DOZENS of Turkish planes bombed supposed PKK bases in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing villagers, damaging infrastructure and forcing villagers to flee, local Iraqi officials confirmed yesterday.
Turkey’s general staff said its warplanes had hit the ‘regions of Zap, Hakurk and Avasin as well as the Qandil mountains’ – known to contain bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Turkish armed forces’ chief said the raids were carried out with US approval and intelligence, but were condemned by the US-installed Iraqi puppet government. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Maliki, called in the Turkish ambassador to explain his country’s actions.
Turkey’s army chief General Yasar Buyukanit confirmed that the strikes had been carried out with Washington’s approval, using US military intelligence, and operating in air space controlled by the United States military.
The general referred to the massive US intelligence assistance from US satellites in his message to the PKK. He said: ‘The PKK should watch its step. It should not forget that, for us, its camps and movement in northern Iraq are like a “Big Brother” show.’
For the record, the US embassy in Baghdad denied that the US gave permission for Turkish aircraft to carry out the air strikes against the Kurdish PKK separatists.
The US embassy said US commanders had not approved the attacks, but had been informed before they took place.
The embassy spokesman, however, did not say why the Iraqi government had not been given this information so that the border villages could have been evacuated, saving a number of lives in the process.
The fact is that the United States is in such a desperate crisis in Iraq that it has had to support Turkish attacks on its own puppet government in Baghdad. It could not just tell the Turks ‘no, we won’t let you do it’.
Neither could it set out to tackle the PKK with its own forces.
In fact Bush, just a few weeks ago, guaranteed to defend the Maliki government for many years after the UN mandate ends in December 2008.
The US is clearly losing what control it had over Iraq and its different regions. When faced with the choice of keeping its major Turkish ally happy or its Iraqi puppet government informed of coming Turkish attacks, it chose the most powerful force, the Turkish regime.
However, Turkey still has a territorial claim on the oil bearing region of northern Iraq, from Mosul to Kirkuk.
Its current military efforts are preparing the way for a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq, to seize Kirkuk and Mosul if the unity of Iraq disintegrates and the US either quits the scene, or is unable to control Iraqi Kurdistan.
The British withdrawal from Basra heralds this phase of the struggle, since the US now faces the prospect of having to rush troops to Basra if Maliki’s security forces are unable to control the second biggest city in Iraq.
The defeat of the British in southern Iraq is the beginning of the end for all of the imperialist forces in Iraq as a whole.
It is obvious that the future of Iraq, and the future of the people of the Middle East and the Gulf, depends on the insurgent Iraqi workers and youth developing a common military and political leadership to drive US imperialism and its remaining allies out of Iraq, so that the Iraqi people can foil all of the plots to disintegrate the country, and reach an agreement for a revolutionary government to preserve its unity.
An Iraq that emerges successfully out of the determined imperialist attempts to destroy it for the last 17 years, will play a major role in freeing the Middle East from imperialism and all its agent regimes.
