion of Turkey and the semi-autonomous province of Iraqi Kurdistan would be viable in all respects, political, economic, social, and cultural.

This is a correct apprehension. Iraqi Kurdistan on its own would be viable. The melding of the arbitrarily divided major portions of the Kurdish homeland would make an even more impressive new state. The envisioned entity would have both oil and water--the two fluids without which life in the 21st century is impossible. While "greater Kurdistan" would include sections of Syria and Iran, the exclusion of these would subtract nothing of importance from a hypothetical Kurdish state.

In an ideal world, a world where the Wilsonian principle of "self-determination of nations" had trenchancy, there would be no bar to the peaceful creation of a state to match the Kurdish nation as it is currently distributed between Turkey and Iraq. Given Mr Obama's obvious affection to Wilsonian notions of internationalism, it is passingly strange that he has not embraced self-determination for the Kurds. But, that musing cannot detain us.

The reef upon which the potential Kurdish ship of state must founder is the determination of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to disallow any alteration in the comfortable current status quo. The Turks and PKK have been engaged in a slow motion shooting war since 1984. Neither belligerent has been either willing or able to seek a knock out blow. At the same time neither has been willing to call the war off, to seek some sort of negotiated compromise.

When not engaged in the planning and execution of provocations directed at Israel with the goal of establishing Ankara as the beacon of hope for the Palestinians, the Islamist leaning AKP in Turkey has been going after the PKK with a renewed frenzy of killing and dying. Prime Minister Erdogan with his usual over-the-top oratory has vowed to fight against PKK without hesitation and regardless of the number of "heinous" attacks the "terrorist" organization might mount.

From Erdogan's language one might think PKK had just hit Istanbul with a chemical attack or poured anthrax in the water mains of Ankara rather than simply hitting a border police station and killing a dozen or so Turkish cops. The PKK action was purportedly in response to the border incursion undertaken by Turkish troops and aircraft which cost the lives of a couple of dozen Kurds, some of whom might have been combatants.

This set of exchanges are typical of the war during all of its twenty-six years. The same is true of the Iranian artillery stonks across the border. Bloody "tit" followed by a sanguinary "tat."

For several years the Kurds of Iraq convinced themselves that the American invasion and its aftermath would serve as a game changer for the Kurds generally. In this the Kurds were doomed to be disappointed. While there were (and are) any number of good reasons based both in principle and in national interest for the US to take the lead in facilitating the "self-determination"of the Kurdish nation, the US was inhibited by visions of a destabilized Turkey.

This inhibition need apply no longer. Turkey has changed sides in all but formal announcement. In another of those ironies which makes the Muslim world so interesting to the observer, a reason for the realignment of Turkey with Iran and away from the US, EU, and NATO is the shared interest both countries have in suppressing the Kurds. But, in making its switch so quickly, so openly, and so completely, the Erdogan regime has eroded any US interest in keeping Turkey stable.

This new consideration particularly when taken in conjunction with the self-serving hypocrisy of the OIC as well as the Muslim majority states directly involved, open new possibilities for a US coordinated effort to support the Kurds in their ambitions and, in so doing, embarrass the governments of Turkey and Iran (and, it deserves mentioning, Syria as well) severely. It would also expose the OIC as the duplicitous body which it is.

There is a collateral which, on balance, is more good than bad. That collateral is the truncation of Iraq. To be viable any new Kurdish state must include Iraqi Kurdistan. That province quite literally is the odd man out in Arab majority Iraq. The fact that Iraqi Kurdistan has significant hydrocarbon reserves which the Kurds hate sharing with the Arabs in no way lessens the antipathy which has long typified relations between these two people who uncomfortably cohabit in common borders.

As Baghdad is loath to let the oil leave Iraq much as it might like to see the Kurds exit the area, any divorce between Arab majority and Kurd minority will not be as amicable as was, for example, that between Czech and Slovak. A divorce would require a "realignment" of US forces in Iraq to Kurdistan (perhaps under the ostensible need to protect the Turkmen minority in Kurdistan against ethnic cleansing.)

The Kurds have been in favor of a US presence in Kurdistan. Several times since 2003, the authorities in Kurdistan have extended an invitation to the US to reposition its troops there as a security against outside interference. While it might be difficult to take up the invitation, doing such would not be impossible. Certainly it would be less difficult than trying to support a central government beset by multiple insurgencies and lacking broad gauge legitimacy.

As a side benefit there is no doubt that the Kurdish government would be far more open to seeing US rather than Chinese oil companies develop the reserves in the region. This stance is at sharp contrast to the attitude in Baghdad. An open American presence in Kurdistan would definitely inhibit Iranian (or Turkish) military actions which is also in distinct contrast with the supine reaction of Baghdad to incursions and artillery attacks.

The Kurdish Question is not one amenable to solution by the UN or any other manifestation of the "international community." It is one, however, which can be answered by the US even over the objections of Russia and China.

The partitioning of Iraq would be only the first step in solving the dilemma presented by the Kurdish nation in its search for a state. Ultimately, the Turks would have to accomodate themselves to the reality that they cannot suppress the Kurds forever. The gestures of limited democracy and constrained economic development offered by Gul, Erdogan, and the rest of the AKP are too little, too late. And, their effect has been offset by the moving of ethnic Turks into districts which have been Kurdish since the time of Saladin.

The Turks are discovering that there is a force greater than that of political Islam. That force is nationalism. The Kurds become more committed to their nationalistic vision every time a Turkish bullet kills a Kurd. To put it bluntly, Erdogan and the AKP are on the wrong side of history this time.

There is one fatal problem in considering the new options open to the US. President Obama lacks both the vision and the wisdom needed. He is without the moral and intellectual courage necessary to seize the moment. He does not have the spine of George Washington Plunkett, the spine needed to, "see me opportunity and I took it."