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Fahrenheit 2007

HELD breaths in Washington and Baghdad betray growing fear that the latest Kurdish rebel assault across the Turkish border that wasted a dozen soldiers might prove the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Erdogan has so far resisted trigger-happy temptation, but mounting attacks mean he will not be able to fend off growing domestic demand for an attack on PKK hideouts in Iraq’s Kurdish mountains.

As argued in this space before, Bush and Maliki administrations are right in calling for talks to defuse the crisis. But they are wrong in not following up the justified proposal with concrete actions that can lend credibility to their diplomacy. Surely Iraq’s occupying forces and central government realise well the importance of keeping the relative calm in the Kurdish north. The instability there is chiefly political, with the administration not recognising the government in Baghdad. But for violence to flare up there risks plunging yet another oil rich area into chaos, with potential catastrophic spillovers.

It is unfortunate that on both counts, straightening out Kurdish disobedience and sorting out the PKK phenomenon, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, has remained largely mute. Himself a prominent Kurd, he should bear greater responsibility in cooling down the tempers.

The present state of affairs in the Middle East is already unprecedented in many ways. Expanding the conflict will only have compound negative effects. Yet all parties concerned seem only to facilitate the combined sleepwalk into the nightmare.

Also, the Kurdish question has popped up at a time of nerve-testing confrontation over the Iranian uranium enrichment drive. Had it not been for Russian and Chinese influence countering the Western push, the collective Gulf outlook would have been a lot duller. Of course, restraint has not been in excess supply in that equation either, with Washington refusing to rule out “all options” and Teheran boasting how many thousands of rockets it can send airborne within a minute. Clearly, 2007 has been one of the most trying years for the Middle East.

There is still time to keep an uglier account of present happenings from tomorrow’s history books. And that requires sanity prevailing in opinion making circles. When all parties are bent upon confrontation, blood invariably flows. The need of the hour is purposeful talks, which require sincere gestures of give and take.