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Pro-Kurd analysts
want US redeployment in N. Iraq
Saturday, October 21, 2006
'Bush screwed up Iraq, and Kurds love him
for that,' Galbraith says
ÜMİT ENGİNSOY
WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News
As U.S. President George W. Bush's administration faces mounting
political pressure to change its failing Iraq strategy,
pro-Kurdish analysts here have stepped up efforts to ersuade
Washington to redeploy U.S. troops in the violence-stricken
country to a Kurdish-controlled region in the north "There's
nothing the United States can do to stop the civil war in Iraq,"
said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and an
adviser to Iraqi Kurdish leaders Galbraith said the United
States should withdraw its forces from the Shiite-controlled
south and central areas, including Baghdad -- scene of a
mounting sectarian conflict and a Sunni Arab insurgency -- and
redeploy them in the "friendly Kurdistan."
"We should pull out of southern Iraq immediately, out of Baghdad
fairly quickly ... and redeploy to Kurdistan," he told a panel
at the Cato Institute, a think tank here, on Thursday. "I
suggest that we redeploy to Kurdistan, we have allies there.
We'll be welcomed in Kurdistan Galbraith dismissed concerns that
a U.S. pullout from southern Iraq would mean full Iranian
domination in the greater region. "A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq
will not increase Iran's influence because we have already
turned much of the country over to the Iranians," he said.
He said Iraq effectively was divided irreversibly and that the
Kurds would like to exit formally as soon the international
situation allowed U.S. forces redeployed in "Kurdistan" could be
used to strike insurgents in nearby Sunni areas if al-Qaeda
sought to create a safe haven there, he said Galbraith said that
Bush was very popular in northern Iraq for things he was very
much disliked elsewhere, particularly in the United States.
"Bush screwed up Iraq, and the Kurds love him for that," he said
Galbraith is not alone in seeking to move the U.S. military
presence to the Kurdish areas Zachary Shore, a professor of
national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, also
said U.S. troops should be moved to northern Iraq. This strategy
would allow the United States to continue training Iraqi forces,
while at the same time helping build up the infrastructure in
the "relatively successful, quasi-independent Kurdish region,"
he told San Francisco hronicle Also National Interest magazine
editor Nicholas Gvosdev told the newspaper that stationing U.S.
troops along Iraq's borders would prevent neighboring powers
from sending arms and fighters into Iraq Many in the U.S.
capital are waiting for the recommendations of the Iraq Study
Group, a bipartisan panel co-chaired by former secretary of
state James Baker, a Republican, and former lawmaker Lee
Hamilton, a Democrat. Both Baker and Hamilton have made it clear
that they do not see the current Iraq policy as working --
though they do not plan to issue recommendations until well
after the midterm elections on Nov. 7 Asked by the TDN if he
were consulted by the Iraq Study Group, Galbraith said the
principals -- meaning Baker and Hamilton -- had not asked to
meet him, but that he had talked with the expert group. That he
has not met with Baker, "I think, will be seen as good news in
Turkey," he joked Galbraith reiterated earlier remarks that
Turkey, although it was not happy with the prospect of having to
see an independent Kurdish state, had no feasible options to
stop that development Any Turkish military incursion to stop
Iraqi Kurdish independence would rupture ties with the United
Nations and make sure that Ankara would not be allowed to join
the European Union "in this century," he said.
Galbraith, instead, suggested that there was an increasingly
receptive and "realistic" attitude in Turkey toward an
independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
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