Partlow stresses that the statement made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Turkey should first deal with separatist terrorists operating inside Turkey before it can consider an operation on separatist hideouts in northern Iraq has lessened the prospect of a large-scale Turkish military movement into Iraq. Iraqi officials acknowledge that the Turkish shelling of the border regions and troop movements in the area have been “a seasonal pastime” for years as the snows melt and separatist terrorist activity picks up across the border. Thus, the conviction of the Iraqi Kurdish local officials “responsible for the border” is that Turkey would not get involved in a major incursion and that the tensions would dissipate with diplomatic negotiations.

  However how would tensions dissipate with diplomatic engagement since both Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister and a Kurd, admit that the central Iraqi government – fighting an insurgency in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country excluding the relatively calm northern section – cannot “release Iraqi troops to the Kurdish mountains”. For identical reasons the U.S. is unwilling to allocate troops for northern Iraq. What's worse is that the peshmerga (Kurdish militiamen) of northern Iraq's local government are cooperating with the PKK or are they not enthusiastic to fight the PKK?

  Massoud Barzani, one of the feudal lords of northern Iraq who is now heading the local administration of that region, remains adamant in refusing Turkey's calls to take action against the PKK presence in the region. Recently he declared that Turkey wanted them to fight the PKK but they would not do it. However while not taking action against the PKK presence in northern Iraq, Barzani is still complaining, "Turkey has a problem with the existence of Kurds… We have always advocated good neighborliness on the basis of mutual interests and nonintervention. Nonetheless, we do not accept violations and threats.”

  That is, Barzani and his forces are not willing to fight the PKK. Intelligence reports and tons of explosives captured by Turkish security forces all underline that his forces are collaborating with the PKK. He is growing more and more insolent against Turkey – a country that has helped Iraqi Kurds whenever they faced existential threats from the former Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Yet, in hopes of becoming the “national leader” of Kurds dispersed in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, Barzani is becoming more and more adamant against Turkey.

  How can he be convinced to cooperate with Ankara against the PKK and avert a possible Turkish incursion into northern Iraq. The adamancy of Barzani is due to the U.S. support for him that has turned him into a spoilt child. Is it possible to change this situation and make Barzani more cooperative?

   US must do something

  The answer, of course, is what Turkey has been stressing for a long time. An Iraqi security official, quoted by the Washington Post writer, tells it all: He acknowledges that the Iraqi border force does not have the power to stop Turkish troops from coming into Iraq or to keep terrorists from pushing out to Turkey. Thus, he stresses, the United States needs to "pinch Barzani" to make him take a harder line against the terrorists. The Iraqi border force does not have the power to stop Turkish troops from coming into Iraq or to keep separatist PKK elements from pushing out to Turkey.

  The WP article concludes with some quotes from Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, which we believe summarizes the real situation well. Pittard says that to the U.S. military, having to take sides in an open fight inside Iraq between Turkey and the Kurds is not a pleasing prospect. “There appears to be some activity on the Turkish side, but it may just be brinksmanship... We can't have it to where we have friction with a NATO ally... The Kurdish regional government "must help out in muzzling the PKK or suffer the consequences.”

  The summary: The U.S. will either “pinch Barzani” and wake him up to the reality or let him “suffer the consequences.”