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<P><FONT size=2>From: Thiago Oppermann<BR><BR>Why were the PKK up in arms in the
first place? Wasn't there a fairly solid history of repression? So -
couldn't the government have avoided a lot of the bloodletting by negotiating ,
avoiding the nasty factionalisation that comes with civil war? Or was the PKK
simply not in the game for negotiations? If the PKK demands were reasonable, or
if the government could have undercut their support by easing off on the Kurds,
then the responsibility for 10K government deaths isn't to be laid only at the
PKK's feet. Do you think there is a case, even an only partially justified
case, for Kurdish insurrection? Forgive me if I find the example of Kurds
mourning a policeman to be insufficient evidence of non-support for the PKK and,
more broadly, independence.<BR><BR>-----------------<BR><BR><BR><BR>As for
Ocalan's dodgy credentials - isn't there even a remote possibility that
free Kurdistan in Turkey could look like the semi-free Kurdistan in Iraq? Those
guys in Iraq were even more sectarian than the PKK before we started funnelling
huge wads of cash to them. The upshot of this is that had the PKK won,
perhaps the result would not be utterly terrible - at least that is not the
precedent apparently set by the semi-free Kurds in Iraq now...<BR><BR>Also,
isn't dismantling, or even discrediting the PKK a big gamble? Even if it is a
pretty perverse Worker's Party, doesn't it at least talk the secularist talk?
Won't destroying them drive people towards the more millenarian fundamentalists
- like pretty much everywhere else in the middle east? Or am I overestimating
the PKK's support?<BR><BR>Another question entirely is why drug running is so
bad - isn't it at least none of our business if the FARC or PKK are running
drugs? Isn't this a demand-side problem? They would probably be selling tulips
if they had better terms of trade on those. What do they care if some kid in
London gets addicted to smack?<BR><BR>Thiago Oppermann</FONT> </P></BODY></HTML>