Turkish troops into Kurdistan

More big news out of Iraq, Turkey has sent more military personnel into the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.

From McClatchy (this is scary, h/t Juan Cole):

Iraqi Kurdish troops on Thursday encircled Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq and threatened to open fire in the most serious standoff between the two nation’s forces since Turkey threatened late last year to go after guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party sheltering in Iraq.

The standoff began when Turkish troops in tanks and armored vehicles left one of five bases they’ve had in Iraq since 1997 and moved to control two main roads in Dohuk province, Iraqi officials said.

Kurdish soldiers from the peshmerga militia, which is loyal to the Kurdish Regional Government, moved to stop them. For an hour and a half, the two sides faced off before the Turkish soldiers retreated to their base, which is about 27 miles northeast of the city of Dohuk. The peshmerga surrounded the base and remained there late Thursday.

The Turkish troop movement was accompanied by artillery and airstrikes that targeted mountain areas held by rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is known by its initials as the PKK. A spokesman for the peshmerga, Jabar Yawar, said the shelling began at about 11 a.m. and continued past midnight. Two bridges were knocked out over the Great Zab River, he said.

No solution to PKK

The Kurdish Terrorist organization which has again struck within Iraq.  On why a military solution against these terrorists is near impossible, from Time.

Regarding the possible responsible response of Turkey’s Prime Minster Erdogan:

But even if Erdogan gave Turkey’s military the green light, going across the border has its problems. The PKK bases in northern Iraq are deep in the mountains, a long way from the Turkish border. The PKK forces are in the remote Qandil Valley near Iran, and the Turkish army would have to penetrate deep into Iraq and travel through several Iraqi cities before reaching it. By that time the PKK’s mobile guerrilla units would have most likely have snuck away to fight another day. And even if the Turkish air force got U.S. permission to cross into Iraq, air strikes have a limited effect on a guerrilla insurgency. Additionally, the attacks against Turkish military and civilians were apparently perpetrated by PKK operators within Turkey.

Moreover:

The reality is that there is no effective military solution for the PKK. The Iraqi government may make a show of cooperating with the Turks, but the Iraqi army can’t even keep Baghdad safe, let alone mount an expedition in northern Iraq. Northern Iraq isn’t even in the Iraqi central government’s military jurisdiction. There are no federal Iraqi soldiers there — just Iraqi Kurdish militia units (the peshmerga) controlled by the largely autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

Furthermore, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders have repeatedly said they aren’t about to send their soldiers off on a treacherous struggle with hardened guerrilla fighters in difficult terrain. Iraq’s Kurds fought the PKK once before in the 1990s, and they’re not looking forward to repeating the ugly experience. Plus, the Iraqi Kurds say their peshmerga are already stretched thin. Besides keeping Arab terrorists out of the KRG, peshmerga are also helping the Iraqi army in Mosul and Baghdad.

This situation has the potential to de-stabilize and destroy the one third of the former country of Iraq that is actually thriving.  And it does not appear at all obvious what to do, whether what is to be done is even feasible, and who would carry out such an operation.