Last week another Iraq war-related problem turned up. In southeast Turkey, near its border with Iraq, ethnic Kurd separatists encouraged by the growing independence of Kurdistan in northern Iraq battled with Turkish security forces, leaving 15 dead.

The United States has leaned on Iraq's Kurds for support since the beginning of the Iraq war. In the beginning it was because the Kurds were opposed to Saddam Hussein's Arab regime. Later, it was because the Kurds were the only important Iraqi group that appeared to like the United States.

The Sunnis, who with Saddam Hussein had ruled Iraq for decades, hated the United States for its invasion and overthrow of their rule. The Sunnis now form the core of insurgent resistance to U.S. rule. The Shiites always were lukewarm on the Americans, even though they advocated the democracy and majority rule that would put them in power during the occupation.

That left the Kurds. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani became president. As Iraq has failed to put together a central government, three years after the U.S. invasion, nearly four months after the elections, the Kurdish north of the country has become increasingly autonomous. Ethnic Kurds in neighboring Turkey, Iran, Syria and Armenia have remarked on the growing strength and independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, and have become heartened in their desire for their own country by developments there.

In U.S. NATO ally Turkey, where an estimated 25 percent of the population are ethnic Kurds, and where an estimated 30,000 were killed in previous conflict in the 1980s, the issue blew up recently. The United States told Turkey in early 2005 that it wouldn't do anything about Kurdish separatists acting against Turkey from Iraq. Given other U.S. preoccupations in Iraq at this time and continued U.S. reliance on the Kurds, it is unlikely to change that position now.

In the meantime, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it clear that he will put up with no nonsense from Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

This is another very old problem that the Bush administration should have taken into account before crashing into Iraq, and particularly before signing up the Kurds as America's principal ally there.

In the meantime, the snarl in naming an Iraqi government four months after the elections remains. The Kurds and the Sunnis won't agree to the Shiites' choice of Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister, selected by the Shiite majority in February. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her travelling partner, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, visited Baghdad last week and sought to advance the candidacy of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi for the prime minister slot in place of Mr. al-Jaafari. It doesn't appear to have worked.

Meanwhile, reconstruction is stalled in Iraq, proceeding in only four of 18 provinces. Religious conflict between Sunnis and Shiites proceeds. Another bomb in a Shiite mosque killed 71 on Friday. If the strife cannot be called civil war -- a term the Bush administration resists despite the growing ethnic cleansing -- it is quacking like that duck.

U.S. deaths in Iraq continue to rise above 2,300. The cost of the war to the United States is estimated at about $300 billion. President Bush continues to assure Americans that we are winning.

If we are winning it is hard to imagine how bad it would be if we were losing. The regional expansion of the trouble in Iraq into Turkey through the Kurds is one of the worst developments to occur yet.