Category Archives: Turkey

Did the Turkish vote signal a more sinister agenda?

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In Erbil, in Kurdish-controlled north­ern Iraq, thou­sands protested against Turk­ish plans to move into the region dur­ing an American-led inva­sion of Iraq.
 (© 2002 Getty Images)

This week­end, the Turk­ish par­lia­ment rejected the United States’ offers of bil­lions of dol­lars in loans and grants for host­ing up to 62,000 troops to be used in a north­ern front in the upcom­ing inva­sion of Iraq. The vote, 264−250−19, was a squeaker — but four shy of the absolute major­ity needed to pass.
At the time, I said that if the Turk­ish mil­i­tary stayed out of this polit­i­cal process, it might be a good sign that the world was wit­ness­ing the begin­ning of a more mature Turk­ish democ­racy, one that isn’t held hostage to the threat of a mil­i­tary “inter­ven­tion” by the gen­er­als who are leery of irri­tat­ing the United States.
But dis­turb­ing reports from Strat­for (Paid reg­is­tra­tion req.) indi­cate there may have been a more omi­nous rea­son for the vote. British intel­li­gence, accord­ing to Strat­for, believes the vote was engi­neered by the Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party lead­er­ship when mem­bers were allowed to “vote their con­science.” As it stands, Par­lia­ment, rather than the exec­u­tive branch of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, is respon­si­ble for reject­ing U.S. troops. This allows the Turk­ish mil­i­tary to ease the pres­sure from Wash­ing­ton by claim­ing inno­cence in the mat­ter — “What can we say, my friend? We are a democ­racy.” And if U.S. troops are denied the north­ern route, Turkey will have a free hand when war breaks out.

The strat­egy is to cause U.S. forces to invade Iraq from the south only — leav­ing the Kur­dish north at Turkey’s mercy in the event of war. If the United States attacks, Turk­ish forces — claim­ing to act in the inter­est of pre­vent­ing anar­chy — would launch their own action against Kur­dish areas in the north. Within sev­eral days, sources say, the Turks would crush the Kurds; mean­while, U.S. bomb­ings would weaken Iraqi forces in the north. Once the regime in Bagh­dad and the army began to weaken, Turk­ish forces would fall upon Iraqi gar­risons — and paint their own actions as proof of Turkey’s alliance with the United States. [From Stratfor]

With U.S. forces tied up in the south and the Kurds paci­fied, Turkey would move between 250,000 and 300,000 troops to encir­cle the rich oil-fields of Kirkuk and Mosul, allow­ing them to then say to the world and to the EU — to which Turkey aspires for mem­ber­ship — that it has pre­vented Amer­ica from occu­py­ing the entirety of Iraq.
Back­ing up this hypoth­e­sis are media reports from the Turk­ish press. The Turk­ish paper Cumhuriyet reported yes­ter­day that Chief of Gen­eral Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok “cau­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Abdul­lah Gul against any adverse devel­op­ments that could emerge in north­ern Iraq and threaten Turkey?s national secu­rity in the event of a war.” Meet­ing with Gul on Sun­day, Ozkok report­edly told the pre­mier that con­sid­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion after Parliament?s refusal of the pro­posal, “urgent mea­sures should be taken in order to pre­vent the estab­lish­ment of a Kur­dish state in the region.” Also, Turkey’s For­eign Min­is­ter Yasara Yakis said the Iraqi Kurds’ burn­ing of the Turk­ish flag in protest of a pos­si­ble Turk­ish inva­sion was “a provo­ca­tion.“
Amer­ica could be fac­ing a dread­ful choice: Inter­vene in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan and north­ern Iraq — and gain the oil-fields — by engag­ing Turk­ish forces on Iraqi soil or stand down and accept a par­tial vic­tory?
The thought of NATO allies Turkey and the United States actu­ally com­ing to blows is almost incon­ceiv­able. Most likely, some kind of deal would be worked out, allow­ing the Turks a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the oil rev­enue from the region. But the treat­ment of the Kurds would be more wor­ri­some.
I’ve been assured by Kur­dish friends and sources that if the Turks come into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, they will have a fight on their hands. The recent demon­stra­tions tend to back that up. But despite my friends’ promises of a “slaugh­ter” and a guerilla cam­paign, I sus­pect 250,000 heav­ily armed Turks with NATO train­ing would be able to quell 70,000 pesh­merga light infantry the Kurds cur­rently field. (Let’s give them 150,000 to account for new recruits.) How quickly the Turks would pre­vail is open to con­jec­ture, how­ever. The last Kur­dish war lasted from 1984 – 1998, and Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is even more moun­tain­ous than south­east Turkey.
(Already the Kurds are cir­cling the wag­ons. The Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment announced that that the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan and the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party would form a Joint Higher Lead­er­ship coun­cil that would coor­di­nate polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary, admin­is­tra­tion and for­eign and domes­tic pol­icy. KDP pres­i­dent Mas­soud Barzani and PUK secretary-general Jalal Tal­a­bani will chair the coun­cil.)
Addi­tion­ally, an extended cam­paign by the Turks in the north would cause the Ira­ni­ans to move in to pro­tect their inter­ests in the region, too. (The Aya­tol­lah Sayed Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakim’s Badr Brigade of the Supreme Coun­cil for Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq has already moved in.) With­out the Amer­i­cans to play ref­eree, every­thing north of Bagh­dad and Tikrit will fall into bloody civil war.
Now we see why those ships are still idling off the Turk­ish coast and the United States is hop­ing to per­suade Turkey to allow U.S. troops. A chaotic north­ern Iraq isn’t in anyone’s inter­ests. But I won­der if any amount of cash would be enough to per­suade the Turks, because if their plans do include seiz­ing the north­ern Iraqi oil-fields (cov­eted for years,) they won’t need the Amer­i­cans’ money.
ASIDE:I’ve writ­ten sev­eral times about Turkey’s plans for Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, includ­ing here, here and here. At one point, back in Octo­ber, I said, “Keep watch­ing the Turks. They hold the key to all of this.” Seems I was right after all…
ASIDE II:By the way, why has the United States and Europe still refused to pro­vide gas masks or pro­tec­tive gear to the Kurds in the case of chem­i­cal attacks, since they’ve been attacked with chem­i­cal weapons before? Could it be that Turkey has effec­tively sealed the bor­der, mak­ing it extremely dif­fi­cult to get human­i­tar­ian sup­plies into the region?

Email from Turkey and mixed news on the terror front

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Imme­di­ately after yesterday’s vote that rejected U.S. requests to use Turkey as a stag­ing area for a north­ern front, I emailed my old friend Aykut about the devel­op­ments there. His email fol­lows:

Dear Chris,
This is also a very big sur­prise for us. Per­son­ally, I am proud of being a cit­i­zen of a coun­try which shows her dig­nity like this. Our deputies show that the Turk­ish par­lia­ment is not an approval office and Turkey is not a coun­try for sale…
Shortly the story is this: In fact, AKP [Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party] gov­ern­ment had decided to bring the deci­sion to the par­lia­ment last Thurs­day, but sud­denly on the last minute they changed their mind and decided to bring it today [Sat­ur­day]. Some ana­lysts claim that the AKP lead­er­ship did not want to take all of the respon­si­bil­ity and wants to share it with the National Secu­rity Com­mit­tee which was going to meet on Fri­day. You know The National Secu­rity Com­mit­tee is a con­sti­tu­tional insti­tu­tion in which the Pres­i­dent and the gen­er­als are rep­re­sented as well as the the mem­bers of the civil gov­ern­ment. (Suit­abil­ity of such insti­tu­tion in democ­ra­cies is another sub­ject of debate). But the National Secu­rity Com­mit­tee did not even men­tion about this deci­sion in their con­clu­sion report. So they wanted the AKP gov­ern­ment to take the all the polit­i­cal respon­si­bil­ity by them­selves. In fact you know AKP holds the 2/3 of the par­lia­ment. We knew that Erdo­gan had some dif­fi­cul­ties of per­suad­ing some of his own deputies. There are demon­stra­tions all around Turkey. More than 50.000 peo­ple gath­ered in Ankara today, but still nobody was think­ing about such a result. Now, the prime min­is­ter with some other min­is­ters are in the meet­ing. It seems that they are going to bring the deci­sion to the par­lia­ment next Tues­day one more time. But we know that there are min­is­ters in the gov­ern­ment in fact they are against this deci­sion, so you see, last week we were sure that this deci­sion would def­i­nitely be passed, but now nobody knows what will hap­pen. Tomor­row [Sun­day] AKP will declare what are they going to do… It will be a very inter­est­ing week.…
When some­thing inter­est­ing hap­pens in here, I will write.… Stay well.…

Well, as we now know, the AKP has shelved any plans on intro­duc­ing a new pro­posal on Tues­day as Aykut thought yes­ter­day.
“The pro­posal has been delayed to an open-ended time. There is no pro­posal for the fore­see­able future,” said Eyup Fatsa, deputy head of AKP. Turkey, how­ever, wants to mend fences with the United States, and may intro­duce a new plan in par­lia­ment if the United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil approves the U.S. and U.K. pro­posal sub­mit­ted Mon­day last week. A vote on that pro­posal won’t be com­ing for another two weeks in all like­li­hood, how­ever, so even if Turkey does intro­duce a new troop deploy­ment pro­posal, it will likely be too lit­tle too late.
Which could be the Turks’ plan all along! If Turkey had the polit­i­cal cover of a UNSC res­o­lu­tion but no time to make the troop approval logis­ti­cally fea­si­ble, the Turks could always say, “Look, we approved your troops. Too bad things didn’t work out time-wise. Maybe next time.“
In other hap­pen­ings, it’s very, very good news that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mas­ter­mind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., was cap­tured in Pak­istan. Also, intel­li­gence offi­cials said he was “car­ry­ing the names and phone num­bers of mem­bers of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in North Amer­ica.” The most dis­turb­ing detail about his life, how­ever, was that he appar­ently learned “flaw­less” Eng­lish at Chowan Col­lege, a Bap­tist uni­ver­sity in North Car­olina. Also, and per­haps most per­sonal for me as a jour­nal­ist, he appar­ently ordered the killing of Wall Street Jour­nal reporter Daniel Pearl, and may have been the man who slit his throat.
There are con­flict­ing reports of where he is or who has cus­tody of the sus­pect. An unnamed Pak­istani gov­ern­ment min­is­ter said he had been handed over to U.S. cus­tody shortly after his arrest, along with two other al Qa’ida sus­pects, in the Pak­istani city of Rawalpindi on Sat­ur­day. But Pak­istani Inte­rior Min­is­ter Faisal Saleh Hayat denied this.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in the cus­tody of Pakistan’s law enforce­ment agen­cies and until we have sat­is­fied our­selves, after the inter­ro­ga­tion process, of the nature of his activ­i­ties in Pak­istan, there is no ques­tion of hand­ing him over to any­one.“
He is also, accord­ing to Hayat, still in Pak­istan.
But there are dis­turb­ing aspects to his arrest. The same Reuters story said another unnamed source, this time for the U.S. gov­ern­ment, expected Mohammed to be “interrogated” — read, “tortured” — in an undis­closed for­eign coun­try. I under­stand the neces­sity of it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or approve of it.
And a P.S. to every­one who says mak­ing war on Iraq will make the world safer from ter­ror­ism should know that al Qa’ida recruit­ment is up all over Europe, and the war hasn’t even started yet.

The after­math of Sept. 11 and the prospect of war in Iraq have increased the num­bers of angry anti-American young men who have been pushed into the embrace of Islamic extrem­ism, accord­ing to counter-terrorism offi­cials. Extrem­ists are muscling into Euro­pean mosques, cre­at­ing new places of wor­ship and win­ning con­verts. … A war in Iraq could turn many mod­er­ate Mus­lims into extrem­ists and drive many extrem­ists over the line between mali­cious intent and action, experts say.
“The strat­egy of the ter­ror­ists is to cre­ate a clash of civ­i­liza­tions,” [Jean-Louis] Bruguiere, [France’s top anti-terrorist judge] said. “And they will use the war to incite vio­lence against the West. A war will have a direct impact on the level of recruitment.”

This is one of my main crit­i­cisms against a war with Iraq. There are much bet­ter ways of deal­ing with ter­ror­ism, as the arrest of Mohammed shows, than embark­ing on mil­i­tary adven­tures with only the most pollyanna-ish of con­se­quences envisioned.

Turkey says no to U.S. deployment — Is this the start of real democracy in Turkey?

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In the span of a few min­utes this morn­ing, the Turk­ish par­lia­ment approved the deploy­ment of 62,000 U.S. troops, 255 war­planes and 65 heli­copters in a squeaker vote (264 to 250 with 19 absten­tions) only to have the vote nul­li­fied a few moments later by speaker of par­lia­ment Speaker Bulent Arinc because a major­ity of leg­is­la­tors present had not voted in favor. He then shut down the par­lia­ment until Tues­day.
This will throw some sand in the gears of the U.S. war machine, to say the least, as Turkey appar­ently refuses to stay bought. The $15 bil­lion in loans and grants — and the right to run roughshod over Iraq’s Kurds — isn’t enough.
Believe it or not, this is cause for hope, and not for any rea­sons hav­ing to do with stop­ping the war, which is a train that left the sta­tion some time ago. No, this is cause for hope the world is wit­ness­ing the grow­ing pains of a mature Turk­ish democ­racy.
About 94 per­cent of the Turk­ish pub­lic is opposed to a war on Iraq, since the coun­try suf­fered so in the first one. Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Party (AKP) leader, Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, urged party leg­is­la­tors to side with the United States and approve the deploy­ment, since Turkey needs assis­tance from the IMF and the World Bank, two insti­tu­tions dom­i­nated by the United States. The gen­er­als in Ankara also backed the vote, see­ing that Turkey is a major pur­chaser of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary hard­ware and the U.S. was the country’s most reli­able ally in the war with PKK sep­a­ratists from 1984 – 1998. Plus, the Amer­i­cans were going to let the Turks have Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.
But the unruly Turk­ish par­lia­ment — and espe­cially AKP deputies — defied their party leader and lis­tened to the Turk­ish pub­lic, diss­ing the United States on its No. 1 for­eign pol­icy issue. The dan­gers of this to Turk­ish par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are great and those who voted against the res­o­lu­tion are brave men and women.
Why? Turk­ish democ­racy has always existed under the spec­tre of mil­i­tary coups. If the civil­ian gov­ern­ment got too unruly, the mil­i­tary would step in and take con­trol to pro­tect the sec­u­lar nature of the repub­lic and its inter­ests, as it did in 1960, 1980 and 1997. To their credit, the gen­er­als never wanted to rule Turkey for its own sake; they gen­uinely believed they were uphold­ing the ideals of Kemal Mustafa Atatürk and quickly turned power back over to a more pli­able civil­ian gov­ern­ment. How­ever, this pater­nal atti­tude has stunted Turk­ish democ­racy and retarded its pace in reach­ing Atatürk’s goal of a West­ern, sec­u­lar democ­racy with a seat at Europe’s table as an equal.
And now, we are faced with another cri­sis. If the gen­er­als don’t step in and push the AKP out of power as they did with the Wel­fare Party, another Islamist polit­i­cal group, in 1997, the world could be see­ing the peo­ple of Turkey enjoy­ing true democ­racy for the the first time in the his­tory of their young repub­lic. Turkey would enjoy a gov­ern­ment with­out the threat of a parental mil­i­tary step­ping in and “fix­ing” things. The coun­try would finally be able to let its own very capa­ble cit­i­zenry make deci­sions through the bal­lot box — and it would be forced to live with their deci­sions. That’s the def­i­n­i­tion of true democ­racy, and the cit­i­zens of Turkey have wanted it — and deserved it — for far too long.
Make no mis­take. If this vote sticks and the mil­i­tary stays out of it, it will not be easy for Turkey. They are heav­ily depen­dent on the IMF and World Bank for eco­nomic assis­tance and the United States will no doubt retal­i­ate for Turkey’s “treach­er­ous” actions, a.k.a., lis­ten­ing to the will of the peo­ple. (The United States has already threat­ened to retal­i­ate against Ger­many and France.) The eco­nomic dam­age from a war in Iraq will be high, pos­si­bly higher than the $100 bil­lion Turkey says it has suf­fered since 1991. But I sus­pect that if Turkey defied the United States on this issue, it might find itself more wel­come in Europe’s bosom when France and Ger­many look a lit­tle more kindly on the Turks…

Some emails from the front and what the hell is happening with the opposition?

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Over the week­end, I heard from a cou­ple of friends in the region about goings on there. The first is from a jour­nal­ist buddy based in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan work­ing for a major news­magazine. (I don’t want to scotch his access, so I won’t print his name.) The sec­ond is from Aykut Uzun, my dri­ver, trans­la­tor and fixer when we were being tailed by the Turk­ish police south of Diyarbakir.
My journo buddy tells me that I’m “not miss­ing much so far.” Also, the Kurds are over­whelm­ingly pro-war. “Talk to the Kurds about the reck­less geopo­lit­i­cal games W is play­ing and you are met with a blank stare and a story about Hal­abja,” he writes. “Ask the KDP, PUK or INC about the same thing and you get a lec­ture about the nefar­i­ous inter­ests of the French.“
He also pro­vides good logis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion and some alarm­ing news. The Syr­ian and Turk­ish bor­ders are closed right now, which I knew, but the route through Iran is open — for freak­ishly huge bribes. (He men­tions $5,000.) There’s also a rumor that Turkey is about to open the bor­der, but that is, as yet, just a rumor.
Aykut in Ankara is more pes­simistic. He works mostly as a tour guide, for which he got a four-year degree and it’s usu­ally good money, since tourism is the biggest indus­try in Turkey. Not now.
“Due to this fuc…g war, tourism busi­ness is very bad in Turkey now,” he writes. “So I can’t say that per­son­ally I am doing well.” He does men­tion the rumor that Turkey will open the bor­der, but it may be only for five days. Then he comes to the Turk­ish prepa­ra­tions for war and America’s deal-making.
“I don’t give any chance to the pos­si­bil­ity of Turkey’s rejec­tion of U.S. troops,” he writes. (Well, it looks like he’s right. Mon­day may see the deal con­sum­mated.) “If she [Turkey] doesn’t allow, the eco­nomic pro­gram that has been con­tin­ued with IMF after the last cri­sis in 2001 will be dam­aged very badly. As every­body knows, the U.S. is very effi­cient [he means influ­en­tial] with the IMF, and Turkey needs the help of it.“

It seems Turkey is about to over­es­ti­mate U.S. patience, but still I believe U.S. needs Turkey for this war. The other pos­si­bil­i­ties are much more expen­sive and dif­fi­cult… Some ana­lysts claim that U.S. can do the oper­a­tion with­out Turkey, but this would cost 40 or 50 bil­lion dol­lars more to her. So you see we are fair. We want half of this… Turkey is dri­ving such a hard bar­gain, because we took a big les­son [I think he means “loss”] from the first Gulf War. U.S. had promised us to reim­burse our losses which would occur after the war. You are the one who knows Turkey’s losses. You talked with the peo­ple in south­east Turkey. Now the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment wants a “writ­ten agreement.”

After he wrote this email, the Turks and Amer­i­cans seemed close to an agree­ment that would give Turkey $5 bil­lion grants and $10 mil­lion in loans, with a bridge loan imme­di­ately avail­able to help pump the Turk­ish econ­omy once the shoot­ing starts.
It’s worth not­ing that the cash fig­ures men­tioned in the Times story are less than were being reported ear­lier this week. And the story never comes out and says a deal for Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is in the works, but con­sid­er­ing the quotes from Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Yasar Yakis, it’s pretty obvi­ous that’s what’s hap­pen­ing.
“A Kur­dis­tan should not be set up,” Yakis said. The Times also heav­ily reports Turk­ish con­cerns regard­ing Iraqi Kur­dis­tan. Two con­cerns were that U.S. weapons don’t fall into Kur­dish hands and that Turk­ish troops be under Turk­ish com­mand (This is a big one, and con­tra­dicts reports from ear­lier this week that Turk­ish troops would be under Amer­i­can com­mand.)
Things are quickly get­ting nasty in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan.

“No one wants another fight, of course,” Hoshi­yar Zebari, spokesman for the Kur­dish Demo­c­ra­tic Party, one of the two main Kur­dish polit­i­cal groups, told reporters in Arbil on Sun­day.
“But if there’s a forced incur­sion, done under the pre­text of ‘I’m going to give you forced aid’, then believe me there will be uncon­trolled clashes,” he said.
“And it will be bad for the image of the United States, Britain and other coun­tries who want to help Iraq, to see two of their allies, Turkey and Kur­dis­tan, at each other’s throats.“
In Tehran, Iran­ian Kurd par­lia­men­tar­i­ans also voiced con­cern about Turk­ish inten­tions in Iraq and accused Ankara of seek­ing to con­trol Kirkuk and Mosul, once part of the Ottoman empire.
The 22-strong Iran­ian Kur­dish par­lia­men­tary fac­tion wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Euro­pean Union lead­ers and Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Moham­mad Khatami.
“Who in the world does not know that Turks have a desire for Kirkuk oil and annex­a­tion of Kirkuk and Mosul to their soil?” the let­ters said. “Autho­riz­ing a Turk­ish mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan means autho­riz­ing geno­cide and ter­mi­na­tion of Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity.”

And as things get nas­tier in Kur­dis­tan, Iraqi National Con­gress front­man Ahmed Cha­l­abi is get­ting increas­ingly bit­ter over what looks to be a rapidly decreas­ing role for him­self and his orga­ni­za­tion.
Two weeks ago, the White House said Cha­l­abi will be leader of a tran­si­tional coali­tion gov­ern­ment that will take over from Gen. Tommy Franks when the shoot­ing stops. How­ever, the Wash­ing­ton Post reported a few days ago that “Once secu­rity was estab­lished and weapons of mass destruc­tion were located and dis­abled, a U.S. admin­is­tra­tor would run the civil­ian gov­ern­ment and direct recon­struc­tion and human­i­tar­ian aid.” Cha­l­abi is, pre­dictably, dis­tressed by this turn of events. In an op-ed for Daily Tele­graph, he wrote, “The lead­er­ship and gov­er­nance of Iraq is, with­out excep­tion, an exclu­sive right of the Iraqi peo­ple … There must be no gap in the sov­er­eignty over Iraq by Iraqis. We reject notions of for­eign mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment or United Nations admin­is­tra­tion for Iraq.“
He con­tin­ues and writes that his tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment should assume sov­er­eignty “the moment” Sad­dam is removed, but admit­ted that his gov­ern­ment would be will­ing to work with the U.S. mil­i­tary to estab­lish order, secure the bor­der, etc. He dis­misses the idea of Iraq as an Arab Yugoslavia as a “myth” borne of the “con­ve­nient pre­con­cep­tion that fits the West­ern image of unruly and war­ring tribes.“
“There is no record in the his­tory of our land of a Shia vil­lage attack­ing a Sunni vil­lage or an Arab quar­ter attack­ing a Kur­dish quar­ter,” he writes. (Yes, but there is a lot on record about Kurds attack­ing other Kurds when the PUK and the KDP warred over smug­gling tar­iffs in 1995 – 96.)
It should be noted that the Guardian story reports him as angry over the instal­la­tion of a mil­i­tary gov­er­nor, pre­sum­ably Franks. If the Iraqi oppo­si­tion objects to a mil­i­tary gov­er­nor post-Saddam, they likely will be even less happy with a U.S. civil­ian admin­is­tra­tor as a fur­ther step to be taken before the coun­try is handed over to the INC.
Aya­tol­lah Moham­mad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Iran-backed Supreme Coun­cil of Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq (SCIRI), who recently ordered 5,000 SCIRI troops into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, said Iraqis would resist, per­haps vio­lently, any attempt to impose a gov­ern­ment on them.
“If the Amer­i­cans do this, they will dis­cover this is a mis­take,” Hakim said.
So what’s the White House’s game? Why are these “plans” and “blue­prints” get­ting leaked espe­cially when the media reports of the plans are send­ing the Iraqi oppo­si­tion into a grand mal tizzy?
The Iraqi oppo­si­tion, divided as it is, doesn’t appear qual­i­fied enough to run a taco stand, much less run a coun­try that’s been dev­as­tated by two, com­ing up on three, wars and 12 years of sanc­tions since 1980. And that’s pretty much been the State Department’s objec­tion to the Iraqi oppo­si­tion all along. Fur­ther­more, Cha­l­abi is dis­trusted by the Depart­ment of State, the CIA and most of the rest of the for­eign pol­icy estab­lish­ment. He seems a bit too eager, for some­one con­victed in Jor­dan of finan­cial fraud and sen­tenced to 22 years of hard labor, to get his hands on the levers of power — and the purse strings — of oil-rich Iraq. But the civil­ian hawks run­ning the war plan­ning, such as Paul Wol­fowitz and Richard Perle, are big-time back­ers of Cha­l­abi. Could the leak­ing of the rebuild­ing ideas be part of the ongo­ing war between Colin Pow­ell at State and Rums­feld, Wol­fowitz at the DoD and Perle at the Defense Pol­icy Board? Since the admin­is­tra­tion of Iraq would, pre­sum­ably, fall to the State Depart­ment after the mil­i­tary is done with it, per­haps the goal may be to dis­credit the INC — and Cha­l­abi in par­tic­u­lar — so that State, which never wanted this headache to begin with, can have a freer hand in run­ning the place with­out hav­ing to deal with the INC.

War pushed back to mid-March?

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The Wash­ing­ton Times is report­ing that war plan­ners have pushed back the start of Gulf War Redux to mid-March due to diplo­matic snags and dif­fi­culty in mov­ing heavy infantry divi­sions.
In addi­tion to the road­blocks thrown up by France and Ger­many, as well as con­tin­ued foot-dragging by other mem­bers of the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil, NATO ally Turkey is upping its demand for aid in return for the sta­tion­ing of up to 40,000 Amer­i­can troops in a north­ern front.
Wash­ing­ton has report­edly offered Ankara grants of $6 bil­lion and loans of up to $20 bil­lion in exchange for its sup­port, and has expressed frus­tra­tion over Turkey’s fail­ure to accept the deal. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell has said he wants an answer by the end of the day.
The Turks are being excep­tion­ally savvy, how­ever.
“We have found the fig­ures insuf­fi­cient and we are not look­ing favourably at the offer,” Econ­omy Min­is­ter Ali Baba­can told the Cumhuriyet news­pa­per. He also con­cern that while the Wash­ing­ton has told Ankara that any war would be short, con­gres­sional approval for the grants and loans could take between six and eight weeks.
“What if the oper­a­tion is over before the com­ple­tion of the con­gres­sional process and Con­gress tells us ‘Sorry’?” he said. “That is why a writ­ten deal is a must.“
The Turks prob­a­bly watched how the United States dealt with Pak­istan. In exchange for help in Afghanistan and against Al Qa’ida, Pak­istan was rewarded with ter­ror attacks and the con­tin­u­a­tion of strict lim­its on Pakistan-made clothes. Mind you, this was after Bush per­son­ally promised Gen. Mushar­raf that the United States would lift import restric­tions. Instead, Bush dropped the plan in Dec. 2001 when, fac­ing immi­nent defeat in the House of his broad pack­age of trade leg­is­la­tion, he decided to woo six law­mak­ers from tex­tile states by promis­ing them he would stiff Pak­istan.
The Wash­ing­ton Times says time is of the essence for the Amer­i­cans, how­ever, because heavy armor must be shipped across the Atlantic. I’ve been told how­ever, that much of the heavy armor used has been pre-positioned through­out the 1990s in order to avoid this kind of broadly telegraphed buildup. I’m not sure what to make of this bit of data.