In keeping with the US policy of leaving no aspect of the invasion or occupation of Iraq unbotched, the American military is currently assaulting and laying siege to the Turkmen city of Tal Afar. In order to provoke maximum opposition and outrage, they are being assisted in this by the Kurdish peshmerga militia. Patrick Cockburn writes:
American and Iraqi government forces last week sealed off Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul belonging to Iraq’s embattled Turkmen minority. The US said it killed 67 insurgents while a Turkmen leader claims 60 civilians were killed and 100 wounded. The massive and indiscriminate use of US firepower in built-up areas, leading to heavy civilian casualties in cities like Tal Afar, Fallujah and Najaf, is coming under increasing criticism in Iraq. The US “came into Iraq like an elephant astride its war machine,” said Ibrahim Jaafari, the influential Iraqi Vice President.
The Americans claim that Tal Afar is a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms into Iraq from nearby Syria. Turkish officials make clear in private they believe that the Kurds, the main ally of the US in northern Iraq, have managed to get US troops involved on their side in the simmering ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turkmen.
“The Iraqi government forces with the Americans are mainly Kurdish,” complained one Turkmen source. A Turkish official simply referred to the Iraqi military units involved in the attack on Tal Afar as “peshmerga”, the name traditionally given to Kurdish fighters.
The US army account of its aims in besieging Tal Afar is largely at odds with that given by Turkmen and may indicate that its officers are at sea in the complex ethnic mosaic of Iraq. The US says that in recent weeks the city was taken over by anti-American militants who repeatedly attacked US and Iraqi government forces.
“Tal Afar is a tribal city and its people were not patient with the presence of American forces,” said Farouq Abdullah Abdul Rahman, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, in Baghdad yesterday. He agreed that there was friction with US forces but denied that anything justified the siege, with many Turkmen close to the front line fleeing into the countryside. “More than 60 people have been killed, including women and children, and 100 wounded.”
While igniting the tinderbox of Kurdish-Turkmen ethnic antipathy might seem counterproductive to those of us lacking in counterinsurgency strategery, the prospects for the Kurds must be even more alarming, surrounded as they are by Iraqi Arabs whose resentment of Kurdish collaboration with the US is already smoldering for their participation in the assault on Sunni Fallujah and Shi`ite Najaf.
The turning of massive, indiscriminate fire on cities, especially Turkman cities, has further outraged and infuriated the Turks. Diplomatic ties were already shredded by all around American arrogance as well as the American policy of making promises they have no intention of keeping, as with the repeated vows to do something about the PKK, a rebel group which makes raids into Turkey from their bases in the northern Iraqi mountains. Attacks on the PKK would anger Iraqi Kurds whose 60,000 strong peshmerga militia is needed to augment the insufficient US forces, especially considering the agenda Colin Powell was trotted out to put forth on the talk shows today:
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the United States has a plan to quash the insurgency raging in several Iraqi cities and bring those areas under control in time for national elections in January.
Powell acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition faces a “difficult time,” but he said the Bush administration is committed to making Iraq stable.
“This is not the time to get weak in the knees or faint about it, but to drive on and finish the work that we started,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The secretary of state said U.S. commanders are working with Iraqi military leaders and the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to put down the extremists in control of Fallujah and other cities.
The insurgency “will be brought under control,” Powell said. “It’s not an impossible task.” Apparently the US intends to be the first country in history to bomb a guerilla movement into peace, because that what’s happening, along with the siege of Tal Afar. Sharon and Putin are undoubtedly watching to see how Bush will succeed where they’ve failed to crush their anti-occupation guerillas by bombing densely populated urban areas. With much more at stake–like staying alive–are the Kurds, now wholly dependent on the American presence in Iraq. It must be hell to be surrounded by Arabs increasingly hostile to the Kurdish collaboration with the occupation and Syria, Turkey and Iran, all committed to preventing an independent Kurdistan when your only “friends” have not only had no problem selling you out in the past, but are clearly increasingly more desperate as they lurch from failure to violent, bloody failure.