Turkey Shells Kurd Rebels in Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Turkey-Iraq.html?hp

This day was always coming, ever since the end of Gulf War I when the no-fly zone was declared.

Perhaps the Turks, knowing they would someday need unimpeded access to their border with Iraq, factored that into their refusal to stage the fourth infantry division in the ethnically kurdish lands at their intersection with Iraqi Kurdistan.

How inconvenient it would have been to have the stockpiles and rear echelons of a full infantry division between the them and the offending Kurds.

The initiative is always with the guerilla in these circumstances, since the adjoining state must respond to security threats to its own citizens on the state side of the border, and is almost guaranteed to do so ham handedly.

The Turkish ambassador may harangue al-Maliki to his hearts content. When the land on the non-state side has been carved out of the normal monopoly on legitimate use of force that attaches to 21st century sovereignty, the accountability that is implicit in high-level discussions is absent, and so is any impact to those discussions.

Consider, after all, that the peshmerga are not about to give up the PKK, and if al-Maliki were to visit Irbil, he could not fly the Iraqi flag on the radio antenna of his limo.

We are out of leverage in this situation, and have not one, not two, but THREE clients at cross-purposes.

"Freedom's on th' MARCH!"