The New York Times brings us a slideshow feature about a less publicized Kurdish militant group, which is engaged in guerilla warfare against Iranian forces. This is separate than the deadly raids into Turkey by Kurdish militants holed up in northern Iraq. The latter is the focus of urgent diplomacy, with the United States begging Turkey for restraint.
As the accompanying article states: "Yet out of the public eye, a chillingly similar battle has been under way on the Iraqi border with Iran. Kurdish guerrillas ambush and kill Iranian forces and retreat to their hide-outs in Iraq. The Americans offer Iran little sympathy. Tehran even says Washington aids the Iranian guerrillas, a charge the United States denies. True or not, that conflict, like the Turkish one, has explosive potential.
I chose the above photograph (all photographs are by Warzer Jaff) for this post for a purpose. It shows a purported Iranian soldier captured by the Kurdish guerillas. The photograph's caption tell us that the prisoner sits under "a picture of Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish guerrilla imprisoned in Turkey. "
No, Mr Caption Person at the NY Times....you need to be more accurate than that. Mr Ocalan is not just a "Kurdish guerilla"...he's the founding leader of the Kurdish militant group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and is currently imprisoned in Turkey where he is considered a child murderer and a terrorist, directly responsible for countless terrorism acts in Turkey. Another of Mr Ocalan's attributes is that he's a Marxist, and espouses a socialist agenda as do his followers. The PKK is branded a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union as well as Turkey.
So why are we applying pressure on Iraq to prevent the Kurds in the north from attacking Turkey, and we're not asking the same from the southern Kurdish front?
The slideshow: A Second Kurdish Front
The article: A Second Kurdish Front