The Challenges Of Terrorism - Iraq, Part 48 - A Turkish-US Role In The North.

Turkey, Iraq's central government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the US are establishing a joint operation centre in the Kurdish capital of Erbil. In this centre, the four parties will share intelligence aimed at stopping attacks by Turkey's separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) from northern Iraqi soil. This is part of an agreement reached earlier in August between Ankara and Baghdad whereby Turkey will send more water to drought-stricken Iraq, in return for joint measures to end PKK's presence in Iraqi Kurdistan's mountains. In parallel, Ankara and Erbil have an agreement on boosting bilateral economic and political relations.

The armed forces of Israel, Turkey and the US recently conducted joint exercises in the east Mediterranean. This was part of a geo-strategic co-operation pact they signed in the 1990s. In accordance with all these agreements, Turkey is expanding its role in the Greater Middle East (GME) with the support of NATO and the Saudi-led Sunni camp in the Muslim world, which includes the Afghanistan/Pakistan (AfPak) front (see news8AfPakAug24-09).

This will counter the Iran-led axis of anti-US/anti-Israel forces in the GME. Ankara has quietly turned down a Tehran call for Turkey and Iraq to join the axis. The call was made on Aug. 19 by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei during talks in Tehran with visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite/Ba'thist regime is part of the Iran-led axis. The purpose of Assad's visit was to brief Iran's leaders on the outcome of his earlier talks in Damascus with a visiting US military team, with the latter wanting Syria to end infiltration into Iraq by Neo-Salafi and Ba'thist insurgents (see below).

Developments in Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran are having different effects on the challenges of terrorism in Iraq and the challenges being faced by Baghdad. Each of these three factors reflects geo-strategic developments in the GME, by far the world's largest energy reservoir stretching from south-eastern Russia to the AfPak front. Energy and terrorism in the GME are the most important factors to the global economy's future.

Iraq's Ja'fari Shi'ite PM Nuri al-Maleki is embarked on reforms aimed at shifting the process from consensus politics (a totalitarian formula applied in Iran and Syria, for example) to real democracy where the rule should emanate from the majority in the country's Council of Representatives (parliament). Now the focus in Iraq is also on the way Iran's Ja'fari theocracy is dealing with its crisis over what is claimed to be a grossly rigged June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to a second four-year term. Iran's challenge is whether or not its Wilayat ul-Faqih (WuF) concept will survive the crisis (as explained in Part 46 in sbme6IrqFocusOnIrn'sWuF-Jun29-09).

Lebanon is to become a member of the UNSC from Jan. 1, 2010. So Beirut next year will be a magnet for inter-Arab politics and international diplomacy. Most of the actions of the Lebanese government, which is yet to be formed, will help set the course for the GME, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt now resolved to put their weight behind a cabinet to be headed by Sa'd al-Hariri. The shape of Hariri's cabinet will indicate which of the two rival GME camps, the Iran-led axis or the Saudi-led Sunni front, will hold the balance of power in this considerably vital part of the globe (see news3LbSauEgSyIrnJuly20-09).

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