The increasingly dangerous crisis stemming from attacks on Turkey by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels based in northern Iraq is yet another by-product of the United States’ fatally flawed polices in the Middle East.
Starting with its refusal to heed the warnings of friends that the invasion of Iraq would cause far more problems than it might solve, Washington has made the wrong choice at virtually every turn.
In Turkey’s case the situation has been compounded by the fact that, far from having addressed its ally’s concerns about northern Iraq becoming a safe haven for Kurdish rebels, US President George W. Bush and his administration have made matters worse.
For one thing, shortly after overthrowing Saddam’s regime in 2003, the Americans disbanded the Iraqi Army, the one institution that might have prevented the vacuum that has allowed all sorts of armed groups--Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish--to gain power and influence.
For another, they have looked the other way as the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq has undermined national cohesion by going it alone on a variety of issues. In addition, as part of the Bush administration’s policy of destabilizing and provoking Iran, Washington has helped to arm the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK). With the PKK facing few checks on its behavior and having easy access to plenty of PEJAK’s arms, an intensification of attacks on Turkey was almost inevitable.
As though making possible--and even providing material assistance for--the PKK’s increasing boldness were not sufficiently unhelpful, Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, have not even done much in terms of trying to rectify the situation.
To be fair, they have few options: US forces on the ground in Iraq are already badly over-stretched and have only a token presence in the Kurdish areas; Iraq’s own military and police can barely handle their current role supporting a US crackdown on insurgents; and Iraqi Kurdistan’s security forces are composed of Peshmerga guerrillas with a long history of collaborating with both the PKK and PEJAK.
It is difficult to feel much sympathy for Bush. In fact, given the constant US propaganda accusing Iran and Syria of failing to stop insurgents from crossing their respective borders with Iraq to join the insurgency, it is ironic that Washington and the government it has cultivated in Baghdad are powerless to police Iraq’s border with Turkey.
Then there is the obligatory double standard: While America encouraged Israeli regime to destroy Lebanon after Hizbullah captured two of the Israeli occupation regime’s troops and killed eight others in July 2006, it has pressured Turkey to show restraint after losing dozens of soldiers in the past few weeks and thousands since the mid-1980s.
All of this would not be nearly so damaging if Turkey were not the bulwark of regional security and stability that it is and if it had not made so many sacrifices for the sake of its pro-Western stance.
Ankara is a uniquely qualified interlocutor between the Middle East and the European Union, regardless of whether its bid for membership in the bloc ever succeeds; it also constitutes an imperfect but encouraging model for the secular democracy that Bush has said he wants to see spread across the Arab and Islamic worlds; Turkey even maintains a relatively close relationship with Israel that suits Washington’s strategy in the region but poses considerable obstacles for Ankara’s relations with dozens of countries.
DAILYSTAR.COM.LB

It would be easy to buy into Mikhail Saakashvili’s claims that Russian agents are responsible for the latest crisis in Georgia. The president’s strong pro-US and pro-Nato stance intensely irritates Moscow and relations between the two countries are dire. Russia routinely exploits separatist and border tensions, and a key oil pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia undermines Kremlin efforts to monopolise energy supplies to the west from the Caspian basin.
But leaders of Georgia’s recently formed 10-party opposition coalition, and this week’s street demonstrators, do not dispute the country’s pro-western orientation, which most Georgians, ever wary of Russia, support. They say their focus is domestic: jobs, wealth inequalities, corruption, a weak judicial system, rights abuses, and what is seen as the excitable authoritarianism of Mr Saakashvili himself.
The opposition’s slogan - “Georgia without a president“ - refers to proposals to hold early elections and change the constitution, possibly by restoring the monarchy. But it also represents a personal rejection of Mr Saakashvili, whose political hero is Margaret Thatcher. Four years after he helped lead the so-called rose revolution and initiated an era of breakneck social and economic change, many Georgians appear deeply discomfited by the resulting upheavals.
Officials had been arguing for days that the street demonstrations were a function of a normal, healthy democracy. Then they suddenly changed their tune. Perhaps the police violence shocked them. In any case, the ensuing state of emergency was justified with claims of a long-nurtured, Moscow-orchestrated coup plotted by “dark forces“.
No evidence has been produced to back the charge and Russia predictably dismissed it out of hand, although it is likely to retaliate for the opportunistic expulsion of three diplomats. More important in the short term is whether the Bush administration, which views Georgia as a paradigm of reform in the post-Soviet sphere, accepts the government’s claims. If it does, that may open up another dangerous front in an already expanding, global Washington-Moscow confrontation.
The opposition has rejected the Russian coup theory, warning that card has been played too often and that the US is too uncritical in its support for Mr Saakashvili. “Beacon of democracy? For four years they did not question anything that Saakashvili was doing,“ said Tina Khidasheli, an opposition leader who told the Washington Post she had been beaten by riot police. “The shining of democracy was in the streets today.“
Other demonstrators predicted that by ordering the use of force against civilians, Mr Saakashvili had crossed a line from which there was no coming back. Marina Kuparadze told reporters she had supported the president in 2003 but would do so no more. “After what he did today he has in fact become a political corpse.“
The opposition coalition, the National Council of Unified Public Movement, was formed after a former defence minister, Irakli Okruashvili, made sensational allegations of murder and corruption against Mr Saakashvili. He was arrested, publicly recanted and then left the country in circumstances that are still disputed. The affair dramatically underscored concerns about abuse of power and the rule of law.
A coalition manifesto unveiled last month accused the president and his “corrupt team“ of “usurping power“, said the country’s economic situation was “grave“ and claimed “political terror reigns“. It called for a US-style separation of powers, the release of all political prisoners, guarantees of media freedoms and an investigation into the death of a former prime minister in 2005. Opposition leaders recently visited Washington to press their case.
Notwithstanding this growing agitation, Mr Saakashvili says he remains more popular than his rivals. “The latest polls show 40% support and the closest opposition party has only 10%. If elections were held tomorrow, we could take up to 65% of seats in parliament,“ he told Pavel Felgenhauer in the Eurasia Daily Monitor last weekend.
As a result of government policies, supporters say, the economy is growing fast, tax receipts and foreign investment are up, and defence spending, in response to the Russian threat, is also rising sharply. Western diplomats, while conceding Georgia has a long way to go, claim to be impressed by the country’s overall progress and say opposition and government should stop trying to score points at the other’s expense.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Russia’s 53rd Antarctic Expedition began in the small hours of November 6. The “Akademik Fyodorov“ research vessel is sailing to the Antarctic in bad political weather that threatens to deteriorate into a geopolitical tornado.
On October 17 the Guardian, a British newspaper, cited Foreign Office sources as saying that the U.K. government might lodge a legal claim with the UN’s commission on the limits of the continental shelf “to extend sovereign territory into new areas.“
Argentina promptly replied to the challenge. Its Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said his country would also claim part of the “Antarctic pie,“ including the controversial territory around the Falkland Islands, which Argentina attempted to take from Britain by force in 1982.
The next to join the melee was Chile. A week after the article in the Guardian, the Chilean government announced it would reopen its mothballed Captain Arturo Prat naval base in the Antarctic next spring.
China announced that the “Snow Dragon,“ a third-generation icebreaker, would be dispatched to the Antarctic in mid-November to modernize the two Chinese stations and start building a third one.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, referring to information from the web site of the British Foreign Office, said that Russia was against the division of the Antarctic on the basis of unilateral territorial claims.
According to the October 19 statement by the U.K. Foreign Office, Britain “is considering submitting five claims to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) for the extension of the continental shelf“ before May 2009. “U.K. jurisdiction in these areas, if internationally agreed, would help protect these areas from uncontrolled environmental damage,“ the statement said.
This is a telling statement, especially since it was published on the Foreign Office’s site two days after the article in the Guardian.
The site also provides information about the so-called British Antarctic Territory, an area of more than 1.7 million square kilometers (666,000 square miles), to which London now intends to add huge shelf areas.
Britain made the first territorial claim to part of Antarctica in 1908, by Letters Patent. It has maintained a permanent presence in the British Antarctic Territory since 1943. The currency is pounds sterling, and the administration is led by Commissioner Robert Leigh Turner. So if you want to travel to the southern continent, request a visa at a British embassy.
At least a dozen countries laid claim to Antarctic areas before the Antarctic Treaty was adopted in 1959.
In 1938, Germany set up the New Schwaben Land base on an area of 600,000 square kilometers on the Atlantic shore of Queen Maud Land. It is rumored that the Nazis conducted nuclear research there, and that Hitler and some of his comrades took refuge there after World War II.
Some even claim that German engineers designed “flying saucers“ there. But these myths cannot be confirmed or dispelled, because documents about New Schwaben Land were destroyed after the war.
The United States and Russia have so far not laid claim to territory in the Antarctic, although they proclaimed it a zone of their interests. But if current disputes continue, they will have to intervene. In fact, they have already started preparing for possible debates.
On October 31, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and submitted it to the Senate for final consideration, arguing that this would give the United States a free hand in the battle for the shelf.
This is what I mean by “bad weather“ for 53rd Russian expedition, which went to the southern continent to reopen the Russkaya and Leningradskaya research stations, closed for lack of funds in the 1980s.
Vyacheslav Martyanov, head of the expedition, said the construction of “a new Russian outpost in the Antarctic“ at the Progress station would be financed by the end of the year. The Russian government has also increased allocations for the Antarctic program by 15%, to 2.4 billion rubles ($97.9 million).
Artur Chilingarov, deputy speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, will find it difficult to keep away from the Antarctic. He always goes where there are problems, although he is often the one who creates them, as when he planted the Russian titanium flag into the seabed beneath the North Pole.
Chilingarov has announced his intention to spend the Christmas holiday in the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility, the point on the Antarctic continent most distant from the ocean.
I believe that another Russian traveler, Fyodor Konyukhov, has a more sensible idea. He plans to take part in the January yachting race around the southern continent. A much better plan than inciting a race of less innocent vessels.
Maxim Krans
RIANOVOSTI.COM

It’s almost nine years since NATO air strikes freed Kosovar Albanians from Serbian control, yet the official status of the province is still undecided. A deadline of Dec. 10 has been set for the diplomatic process to deliver. It’s expected to fail, after which Kosovo’s semi-autonomous government says it will make a unilateral declaration of independence.
While Kosovo was a defining issue of post-Cold War global leadership, there is now a gaping silence from all global powers--except Russia--on an acceptable way forward. Kosovo’s two million citizens interpret this as a signal that the United States and much of Europe would support its independence.
Kosovo, therefore, is in danger of falling victim to the type of opaque diplomacy that has been behind some of the gravest global conflicts. One of the more recent is Saddam Hussein’s belief that the United States would not object to Iraq’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait.
Too much is at stake for international policy to be misread again. The West must declare clearly what it will or will not do if Kosovo declares independence, and it must avoid enveloping Kosovo in a clash with Russia.
Since the NATO intervention in 1999, the United Nations has administered Kosovo. Stability remains underwritten by a 16,000-strong international force, and apart from a surge of anti-Serb unrest in 2004 and sporadic ethnic attacks, Kosovo is seen as an intervention success story.
In January, the UN special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, put forward proposals that would allow Kosovo official separation from Serbia. He deliberately avoided using words such as “independence“ or “sovereignty.“ The new nation would be monitored by the European Union and the international military force would stay. In many respects, it would be similar to the status quo.
Serbia rejected the proposals, saying it would never accept Kosovo’s separation. Russia gave this its full support.
Serbia insists that it should not be punished for the atrocities of a former dictator. The brutality of the 1990s was carried out under the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, they say; Serbia is now a democracy and the issue should end there.
Russia’s blunt declaration, however, has taken the question of Kosovo’s status to a higher level. What began as a humanitarian mission to stop ethnic-cleansing has become part of a new balance of power in Europe. Kosovo’s future is linked to the Czech and Polish missile defense-shield dispute, energy supplies, and a basket of issues on which a revitalized Kremlin is testing the will of the European Union and the United States.
The entire EU is unlikely to accept Kosovo’s independence because of opposition from governments in Greece, Cyprus, Romania and others. Without UN or EU recognition, the new Kosovo might have less legitimacy than the present one.
Opinion polls have found that more and more Serbs are questioning where their future lies. At present, they are split 50-50 between Russia and the EU. But, increasingly, Moscow is seen to be delivering more than Brussels, particularly by way of security and a sense of belonging.
IHT.COM