But lawmakers as well as American military commanders are concerned by violence in Iraq, particularly about the possibility that tensions between Arabs and Kurds could expand into widespread violence.

VOA: standard.2009.09.10

Besides the threat from cross-border raids by Turkish Kurd guerrillas based in Iraq, the Turks fear that the Kurds in the autonomous enclave in northern Iraq might take advantage of Iraq's chaotic situation and declare an independent Kurdistan, which would then cast covetous eyes on Turkey's sizeable Kurdish areas (see map above).

ECONOMIST: Finally, a new UN resolution

In 1996 he raided the supposed sanctuary of the Kurds in northern Iraq.

FORBES: Eliminating This Evil

The allied intervention in northern Iraq in 1991 to save the Kurds, and the imposition of a no-fly zone in southern Iraq to save the Shia Muslims there, were undertaken without explicit authorisation by a Security Council resolution, but were also widely accepted as legitimate.

ECONOMIST: Law and right