Was Rice's trip to Iraqi Kurdistan Deliberately Sabotaged?
So when we left off the story yesterday, US Secretary of State Condi Rice had just made a surprise visit to the northern oil city of Kirkuk, apparently to congratulate the provincial council for a move toward Kurdish-Arab reconciliation. But while Condi was doing that, the Turkish army invaded Iraq! And then the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Authority, Massoud Barzani angrily refused to meet Secretary Rice, saying that the US had given Turkey the 'green light' to attack Kurdistan and that the incursion was a 'crime.' I guess that means Barzani is calling Rice a criminal
Look, it is absolutely impossible that Condi plans out a trip to Kirkuk and a meeting with Barzani with full knowledge that while she is there, Turkey will send 500 Turkish soldiers into northern Iraq to occupy the villages of Kaya Retch Binwak, Janarok and Gelly Resh. Or even that when she set out on her trip, she knew that Turkey was planning to bomb Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday, killing 3, wounding 8, and displacing 300 Kurdish villagers. (Turkey maintained that these villages were havens for the Kurdish Workers Party guerrilla (PKK) guerrilla group, which Ankara accuses of making cross-border raids to kill dozens of Turkish troops in the past few months.)
So there are only two possibilities. The first is that this whole affair is a SNAFU. Let us imagine that the US military is concerned about Barzani helping PKK guerrillas kill NATO troops (yes, Turkey is in NATO and a close US ally for decades). They complain to Irbil and Barzani blows them off. And the US military takes a little revenge on Barzani by giving the Turks real time intelligence on PKK movements. The Turks interpret this gesture as a green light for them to attack Iraq. In the meantime, the State Department has set up a secret trip to Kirkuk and Irbil for Condi.
That could explain Sunday's bombing raid, which was not a good omen for Rice's trip. But it can't explain Tuesday's ground invasion, which is an obvious provocation and done after it became known that Rice was in Kirkuk.
So in my view Turkey is trying to drive a wedge between the US and Barzani, and Turkish chief of staff Yasar Buyukanit deliberately embarrassed Secretary Rice and ruined her trip to celebrate Kurdish-Arab reconciliation (a reconciliation that is not actually good news for Ankara, which does not want to see the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government annex Kirkuk).
If the bombing raid was also not a SNAFU but was a deliberate attempt to thwart Rice's good feeling tour in Iraqi Kurdistan, then that would point to the Turkish military having received advance warning from someone in the US government about Rice's secret trip. That is, it would point to spying. That in turn would raise the question of whether there are relatively high USG officials who had knowledge of her secret itinerary, and who have an interest in bolstering the ties of the US with the Turkish military at the expense of Washington's de facto alliance with Barzani in Iraq. I'll bet you State is looking into this fiasco as we speak and if you hear fairly soon that someone high in the department (or another department who has similar clearances) suddenly resigns to spend more time with his family, you can reasonably speculate that he was the source of a leak to Buyukanit--if indeed there was one.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/19/2007 05:03:00 AM
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' If the bombing raid was also not a SNAFU but was a deliberate attempt to thwart Rice's good feeling tour in Iraqi Kurdistan, then that would point to the Turkish military having received advance warning from someone in the US government about Rice's secret trip. That is, it would point to spying. '
How high does it have to go before you call it something other than spying?
The VP? Would the VP be a spy? Or a traitor?
How about the quasi officials in those DoD advisory groups?
Who are the people who most love chaos in the Middle East?
Who have had so many years of pulling the strings in Washington and been so successful at it in the past eight that they're sure they own it?
If it comes down to Elliot Abrams or a Neocon of his ilk, and Condi Rice it's Bye Bye Condi. In fact this may have been her bon voyage party. It would be for anyone with a shred of self-respect. But Powell hung in there until he lost the respect of every single American, so maybe Rice will do the same.
Does anyone remember the name of the FBI translator who blew the whistle on the corrupt inner core of "our" government back in 2002?
Oh, yeah. Sibel Edmonds.
Gagged by Cheney in 2002. She's been pleading for a Demoblican Senator to depose her on the record, a la Mike Gravel and the Pentagon papers. That's the kind of stuff she's got to expose.
No takers of course. Not from the other side of the leaden Demoblican/Republicrat counterfeit coin.
Our enemies are all in Washington DC and there are just 537 of them.
There are 300,000,000 of us.
Yet they've got us on the mat with their boot on our neck?
Give me a break will ya! Snap out of it, America! Sweep these punks into the sea!
Gravel, Kucinich, Paul. Take you pick.
Turn off your TV. Work your family, your friends, and your neighbors and co-workers.
Before the last train leaves the station.
There's still just time to catch it.
FUBAR
It would occur to me that the timing of Mz Rice's visit indicates that the Kurds would be in a more relaxed mode of operations, allowing for a correspondingly easier course of action by the Turks. "Surprise" is a relative term, perhaps more accurately regarded as being announced to a minimal number of people, least of all the media at large. With any appearance of any highly placed dignitary, many preparations have to be made. It could be as simple as having knowledge of some VIP arriving and being somewhat prepared (plastic vs real turkeys for Thanksgiving, e.g.) to something more complex as knowing who the person of interest is and responding accordingly (real Turkey, e.g.). Given the security situation in and around Iraq, there is not the luxury of anonymity that many well-travelled destinations enjoy, comparatively speaking. But, then, it could have been just blind luck all around, not ruling out coincidence given that the Turks have been warning everyone for some time now.
Should the Kurds have expected some measure of relaxation and a sort of détente due to an American bureaucrat's appearance, we only need to refer back to T?t when the Americans thought that the Vietnamese New Year's celebration should have been a time of lessened tensions, a period when everyone would stand down for some particular observance. Of course, this is THE prime opportunity for one or another adversary to make a move, using the time to gain some sort of advantage. Like Christmas, any diversion allows the 'Santas' to make preparations for the big event, even if it means dropping bombs down the chimneys.
And, then, given the locale, there are any numbers of opportunities for the locals to engage in information transfer, from rumours to hard news, moving from person to person, from place to place. With the ability of electronics to track any object in the sky (and NATO/OTAN must have any number of facilities in client nations (Turkey, e.g.) that do such things), something as obvious as an aerospace vehicle would be easily identifiable and monitored with relative ease.
We recall the situation at Pearl Harbour in them olden dayze when operatives reported on comparatively slow and clumsy things such as ships. It only took a few interested persons to make the proper observations at the appropriate times in order to develop intelligence that later proved valuable to an enemy attacking on a Sunday morning while the Hawaiians were reading the funnies or finding other cartoonish diversions. Friday or Saturday night might have been equally attractive when the GIs were out seeking fun and frolic with other kinds of spirits.
The Turks will use pretty much any pretext in order to try to gain a foothold in Iraq, trying to reclaim lands lost that last time the Anglo(phile)s made themselves to home in Mesopotamia. Claims to Northern Iraq's oil fields have not been retracted and the PKK is merely a convenient chance for them to flex Turkish muscles, given that the route through Turkey has been lucrative for oil exporters, legal or otherwise.
The Turks may have taken this recent Rice visit as advantageous to their overall strategy. The fact that the Americans protected the Kurds from 1991 on and - in effect - allowed them to declare independence from Saddam Hussein and everyone else, this allowed the Kurds to have their relatively peaceful period to consolidate and develop the means to protect and project themselves in the region.
Perhaps by turning a blind eye toward the PKK, the nationalists may have been hoping that the Americans' presence would be a further guarantee for Kurdish autonomy. The Turks, taking their turn, have begun to erode this sense of ease and complacency by protecting themselves and their aims overall. This is a telling time and time will tell as to what acts will be answered with action. Stability is, as we've learned from the Buscists, not the desired condition.
Turkey's refusal to allow the 4th infantry division to stage the Northern Front invasion of Iraq in '03 was doubtless partially informed by their apprehension that this day would someday come, and the presence of the rear echelons of a full division still in place (cf, Kuwait) would seriously hamper their access to the PKK encampments.
Or Cheney put the Deciderator in charge of dealing with Turkey.
And if her visit was leaked to Turkish intelligence, and presumably to the Turkish PM, who's to say that it wouldn't, in turn, be leaked to the Iraqi insurgency? If it was leaked by a USG official, I'd call it treason.
Juan, your it is absolutely impossible that Condi plans out a trip to Kirkuk and a meeting with Barzani with full knowledge that while she is there, Turkey will send 500 Turkish soldiers into northern Iraq... Why "impossible"? This is the woman who traveled to Lebanon (ruled by a supposedly pro-US PM) at a time when even closer and weightier US ally Israel was bombing the bejeesus out of the country in summer 2006-- oh yes, and also organizing ground incursions, deploying cluster-bombs, etc, etc...
So your comment that it was "impossible" she visited Kirkuk while knowing of Turkey's plans for a military attack against northern Iraq seems on the face of it unsubstantiated. In summer 2006, she presumably judged that her visit to Lebanon-- even while the Israeli bombardment continued-- could (1) help calm things down, and (2) reassure Siniora of Washington's continued support. Of course, it did neither. But why should we assume she is capable of effective learning from mistakes like that one?
(Btw, I've been writing about some intriguing recent analyses of the 33-day war in Lebanon, here.)
The importance given to the Arabs rejoining the Kirkuk assembly is dubious. This is not the first time, and they will probably leave again soon as they have done before. The local groups matter little in the national and international Kirkuk conflict anyway. Having Dr Rice fly all the way to Kirkuk for this "reconciliation" is far fetched.
Secondly, the Iraqi Kurdish leaders were happy with limited Turkish attacks, both air and special ops, as long as they were limited to PKK camps. So why this big fuss now?
There are plenty of signs that Rice is putting heavy pressure on the Kurds, and with good results. Their dogged opposition to UN involvement in Kirkuk simply vanished, and Dr Rice emphasized the UN's role oftten during the trip. Mas'ood Barzani also refused to extend the Kirkuk referendum by "even one day" until the trip. Now he has agreed 6 months.
The Turkish attacks are actually helping Rice, as a heavy stick to bash the Kurds with, rather than derailing her efforts in a conspiracy with far reaching impact on US Turkish relations. This is why Barzani is so upset, which the US must have expected, if not sought it.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it was Dick Cheney, and that he won't be resigning anytime soon.
when US officials claim innocence about this Turkish invasion and bombing, they are just lying as usual.
It certainly was done with US foreknowledge, and done on purpose.
If is quacks like a duck, walks like a duck - guess what, it is a duck.
Doesn't have to be a leak in State. Such a trip would obviously have to be coordinated with the US military to provide security.
That hardliners in the military would leak this to embarrass Rice, who's opposed the neocons on war with Iran, is not hard to believe at all.
Team Bush plow new ground in being the first to invade and occupy another country, and then to conspire with an ally for further attacks on the victim.
Since John Bolton in on record as telling a German magazine in recent days that Condie Rice must be reined in (see, for examply YNet
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3483252,00.html), perhaps he or someone close to him is implicated in this leak. This, ofr course, would substantiate what you say, and perhaps points to other neo-cons as involved, as they were in the outing of Valerie Plame.
if you hear fairly soon that someone high in the department (or another department who has similar clearances) suddenly resigns to spend more time with his family, you can reasonably speculate that he was the source of a leak to Buyukanit
As others have noted, I don't think Cheney will be resigning anytime soon.
And what about one Richard Perle ?
Since John Bolton...
You folks are creeping me out. I'll bet the evidence of anyones involvement in this was destroyed in the White house closet fire.
Smells like the rats are getting nervous and are starting the dance to the door without the hot potato (like video tapes).
For the record, I agree with Helena, Anonymous and Dancewater... there is no reason to assume that Rice doesn't think the Turkish air strikes part of her bargaining power.
I think too much is made of the distance between her and the neocons. History won't be so subtle.
If it's spying, I say, ask Sibel Edmonds about it.
But Juan, I think your first assumption, that Rice wouldn't make the trip knowing it was going to be undermined, is false. I can't imagine why you think Rice wouldn't play both sides of the fence. What the hell has she done from day one? Why do people seem to keep assuming that she's the peace loving moderate, always trying to smooth things over, when she was one of the biggest promoters of the Iraq war in the first place.
This administration, it seems to me, is playing a clever and finely tuned game. If things become too quiet in Iraq, the demands to pull the troops out can't be resisted. If they become too violent, Bush risks even further erosion of his polical 'capital'. Remember, the real goal here seems to be long term stationing of a large US force in Iraq in order to control oil and gas flow in the region, plus getting Iraq to sign onto the plan that privileges US interests vis-a-vis Iraq's oil.
I think Condi's perfectly capable of going on a good will trip that she knows will be subverted. In fact, I think THAT'S THE ONLY KIND SHE WOULD GO ON!
Honestly, Juan, are you really as naive as you seem sometimes? Or do you have some kind of hopeless crush on Condi? She IS kindof hot, I'll admit.
This might be one in the eye for Condi, but it:
a/. Harms the Kurds, who I thought the Americans and especially the Israelis were very keen on.
b/. Aids the Iranians by knocking out the Kurdish guerrillas who are attacking them.
Entirely too much time spent on the utterly insignificant Condoliar Rice. She has been thoroughly discredited years ago. No one cares what she does.
One of the hallmarks of the Turkish Republic from its very inception has been that it conducts an independent foreign policy. Others (certainly including the United States government) ignore that fact at their own risk. Another factor to consider is that Turkey and Turks surely feel they have a legitimate grievance resulting from the UK's post-WWI theft of the provinces that became northern Iraq, in violation of the armistice agreement. If memory serves me correctly, that included both Mosul and Kirkuk.
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