The much anticipated Petraeus report is becoming increasingly irrelevant as political developments in Iraq overtake it. The General has said that there is no military solution to Iraq's lack of political cohesiveness. The presumptive unity government of Nouri Al Maliki continues to crumble in Baghdad. Five cabinet ministers of the moderate, secular Iraqiya coalition have pulled out of cabinet meetings, joining six Sunni ministers who began a boycott last week. These defections bring the total number of ministers detaching themselves from the Shitte lead government coalition to seventeen.
Meanwhile in autonomous Kurdistan, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) prompted more threats from Turkish nationalists to cross the border and engage them in Iraq. Turkey has massed thousands of troops along its southern borders in preparation for such an incursion. The PKK has been fighting for a Kurdish ethnic homeland since 1984 although its origins go back to the seventies. Eighty Turkish soldiers have died in skirmishes. There have been conflicting reports that the US is arming the Iranian branch of the Party (PJAK) in its fight against Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the northern Kurdistan province of Iran. Al Maliki promised Turkish officials in a memorandum signed during his visit to Ankara to take action against the 4,000 or so separatists, but in reality his splintering government can do very little to stop either the PKK or the Turkish military. Kurdistan will, no doubt, seek complete independence from Iraq when Kurdish leaders believe the timing is most favorable.