I have a totally different way to look at the Turkish threats to invade Iraq, and analyze them. I don’t know why I cannot take things for granted and have to dig deeper.

Why now?

The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK, has been based in Iraq for a long time. Why only now Turkey wants to put an end to its existence? Because they’ve attacked Turkish troops and killed a bunch of them? No, because that happened before, even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the armed conflict in the early 1980s, about 40,000 people were killed from both sides, Turkish and the PKK.

There is no way Turkey is going to actually invade Iraq. We have to remember that Turkey is a member of the NATO and it is not in its best interests to upset the U.S. So, unless they get the green light from the United States, which would be another loud international “shame on you” for the Bush administration, they will continue to threat only.

They’ll attack villages? Yes. They’ll bomb places inside Iraq? Yes, because they already have the U.S. blessings to do that. PKK after all is listed as a terrorist organization.

So, why now?

I came up with an answer for that.

Well, first of all: because why not? Iraq is opened to the public! Whoever wants to invade can simply spare a few tanks, a dozen attack helicopters and a couple thousand soldiers, especially when the U.S. troops are busy figuring out how to escape Iraq.

Who is going to defend the country against any other invasion? Iraq doesn’t have an army [and for those who are trying to play words game, I will add “qualified” before the word army.] And the U.S. Army is not going to fight with the Turks to protect Iraq. It is just plain impossible.

Then I thought about it from a political point of view:

Remember what Masoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan region and the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party, said two months ago about the issue of Kirkuk on the U.S. funded al-Hurrah TV? He said: “If they don’t solve it, then all the options are possible… if they don’t work on article 140 of the constitution, there will be a real civil war.”

That was when everyone understood that Barzani was actually sending a direct threat to the Iraqi government and Arab Iraqis, now that they have no real power to defend themselves.

By “they” he meant the Iraqi government. And article 140 is the one that demands “normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.”

I cannot see the Iraqi politicians, who are fighting each other on daily basis, dealing with or solving the issue of Kirkuk. The Maliki government has not paved one street in all over Iraq since it came to power early 2006!

Also, in early 2006, Barzani was asked on Arabiya TV whether he had said before that he wanted Kurdistan to be a separate states, he said: “I was asked if there were a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis what will we do, my answer was ‘we will separate.’ … Independence is the Kurdish nation’s legitimate right like it is of any other nation.”

Therefore, given that there is a civil war in Iraq, Barzani has in fact started to act as if he is governing an independent state. First with refusing to raise the Iraqi flag, and then the Kurdish authorities prevented Arab families from entering Kurdistan unless they have a Kurdish sponsor. Now, if any Arab family wants to live in Kurdistan, they have to get residency. In fact, if you want to go to Kurdistan, you can get a Kurdistan visa that is different from the Iraqi one!

Then comes the oil law. Before even the Iraqi parliament discussed it [it hasn’t passed yet] the Kurdish parliament passed it and activated it. They have signed contracts with foreign companies.

There are huge numbers of Kurds in Syria, turkey and Iran. If the Iraqi Kurds succeeded to separate and get their own state, why not the others? Is that another enormous problem in the region or what! Can you imagine the size and depth of such a conflict?

Why do you think on October 17, Bashar al-Assad of Syria intervened in the discussions and said “We support the decisions the Turkish government has put on its agenda against terrorism and terrorist activities. We see this as Turkey's legitimate right." ?

So, if the Iraqi government cannot stop the civil war, which the Kurds are afraid of, and cannot solve the issue of Kirkuk, which is what the Kurds want, how do we stop the Kurds from strengthening their independence?

Keep them busy!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki

First of all, I am so sorry for the delay in writing a new post. I don’t know what happened! I just lost the words for a while. I really wasn’t able to write one paragraph.

I heard a very disturbing report today on Radio Sawa on the Iraqi-Turkey issue. As the Turks are preparing to invade Iraq [why not if everyone has an army can, and if there is no Iraqi government and military forces to defend the country] they have been sending messages to the American administration saying that no one can stop them if they wanted to go ahead and kill hundreds more of civilian Iraqis in their pursue of Turkish rebellions in northern Iraq.

But what drew my attention [because very rarely nowadays something draws my attention in the news from Iraq] is an interview with one of the Iraqi deputy ministers of Foreign Affair in which he said that the security agreement that was signed lately by Iraq and Turkey had different text in Arabic than the one in Turkish!

“This is the main issue of the agreement, but the Arabic version says that a condition for the Turkish forces to enter Iraq is to get a permission from the Iraqi government,” the deputy minister said. “But the Turkish version says that the Turkis forces enters Iraq and then tells the Iraqi government. They just have to tell, not take permission from the Iraqi government.”

Still, the Iraqi government signed the agreement!

What is a stronger evidence that Iraq is a failed state that this? If we have a government that doesn’t read the agreements it signs, and doesn’t provide security to its people, and doesn’t provide food to its people, and doesn’t maintain the infrastructure in the whole country, and doesn’t realize that it is mid October and schools have not opened yet, what kind of a government is that?

The Kurds have signed contracts with foreign companies to invest in the oil resources in northern Iraq before the Oil Law is even discussed in the Iraqi parliament.

From Reuters today:

"There are a lot of minors coming from Iraq to Sweden now," said Swedish Red Cross refugee expert Dick Clomen. "A lot of them are not truly unaccompanied -- they travel with other people -- but they have no legal guardians. They suffer from being away from their families, lack of role models, psychological trauma which must be dealt with."

"I last saw my family two years ago,” 16-year-old Said told Reuters through a translator at a centre for Iraqi underage refugees on the outskirts of Stockholm. “They are happy because I am away from death."

What kind of a government is Maliki’s if the youth are fleeing the country? What are the seeds of the future of Iraq?

The political parties are fighting still since April 2003. The Shiite politicians and turbaned snakes are fighting each other [although some of you were deceived by the latest announcement that Hakim and Sadr had signed an agreement to worked together, I want to remind you that this is the third time they sign this agreement over the last four years!] and the Sunni politicians don’t want to reconcile with the Shiite politicians and also the Shiite politicians will never reconcile with their Sunni rivals obviously. The Kurds basically don’t care what happens west and south of their borders. I am not just saying these things, I have four years of failed politics to support what I am saying.

Now, if there are more than four million Iraqis displaced within and outside Iraq, if the youth don’t like the government and the older don’t and the elderly don’t, as polls are telling us, why is Maliki still in power? And why do we blame Saddam Hussein for staying in power although people did not want him? And why did not we want Saddam Hussein and we are not doing anything to get rid of Maliki?

Why doesn’t the world see the malfunction of the Iraqi government? Seriously!

Painting by Iraqi artist Betool Fekaiki