The Peymaner news agency recently reported that the Iraqi Council of Ministers has decided to compensate Iraqi Kurds damaged by Iranian bombing in the Kurdistan region. “The amount will be allocated through the reserve funds of the 2010 budget,” Ali al-Dabbagh, the official spokesperson of the Iraqi government, said. Turkish and Iranian assaults against the PKK sparked an interesting debate on whether Turkey really wants to hit the PKK in that region. International observers and local journalists who have nothing to do with the PKK, have reported interesting eyewitness observations.For instance, a local journalist who recently visited the Kandil Mountains interviewed Karayılan and PKK militants on whether the Turkish air strikes had damaged the PKK. The PKK fighters told him that Turkish airstrikes do not damage the PKK. Skeptical about what the PKK told him, he went to ask the same question to local villagers. The answers were the same. They told him that the PKK had not been affected at all by Turkish bombardment.
Villagers were the only victims.
A foreign observer in Iraq shares a similar view. “I haven’t heard of any Kurdish Iraqis being casualties or fleeing their villages because of Turkish military activity, but I have heard, and met, villagers who fled Iranian military activity,” said the observer. He states that he has seen PKK militants driving SUVs near the town of Amadi and policing in the area. “As tourists, if we see where the PKK militants are, the Turks must know too. But it is obvious the PKK feels safe. So what can the game be, other than the Turkish military keeping the PKK card close to their chest to play as and when they want.”
Further, there was a report in the Turkish dailies on Monday that the Turkish military did not use drones over the Kandil Mountains. They used information that was provided by the US military. The reason for this may be technical, because it is a foreign country and the US may not have allowed Turkey to use drones over Iraqi territory. However, recent media reports about how a group in the military at one point tried to sabotage the drones, to make them ineffective against the PKK militants, would make anyone skeptical about the intention of the military. On Monday, Zaman reported that the drones picked up intelligence, which was relayed to a military outpost on the Iraqi border, of PKK activity in the area 15 minutes before PKK fighters attacked the outpost, killing six soldiers. During a press briefing after the incident, the commander of the unit told the prime minister that they had noticed PKK activity around the outpost but had thought the people they saw were local villagers. It was also leaked to the media that right before the attack in Hakkari a colonel working at the Herons’ base warned Ankara that there was evidence of large-scale PKK movement but no one took his warning seriously and the PKK killed six additional soldiers.
Bringing all these pieces together indicates that there is something wrong here. Either the Turkish military is incapable of fighting the PKK, cannot hit their targets in northern Iraq or cannot get accurate intelligence about the terrorists’ activities. Knowing that at least in the last several PKK attacks both military intelligence and police intelligence provided accurate information about the PKK’s pre-attack movements to the post that the PKK attacked, one ends up questioning the real intentions of the generals in Ankara.
If we cannot target the PKK in the Kandil Mountains and cannot prevent PKK attacks despite accurate intelligence, as taxpayers should we not question the intentions of the generals in Ankara?
