Good background on West Asian conflict, Iraq, and Kurdish self-determination struggles.
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"Greater Kurdistan" Ambitions Could Spark Regional War

by Sarkis Pogossian
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Nov. 1, 2005

It is now the Sunni insurgency in central and western Iraq that is drawing blood and media attention in Iraq, but the situation in the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan, at present the most peaceful part of the country, is waiting to explode—and holds far greater potential to internationalize the conflict. The Kurdish people, numbering some 20 million, were left off the map when the victorious allies carved new states out of the ruins of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I. They are now divided mostly between Iraq and Turkey, with smaller populations in Iran and Syria. The emergence of a highly autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq has re-ignited ambitions for a "Greater Kurdistan" which would unite Kurdish lands across the borders of these four nation-states.

Patrick Cockburn

The three months it took to cobble together a
government in Iraq after January’s election shows the
depth of the divisions between the Shia, Sunni and
Kurdish communities. In the north of the country the
Sunni Arabs and the Kurds are close to civil war.
Their savage skirmishes, around the oil city of Kirkuk
and in the streets of Mosul, are generally unreported
in Baghdad. The war of 2003 made the Kurds the north’s
dominant power. They are no longer penned in their
mountains, or in their decrepit cities crowded with
refugees from the 3800 villages destroyed by Saddam
Hussein. But their advance south is contested by the
Sunni Arabs, everywhere on the retreat but able to
stage daily suicide bomb attacks, ambushes and
assassinations. On 4 May a man with explosives
attached to his body blew himself up in a queue of
young men trying to join the police in Arbil, killing
60 of them and wounding 150. Ghassan Attiyah, a
political commentator in Baghdad, told me that ‘the
Kurds were able to destabilise Iraq for half a century
under Saddam Hussein and his predecessors. The Sunni
Arabs are certainly strong enough to do the same thing
if they want to.’

posted at www.dozame.org

Kurds on the verge of a state

Haaretz.com
May 14, 2004
By Zvi Bar'el

The political forces active in Iraq look like a diagram of the stock market. On any given day of the week, separatist Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr grabs the headlines, on another day it's the turn of the city of Faluja, and on a third it's a scandal of torture and harassment. The media have more freedom here than in any other Arab country, and every political and military organization makes the most thorough use of them. Muqtada al-Sadr, for example, usually appears with a battery of at least five microphones, most prominent of which are those of the satellite stations in Arabic, along with two or three from international Western stations. The U.S. army in Iraq gives press conferences and briefings for all the media. Shi'ite leaders, Sunni leaders and people from the Iraqi administration transmit information over personal or party Internet sites, and they are well-connected to foreign correspondents who have spent time in Iraq or are still there. But one group has been absent recently from the Iraqi communications arena - the Kurds.

3 articles:

1. U.S. Hostage Freed; 11 GIs Killed
May 2, 2004

...In other developments in Iraq:

Eleven soldiers were killed in separate attacks, raising the U.S. death toll to 151 since a wave of violence began on April 1. Six American service members killed in mortar attack in Anbar province, which includes such flashpoint cities as Fallujah and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle. One U.S. soldier was killed Sunday and 10 were wounded in a bomb and small arms attack on a coalition base near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, the U.S. military said. Overnight, Shiite militiamen killed two soldiers in an attack on a U.S. convoy near the southern city of Amarah, 180 miles south of Baghdad. An attack in northwest Baghdad killed two other soldiers and wounded two Iraqi security officers and another American, the military said...

U.S. Hits Mosque Compound; 40 Said Killed

By BASSEM MROUE and ABDUL-QADER SAADI

Associated Press Writers

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that destroyed part of a wall surrounding a mosque compound filled with worshippers Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to key cities in Iraq.