SUNNIS, SHI'A, AND THE BIG, BAD PKK

"Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me.“
~ Senator Trent Lott, R-MS.

The war balance for the month of November is up at the HPG site. In spite of the ceasefire, which was rejected by both the Ankara and Washington regimes, TSK continued its operations against the Kurdish people's defense forces as follows:

Number of contacts: 25

Number of Turkish terrorists killed: 23

Number of our gerîlas captured: 2

Number of our gerîlas killed: 9

We also have confirmation on the Turkish Black Hawk down incident, with a little more information from the hevals at KurdishInfo.

In a retaliation operation, 11 Turkish terrorists were killed, 7 wounded, when their convoy was attacked between Cizîr and Basê in Şirnex.

Actually, quite a bit of activity is going on, so check out HPG. Naturally, the news is also available in Kurdish.


Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston met with Edip Baser in an undisclosed location in Europe today, according to Zaman. They're supposed to be meeting in order to "coordinate" more on the PKK, but I wouldn't be so sure about that. I'm willing to bet that they're ironing out the details of the $10 billion Lockheed Martin F-35 deal. Turkey is due to finish up the paperwork on that by the end of the year, which is fast approaching.

Rastî readers will remember that both the US and Turkey rejected the PKK ceasefire, going so far as to preclude any type of political settlement to the situation of the Kurdish people under Turkish occupation. The rejection came because a political settlement would not be good for Lockheed Martin's bottom line, nor for the bottom line of the defense industry in general.

The War on Terror® itself is nothing but an advertising gimmick to sell more weapons, as reported recently in the NYTimes, on Vancouver Indymedia.

Thanks are in order for a heval who notified me about a news item from AFP, carried on Yahoo:

The separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) could call off a two-month-old unilateral ceasefire with Turkey if Ankara continues to crack down on the rebels and mistreat its Kurdish community, a senior rebel commander said.

"We have put everything on the line to maintain the ceasefire... despite attacks, oppression and acts of elimination against us. In the face of these developments, the ceasefire has rapidly become impossible to implement," Cemil Bayik was quoted by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency as saying on its website.

"Everyone should know that we will reconsider our decision (for a ceasefire)" if the Turkish government does not cease its attacks against PKK rebels, improve the treatment of the Kurdish community and pave the way for dialogue, he added.

[ . . . ]

Ankara's actions since the declaration of the ceasefire "have long ago given us the right to use our legitimate right of defence and retaliation", Bayik said.

"But there is a limit to this. If that limit is exceeded, it will not be accepted and will be met with great resistance," he added.

More on that on Özgür Gündem and in Kurdish at Azadiya Welat.

Notice how the AFP starts the article: "The separatist Kurdistan Workers Party . . . " How separatist can PKK be when it said this in August:

We would like as a movement to emphasize once again that the right solution is a democratic autonomy within the borders of Turkey. We believe that a solution in the unity of Turkey will be for the benefit of firstly the Kurdish people and all the people of the region.

Also note that the AFP article at the Yahoo link ends like this:

More than 37,000 people have been killed since the PKK, classified as a terror organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast.

I call it the "Shit Just Happens" line because every worthless journalist and news agency on the planet always uses that line because they are too stupid to explain WHY Kurds fight. In other words, they never provide context. But standard lines like this one, or the use of "separatist" makes the article conform with the American global War on Terror® bullshit.

There is a real eye-opener on elected officials who are supposed to know what they're doing about the global War on Terror® at Congressional Quarterly. The scary part is that the elected official in question is the Democrats' new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes:

I thought it only right now to pose the same questions to a Democrat, especially one who will take charge of the Intelligence panel come January. The former border patrol agent also sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Reyes stumbled when I asked him a simple question about al Qaeda at the end of a 40-minute interview in his office last week. Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.

We warmed up with a long discussion about intelligence issues and Iraq. And then we veered into terrorism’s major players.

To me, it’s like asking about Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland: Who’s on what side?

The dialogue went like this:

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

[ . . . ]

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah...”

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

“Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

“Poquito,” I said—a little.

“Poquito?! “ He laughed again.

“Go ahead,” I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.

Reyes: “Well, I, uh....”

I apologized for putting him “on the spot a little.” But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now.

It’s been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines.

Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, is close to taking over in Lebanon. Reports say they are helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis in the spiralling civil war.

“Yeah,” Reyes said, rightly observing, “but . . . it’s not like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It’s a heck of a lot more complex.

“And I agree with you — we ought to expend some effort into understanding them. But speaking only for myself, it’s hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories.”

Reyes is not alone.

For more of the same, check the replies to the same questions from FBI officials and other politicians at the NY Times.

For once, I am speechless.