Sept. 24, 2007 | By Peter Galbraith 

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.

The PKK fought a 15-year war with Turkey that ended in 1999 with the capture of its leader Abdullah Ocalan. PKK remnants then fled to Qandil; ever since, Turkey has accused them of terrorist attacks and threatened to send troops against them. Iran has made the same accusations against PJAK, retaliated by shelling Kurdish border villages, and last week also threatened to send troops into Iraq.

All parties act as if the Kurds on Qandil were someone else's problem. Iran and Turkey demand that the Iraqi government stop the cross-border attacks. But the Iraqi government has no presence within a hundred miles of Qandil, which is in territory nominally controlled by Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government. For its part, the regional government has neither the stomach to battle fellow Kurds nor the helicopters to reach the remote Qandil base.

The United States, on the other hand, has the military power to dislodge both the PKK and the PJAK, but the last thing Washington needs now is to open a new front in the Iraq War. The Bush administration has told Ankara it sympathizes with its concerns but has no resources to strike the PKK. Meanwhile, the Iranians accuse the United States of supporting PJAK, a charge Washington denies.

The Bush administration has appointed Gen. Joe Ralston, the former NATO Supreme Commander, as a special envoy between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds. Although well regarded in both camps, Ralston's mission is only part-time and it is limited to the PKK. Washington should do more to smooth ties between the two sides. Apart from the PKK, relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan are surprisingly good. Iraqi Kurds remain grateful for Turkey's role in setting up and protecting the Kurdish enclave after the 1991 gulf war. Turkey is now by far the largest investor in Iraqi Kurdistan. And most important, Turkey seems to have accepted the reality of an independent Kurdistan; even Kenan Evren, the Turkish president who prosecuted the war against the PKK, has acknowledged that "a Kurdish state" now exists in Iraq and that Turkey must get used to it. One major hurdle ahead is the upcoming referendum—due to be held at the end of the year—that will likely bring Iraq's oil-rich Kirkuk province into Kurdistan. U.S. diplomats should ease Turkey's concerns about Kirkuk's Turkmens—ethnic Turks who remained after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire—by ensuring they enjoy local autonomy and an outsize role in Kirkuk's future administration.

The United States should also encourage Turkey's efforts to address the grievances that enabled the PKK to gain so much support. In recent years, Turkey has legalized Kurdish-language broadcasts and permitted schooling in the Kurdish language. The cities of Turkey's southeast now have elected Kurdish mayors. And in the recent national elections, 20 Kurdish nationalists won seats as independents. The PKK itself has moderated, renouncing separatism in favor of Kurdish rights within Turkey. If Turkey were to enact a comprehensive amnesty (so far resisted by its military), most of the fighters on Qandil Mountain would return home and the PKK problem would disappear.

There is little hope for a settlement with Iran, however. In April 1992, I listened to the Kurdish leader Sadik Sharafkindi outline his hopes for peace with Tehran. But four months later he was shot dead by Iranian agents posing as peace emissaries. To this day, Iran has refused to deal with even moderate Kurds, and the price it pays is growing support for extremists like PJAK. But Washington must keep Iran from destabilizing Iraqi Kurdistan. At a minimum, the administration should be as vocal about Iranian shelling of Kurdish villagers as it is about Iran's other activities in Iraq. The matter might also be referred to the U.N. Security Council. Kurdistan's stable, democratic and pro-Western government represents America's only enduring success in Iraq; Washington should do all it can to protect it.

Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, and has advised Iraq's Kurds.