Newsweek
By Peter Galbraith
September 24, 2007
Qandil mountain is an unusual trouble spot. Straddling the Iran-Iraq border in the Kurdish regions of both countries, it is inaccessible and inhospitable. When I drove up the mountain in 1992, valleys with scorching summer temperatures gave way to large snowfields. At the time, Qandil was home base for a Western-oriented Kurdish democratic movement that infiltrated political activists and guerrilla fighters into Iranian Kurdistan. Today that base is used by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a separatist group on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations for attacks in Turkey , and PJAK, its Iranian branch. Though the Petraeus and Crocker testimony last week focused on violence in and around Baghdad , the Kurdish border regions pose an explosive threat that could embroil Iran , Turkey , Iraq and the United States . Full Text
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