Middle East

AP reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is concerned about a wave of assassinations and killings in the southern port city of Basra: ‘ A spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, called on the Iraqi government to stop violence he said was increasingly plaguing southern Iraq and warned the inaction could […]

The USG Open Source Center translates television news concerning the crisis between Turkey and Iraq over the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla actions against Turks; the PKK fighters are given safe haven inside Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Authority, led by Massoud Barzani. In a second item, OSC translates a Kurdish t.v. report on the […]

Turkish war planes and helicopter gunships attacked Kurdish guerrillas in eastern Anatolia on Wednesday, making at least one raid into Iraq according to wire services. An Iraqi delegation is going to Ankara to try to resolve the crisis, which may eventuate in a Turkish incursion into Iraqi territory. A bombing of the Shiite Diyala Bridge […]

At Salon.com, my column on the collapse of Bush’s Middle East police, with the troubles on the Turkish/Iraq border and the huge bomb that greeted Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Edward Luce of FT argues that Iraq has faded as a campaign issue in the 08 presidential election. He attributes this lower profile for the issue […]

The Bush administration made a diplomatic ‘full court press’ with Turkish leaders to dissuade them from attacking the Kurdish Workers Party [PKK] guerrillas hiding out in Iraq after the killing of 17 Turkish troops and the capture of 8 others by the PKK on Sunday. Turkish Prime Minister Rejeb Tayyip Erdogan is alleged to have […]

Ferit Demir reports (via The Scotsman): ‘ Kurdish rebels [of the PKK/ Kurdish Workers Party] killed at least 17 Turkish soldiers, wounded 16 others and took several hostage in an ambush near the Iraqi border yesterday . . . Turkey’s military general staff said 32 rebels were killed in continuing clashes. Its artillery also shelled […]

Iraqi president – slash – Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani condemned Syria’s president Bashar al-Asad for supporting the Turkish claim of the right to invade Iraq in search of Kurdish guerrillas [the Turks–and I suppose the US State Department — say ‘terrorists’] being given safe harbor there. Talabani connived at the US invasion of Iraq in […]

The leader of the Kurdistan Regional Authority in Iraq, Massoud Barzan, called Friday for talks with Turkey. The call was immediately rejected by Ankara, which accuses Barzani of deliberately harboring 3,000 to 5,000 guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party who have been going back over into Turkey and blowing people up or killing them (i.e. […]

Gen. John Abizaid at Stanford U.: ‘ While [panelists] discussed green technology, the subject of America’s operations in Iraq was also a hotly debated topic. Abizaid, who was formerly the Commander of the United States Central Command, quickly established a connection between the two topics. “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” […]