"Bush offers to bomb Kurds"

[Lanya]

What a way to pay back people who have helped us.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22636940-663,00.html

[Plane]

This could be a good idea , the PKK seems to be led by some serious boneheads .

Hw popular are they where they operate?

[BT]

This could be a good idea

Exactly. Will limit the targets to the PKK and not make it a generic Kurd issue.

[Christians4LessGvt]

"What a way to pay back people who have helped us"

yeah that might be kind of like Hussein Obama's plan to attack Pakistan?

[_JS]

This could be a good idea , the PKK seems to be led by some serious boneheads .

Hw popular are they where they operate?

I wouldn't say that the PKK are led by "boneheads" and they are popular and somewhat respected as well, but it varies (of course). The thing to remember is that the PKK has fought for an independent Kurdistan for a very long time and fought against not just Saddam Hussein, but also Turkey, Syria, and Iran (both under the Shah and Ayatollah).

They are basically left-wing nationalists, similar to the PIRA, FARC, or ETA. Turkey is probably right that the Kurdish authorities in Iraq have been soft on the PKK, in the same way that the black-led Mozambique would provide shelter for militant black groups that opposed the white minority governments in South Africa in the late 70's and 80's.

It is complex for the United States because in the past we have supported the Iranian and likely the Syrian elements of the PKK, not so much because we believe in an independent Kurdistan, but just to disrupt governments we do not like.

It should also be noted that Turkey's human rights record, despite their being our allies in the Cold War, is not good and the Kurds in Turkey have not been a well-treated minority by any facet of the imagination. That is not to say that the actions of the PKK are tolerable, but that there are two sides to this story.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The letters PKK stand for Kurdish Communist Party. I don't know how actually Kommunist these bozos are, but they seem to be extremists like the Irish Provos.

It is a myth that all Kurds speak a mutually intelligible language. Sunni Islam and rather weird taste in clothing seem to be the only things all Kurds have in common.

The WHEYS, on the other hand...

[Amianthus]

It is a myth that all Kurds speak a mutually intelligible language. Sunni Islam and rather weird taste in clothing seem to be the only things all Kurds have in common.

Their food is pretty good, though.

[Christians4LessGvt]

"They are basically left-wing nationalists"

JS where are these guys on the Islamist scale?

[_JS]

"They are basically left-wing nationalists"

JS where are these guys on the Islamist scale?

As far as I know they aren't Islamists at all. I think the closest parallel would be the Basque militants of ETA in Spain. Both groups support an independent state based primarily on ethnicity and culture (i.e. nationalism). They both gained a lot of popularity from their own people by fighting against really brutal governments. The ETA fought mostly against Franco, who to put it mildly, loathed the Basque people and their culture. The PKK fought against Saddam Hussein, the Shah, the Ayatollah Khoemeni, and the Assad Ba'athists in Syria.

Both groups have used very brutal and violent tactics and justify that through Leninist contexts (hence their leftism) and just the brutal oppression of their own people. They both use kidnapping, assassination of political and military targets, bomb explosions, and often have little regard for "collateral damage." One difference, if you want to call it that, between the PKK and the Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qaeda is that the PKK tends to target military, police, and border guard targets. But, they aren't above shooting up a bus load of civilians either.