Thursday's raid on the Iranian consulate is more evidence that President Bush is ready to escalate the conflict.

By Juan Cole

Jan. 12, 2007 | For months, rumors of war between the United States and Iran have been building. Many fear that President Bush is spoiling for a fight, and they've begun to interpret various developments in the region as the run-up to an attack on Tehran. A report in the British press about a possible Israeli raid on Iran's nuclear facilities quickly became linked with predictions about coordinated action with the United States. Observers on all sides, left, right and other, convinced themselves that the appointment of Adm. William Fallon to oversee military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan meant there would soon be Tomahawk missiles, if not U.S. soldiers, crossing the border into Iran.

Good background on West Asian conflict, Iraq, and Kurdish self-determination struggles.
***
"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.’

IRAQI KURDS' SUSPICION OF U.S. GROWS
By Roj Shuhe
from Socialist Voice
Number 14, Sept 12, 2004

A notable feature of the larger demonstrations against the U.S.-led war on
Iraq in Toronto during the last year was the participation of sizeable and militant

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.

Issue of 2004-06-28 New Yorker

In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

Kurdish rebels reject calls to restore ceasefire with Turkey

dozame.org

Monday, June 14 2004 @ 04:11 PM CDT

ANKARA, Turkey, June 14 (AFP) - A top Kurdish rebel leader has rejected calls for the restoration of a truce with Turkish forces and has called instead for an end to the prison isolation for former rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, the pro-Kurdish Mesopotamia news agency reported Monday.

info from dozame.org and stratfor.com

1. Stratfor.com Assessment of Kurdish Struggle

2. Food Embargo on North Kurdistan, May 18

3. Turkish Soldier Killed, May 26

4. Guerrilla Defensive Ops, May 24

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.

Is the West playing a double game against the Kurdish people, using them as a pawn in northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) and selling out the freedom fighters in south-eastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan)?

"We Would Have Liked to Explain…"

May 4 2004
Suleymania, Liberated Kurdistan

Visiting Kurdistan as an anti-occupation, anti-imperialist is, admittedly, a head wreck.

It isn’t just the fact that Suleymania, a university town in the eastern part of the region governed by the PUK, is surrounded by green mountains and lakes and coniferous trees, and looks like a different country than the one I’ve lived in for the past two months. Or the fact that the amount of Kurdish spoken makes it sound like a different country. Or even the fact that the distinctly Kurdish culture, evident to a first-time visitor in dress and in a propensity for lavish Friday picnics, makes it feel like a different country.