israel wants to use kurds against arabs (kurdistan ping)

[thebigmansentme]

Israelis 'using Kurds to build power base'

Gary Younge in New York Monday June 21, 2004

The Guardian

Israeli military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilise the entire region, according to a report in the New Yorker magazine. The article was written by Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who exposed the abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib. It is sourced primarily to unnamed former and current intelligence officials in Israel, the United States and Turkey.

Israel's aims, according to Hersh, are to build up the Kurdish military strength in order to offset the strength of the Shia militias and to create a base in Iran from which they can spy on Iran's suspected nuclear-making facilities.

"Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way - a balance against Saddam," one former Israeli intelligence officer told the New Yorker. "It's Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The critical question is 'What will the behaviour of Iran be if there is an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel? Iran does not want an Israeli land-based aircraft carrier on its border."

By supporting Kurdish separatists, Israel also risks alienating its Turkish ally and undermining attempts to create a stable Iraq. "If you end up with a divided Iraq it will bring more blood, tears and pain to the Middle East and you will be blamed," a senior Turkish official told Mr Hersh.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4952249-103552,00.html

In the autumn the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak told the US vice president, Dick Cheney, that America had lost in Iraq. Israel "had learned that there's no way to win an occupation," he told Mr Cheney, and the only issue was "choosing the size of your humiliation".

From July last year, argues Mr Hersh, the Israeli government started what one former Israeli intelligence official called "Plan B" in order to protect itself from the fallout of the chaos prompted by America's failure ahead of June 30. If the June 30 transfer of sovereignty does not go well, "there is no fallback, nothing," a former National Security Council member tells Hersh. "The neocons still think they can pull the rabbit out of the hat in Iraq," a former intelligence official says. "What's the plan? They say, 'We don't need it. Democracy is strong enough. We'll work it out.'"

[LittleApple81]

1. If you didn't see him in Wolf's program this morning, there are

links to the transcript. Read it. Is also very good.

[TeeYiYi]

2. kick

TYY:kick: