The United States authors of its war on Iraq hardly knew Shiite from Sunni before President George W. Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I read there are no fewer than 24 armed factions in Iraq taking part in what the National Intelligence Estimate terms a civil war and much more.
Did we know about the Mehdi Army before the invasion? How about the Soldiers of Heaven who were killed in Najaf last week? The MEK is an anti-Iranian terrorist organization based in Iraq.
I had heard about the Kurdish PKK. There are also the rival groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which have been at loggerheads for much of the last decade.
I knew there are Kurdish separatists fighting for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey who find sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan, but I had not heard about the PJAK until today.
The United States has reretrievably broken Iraq, but any partition of Iraq - soft or otherwise - which creates an independent Kurdistan is unacceptable to Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Any partition of Iraq that leads to an independent Kurdistan is a formula for a regional war involving our ally Turkey (which is one of our few allies in the region and in the Muslim world). Bush has really mucked up bigtime in Iraq.
Hastening the Apocalypse by soj [Booman Tribune] Mon Feb 5th, 2007 at 07:33:12 AM EST
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