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AF providing intel for strikes on Kurd rebels

If Turkey strikes Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as planned, the U.S. Air Force is likely to play a subdued or perhaps covert role, experts say. In fact, it’s already providing intel.

Turkish leaders have clamored for attacks on Kurdish nationalist rebels — guerrilla-style fighters known as the “PKK” — since they began crossing into Turkey in October to carry out shoot-and-run attacks. The rebels have killed more than 40 Turkish soldiers. This has placed American political and military decision-makers — the Kurds’ de facto guardians — in a tricky position. Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurd region and Turkey, which share a mountainous border and a long-simmering territory dispute, are both vital U.S. allies.

Turkey is a NATO partner, a partner in stabilizing war-scarred Afghanistan and home to Incirlik Air Base, near the Mediterranean shore. The northwestern corner of Iraq, where the Kurds have been semiautonomous since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, is the country’s most stable and America-friendly region, especially after the Kurds suffered genocide at the hands of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Strongly backing one side, experts say, would sacrifice the U.S. military’s strategic dependence on the other.

An American military solution, experts say, would rely on operations in the Air Force’s domain: covert jet strikes against the PKK or, much more likely, feeding Turks reconnaissance gathered by spy planes, unmanned aerial vehicles or satellites.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell has said U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance planes are already providing real-time intel to Turkish forces, and U.S. Air Force authorities are coordinating with the Turks to get prior notice of any Turkish border strikes. The U.S. Air Force’s precise role is unknown.

“I think it depends on how covert the participation can be,” said Guy Ben-Ari, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank focusing on global defense issues. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after a Nov. 5 White House meeting with President Bush about the budding conflict, visited the center’s headquarters for a similar discussion.

“A jet with U.S. Air Force insignia? Probably not,” Ben-Ari said. “A satellite relaying data to a Turkish operations base? Much easier and much more covert. A UAV flying at 50,000 feet and assisting in the guidance of certain munitions, I can see that, too. There are many options.”

The ragged PKK fighters, who desire an independent Kurdistan that would include parts of what are now Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, train and plan in impossibly remote mountain hideaways. Roads seldom link their camps to the outside world.

Turkey has amassed more than 100,000 troops on the Iraq border, ready to penetrate the craggy landscape and attack the estimated 3,000 or so PKK militants. But, in their D.C. meeting, Bush cautioned Erdogan against large-scale ground operations that could swell into a regional crisis. He did, however, approve of limited, strategic strikes from Turkey’s military.

“Nobody told us not to launch a military operation,” Erdogan later told the Turkish television news channel NTV. “They just told us we were right.”

Some leaders within the U.S. military have openly regretted a lack of focus on the PKK, most notably retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, who recently quit his position as special envoy for countering the PKK over frustrations that the U.S., Turkey and Iraq’s fledgling government have been deficient in addressing Kurdish rebels. Ralston, formerly the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, declined an Air Force Times interview request.

Although Turkey may possess stronger intelligence about PKK whereabouts, its forces lack the American military’s eye-in-the-sky assets. The U.S. Air Force likely has already started sharing intel with the Turks, who run a capable fleet of F-16s with air-to-ground capabilities, Ben-Ari said.

“It’s not enough to have the hardware and the manpower,” he said. “Turkey’s ability to generate real-time, actionable intelligence is limited. They don’t have Global Hawks. They don’t have spy satellites. They don’t have reconnaissance aircraft to provide constant coverage of this vast region. They’ll rely heavily on the U.S. for these assets.”

Much of Turkey harbors bitterness not just against the PKK, but against the U.S. forces that, in their view, destabilized Iraq and unwittingly presented the rebels with a rebuilding opportunity amidst the chaos, said Sam Brannen, another expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who met with the Turkish prime minister.

The “Hood Event” of July 4, 2003 — in which Turkish Special Forces and civilians were hooded, detained and interrogated by U.S. Army soldiers raiding a safe house to foil an assassination plot against Kurdish leaders — only deepened the distrust.

“This was a moment of national humiliation for the Turks,” Brannen said. The event even spawned a 2006 Rambo-style vengeance film, “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq,” in which a Turkish officer attempts to place a sack on an American commander’s head and trot him through the streets. The movie, Turkey’s most expensive film to date, drew record crowds across the country.

America’s allegiance to Turkey is crucial to sustaining Incirlik Air Base, a hub just a few hours’ flight from Iraqi combat zones, which has proved instrumental for cargo and troop movement. Militarily, it is perhaps Turkey’s biggest bargaining chip with the U.S. Its presence was briefly called into question during the Hood Event.

“If Turkey cuts off Incirlik, it’s the end of our relationship — under this administration, at least,” Brannen said. “It’s really a canary in the coal mine for the entire relationship.”

Though both Turkey and the U.S. military hope for a crippled PKK, which has killed thousands of Turks since its late-1970s inception, experts doubt American troops will soon focus on the highlands of Kurdistan, among Iraq’s least bloody corners.

Only a well-crafted political process, Ben-Ari said, will resolve the Kurds’ long-term demands.

“This is a classic example of a problem you can’t make go away strictly with military action,” he said.