An explosion on an Iran-to-Turkey natural gas pipeline outside the Iranian border city of Maku occurred at 11:30 p.m. Sept. 28.
Most Kurdish acts of sabotage on the Iran-Turkey gas pipeline occur in Turkey and are carried out by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has increased attacks on security, government and commercial targets in Kurdish-majority areas of Turkey in recent months. The 1,600 mile pipeline, running from Tabriz to Ankara, is an attractive target for Kurdish guerrillas aiming to strike at the Turkish economy, since it supplies Turkey with more than a third of its annual gas consumption. Turkey most recently experienced natural gas shortages for four days when PKK rebels blew up part of the same pipeline in the Turkish city of Agri in September.While the PKK has sustained its level of operations in Turkey, Kurdish separatist rebels in Iran have largely stayed quiet out of fear of incurring a major crackdown by the Iranian regime. Lacking a viable leadership structure, the Kurdish rebel movement in Iran generally sticks to low-level operations, which draw a stiff response from the Iranian armed forces. The latest pipeline explosion, however, reveals the manner in which the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran can cooperate on some level to further their territorial ambitions through hard-hitting attacks.
Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, made a telling statement Sept. 26 in Washington when he told National Public Radio that Iraq can "make trouble" for its neighbors (e.g., Turkey, Iran and Syria) if they do not stop interfering in his country's internal affairs. With a political arrangement in Baghdad still nowhere in sight, the Kurdish bloc in Iraq has taken the opportunity to push its own demands while Sunni and Shiite factions are deeply consumed in sectarian fighting. The most contentious of the Kurdish demands undoubtedly revolves around the issue of oil revenues in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Despite the lack of federal legislation on how to divide oil revenues among Iraq's three dominant factions, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has pressed forward in talks with oil majors, having even signed an agreement with Norwegian oil company DNO to start producing up to 5,000 barrels per day of oil in northern Iraq beginning the first quarter of 2007. While this outrages Iraq's Oil Ministry, which has said the government does not need to honor previous KRG oil investment deals, the political disarray in Baghdad prevents the center from taking any real action to suppress Kurdish moves to grab oil returns.
With sizable Kurdish populations, Iran and Turkey have been watching these developments closely, and are becoming increasingly alarmed at the rate at which the Iraqi Kurds are asserting their autonomy without restraint. As a result, Tehran and Ankara have coordinated military operations against Kurds on Iraqi soil, with the deepest Iranian incursion taking place Sept. 5 when Iran fired artillery against Kurdish positions near the Iraqi town of Mandali, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. Talabani made it clear during his Washington visit that his patience for such actions is wearing thin, and that Iraq will respond by supporting "opposition forces" within its neighbors' borders, a warning that appears to have been actualized by the late-night pipeline explosion.
The pipeline attack will only strengthen Iran's and Turkey's incentive to work together to curb Kurdish separatist tendencies.
The Kurdish issue also complicates matters for Washington, as U.S. officials are running out of options to contain Iran's expansionist push. Ankara is especially peeved at Washington for not following through with a commitment to help contain the Kurds in Iraq and block support for PKK operations in Turkey. As long as Turkey feels territorially threatened by developments in its Iraqi neighbor, the United States will be hard-pressed to find strong regional allies to help keep the Iranians at bay.