But over the weekend, the NY Times said the Kurds were going to be important to Iraq's part of the upcoming "surge" plan:
[American officials] said two-thirds of the promised Iraqi force would consist of Kurdish Peshmerga units to be sent from northern Iraq, and they said some doubts remained about whether they would show up in Baghdad and were truly committed to quelling sectarian fighting.
However, the Washington Post says of the plan:
The Defense Ministry spokesman, Mohammed al-Askari, said that no Kurdish militiamen, known as Peshmerga, would be included in the plan. Hasan Suneid, a Shiite lawmaker, said Kurdish soldiers who are part of the Iraqi army would participate.
Now whether these Kurdish soldiers have ties to the Peshmerga militias who've been fighting for Kurdish independence or not would seem hard to trace. But why would any Kurd be interested in coming down to Baghdad to stabilize the place when that might only work against the establishment of a separate independent Kurdish state? I'd wonder if some deal had been made that something like that is already in the works, although the notion of anything being "in the works" in Iraq right now is pretty hard to believe. Thoughts?