With all the focus on the crisis over Kurdish separatist rebels taking refuge in northern Iraq, largely overlooked are the multiple reasons that Turkey’s Kurds have to be discontented. We noted two years ago the pressures on eastern Turkey’s peoples… Read moreTurkey seizes Kurdish lands for Ilisu Dam
With an Iraqi delegation in Ankara to discuss the standoff over PKK rebels in northern Iraq, Turkish war planes and helicopters reportedly bombed guerilla bases within Iraq’s borders Oct. 26. However, even as the state-run Anatolia news agency reported the… Read moreTurkey bombs Iraq —then backs off (for now)
This Patrick Cockburn report is entitled “Baghdad may be unable to stop attacks by PKK fighters,” but the more relevant question may be whether the regional Kurdish government which is the real power in northern Iraq has any real desire… Read moreDoes Baghdad have power to crack down on PKK?
On the heels of the outcry over the Blackwater massacre, comes another atrocity by a private contractor in Iraq. A particular ugly irony is that this time the victims were members of one of Iraq’s threatened minorities—the Armenians, whose very… Read moreContractors kill Armenian Christians in Iraq
Just a week after Baghdad and Ankara made a public show of pledging cooperation against the PKK, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his military staff Oct. 9 for the first time formally approved unilateral incursions into Iraqi territory… Read moreTurkish conspiracy theory: PKK pawn of NATO?
Nathaniel Deutsch, professor of religion at Swarthmore College, writes for the New York Times, Oct. 6: Save the Gnostics The United States didn’t set out to eradicate the Mandeans, one of the oldest, smallest and least understood of the many… Read moreIraq’s indigenous Gnostics make NY Times op-ed page
Iraq’s bitterly divided political leadership came together Sept. 30 to denounce a non-binding US Senate resolution approved last week that endorses the decentralization of Iraq through the establishment of semi-autonomous regions. That same day, the US Embassy in Baghdad issued… Read moreIraqi leadership unites against partition plan
The Turkish government signed an agreement with Iraq Sept. 28 to cooperate in fighting guerillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who are launching attacks on Turkey from Iraqi territory. That same day, the PKK attacked a military post in… Read moreBaghdad, Ankara pledge cooperation against defiant PKK
At least seven young men were killed in an apparent US helicopter attack on an outdoor Ramadan gathering in the Baghdad Shi’ite suburb of Abu Dshir late Sept. 27. Witnesses say the men were playing a traditional Ramadan game called… Read moreIraq: US bombs Shi’ites —again; Congress funds carnage —again
Juan Cole‘s Informed Comment blog Sept. 24 has an enlightening commentary on a Sept. 20 AP story about the Pentagon’s latest report to Congress on supposed “progress” in Iraq. Cole writes that the report, entitled “Measuring Stability and Security in… Read morePentagon data reveal grim reality of “surge” —and “resistance”
Former US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan famously spills the beans in his new memoir, The Age of Turbulence: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” (London… Read moreAlan Greenspan vs. Naomi Klein: who has rights to Iraq’s oil?
Another blow in Iraq’s escalating Sunni civil war—and further evidence that any attempt at “reconciliation” will be doomed as long as the US remains in Iraq, allowing the jihadis to pose as the “resistance,” and anyone advocating co-existence to be… Read moreIraq: occupation kiss of death for “reconciliation”
