Unhappy Holidays in Northern Iraq

For a while, the crisis between Turks and Kurds in northern Iraq looked like it was going to hibernate for the winter. There had been no major clashes between the Turkish army and the Kurdish Works Party (or PKK) -- a radical group composed of mainly of Turkish Kurds fighting the Turkish government -- since the militants released eight captured Turkish soldiers in early November. And as snowy weather approaches, it looked less and less likely that the Turkish army would stage an offensive against PKK bases in mountainous northern Iraq.

So Sunday's attack by Turkish warplanes against PKK targets inside Iraq, and the invasion today -- just a day before the Muslim Eid holiday -- by some 300 ground troops came as something of a shock, even if the operations are largely for show. The air strike wounded six people and killed a woman whom Iraqi Kurds officials claim was a civilian, and the 300 Turkish commandos dumped into hostile mountain terrain will be lucky if they find any of the 5,000 or so PKK guerillas in northern Iraq, let alone cramp their style. Still, despite months of diplomacy, despite the prisoner release, and despite an offer by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of limited asylum for certain PKK members, the raids are a sign that Turkish military is going to deal with the Kurdish problem the old fashioned way: by making it worse.

Turkey was waged a 30-year civil war with the PKK to no avail. Meanwhile, the PKK has since dropped its original demands for a separate Kurdish nation to break away from Turkey and now claims it wants to give up armed struggle in return for security guarantees and greater rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority. But the Turkish government has never negotiated directly with the PKK. Even Erdogan's most recent amnesty offer wouldn't have included those guerillas actually doing the fighting.

Now the conflict is spreading into northern Iraq, where the PKK have operated since the 1990's, when the region was a lawless wasteland. Though Iraq's Kurdish minority, which now administers northern Iraq, has turned the region into the most secure part of the country, their leaders say there is little they can do against a determined insurgent group in remote mountain hideaways, and have asked the United States to push Turkey for a political solution.

But instead of encouraging the Turks to negotiate with the PKK, the US -- which officially lists the PKK as a terrorist group -- is enabling the conflict. While pressing Turkey to stage only limited attacks inside Iraq, it gave the Turkish air force permission to enter Iraqi airspace, which is monitored by the US Air Force from its base in Qatar. Now a precedent has been set. If fighting between the PKK and Turkey continues -- as it probably will this spring -- will the US be able to prevent Turkey from attacking Iraq in greater and greater force? Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish leaders have ordered their peshmerga fighters to prevent any more Turkish solders from entering Iraq, setting the stage for possible clashes between Turks and Iraqi Kurds. Which may be exactly what the Turkish army -- which has grown increasingly hostile to the emergence of Kurdish power in northern Iraq -- is hoping for.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut