Israel & Kurds

[Armat]

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact

This is an excellent article from the New Yorker by Seymore Hersh that didn't get much attention when it was published a couple of weeks ago. You have to get about half way through before it gets into the Isreali connection and the Kurdish problem but I recommend everyone give it a read.

What is ironic that Israel after all could be our most beneficial ally indirectly?

 

“Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria. Israel feels particularly threatened by Iran, whose position in the region has been strengthened by the war. The Israeli operatives include members of the Mossad, Israel’s clandestine foreign-intelligence service, who work undercover in Kurdistan as businessmen and, in some cases, do not carry Israeli passports.”

The Israeli decision to seek a bigger foothold in Kurdistan—characterized by the former Israeli intelligence officer as “Plan B”—has also raised tensions between Israel and Turkey. It has provoked bitter statements from Turkish politicians and, in a major regional shift, a new alliance among Iran, Syria, and Turkey, all of which have significant Kurdish minorities. In early June, Intel Brief, a privately circulated intelligence newsletter produced by Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, and Philip Giraldi, who served as the C.I.A.’s deputy chief of base in Istanbul in the late nineteen-eighties, said:

Turkish sources confidentially report that the Turks are increasingly concerned by the expanding Israeli presence in Kurdistan and alleged encouragement of Kurdish ambitions to create an independent state. . . . The Turks note that the large Israeli intelligence operations in Northern Iraq incorporate anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian activity, including support to Iranian and Syrian Kurds who are in opposition to their respective governments

Edited August 7, 2004 by Armat

[Arpa]

I saw that article and I had many disturbing thoughts.

Not the least of which is mistrust of the Israelis.

I/we have said this before and it may worth to repeat.

Kurds will do themselves a great favor and spare much time and lives reading Armenian history. In particular history of late 19th and early 20th c. when cynical superpowers used the Armenian to weaken the Ottomans and turned away when blood began to flow. They can also benefit by reviewing recent Kurdish history in all of their diasporas, in particular when Saddam masscred them using WMD supplied by guess who.

Another lesson from Armenian tragedy is the fact that the Kurdish "nation" is so fragmaneted and spread thin, not unlike the Armenians of that time when we were spread all the way from Moscow to Paris and beyond with barely any presence in the disputed (Armenian)lands where we had been reduced to a insignificant minority.

[Armat]

It is interesting when I posted this article I thought about you Arpa and your many warnings of being ready when time comes again which it seems more likely to happened.