HPG: NO CASUALTIES

"Amongst Kurds, one of the lowest things that can be done in society is reporting another person. In Kurdish eyes, the US has become this kind of reporter by giving coordinates for Kurds living in northern Iraq.....The US has issued messages of unity at bayram, but is then having bombs rain down on Kurdish heads."
~ Halil Aksoy, DTP Istanbul Chairman.

HPG confirms that there were no casualties in yesterday's bombing of the Medya Defense Zone--in spite of assistance provided to the Ankara regime by overflights of American reconnaissance aircraft. Yet the fantasies continue in the minds of the Paşas:

After comparing photos, intelligence reports gained from various sources they defined that at least 300 terrorists were killed in 12 camps. Moreover, Japan-production modern communication center “Yasu” which was established by PKK in Qandil Mountains was destructed and office of “Firat” News Agency serving to terrorists was also destructed. Nearly 100 terrorists left PKK after operation.

That news comes from an Azerbaijani news agency and we know that the Azerbaijanis are deeply involved with the Deep State.

Shiraz Socialist notes the lack of coverage of the bombings not only in the mainstream media, but also in the Left press:

You probably didn’t know about this: it hasn’t been a prominent issue in the Left press, and hasn’t gotten much coverage in the mainstream papers either. But for those of you who didn’t know, the Turkish airforce has been bombing Kurdistan for the past two days. Remarkable that nothing much has been said about it by the “left” (one can only imagine what would be said if the jets were flying from Israel rather than Turkey), but there we have it. I’m highlighting the issue for you now anyway.

[ . . . ]

If there is one salutory lesson we should take into the new year it is that we as the left are supposed to oppose all oppression - whether the oppressed concerned are of political convenience to us or not. The Kurds’ story tells us that we are not always as good or as consistent as we ought to be. It’s time we changed that.

Well, a big part of the problem is that there really is no Left. There is really no true political discourse in the West because it has been totally corporatized. The Left and the Right are exactly the same.


Meanwhile, the Southern Kurdish so-called leadership bemoans the continued bombing:

Massoud Barzani said his people "cannot accept" the bombing raids and shelling to continue and condemned the attacks which began on Dec. 16. On Sunday, Turkish fighter jets bombed Kurdish rebel targets inside Iraqi territory, in the fourth cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in one week.

"We cannot accept this situation to continue," Barzani told reporters in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah. "We cannot accept our villages to be bombed and our people killed."

[ . . . ]

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, said Iraq's foreign minister had summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad and lodged a formal complaint, but said he did not want to exacerbate tensions between Iraq and its neighbor. He was standing next to Barzani.

Actually, these two mini-globalists don't want to exacerbate tensions that may end up damaging the exploitation of South Kurdistan by foreign (i.e. Turkish) investment, which would, in turn, affect their personal bottom lines.

Hîwa weighs in on the matter, noting the loss of the Kerkuk by our mini-globalists. Certainly the issue is linked because Kerkuk and the idea of a strong, autonomous Southern Kurdish region is something the Ankara regime cannot stand. Nor can the Americans stand the idea of losing control of Kerkuk's oil fields, since they went to war for the purpose of controlling Iraq's oil. With regard to the PKK, Hîwa hits the nail on the head:

Current raids only make PKK stronger and it is the pure reality of life that when you even argue with someone, unless they reply you will not have the tempo to go on and on! I believe the fresh attacks by Turkey has only given PKK more and more reason to caryy on and fight! I am sure there will be people who will be more than happy to help the PKK fight a government which has got more than PKK to fear!

He is exactly right and, in order to reinforce reality, let's remember what Osman Baydemir said recently:

If Turkey’s perception of the Kurds remained unchanged then another party would emerge bearing a different name if the PKK were to disappear.

This fact of the Kurdish reality stands in stark contrast to the ignorance of the "experts":

Future military strikes, conducted with the precision demonstrated on the 16th will force the PKK to disperse, reducing the effectiveness of their training and rest areas between attacks as has been the case; the Qandil Mts area, long thought to be perhaps the top no-go area in the world, is now on notice, day or night, that it is subject to pinpoint bombing.

Younger PKK members, no longer subjected to the harsh training regimen (including death) and seeing the possibility of another life beginning with the Repentance Law, will begin falling away or never joining. If Turkey will work with Iraq to grant the Kurds more autonomy the Pesh Merga represents another potential path for Kurdish youth, as does membership in Turkey’s village guards. Finally, “attacking” the PKK in other than military ways - publicizing the PKK’s drug operations and human trafficking operations, working against the PKK diplomatically in W. Europe, going after PKK financing, will bring about the end of the PKK much faster than trying to do it with military force alone - emulating the successes achieved by the US in the Global War on Terror.

Oh, yeah, we all know that the American Global War on Terror, Inc., is an undertaking that has reaped endless benefits for the entire world . . . or at least for the fascist ruling elite.

First of all, no "repentence" law will ever work. It didn't work in 2003, the last time the Ankara regime offered such nonsense at the urging of the totally-disconnected-from-reality Americans:

The US reportedly assured Ankara during Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s recent visit to Washington that it would eradicate the terrorist group from the region.

Requirements of such bogus laws, given fascist Turkish jurdisprudence, usually include snitching on comrades, not having engaged in "crimes", and helping to manufacture lies about PKK's so-called "crimes." Then there is the fact that such laws include the word "repentence" (pişmanlık, in Turkish). Repentance implies that one has done something wrong, but PKK has done nothing wrong so there is no need for "repentance."

Secondly, the idea of Kurdish youth joining the Village Guards is absolutely ridiculous. No politicized youth would think of assisting the state in its official policy of genocide.

As for the rest of the Ankara regime's lies that are repeated by the "experts", well, all I can do is point to Osman Baydemir's comments once again. The "repentance" law didn't work in 2003 and Erdoğan's current efforts to that end is certainly not going to work now that both the US and Turkey are targeting civilian Kurds with aerial bombing.

The Americans and the Turks are two peoples that are almost exactly alike in every detail. Take, for example, these comments:

Turkey has the right to defend itself against Kurdish rebels based in Iraq but must make sure it does not destabilize its neighbor, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Sunday.

Ryan Crocker made the remarks before news emerged that Turkey had bombed Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Sunday - for the third time in the past week. Turkish warplanes also bombed positions held by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, on Saturday and on Dec. 16.

``We've been clear on this. The PKK is a terrorist organization, it has carried out a number of lethal actions in Turkey from bases in Iraq, and the Turks clearly have a right to defend their country and their people,'' Crocker told reporters in Baghdad.

He made the comments as Turkish jets were bombing an area about 50 miles north of the city of Irbil near the border with Turkey for about an hour and a half.

Along with the "counterterrorism experts," the US State Department never acknowledges the conditions which caused Kurds to begin a legitimate armed struggle. Nor will the Americans ever admit exactly what those conditions are because the Americans eagerly helped to create those conditions and today the Americans eagerly maintain those conditions. The Americans have eagerly given the Ankara regime the weapons systems and training necessary for carrying out genocide, and the Americans continue to eagerly do the very same thing today.

In short, the Americans are guilty of genocide.

The always full-of-shit Justin Raimondo is moaning about Barzanî's refusal to meet with Condi "Chevron" Rice last week, and he gets caught in a huge lie about the bagging incident of 2003. Everyone remembers that Turkish Special Forces were caught by US forces as the Turks were on their way to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kerkuk. Earlier, in April of the same year, Turkish Special Forces were caught as they were smuggling arms to the Iraqi Turkmen Front, a fact which prompted American Col. Mayville to say that the Turks "did not come with a pure heart."

Now, though, the liar Raimondo claims that the Turks were caught by the Americans, in 2003, as they were in "hot pursuit" of PKK, which is a complete lie, especially since PKK had virtually no operations at the time.

Raimondo, yet again, refers to Seymour Hersh's lies of Israel as an ally of PKK. Yes, that's the same Seymour Hersh who gets all his information from prominent members of the Ankara regime, like Abdullah Gül. It's awfully strange that Raimondo harps on the nonexistent Israel-PKK relationship yet never manages to write anything about the intimate relationship between Turkey and Israel, or of the intimate relationship between the Turkish and Israeli lobbies in the US.

That's almost as strange as Raimondo's utter silence on the joint American-Turkish genocide of the Kurdish people. I'm willing to bet that Justin Raimondo and Michael Rubin are twins that were separated at birth.

Also, check the latest from Gordon Taylor at Progressive Historians. He's got something on The $20 Million Sheep Hunt.

I have said repeatedly that the US will not go into the mountains to fight PKK for a number of reasons. The same thing is now being said elsewhere, with the point being that, since 1984, Turkey has had no success in annihilating PKK:

Syrian Middle Eastern expert Sami Moubayed says the US is reluctant to clamp down on the PKK in northern Iraq for a variety of reasons. "They know - thanks to Turkey - how difficult it is to combat a guerilla movement. The Turks have been doing it since the 1970s and they have not succeeded at bring the PKK to its knees - despite the arrest of the party's founder and leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in the 1990s."

Moubayed says if the Turks, who know the terrain and are fighting on their own territory, have been unable to eliminate the PKK, then the US, with its very limited hands-on military experience, certainly will not. "Plus, the Americans already have too much to cope with, combating a Sunni and Shiite insurgency in central Iraq."

Once again, that brings us back to the words of Osman Baydemir that, as everything stands right now, that if the enemies manage to close down PKK as we know it, another organization with the same aims will spring up from the ashes . . . the phoenix that is Our People's Hope.