Friday, August 11, 2006

A New Front In The Iraqi Civil War?

Overall it is just another typical bloody day in Iraq. The bodies of the two US soldiers missing from the helicopter crash have been recovered. There have been a few bombings, a couple of kidnappings, a score of recovered bodies and the usual stream of depressing news that we have been ignoring of late, but one item demands notice.

gunmen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric torched an office of the Iraqi president's Kurdish party.

About 50 gunmen in the northern city of Kut stormed the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by President Jalal Talabani, beat up the guards and set the building on fire


To date the Kurds have been left on the sidelines in the ever expanding conflict, but it appears that they now have an invitation to join in the fun.

The next question is, do the Kurds have the wisdom and willpower to stay out.


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3 comments:

hfiend said...

They have been quiet in Iraq but pissing off neighboring Turkey.

Read more here (with background and a personal attack on me by local RW blogger, always fun)

Jon said...

Good point, but a conflict with Turkey 'fits' into the long term goal of the Kurds.

They want a greater kurdistan that includes healthy portions of Turkey, Syria and Iran, in attition to thier Iraq holdings.

and then they can get back to their own little civil war, that is currently suspended, but not resolved.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that it was Shiites not Sunni, with whom the Kurds have the biggest beef.

The Kurd/ Turk tension is the one area that could pull the entire region to war. Somehow we have given satiety to Kurd aspirations to this point.