Jason Ditz talks about the Turkish attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq, which have taken the form of both land assaults and periodic airstrikes. These incursions began around the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, and have seen little resistance from the Iraqi government. Ditz also discusses the border dispute between India and China, which has long been simmering and recently erupted into hand-to-hand violence that killed several dozen soldiers on both sides. Ditz thinks the killing is over for the time being, but is concerned about the future of the conflict, given both countries’ age-old animosity and their possession of nuclear weapons.

Discussed on the show:

“Turkey Launches Ground Offensive Against Kurds in Northern Iraq” (Antiwar.com)

“6/19/20 Eric Margolis on the World’s Most Dangerous Border Dispute” (The Libertarian Institute)

Jason Ditz is the news editor of Antiwar.com. Read all of his work at news.antiwar.com and follow him on Twitter @jasonditz.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBk-G-A32GI

The following is an automatically generated transcript.

Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, y'all welcome it's Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. Okay, guys on the line, I've got Jason ditz. He's the news editor at antiwar.com news.antiwar.com. And he's got a whole series on this extremely important series of events. Man I said series twice in a row like that. That's just terrible. A bunch of stuff happened. Turkey attack the PKK than Iraq. And then so did Iran. Huh. Welcome back to the show, Jason, how you doing?

Jason Ditz 1:04

I'm doing good. Scott. How are you?

Scott Horton 1:06

I'm doing great. So June 17. You wrote this thing. Turkey launches ground offensive against Kurds in northern Iraq. And so who's who and what do they fight about?

Jason Ditz 1:17

Well, this has happened. Honestly, a lot. Turkey's been at war with the PKK, who are Kurdish separatists since the 80s. They consider them terrorists like they consider most Kurdish groups. And a few years ago, there was a very brief ceasefire that was supposed to lead to peace talks in Turkey. And as part of that ceasefire deal, the PKK sent a lot of their forces into northern Iraq like the the really just barely still Iraq, Northern Part of the country of Iraqi Kurdistan officials really didn't seem to mind at the time they thought they were helping out a regional ally. But ever since that a ceasefire collapsed, which was seems like a few weeks after it started, a turkey has been attacking the PKK in northern Iraq for fairly regularly at least once a year. And this time, what's different is they're doing the same, you know, send some ground troops in an attack. But Iran has actually gotten involved, to some extent firing some rockets and artillery at the PKK as well.

Scott Horton 2:57

As Do you know, is there a recent crackdown on PJAK inside Iran or something like that.

Jason Ditz 3:03

There were there were reports of it a few weeks before this started