Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The message behind Turkey and the PKK's peace agreement?

Hurriyet Daily News reports, "The first group of outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants that left Turkey as part of a peace drive with Ankara arrived in the Harur area in nothern Iraq early this morning, Doğan news agency reported."  May 8th,  the PKK began their withdrawal process from Turkey.  The Kurdish rebels and the Turkish government had been at war for decades but the two sides worked out a peace agreement.  Trend News Agency describes it this way,  "Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan previously called on members of the organization to lay down arms and leave the country. Turkish authorities promised to create the conditions for PKK militants who laid down their weapons to freely leave the country."

The effort is a major one and a major one for the region.  It's amazing when you grasp how little commentary there's been on this in the west.  Maybe that's because the west wasn't involved?  Isn't that against the image of why so many dollars and pounds and francs, et al are used?  That area supposedly needs the west so much.  Some days, the talk all but insists that the Middle East can't go to the bathroom without a western escort.

So maybe that's why this major moment gets so little attention?

Right now two sides in a deep conflict are attempting to work through peace.  And doing so without the US military invading or some high pressured IMF 'loan' or what have you.

The peace agreement could fall apart.  Any peace agreement can fall apart.

But already, the fact that they worked one out and the fact that they are implementing it is huge.

Some might argue that it demonstrates the need for no US involvement.

The US government is opposed to the PKK, declares them a terrorist group, first allowed the Turks to begin bombing northern Iraq to kill them.  Turkey?  Turkey's been on the US's bad side for a bit now.  Icky Vicky Nuland has denounced them on behalf of the US State Dept.  The US is displeased with Turkey's dealings with the KRG.  The US government threatened and bullied to get the Turkish government to call the Israeli government to smooth over their conflict.

So two sides in conflict work out an agreement with no help from the 'unipolar,' 'last super power' US government?

That's pretty telling.  Some might argue that the Israeli and Palestinian conflict might benefit from the same.  Or Iraq.

In both instances, the US government has chosen side and is not an honest broker.  With the Israelis and the Palestinians, the US government backs the Israeli government.  If that support was pulled, might the two sides in conflict be forced to work out an agreement?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

In Iraq, US special forces remain.  They train.  SWAT forces now terrorize Iraqi protesters.  SWAT forces?  As we've not before that's the term being used in Iraq, by the government, by the press.

That may not seem in the US.  But in the US, English is the main language so referring to a team of Special Weapons And Tactics forces as "SWAT" isn't strange.  But "SWAT" is not the acronym for the terms in Arabic.

SWAT's a new development in Iraq.  And it's a US term.  And US special forces are training Iraqi forces on 'counter-terrorism.'


And those forces are said to have participated in the  April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija resulted from  Nouri's federal forces storming in.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.   AFP has been reporting 53 dead for several days now -- indicating that some of the wounded did not recover.  UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured). So did the US government bring about that massacre? Either just due to training and arming the forces or did they also provide 'tactical' advice?  Were they involved in mission planning?

I have no idea.  I know that the US government still spends billions in Iraq and plans to spend billions there in the next fiscal year.  If the US government is a hindrance to the region, if their efforts don't bring about peace (and installing Nouri in 2006 and then demanding that, despite his State of Law losing the 2010 election, he get a second term), might people start demanding their tax dollars be spent some other way?

Most US financial assistance falls under two categories: bribes or blackmail.

Maybe exploring what's taken so place so far, with no help from the west, threatens the model by which western governments siphon off their citizens' money under the pretext of 'world safety'?

No one's under the delusion that the US' AFRICOM is about peace.  No one was under the delusion that Zbigniew Brzezinksi's plan (Carter's National Security Advisor and all round piece of trash) wasn't trying to help bring peace to Afghanistan, was he?  He wanted to turn into a swamp of fighters that would result in many, many deaths and draw the USSR into Afghanistan, defending their satellite government, and draining the USSR's resources.  When you think about it, leaderships treats lives with all the value most people treat a red or black piece in the game of checkers.  What resulted in Afghanistan due to Brzezinski's 'plan' should have Brzezinski on trial for War Crimes.

Again, maybe the lack of serious coverage and serious exploration of what's taken place thus far between the PKK and Turkey is due in part to the fact that it rejects the notion that the US government should be the cops of the world?


The following community sites -- plus Chocolate City, Antiwar.com, Susan's On the Edge, Tavis Smiley, Jody Watley, Pacifica Evening News and Adam Kokesh -- updated last night and this morning:







We'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' "Time Running Out For Obama To Free GITMO Hunger Strikers" (Veterans Today):

Next May 17th will mark the 100th day more than 100 of Guantanamo’s 166 remaining prisoners will have refused food.


Their determined hunger strike may be generating global headlines but it has not moved President Obama to release this mainly Yemeni group of prisoners whose innocence is attested to by the fact that the U.S. has held them for years without ever bringing them to trial, much less charging them with a crime.

When a nation with 200 law schools and more than 1,100,000 lawyers can’t bring 166 prisoners to trial over a 10-year period, one begins to suspect the legal system is not only broken but that it may be meaningless as well.
According to the May 20th issue of The Nation, a liberal American magazine, “after the failed 2009 suicide attack by the so-called ‘underwear bomber,’ who trained in Yemen, the White House implemented a policy of caging its Yemeni detainees indefinitely. The fact that 56 are apparently innocent of any crime is of little concern...”
Several men have attempted suicide since the hunger strike began while another man has shriveled to as little as 77 pounds.
“As of today,” one prisoner wrote in a letter to the UK Guardian published last month, “I’ve spent more than 11 years in Guantanamo Bay...4,084 long days and nights. I’ve never been charged with any crime.”



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