While the United States searches for a solution to the ongoing war in Iraq, another conflict is brewing presenting a grave new threat to the country's only stable region. Turkish forces have amassed along the northern border of Iraqi Kurdistan threatening invasion under the pretext that Kurdish rebels are launching attacks from Iraqi territory.

Iraqi Kurdish politicians accuse the Turkish government of using any excuse to hasten its ultimate goal of controlling the fate of Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Despite this dangerous rise in tensions, the United States has employed a foreign policy that seems to further provoke this conflict. The results of such provocations can only add to the serious instabilities that exist throughout the Middle East.

For the past year, the Turkish military has been targeting positions held by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the mountains along the Turkish-Iraqi border. While the PKK is a rebel group, for the past 22 years it has fought for greater political, social and economic rights for ethnic Kurds in Turkey.

The irony here lies in the fact that Iraqi Kurds allied themselves with the U.S. in the war in Iraq. Prepared in ways other regions of Iraq were not, the Kurds' autonomous administration in the Iraqi Kurdistan region with their own Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and their army of 140,000 troops separate from that of the central government provided help in ways other Iraqis couldn't. Indeed, to this day, the Iraqi Kurdistan region remains almost entirely unaffected by the war in southern Iraq and U.S. soldiers are greeted rather than attacked when visiting this stable part of the country.

Despite these facts, the U.S. Administration remains curiously quiet in regards to their Turkish NATO ally and is only further arming an ever-growing conflict. The threats coming from Turkey have become a major cause of concern for Iraqi Kurds who have more to lose when considering their political achievements in Iraq.

With the PKK ceasefire, a chance for a political settlement between Turkey and the Kurds has never been so close. The U.S. could play a pivotal role in finding a peaceful solution. However, with current U.S. foreign policy, Iraqi Kurds may soon be forced to abandon the significant help they are providing the U.S. and the Iraqi army to engage in a long conflict of their own.