Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:34:23 -0500
Subject: 03/29/03 (KURDS/IRAQ) Kirkuk Moves; Uprising Urged; HRW Warns;
US/PUK Rout Ansar; US Based in Schools?; Homecoming?; IDP Camps;
Chemical Ali Fears


1. Kurds Within Two Miles of Kirkuk as Iraqis Retreat (Independent) 03/28
2. Kurds close in on Kirkuk (AFP) 03/29
3. After Kurd Gains, Iraq Shells Kurdish Positions in the North (Financial
Times) 03/28
4. As Iraqi Forces Retreat, Kurdish Troops Take Control (Boston Globe) 03/28
5. Kurds Eye Kirkuk Oil Fields (Associated Press) 03/28
6. Kurdish Factions Urge Iraqis to Revolt (Associated Press) 03/28
7. Rights Group Warns on Impending Inter-Ethnic Violence in Kirkuk (Human
Rights Watch) 03/28
8. Kurds and G.I.'s Rout Ansar Militants in North (New York Times) 03/29
9. Kurdish-U.S. Assault Takes Ansar Strongholds (Washington Post) 03/29
10. US-Backed PUK Forces Move Against Group Linked to Osama (Knight-Ridder)
03/28
11. Kurds Complain That Presence of GIs' in Schools Poses Danger
(Washington Post) 03/29
12. One Small Step Towards a Return Home (Guardian) 03/29
13. With the Kurds in Chamchamal (The Nation) 04/14 issue
14. Kurds Ready Camps to Hold 500,000 IDPs (Associated Press) 03/28
15. Kurds Waiting Out War in Cold, Rain (Newsday) 03/28
16. US, Kurds Fear ‘Chemical Ali’ Will Use Chemical Weapons Again (ABC
News) 03/28
17. Two Kurds Shuffle Across Border and into History (The Times) 03/28
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Kurds within two miles of Kirkuk as Iraqis retreat
Independent
By Patrick Cockburn outside Kirkuk
29 March 2003

Kurdish irregulars advanced past abandoned Iraqi bunkers to within two
miles of the oil city of Kirkuk yesterday as the Iraqi army retreated into
the city in their first withdrawal on the northern front.

"They have pulled back because of the air raids so they will be in
populated places where the planes cannot be used," said Shamal Ali, a
Kurdish peshmerga manning a light machine-gun on top of a pick-up truck.

There were only a few hundred lightly armed and raggedly dressed peshmerga
on the road to Kirkuk yesterday, looking surprised and a little alarmed at
how close to the city they had come. The retreat is evidently part of
Iraq's strategy of not trying to hold fixed positions out in the country
vulnerable to air strikes.

The Iraqi retreat was well organised, with the former headquarters of the
8th Infantry Brigade in the village of
Karahanjir stripped bare, to the disappointment of Kurds looking for loot.
The only weapon left behind was an ancient artillery piece that looked as
if it was used only for ceremonial occasions.

In one large room in the headquarters the Iraqis had left behind a large
plaster model of their positions, with bunkers on the bare hilltops and
pieces of winding white string showing the trenches. In the commander's
office, there was a copy of al-Qadisiya dated 25 March, showing
communications were good enough for daily newspapers from Baghdad until
recently.

For 12 years, the Kurds have faced an Iraqi front line on a ridge of hills
overlooking the town of Chachamal. Yesterday local people were looting even
steel bars and window frames. One had to be satisfied with a small tree he
was dragging to his home.

Kurdish commanders played down the extent of their advance, evidently
frightened this could lead to Turkish intervention. A few kilometres down
the road to Kirkuk, Mam Rostam, a leader of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, was saying: "None of our official forces have gone beyond this
point. Anybody further down the road are irregular peshmerga, they don't
belong to us. We are definitely not on the edge of Kirkuk."

As we drove further down the road, this turned out to be untrue. The Kurds
are within sight of Kirkuk and its oilfields, though the latter are
shrouded in smoke from the bombing. They could see the larger buildings,
including the Saddam hospital in the distance. Gazi Khalid, a peshmerga
officer, said: "I got within two kilometres of the city and I felt
frustrated because I come from there and I have not been able to go back
for 15 years."

In the past four days, the US has been bombing the Iraqi front line
intensely, particularly in the Chamchamal area. But the bombers had left
the main road alone, presumably because America or its Kurdish allies want
to capture it to use themselves.

The military headquarters at Karahanjir also was not hit. It is in the
middle of a large Kurdish village from which the Kurds were forced to flee
in 1991, abandoning their neat white houses, many of which are now roofless.

It is clear from the light forces on the road that the Kurds have not
started to make their push on Kirkuk, a province where they were the
majority until they were expelled or forced to flee by Saddam Hussein.

They have promised America, under whose command they now claim to be, that
neither the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan nor the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, the two dominant Kurdish parties, will take Kirkuk city, only
targets in the countryside. Judging by yesterday's redeployment of the
Iraqi forces, if they choose to make a stand, it will be in the houses and
streets of Kirkuk.

We asked a peshmerga patrol how many Kurdish troops were between us and
Kirkuk. They said they were the most forward Kurdish unit and, as we heard
the sound of shell-fire they said they were going back to base. They had
evidently realised, as we had, that the Iraqi army could easily reverse its
retreat and brush aside Kurdish resistance.

----

2) Kurds close in on Kirkuk
AFP
29 March 2003

Iraqi Kurd rebels advanced to within 16km of the northern oil capital,
Kirkuk, after Iraqi government forces abandoned their positions, bringing
them to within striking distance of their most prized objective.

In the first major movement on the northern front against Baghdad, fighters
from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) captured the garrison town of
Qarah Anjir, situated in hills to the east of Kirkuk, after clearing scores
of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines left behind by the retreating Iraqi army.

"The Iraqi army is finished. They were ordered to pull back to defend the
city," boasted Rostam Hamid Rahim, a top PUK commander.

Fighters here allowed journalists to walk out of Qarah Anjir to a point
just 16km from Kirkuk city centre and 14km from the city limits.

PUK military sources said the Iraqi troops were now only holding a
perimeter on the edge of the city, and said the Kurds would first
consolidate their positions and coordinate with US troops and their
erstwhile rivals in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) -- posted to the
north of Kirkuk -- before moving forward.

They also said small teams of US special forces were working alongside
their PUK allies in the operation to secure the area captured.

And Rostam dismissed suggestions that the Kurds would be kept out of Kirkuk
in the light of Turkish concerns that a capture of the oil-rich city could
embolden Kurdish moves towards independence.

"This is our area," asserted Rostam, a native of the city who has been
battling central government in Baghdad for 35 years. "The Americans will
not prevent us from liberating Kirkuk."

The Kurds see Kirkuk as their capital in a future federal Iraq, and tens of
thousands of them have been displaced from the city in a campaign of
"Arabisation" ordered by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The PUK's jubilant advance came after Iraqi forces abandoned a string of
hilltop positions 40km east of Kirkuk - situated in a northern belt where
some one-third of Iraq's oil is tapped - after several waves of US air
strikes on the lush green hills.

On the road to this abandoned town, Kurdish villagers were seen rooting
through the abandoned Iraqi posts collecting abandoned firearms, gas masks,
wire, blankets and scrap metal -- despite the high risk of landmines. Along
the main road, scores of holes were seen where mines had been dug up.

Hundreds of PUK reinforcements -- many of them waving their guns in
jubilation at the advance -- were also seen along the road moving in to
reinforce the front.

In Qarah Anjir, a huge bulldozer was called in to smash a towering portrait
of Saddam Hussein as well as clear a huge pile of mud blocking the road to
Kirkuk left during the Iraqi army's tactical withdrawal.

"It was really a pleasure. Saddam has been treading on us for so long so it
was great to drive over him," quipped Abdullah, the bulldozer driver who
spent around 10 minutes smashing the metal-reinforced concrete structure
covered with a ceramic portrait of the Iraqi president.

The town - an Iraqi garrison centre that has been almost totally abandoned
for years - was devoid of any life except Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

----

3) Iraq attacks Kurdish positions in the north
Financial Times
By Gareth Smyth in Chamchamal, northern Iraq
March 28, 2003

Iraqi forces fired for the first time in the war at Kurdish-held positions
in northern Iraq on Friday night, after falling back from their previous
front line at Chamchamal the day before.

"Five artillery rounds hit the ridge which we now occupy," said a Kurdish
officer. "No one was hurt or injured."

Earlier in the day Kurdish peshmerga guerillas moved forward 1.5km westward
on the road from Suleimaniyah to Kirkuk.

Huge shell holes peppered abandoned Iraqi bunkers and trenches after days
of heavy US bombing. Military papers blew around in the wind, while helmet
fragments were among debris scattered across trip-wire mines.

Kurdish civilians were already stripping valuables from mangled wreckage.
"They stole from us and now we taking things back," said a young man
carrying an iron rod. "This can help to build a roof."

"We haven’t exceeded out limits," said Rostem Hamid Rahim, local commander
of the peshmergas of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "Don’t write
anything that will upset the Turks."

Ankara has threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to curb the
Kurds leading Kurdish leaders to assure the US they would not move forward
from defensive positions.

Ankara is particularly sensitive about the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, just
30km west of Chamchamal, as they fear an autonomous Kurdish zone with
Kirkuk as its ‘capital’ would be a dangerous example for Turkey’s 15m Kurds.

The Kurdish push forward has a psychological value. Nine days into the war,
the Kurds are frustrated at the minor role assigned to them by the
Americans in removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The Americans continued to land troops at Kurdish airfields on Friday, and
again bombed targets around the city of Mosul, but revealed nothing of
their plans for a long-promised ‘northern front’.

US efforts on Friday went in attacking remnants of Ansar al Islam, an
Islamist group already heavily bombed by US planes, and holed up in
mountains east of Suleimaniya near the Iranian border.

Information about the attack came from reporters "embedded" with 1000 US
troops leading 10,000 PUK peshmergas.

The PUK is denying access to other journalists and has refused to estimate
civilian and other casualties in the bombed villages held by Ansar al Islam
and Komal, a second Islamic group.

A senior member of the PUK told the Financial Times he could only guess at
US intentions but that the Americans had ignored his advice about the
Islamic groups.

"They told me Komal were the teachers of Ansar," he said, "and that they
won’t repeat their mistake of supporting [in Afghanistan] fundamentalists
from Saudi Arabia who went on to attack New York."

-----

4) As Iraqi forces retreat, Kurdish troops take control
Boston Globe
By Charles M. Sennott
3/28/2003

BANI MAQAN, Iraq -- After four days of sustained US air strikes on Iraqi
army posts, Iraqi soldiers retreated from their bunkers yesterday and
Kurdish forces swiftly advanced for the first time into Saddam
Hussein-controlled Iraq as the opening of a northern front gained momentum.

In the late afternoon, forces from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the
political party that controls the eastern sector of the semiautonomous
Kurdish region in northern Iraq, saw the soldiers abandon their posts and
began moving tentatively at first past what was once an Iraqi-controlled
checkpoint.

The PUK forces met no resistance and quickly fanned up into a ridgeline
laced with land mines and took the former Iraqi positions just 25 miles
from the city of Kirkuk, the oil-rich city that Kurds consider the
heartland of their culture and history.

''We are very happy and we will be even happier when we are in Kirkuk,''
said Mam Rostam, the PUK commander of the region who lived in Kirkuk until
he and his family were among the tens of thousands forced out by the
Hussein regime, which has suppressed the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq
for decades.

As Rostam spoke, the first truck loads of soldiers barreled down the road
to fortify their troops on the ridge line. ''Kirkuk is ours!'' a soldier
shouted.

The advance came hours after a predawn landing of 1,000 US paratroopers
from the 173d Airborne Brigade in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq as part
of a steady buildup of forces that Kurdish military leaders said is
expected to reach up to 6,000 soldiers in coming days.

The creation of a northern front has been stalled by the Turkish
parliament's decision to block a US request to use its bases for a massive
invasion force of 60,000 combat troops.

But yesterday's developments suggested that the northern front was gaining
some momentum, although it was still unclear how the US forces would
coordinate with Kurdish militias to make a push on Kirkuk and the other
main northern city of Mosul.

The US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad flew into an airstrip near
Sulaymaniyah and met with the PUK leadership. A Kurdish official who met
with Khalizad said he had come to assure the Kurds that the northern front
had not been forgotten, and that neighboring Turkey had given assurances
that it would not send its troops.

Shalaw Askari, a member of the PUK central committee who met with Khalizad
yesterday, said that even though the PUK advance was ''very encouraging''
for the forces, he still did not believe that the Kurdish forces would be
part of a US-led military offensive into Kirkuk and Mosul.

''First the US will need to cut the head of the snake in Baghdad,'' said
Askari. ''When they do that they won't even have to take the cities by
force. They will just fold and we will be looking at a handover of power.
That is what we are expecting.''

Seizing the ridgeline yesterday, Askari said, was part of a steady pressure
from the north in which he expected US forces to take key bridges and
positions just inside the border with Hussein-controlled Iraq while
steadily building up US forces and continuing with airstrikes.

The Iraqi forces retreated from the ridgeline to approximately 12 miles
into Hussein-controlled Iraq. As of last night, the PUK fighters known as
''peshmerga,'' or ''those who face death,'' had advanced about 8 miles.

A PUK commander said he wanted to complete a demining operation before
moving forward and so that more US airstrikes could push the Iraqi soldiers
further into retreat.

Two Iraqi soldiers who had survived the heavy pounding of US airstrikes in
a bunker surrendered themselves. They were both officers from the 8th
regiment of the Iraqi Army's First Corp Third Division. One was a
37-year-old lieutenant colonel. The other was a 39-year-old major. They
gave their names, but pleaded that they not be published. ''We have
families and young children. They will be executed. Please,'' one of them
said in Arabic.

For days they said they thought of deserting, but knew that deserters were
ordered to be shot. After a night of airstrikes, during the chaos of
casualties being treated, they slipped away from their posts at dawn. They
hid in a gathering of trees and then ran praying that they would not step
on the land mines that had been placed along the hillsides.

They found another hiding place in a ditch at the bottom of the ridge just
at the edge of the border village of Chamchamal and waited, shivering in
the cold, for nightfall.

They walked unarmed into town where a ''peshmerga'' found them and escorted
them to the home of a local commander.

''What will happen to us?'' they asked, as they were invited by the
militiamen to sit down on thin mats on a cold cement floor. They warmed
their hands on a kerosene stove and were offered tea and bread.

They had received no information about the war in the south. For them, the
war started on Wednesday night when US air strikes began to slam the ridge
line. The first raid struck an observation post, they said, instantly
killing five of their fellow soldiers.

''It was a very strong raid. Four of the men were cut into pieces.''

In all seven men from their 200-strong unit were killed. The lieutenant
colonel said he had been in Kuwait in 1991 and he said, ''This bombing was
much worse.''

''Thanks be to God we are safe now,'' the major said, eyeing the Kurdish
militia around him. Then Kurdish security forces arrived and the two
defectors were taken to a military headquarters in the nearby village of
Takia.

As they surrendered, up on the ridgeline the scene was one of chaos as the
PUK forces fired AK-47s in celebration. Kurdish looters flooded into the
Iraqi posts hauling out everything from rocket-propelled-grenade launchers
to radio antennas and plastic chairs. Two looters were seriously injured
when a land mine exploded in the darkness last night, Kurdish officials said.

''We are so happy. It's like our birthday,'' said Ahmed Jabar Saleh, 30,
who took a kerosene heater and empty machine-gun belt from an abandoned
bunker. ''We start our lives from this day.''

----

5) Kurds eye Kirkuk oil fields
By BRUCE STANLEY AND BRIAN MURPHY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 28, 2003

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) - U.S. and British forces moved quickly to secure Iraq's
southern oil fields, home to much of the country's petroleum wealth. But
the heartland of Iraq's oil industry lies much farther north, near the city
of Kirkuk, where an earlier generation of Westerners scrambled for
oil-drilling rights amid the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

This week's arrival near Kirkuk of 1,200 American soldiers brought renewed
attention to a province whose crude deposits make it an economic prize -
and a faultline for potential conflict between Kurds, Iraqi Arabs and
Turks. After landing in the area Wednesday, the Americans grabbed a
strategic air base and began plotting how to cross 80 miles, through
thousands of Iraqi troops, to seize valuable northern oil fields.

Iraq has 112 billion barrels in total proven crude reserves, many of them
lying north of Kirkuk toward neighboring Mosul.

The biggest northern oil field contains an estimated 7 billion barrels of
recoverable crude. That puts it in the same league as Prudhoe Bay, Alaska,
during its heyday in the 1970s, said Leo Drollas of the London-based Center
for Global Energy Studies.

Kirkuk, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, is outside the Kurdish enclave in
northern Iraq. But it was long a solidly Kurdish city, and Kurds still
speak of it with reverence.

"Kirkuk is Kurdish and will forever be Kurdish," said Hoshiar Zebari, a top
member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish
factions operating under Western protection in the enclave.

In recent years, the Iraqi government has expelled thousands of Kurds from
the Kirkuk area and settled Arabs in their place. As many as 120,000 Kurds
have been forced from their homes since 1991, Human Rights Watch reported
last week.

Under its oil-for-food program, the United Nations earmarked 13 percent of
Iraq's oil revenues for the country's Kurds. But some Kurds have said they
want more. In October, the top Iraqi Kurdish military commander, Hamid
Efendi, said his forces would try to capture the oil fields around Kirkuk
if the United States attacked Iraq.

Such bellicose language has subsided somewhat since the war began. Yet maps
in political and military offices in Irbil, the administrative capital of
the Kurdish zone, always include Kirkuk and Mosul within the borders of an
Iraqi "Kurdistan." A top Kurdish military commander, Feridoun Janrowey,
oversees the "Suleymaniah and Kirkuk" administrative district, and Iraqi
Kurds already have selected a mayor for Kirkuk.

Americans worry that a Kurdish thrust toward Kirkuk could prompt Turkey to
invade northern Iraq. Ankara fears that if Iraqi Kurds overrun key oil
fields and create a rich, independent homeland, they could inspire revolt
among Turkey's own minority Kurds.

The U.S. troops airlifted into this ethnic and political cauldron are too
few to mount a serious offensive against the Iraqis. Instead, their role is
more likely to be that of a glorified police force to keep the Kurds at
bay, analysts say.

The region's main object of desire, the oil field at Kirkuk, began flowing
crude in 1927. British oil giant BP was an original partner in the Turkish
Petroleum Co., the consortium exploring in the area.

"On Oct. 15, 1927, the drill struck oil, which flowed with such force that
it was uncontrollable for several days. The discovery of the Kirkuk field
transformed Iraq from a country of high oil promise to one of the most
valuable concessionary areas in the world," wrote BP company historian R.W.
Ferrier.

Together with its main partners - Royal Dutch/Shell and the precursor of
France's Total - BP tried at first to bar American competitors from Iraq.
However, the U.S. State Department demanded and finally secured a share in
the consortium for Exxon Mobil and several other American firms.

Renamed the Iraq Petroleum Co., the venture pressured the Iraqi government
into accepting royalties instead of a stake in the business. Iraqi cabinet
ministers protested, with some resigning and even threatening suicide over
the issue.

The final agreement served as a model for other joint oil ventures to
follow in the Middle East. But for the Iraqis, it caused decades of
resentment that boiled over when Baghdad nationalized the consortium in 1972.

Estimates of Kirkuk's daily production capacity range from 500,000 to
900,000 barrels. Until the war, much of Kirkuk's crude flowed under U.N.
supervision through a pipeline to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey.
The pipeline was operating Friday, albeit at a reduced rate, port sources
at Ceyhan said.

Like Iraq's other oil fields, including newer ones in the south, Kirkuk has
suffered from a shortage of investment during 12 years of U.N. economic
sanctions. But it remains a valuable prize.

"It's not just an economic question," Kurdistan Democratic Party leader
Massoud Barzani said this month.
"Kirkuk is a symbolic city of unity. ... Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen live
there. And the oil should be equally distributed."

AP Business Writer Bruce Stanley contributed to this report from London.

-----

6) Kurdish Factions Urge Iraqis to Revolt
Associated Press
March 28, 2003

IRBIL, Iraq The main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq whose members
usually disagree on almost everything issued a joint statement Friday with
other regime opponents, urging everyday people across Iraq to defy Saddam
Hussein.

The call came as more than 1,200 newly arrived American troops bolstered an
emerging northern front, marshaling Kurdish militiamen and U.S. special
forces already on the ground.

The statement issued by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan
Democratic Party and the Iraqi National Congress implored citizens
throughout the country to rebel in "a holy mission of regime change."

The Kurdish autonomous region, established after the 1991 Gulf War, is
protected by U.S.-British air patrols. It is governed by the Kurdistan
union in the east and the Democratic Party in the west.

U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, visiting the region Friday, said he
was "comfortable" with the call to arms.

At the Bakrajo airstrip, 10 miles from the northern town of Sulaymaniah,
coalition aircraft were heard landing and taking off early Friday, as
explosions were reported near Mosul and Kirkuk, where key oil fields are
located.

There were no immediate casualty or damage reports.

In Baghdad, Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed warned Kurds to stay away
from coalition forces or face attack from Iraqi troops.

Kurdish militia leaders have promised the United States they will not
attempt a takeover of oil-rich Kirkuk. To do so would most likely provoke
Turkey to invade Iraq. The Turks fear such seizures would help establish an
independent Kurdish state and incite Turkey's large Kurdish population to
revolt.

But on Friday, Kurdish militiamen said they would police areas relinquished
by fleeing Iraqis. "We're here for security, to prevent robbing and
looting," said Nazim Hussein, carrying a Kalashnikov rifle to guard an
outpost near the autonomous region's southern checkpoint.

Like many Kurds, Hussein was driven from his property and his home when
Saddam's regime declared much of northern Iraq military areas.

The city of Chamchamal, for example, is to the Kurds what New York is to
Americans, or Paris is to the French.

So on Thursday, when Iraqi troops quietly abandoned hilltop bunkers from
which they had shelled and terrorized Chamchamal for 12 years, people there
rejoiced.

They jammed taxis, pedaled bicycles and ran on foot to the emptied bunkers,
and exulted in claiming a site that had brought destruction and death to
their city.

Twelve miles inside government-controlled Iraq, Qala Hanjir offered a clear
view of Kirkuk on Friday. Raging fires and smoke plumes were seen there,
possibly the result of American bombing. Iraqis had used Qala Hanjir to
defend Kirkuk.

Iraqi soldiers appeared to have abandoned other positions near the Kurdish
region and moved closer to Kirkuk.

But Kurdish control of those newly deserted locations was tenuous. In
Chamchamal on Friday, shells and rockets fired from Kirkuk landed nearby,
injuring at least one person, witnesses said.

-----

7) Impending Inter-Ethnic Violence in Kirkuk
Human Rights Watch
28 Mar 2003

Arbil, March 28, 2003) As U.S. and coalition forces prepare an assault on
the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, U.S. forces have a responsibility to
prevent the eruption of inter-ethnic violence, Human Rights Watch said today.

Related Material
Iraq: Forcible Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0303/

HRW Report, March 2003
Human Rights Watch documents on War in Iraq http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/

"Kirkuk is a disaster waiting to happen. If a plan for the gradual and
orderly return of these displaced civilians is not drawn up soon and
implemented before the ground offensive begins, there is a real possibility
that the city will erupt into inter-ethnic violence."

Hania Mufti, London director for the Middle East and North Africa Division,
based in Arbil Human Rights Watch said widespread reprisal killings,
retaliatory forced displacement, and other acts of violence against
resettled families are possible once tens of thousands of forcibly
displaced people return to reclaim their homes. Oil-rich Kirkuk, currently
under Iraqi government control, has been the target of U.S. aerial bombing
for the last several days. U.S. paratroopers have landed in Iraqi Kurdistan
and it is likely that U.S. and coalition ground forces will enter the city
in the near future.

"Kirkuk is a disaster waiting to happen," said Hania Mufti, a Human Rights
Watch researcher based in Arbil. "If a plan for the gradual and orderly
return of these displaced civilians is not drawn up soon and implemented
before the ground offensive begins, there is a real possibility that the
city will erupt into inter-ethnic violence."

Since the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi government has systematically expelled
an estimated 120,000 Kurds, Turkomans, and Assyrians from Kirkuk and other
towns and villages in this oil-rich region. Most have settled in the
Kurdish-controlled northern provinces. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has
resettled Arab families in their place in an attempt to reduce the
political power and presence of ethnic minorities, a process known as
"Arabization."

Those who were displaced were forced to abandon their homes, were stripped
of most of their possessions, and were deprived of any means of livelihood.
Scores of expelled Kurds and Turkomans interviewed by Human Rights Watch
during a September 2002 mission to Iraqi Kurdistan described the relentless
pressure by the state to drive them from their homes by making their daily
lives intolerable.

Human Rights Watch researchers now based in Iraqi Kurdistan said the United
States has not prepared for returning displaced residents of Kirkuk.

"We have found no evidence that U.S. political and military leaders have
prepared for the consequences of a massive influx of returnees with
grievances against those who forced them from their homes, as well as those
who now live in their homes," said Mufti.

During talks in Ankara in March 2003, U.S., Turkish and Iraqi opposition
officials discussed the idea of creating a coalition commission to oversee
issues relating to the northern front, including the orderly return of
internally displaced people to Kirkuk. To date, however, no such commission
has been established.

Kurdish officials told Human Rights Watch that they were uncertain as to
the role of their armed forces during any eventual ground offensive on
Kirkuk. Both Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Mas'ud Barzani and
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani have agreed to
commit their Pesh Merga forces only with U.S. approval and under its
command. Until now, the United States has not asked for such participation,
but that position could change in the light of Turkey's refusal to grant
access to U.S. forces through its territory.

"It is paramount that the United States immediately address the
consequences of a future assault on Kirkuk," said Mufti.

Human Rights Watch urged the United States to make concrete plans for the
gradual and orderly return of forcibly displaced residents, for the control
of mass population flows, for the removal of land mines and unexploded
ordinance, and for the implementation of security measures to deal with any
outbreaks of violence.

In recent days, Human Rights Watch researchers have met with
representatives of the Iraqi opposition, including the PUK, KDP, the Iraqi
Turkoman Front, and the Iraqi National Congress, to discuss what
preparations have been made to regulate the return of displaced families to
Kirkuk. Kurdish officials have expressed serious concern about the
potential for inter-ethnic violence in the city, but said there was very
little they could do to stop a large-scale return since displaced families
had every right to reclaim their homes as soon as possible. Some also said
that "a significant number" of Arab families settled in Kirkuk had already
left and that they hoped their departure would mitigate any violence.
However, more recent information indicates that the Iraqi government has
forcibly returned some of these Arab families to Kirkuk and to a number of
villages in the province that were also included in the "Arabization" process.

Human Rights Watch called on all parties to the conflict in Iraq to respect
the safety and freedom of movement rights of all Iraqi citizens, including
their right to choose a place of residence, and to move to a place of
safety either inside or outside Iraq.

Under international humanitarian law, the U.S.-led forces have a duty to
restore and ensure public order and safety in territories under their
authority from the moment they establish effective control over them. In
order to do so, they need to devote enough personnel to ensure public
safety, grant protection to all noncombatants, and prevent the occurrence
of acts of reprisal or revenge.

Human Rights Watch called upon the U.S. government and its coalition
partners to undertake, as a matter of urgency, the following measures to
prevent the possibility of inter-ethnic violence in Kirkuk:

· Call publicly for a gradual and orderly return of internally displaced
persons to Kirkuk and other affected areas.

· Establish a commission of coalition partners to address matters relating
to the return of the former residents of Kirkuk, including the control of
population flows, the clearance of land mines and unexploded ordinance, and
the prevention of inter-ethnic strife.

· Make every effort to secure government buildings in Kirkuk that could
contain Iraqi government documents pertaining to the "Arabization" policy,
including property deeds and nationality registration records. Such
documentation will be essential for a speedy and fair resolution of all
claims on homes and property, for family tracing and reunification efforts
and for future accountability for crimes committed by Iraqi officials.

Human Rights Watch also called upon the Kurdish authorities to go beyond
making general appeals to returning families that no reprisals be carried
out against Arab families settled by the Iraqi government in Kirkuk. The
Kurdish authorities should:

· Develop a plan, to be made public as soon as possible, for the gradual
and orderly return of displaced families to Kirkuk. For example, organizing
the return of groups of displaced civilians according to the districts from
which they were expelled.

· Continue to compile records establishing the ethnicity and place of
origin of displaced civilians, including duplicates of nationality
correction forms, confiscated expulsion orders, and ration cards.

· Provide a public and accessible family tracing and reunification registry
and service. Finally, Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations to
return to northern Iraq to assist in this and other humanitarian efforts.
The United Nations should:

· Draw up a plan for the speedy dispatch of human rights monitors to Iraq,
including Kirkuk, once hostilities have ceased.

· Provide technical and financial assistance to the Kurdish authorities to
create a central registry of displaced persons based on ethnicity, place of
origin, and property claims, as well as a public family tracing and
reunification registry and service.

· Establish a mechanism for the adjudication of disputes in Kirkuk and
other affected areas with respect to property claims and other assets.

For further background on the Iraqi government's "Arabization" policy of
the northern oil-rich regions including Kirkuk, see Human Rights Watch's
recent report, Iraq: Forcible Expulsion of Ethnic Minorities, published in
March 2003.

-----

8) Kurds and G.I.'s Rout Militants in North
New York TImes
By C. J. CHIVERS
March 29, 2003

BEYARA, Iraq, March 28 A combined American and Kurdish military assault
swept through this remote mountain valley in northeastern Iraq today,
capturing a series of villages from a militant Islamic group and restoring
a swath of border territory to Kurdish control.

In a war that has seen early setbacks and unwelcome surprises, this was an
operation in which the immediate outcome exceeded expectations.

The American commander, who supervised the battle but asked that he not be
identified, summed up the first day of American fighting here. "We expected
stiffer resistance," he said.

The early morning assault today was mounted with a mix of Kurdish fighters
and roughly 100 American Special Forces troops; many of the latter moved
with the Kurdish columns. It quickly became a mismatch in the conventional
military sense.

The Taliban-like group, Ansar al-Islam, consists of about 650 fighters who
the United States says receive support from both Baghdad and Al Qaeda;
Kurds say they are also underwritten by Iran. About 150 of the group's
members are thought to be pro-Taliban fighters who escaped from Afghanistan
late in 2001.

American commanders at the battlefield today estimated that 30 to 50 Ansar
militants had been killed and that 2 had been captured. While there was no
doubt that Ansar had been successfully expelled from the area, uncertainty
remained concerning the total dead, and whether Ansar remnants would
regroup in the mountains to fight again or had fled into neighboring Iran.

Little about the group's links has been independently verified, although it
is clear that since 2001 they have developed and occupied militant training
camps in this valley, adhering to what they believe is an ancient model of
Islamic village life.

They used their camps to fight as guerrillas and terrorists, employing
small arms, mortars and suicide bombs against the secular Kurdish
government of northern Iraq.

Ansar had also been active as American planes attacked Iraq. An Ansar
militant killed an Australian journalist and three Kurds in a suicide car
bombing near here last week; another car-bomb attack was thwarted by the
authorities on Thursday.

Today the violence was turned the other way. The officer, commanding a
United States Army unit known as Task Force Viking, worked with forward air
controllers from a bunker atop the hill at Gilda Drozna, which the
militants had overrun last December in an pre-dawn attack that ended with
Ansar fighters executing Kurdish prisoners and displaying the dead along a
road.

This time, Ansar faced as many as 10,000 freshly armed Kurdish fighters,
known as pesh merga, advancing in six simultaneous thrusts coordinated by
Special Forces teams and supported by intensive bombardment from mortars,
artillery, B-52's, cruise missiles and attack jets.

Religious ardor and light weapons proved no match for the array of
technology assembled here.
All manner of firepower was brought to bear on the valley's villages and
bunkers. As Ansar moved back, trying to consolidate on a mountain at the
Iranian border, they were observed by a pilotless drone, the size of a
model airplane.

The drone allowed the Special Forces to watch the battle live on a video
feed to a front-line command post, and direct more air attacks.

The Ansar fighters' situation was untenable long before the lengthening of
afternoon shadows. Columns of Kurds and Americans could be seen pursuing
them up the road at 2 p.m., as an air strike flashed and then boomed just
ahead of the pesh merga advance.

One by one, villages fell: Sarget, Glup, Zardahar. Signs abounded that
Ansar, which had boasted that it welcomed a pitched battle against America
and dug caves and brewed explosives to prepare for it, had been unable to
resist an attack of this size and with such a deadly mix of coordinated
firepower.

Precise casualty figures were unavailable this early in the fighting. The
Special Forces commander said 30 to 40 Ansar fighters died in Sarget, where
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said the group runs a poison
factory. The two Ansar captives, Kurdish military officers said, were being
held in a prison near the front tonight.

Kosrat Rosul Ali, a veteran Kurdish guerrilla and politician, said about
100 Ansar fighters had died throughout the day. No Special Forces fighters
were wounded.

"Luckily, we have not had any casualties, we the Americans," said Maj. Tim
Nye, a spokesman for the task force.

Two Kurdish fighters died in a land mine explosion, and at least 20 others
were wounded in the fighting, according to Dr. Muhammad Khosnaw, minister
of health for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party controlling the
eastern zone of the Kurdish enclave. Seven of the Kurds were seriously
wounded and required surgery, he said.

The casualties did not affect the offensive's pace.

Before sunset, Special Forces soldiers and local pesh merga were mingling
in the abandoned bazaar here, a stroll from the Iranian border, as another
wounded Kurdish fighter was carried out, blood running down his leg.

Kurdish commanders sent their fighters into position for the night. They
huddled under the snow-capped mountains, issuing instructions. Vapor trails
from attack jets arced through the sky overhead.

"Put up your checkpoints," said Mr. Ali. "Before it gets dark you should
put 100 pesh merga on very hill seen from here."

The fighters had gathered at 5 a.m for this assault. Now, more than 12
hours on, there were signs of exhaustion. "We have walked a long way, and
we are tired," one said. "We don't have enough power to go up to the snowy
mountains."

Still, they trudged forward, weary smiles on their faces, bandoleers across
the chests of some. The Special Forces teams were pulling back for the
night, readying for more fighting on Saturday. Some wore baseball caps or
surfer's sunglasses. They slipped into sport utility vehicles and sped away.

Their route took them past their handiwork: Ansar bunkers, primitive but
sturdy structures of logs, earth and bagged sand, showed the effects of the
tremendous forces unleashed by precision-guided bombs. Roofs were
shattered, their thick logs snapped like twigs. Sandbags were scattered.
The earth was heaved away or charred gray and black.

Here in Beyara, mortar shells boomed on the ridge at the town's edge, where
remnants of the Ansar force were thought to have gathered.

In a nearby copse of thin trees, a dead man lay on his back, arms extended
upward in rigor mortis. His nose was streaked with blood.

Some said he was a dead Ansar fighter. Others said he was a prisoner Ansar
had killed on the way out of town. Whoever he was, he appeared to have been
executed, shot in the chest at close range.

Among the items captured in Beyara was a memorandum, taped to the wall of
an Ansar barracks, that described a religious justification for the attacks
in Washington and New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

The memo began with Koranic script, and a number of references to the fates
that await people who do not believe in Allah or follow the strictures of
the Muslim faith.

"Allah promises in the Koran to destroy the places of those who do not
believe in Islam," one reference read.

Mr. Ali, the Kurdish guerrilla veteran, issued an order to prevent the pesh
merga from looting. Soldiers milled, encamped in houses and captured
bunkers, starting cooking fires.

"I am very glad that this area is clear," said one mid-level commander,
Karim Kemal Agha, as he sat with his fighters along the road, waiting for
his instructions to move on.

Mr. Ali said Iranian guards were cooperating and refusing to allow the
Ansar fighters access to Iran. "The Iranians say they have closed the
border," he said.

Some field commanders disagreed. "I am sure they all escaped over the
border into Iran," said Ali Faqe Muhammad, a pesh merga captain. "They are
gone from here, but maybe they will fight again."

-----

9) Kurdish-U.S. Assault Takes Town
Special Forces Call in Air Strikes Against Islamic Radicals
By Karl Vick
Washington Post
March 29, 2003

BIYARA, Iraq, March 28 -- With U.S. Special Forces operating field
artillery, calling in airstrikes and supervising a massive infantry charge,
6,000 Kurdish fighters today overwhelmed a band of radical Islamic Kurds in
a remote mountain valley in northeastern Iraq.

The combined Kurdish-U.S. assault began at dawn and ended in a rout. By
mid-afternoon this rugged village in the Shram Mountains near the Iranian
border was no longer the headquarters of Ansar al-Islam, a small but
dangerous militant group that the Bush Administration charges has links to
the al Qaeda terror network.

About 40 Ansar fighters were killed and at least one Arab, described as a
Palestinian, was captured, according to medical officials. Kurdish
commanders said two Ansar fighters detonated explosive vests rather than be
captured. The rest of the force of about 700 fled in the direction of the
Iranian border.

No casualties were reported among the approximately 100 U.S. forces working
in the area. Doctors said about 40 Kurdish militia were wounded, but only
five were killed. All five fatalities were caused by mines planted by Ansar
fighters as they retreated from bunkers in the southeastern corner of the
Halabja Valley and began their climb toward Biyara and the Shram Mountains
above.

Kurdish leaders would like more of such smooth battlefield cooperation
between U.S. and Kurdish forces on the northern front.

But the connection to the larger war against the government of President
Saddam Hussein was indirect.

Ansar al-Islam, which means "followers of Islam," was an obscure local
group of militants last year when the first U.S. military operatives
arrived in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq -- an autonomous region
protected by U.S. and British warplanes since 1991 -- to begin preparations
for a war on Hussein.

The group's allegiance to al Qaeda emerged over time, as did the presence
of at least 100 Arabs among its force of about 700 fighters. Kurdish and
U.S. officials said most of the foreigners arrived early in 2002 from
Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban.

"I'm pretty well convinced after studying this problem for 10 months that
the al Qaeda piece is pretty [solid]," said the Special Forces commander
overseeing the battlefield today from a hillock outside Halabja, 35 miles
southeast of Sulaymaniyah. The commander said he could not be identified by
name.

"You talk about continuing the global war on terrorism," he said, "this is
certainly a part of it."

The handful of U.S. fighters lounging in the bed of a pickup truck on the
narrow main street of Biyara said the victory belonged to the Kurdish pesh
merga militiamen. The Kurds, who have squared off in recent years against
both the local extremists and the Baghdad government, smiled and pointed
toward the stony heights of the summits into which the Ansar fighters had
retreated.

"They don't have the morale to fight against us," said Majmadin Majid, a
Kurdish regular. "If the Americans stay here, we are afraid of nothing."

The snow-capped range forms the border with Iran, which is widely believed
to have been supporting Ansar.

But after U.S. forces began targeting the valley with cruise missiles last
Saturday, Iran abruptly closed its border to the militants and their
families. Today a senior Kurdish official said the border remained closed
to Ansar. But the Special Forces commander was more cautious.

"I'm not sure about that yet," he said.

In the six days leading to today's battle, U.S. forces on the ground
summoned at least 30 to 40 airstrikes on Ansar positions. "They've called
airstrikes from almost every conceivable platform," said another Special
Forces officer. "B-52s, F-14s, F/A-18s."

On the night before the battle, an AC-130 Spectre gunship patrolled the
valley, targeting Ansar bunkers and hideaways with cannon and Gatling guns.

Today's battle began with the Kurdish militia arrayed along a front that
extended about 10 miles along the lush valley floor toward Halabja, the
town where an Iraqi chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 people in 1988.

Kurdish commanders said four columns of pesh merga moved into the valley,
including one from the ridge along Shinerwe Mountain.

The U.S. Special Forces set up and operated 81mm and 90mm field artillery,
and helped the Kurdish forces make the most of their own cannons. Flatbed
trucks delivered 30-kilogram crates of ammunition for the Kurds'
Kalashnikovs, and as the battle raged, five armored Humvees arrived at the
rear.

The battle wagons, mounted with 50-caliber machine guns and multiple rocket
launchers, were followed after dark by five or six more Humvees cruising
south from the direction of Sulaymaniyah.

By then, the fighting appeared to be largely over. Moving out about an hour
after dawn, the Kurds scrambled past villages of mud brick homes with
wildflowers growing in the roofs. The advance covered about four miles in
the first hour, a pace the Special Forces commander called astonishing.

There was one half-hour fire fight at the main Ansar checkpoint on the
valley floor -- where an airstrike turned the largest bunker into an
ash-filled crater -- and another on the road leading west toward villages
named Gulp and Sargat.

"We expected stiffer resistance up front, but they'd been hit pretty hard
from the air," the U.S. commander said. About 20 of those bombing runs came
today. The Americans also steered two model-airplane sized drones equipped
with a video camera to let the command see over the next ridge.

"Today is a beautiful day," said Zirar Mahmood Qadir, a Kurdish fighter in
Biyara, where someone had pulled down Ansar's flag and tied it to the back
of a donkey. "We expected a great battle, but they ran away.

The jet fighters reduced their morale. And our forces were huge."

-----

10) U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels attack militant group tied to Osama bin Laden
BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
March 28, 2003

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - (KRT) - Thousands of Kurdish rebels supported by U.S.
ground and air power Friday launched an offensive on a Kurdish Islamic
militant group allegedly in league with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

By nightfall, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan guerrillas and U.S. Special
Forces had overrun virtually all of the isolated enclave that was held by
Ansar al Islam (Partisans of Islam) and driven most of its fighters into
mountains bordering Iran.

More than 60 Ansar members were killed, according to Jalal Talabani, the
head of the PUK. He said two of his men had died and eight were wounded,
and there had been no casualties among dozens of U.S. soldiers in the
operation.

At a news conference with Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy
to the Iraqi opposition, Talabani said he believed the fighting could be
over within 24 hours.

But the PUK and the United States could still face a bloody job in
eliminating Ansar's remaining 600 fighters and the estimated 150 al-Qaida
members believed to be with them. Ansar has fortified caves and fighting
positions in rugged mountain slopes that could be hard to hit from the air.
PUK and U.S. troops may be forced to fight uphill, position by position, in
a protracted and costly battle.

Even then, some of the militants may escape, as bin Laden did from his
Afghan stronghold of Tora Bora in December 2001, and continue their
struggle to forge a Taliban-style Islamic regime in the Kurd-dominated area
of northern Iraq.

Ansar has conducted assassinations, suicide bombings and ground assaults
that have killed and injured several senior Kurdish officials and dozens of
fighters over the past two years.

The Bush administration and PUK officials contend that the group is
sheltering al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan and that it has produced
rudimentary chemical weapons at a crude laboratory on its territory.

They have also portrayed Ansar as a link between al-Qaida and Saddam
Hussein, saying the Iraqi dictator provided the militants with funds and
training. Baghdad denied the allegations.

Ansar controlled a handful of villages and hamlets in a swath of rolling
hills and mountain slopes near the northeastern town of Halabja. It imposed
strict Islamic rule on residents of its territory, forcing women to wear
head-to-toe Islamic coverings and men to grow beards and pray five times
per day.

Some 7,000 Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, meaning "those who face
death," and an estimated 100 U.S. Special Forces launched the offensive
Friday morning, PUK officials said.

As intense mortar fire rained on Ansar's positions, PUK guerrillas and U.S.
Special Forces swept into its territory, driving the militants from all of
the villages they had controlled, they said.

Talabani said U.S. Special Forces directed air strikes on Ansar positions.

The offensive was launched six days after U.S. forces began targeting Ansar
with cruise missiles and bombs.

The U.S. strikes also hit the positions of another Islamic militant group,
Komal Islami (the Islamic Group) that held a sliver of territory on Ansar's
right flank. Dozens of Komal fighters were killed. PUK officials had
accused Komal of supporting Ansar.

In other developments in the north:

_Troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which parachuted into northern
Iraq this week, moved several miles from the airfield they secured to a
former Iraqi military facility now held by Kurdish forces of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party. There, the U.S. paratroops mingled with hundreds of
smiling peshmergas and bedded down indoors after spending two cold, rainy
nights in the open.

The KDP and the PUK are the two Kurdish parties that control the autonomous
Kurdish region. Their armies are operating under U.S. command.

KDP fighters armed with AK-47 rifles manned checkpoints around the
airfield. They also dropped off sacks of warm bread and vats of stew, and
their trucks delivered food, water and gear to the American troops on the
landing zone. C-17 transport jets are expected to bring more American
soldiers and equipment in the next few days.

The United States wanted to send the 4th Infantry Division, with its heavy
armor, into Iraq from Turkey to open a northern front. But Turkey refused
to allow the ground forces to deploy from its soil.

Brigade commander Col. William Mayville, who jumped out of the first
airplane, said the future missions for the 173rd have not been decided.

The brigade may find itself acting as a stabilizing force between the Kurds
and any Turkish forces that enter the region. "On the other hand, we could
fight as part of a combat arms team here in the north," Mayville said.

Most analysts believe Turkey, which has its own large Kurdish minority,
wants to disrupt the formation of an independent Kurdish nation on its border.

The United States is opposed to any Turkish incursion into the Kurdish
area. Khalilzad, the U.S. official, assured Kurdish leaders that Turkey has
pledged not to send combat troops into the region.

_U.S. bombers rocked the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk on Friday night,
and Kurdish guerrilla fighters moved forward across the Kurd-Iraqi border
as Iraqi troops pulled back to defend Kirkuk.

_Near the frontline village of Kalak, Iraqi infantrymen continued to hold
their defensive positions east of Mosul, although nine troopers defected to
Kurdish security forces on Friday. Earlier in the week, 10 would-be
defectors were caught by the Iraqis and shot in front of their regiment.

_In Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan's main city, two artillery shells were found
Friday in a garbage dump near a shopping center. One shell exploded,
throwing off a cloud of white smoke, and local residents fled, fearing it
was a chemical attack. No one was hurt, and police defused the other shell.

(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Ken Dilanian with the 173rd
Airborne Brigade; Mark McDonald in Salahaddin, Iraq; and Kevin G. Hall in
Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.)

-----

11) Kurds Voice Suspicion of U.S. Troops
Townspeople Complain That Presence of GIs' in Schools Is Posing a Danger
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post
March 29, 2003

AIN KAWA, Iraq, March 28 -- U.S. Special Forces troops have taken up
residence in five schools in this little town on the northwest edge of
Irbil, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Far from being welcomed as
liberators, citizens fear the troops' presence will make Ain Kawa a target
for artillery or terrorists.

Residents also are upset that the Americans picked schools, clearly
civilian establishments. "Isn't this what the Americans blame Saddam
Hussein for doing? Why not put them in the countryside? There are plenty of
camps out there," said Fais Betrus, an unemployed laborer.

"Ain Kawa is a peaceful place, and this can bring trouble," remarked Sivan
Ahmed, a college fine arts student. "The authorities told us that the
soldiers are here for humanitarian assistance. We don't believe them."

It is odd to hear such negative comments from Kurds about the presence of
U.S. soldiers in their territory, an autonomous zone protected by U.S. and
British fighter jets since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Kurds generally
support the U.S.-led war to unseat Hussein, the Iraqi president. Kurdish
officials have declared their militia forces at the service of Army Gen.
Tommy R. Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command and the officer in charge
of running the war.

They would like to help the United States take the city of Kirkuk, a key
oil center and former home to tens of thousands of ethnic Kurds who were
expelled by the Baghdad government over the years.

But Kurds are also fearful. During a 1988 revolt, Hussein's forces attacked
villagers from Halabja, on the eastern side of the autonomous zone near the
Iranian border, with chemical weapons. Thousands of people died. Moreover,
on two occasions, in 1975 and 1991, the United States has withdrawn support
from Kurdish uprisings. The second time, after Iraq's Gulf War defeat,
President George H. W. Bush called on Iraqis to revolt only to refuse to
back the uprising with military force. Tens of thousands of Kurds, as well
as Iraqi Shiite Muslims in the south, were killed during Baghdad's
counterattack.

"Honestly, we are nervous. Saddam is capable of anything and we are now
targets," said Yusuf Shauba, a vegetable vendor.

Someone in Irbil apparently tried to exploit Kurdish fears today. A bomb
packed into an artillery shell and laced with a material that caused lots
of smoke exploded in a vacant lot near the center of town. It seemed
designed to simulate a chemical attack, said Karim Sinjari, interior
minister of the Kurdish administration.

Ain Kawa is a lively, relaxed town of 12,000 residents, mostly Assyrian
Christians. Its main street is jokingly referred to as the Champs-Elysees
by Kurds both here and in Irbil, which is largely Muslim and the most
populous city in the Kurdish region. In late afternoon, strollers fill the
street. And, unlike in Irbil, a more conservative city, women appear
publicly in large numbers without head scarves and long black dresses.

In a war portrayed as a crusade in the parts of Iraq controlled by Baghdad
and the larger Arab world, Ain Kawa residents fear they will be seen as
favored wards of the Americans.

"It is something we don't like to talk about. Are the Americans afraid of
Muslims? Why did they just come here?" asked the principal of one of the
schools. To his knowledge, no such encampments were set up in Irbil, he
said. He declined to give his name for fear of losing his job. He said that
officials from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two groups that
administer the north, told him the school would be used to house Iraqi
prisoners of war.

At one of the schools, a U.S. soldier in charge said he was unaware of
local feelings. He did acknowledge that people were afraid the schools
would be damaged during their stay. "I've heard that," he said. The soldier
declined to give his name or unit, for security reasons, or to speculate on
future uses of the school. He said only the Americans were working with
Kurdish militias.

Dozens of Special Operations troops have been stationed in Kurdish
territory for months. Kurdish officials said they were infiltrating behind
Iraqi lines, in the company of Kurdish militias, to spot targets for bombing.
Today, Special Operations personnel in the far east of the Kurdish region
assisted Kurdish militias to try to flush out armed anti-American militants
in the mountains.

Two nights ago, 1,000 paratroops arrived at an airfield 30 miles northeast
of Irbil to prepare it for the arrival of more troops and equipment. The
arrival heralded a possible ground invasion of Iraqi territory to the south.

The morning after the paratroops arrived, it was hard to discern whether
the reinforcements were pleased or perplexed to be in a part of Iraq where
no one was shooting at them. Six sentinels looked on silently as a crowd of
Kurds, children and reporters pressed to get close to them. A Kurdish
militia phalanx shoved the crowd away.

Other U.S. soldiers took positions in an empty concrete reservoir. Farther
below, groups of three paratroops, each accompanied by a Kurdish escort,
dug trenches and surveyed the fields of new wheat. Their desert fatigues
looked out of place in the wet greenery.

Along the road south, nine Americans camped in a rectangular earthen
corral, pointing a big machine gun at the traffic-heavy road just 30 yards
away. "Gotta go," was the only comment a shouting reporter was able to
extract from the group.

"Yes, I'm happy if they have come to help the Kurds get rid of Saddam
Hussein," said Mohammed Abdul Razak, owner of a shop just across the road
from the airfield. "God willing, this will be a real partnership to fight.
Right now, it just looks like confusion."

Hares Ahmed Hamad, a customer, was more upbeat. "This is very good," he
said. "We are in this together, and Kurdish people will be freed."

-----

12) One small step towards a return home
Luke Harding at Bani Makam checkpoint, Iraq
March 29, 2003
The Guardian

By the standards of modern warfare it was not much of an advance. By
yesterday afternoon the Kurdish peshmerga had crept forward a mere 10 miles
across rolling green hills dotted with pine trees and bright spring poppies.

But for Daniel Fatih yesterday's advance by Kurdish guerrillas into
territory previously controlled by Saddam Hussein meant only one thing: he
might get to go home soon. "This is a great day for us. The peshmerga have
taken control of the area," he said, standing in the sunshine next to an
abandoned Iraqi checkpoint. "I'm from Kirkuk. I haven't been there for 12
years," he said.

The war may be going badly in southern Iraq, but in a small, pastoral
enclave in the north yesterday things were going very well indeed. On
Thursday afternoon hundreds of Iraqi soldiers encamped in the hills above
the Kurdish town of Chamchamal began pulling out. They aban doned their
frontline and got into a series of trucks. Then they drove off.

The troops were not surrendering as such - merely retreating down the
potholed road towards the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Their withdrawal
could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Or it could have been part of
President Saddam' s strategy to entrap the enemy inside Iraq' s cities.

Within minutes of the Iraqi army's departure Kurdish peshmerga surged up
the hill. They then liberated their first chunk of Saddam's Iraq - a small
concrete bunker. Few were in doubt as to what this meant. "It's a victory
for the Kurds. This regime has been attacking us and killing us for more
than 30 years," Mam Rostam, a Kurdish commander in charge of the advance said.

"Thousands of our people have died or been killed by chemical weapons. Five
thousand Kurdish villages have been flattened. I'm very excited and very
happy."

The Kurds yesterday revealed a self-evident truth: that the easiest way to
win the war in Iraq is to allow Iraqis to do it themselves. The US military
has told Kurdish leaders not to capture Kirkuk - a Kurdish city that
remained under Baghdad's control after the last Gulf war in 1991, unlike
other towns to the north that achieved autonomy. The Kurds reluctantly agreed.

Yesterday a cavalcade of excited Kurdish fighters in mud-splattered Toyota
trucks surged towards the city. Other peshmerga spent the morning digging
out mines concealed by the retreating Iraqi troops. They were happy and
efficient.

"We've defused more than 200 so far," Commander Hajar Ali explained.
"They've also buried several anti-tank mines up ahead."

Last night Kurdish forces had dug in 12 miles inside Iraqi territory and
had got as far as the abandoned village of Kalahangir - a short drive from
Kirkuk. "We don't have orders to go any further," Commander Ali said.

The Iraqi soldiers had retreated to the city's outskirts, he added. Back at
the abandoned Iraqi frontline the mood was festive, as dozens of locals
streamed up the hill under a blue sky to see what they could loot.
They didn't find much but returned with coils of electrical cable and scrap
metal. One man loaded an entire door on to to his donkey, and then rode
back down the hill. "It's for my house," he explained.

A few sightseers even appeared. Three young Kurdish men revealed that they
were deserters from the Iraqi army who were unable to enter the Iraqi
territory for fear of arrest. "We have come here to have a picnic,"
Mohammad Ali, 23, said. "This is like paradise for us. We Kurds have waited
a long time for this."

American warplanes began bombing the Iraqi frontline above Chamchamal on
Monday, prompting its retreat three days later. Yesterday we were able to
see the damage for the first time.

The missiles had pulverised the flimsy concrete outposts where Iraqi
conscripts had spent their nights shivering in the cold. Vast craters had
been punched into the ridge. The detritus of war was everywhere: torn Iraqi
army uniforms, a charred shoe, chunks of rubble. For those unable to flee
it had clearly been a merciless extinction.
Yesterday's advance by Kurdish forces does not necessarily presage a
turning point in this war. Kirkuk remains a key target for coalition forces
because of its vast Bawa Gurgur oilfield, Iraq's largest.

So far though only around 1,500 American troops have managed to arrive in
northern Iraq - too few to mount a serious push on the city, or on Mosul to
the north. Yesterday a van full of American special forces was spotted
heading towards the new frontline. Otherwise, though, the Americans were
conspicuous by their absence.

The Kurdish fighter Daniel Fatih, one of thousands of Kurds evicted from
his home city by President Saddam, predicted that if British and American
troops ever made it to Kirkuk, the Kurds who were still there would rise up.

"It would have been better if America had begun its war in the north and
not in the south," he added. "The Kurds stand shoulder to shoulder with
Britain and America."

------

13) With the Kurds
The Nation
by ELIZA GRISWOLD
[from the April 14, 2003 issue]

I'm standing at the northern front in Chamchamal, a quarter-mile from
Saddam Hussein's hilltop divisions.
Before me six mounds of earth, like oversized anthills, line the ridge.
This morning, US-led forces bombed each of them. I watched trucks arrive on
the Iraqi side of the line, and presumed they were taking away the wounded.
But the Kurdish soldiers I was with told me that in fact these trucks
belong to Saddam's special forces. One of their tasks is to shoot deserters
before they can cross the no man's land between there and here to surrender.

Here in Kurdistan, Saddam's legacy is everywhere, from the blind children
playing in the streets of Halabja--victims of the 1988 chemical attack--to
the crippling poverty of an oil-rich region deprived of its own resources.
Drive down any road here for five minutes, and you'll pass at least one of
His Excellency's prisons. They are vast and uniform structures with small
slits for windows and rounded corners for better defense. Now deserted,
they are still surrounded by landmines buried in the late 1980s to prevent
the escape of inmates.

The prison up the road from me--on the frontline between Kurdish-held
territory and Iraq--is called the White Fort. The White Fort once housed
women and children rounded up during the 1988 terror as Iraqi forces
destroyed hundreds of Kurdish villages and killed up to 200,000 people.
Last night, I met a 27-year-old woman named Baham, whose mother was killed
there. Since fleeing Kirkuk in 1991, Baham has lived in Chamchamal, 500
feet from the Iraqi frontline. Now that war has begun, she has been forced
to flee again, because of Iraqi shelling and the threat of Iraqi gas
attacks, from which the United States has provided no protection.

Chamchamal is an easy target for Iraqi forces, and there is widespread fear
here that Saddam will use the cover of war to lash out at his most
powerless enemies with his still unaccounted-for chemical arsenal. In the
local hospital, there is neither atropine, nor gas masks, nor even one
chemical suit. Almost everyone in the town has fled. Baham says she cannot
count how many times in her life she has done this: risen in the night,
packed all her belongings onto a tractor and headed off to a cave or
outlying village.

Despite its risks, Baham looked forward to the war and says she is grateful
to the Americans. "War is crucial to us," she told me. "If the US cannot
defeat Saddam, then we will have to support him, because no one will be
strong enough to stop him." Like most Kurds I've spoken to, she prefers not
to talk about America's abandonment of them after the last war and says she
believes that this time will be different. Several people mention to me
that they heard on KurdSat TV that the United States now feels
responsibility for the Kurds' fate.

But gas attacks are only one of the war's potential terrors. Another is the
specter of ethnic conflict. Baham's family is one of 120,000 households
displaced from Kirkuk since 1991, as the Iraqi government forcibly replaced
Kurds with Arabs in order to keep the oil-rich city in friendly hands. As
soon as Iraq loses control of the city, Baham plans to rush in and reclaim
her house. "I'm going to force whoever's in that house to leave," she says,
laughing. A turf war among Kirkuk's Turkmenis, Arabs and Kurds is a real
possibility.

Today I met a family of refugees who fled Kirkuk last week because, they
say, five of their neighbors--all male Kurds under 35--had been rounded up
and killed. They managed to cross the border in the chaos that followed as
the Iraqis began blowing up an oilfield. An 8-year-old girl, Terjeen, told
me she is most frightened by the soldiers, who have been banging in doors
in Kirkuk and setting up heavy weaponry in people's homes. Her uncle,
Kamaran Mejid Karim, 26, says Iraqi forces have been digging trenches in
the streets of Kirkuk and are transforming the city into a battlefield.

One last potential side-effect of the war--both in Iraq and beyond--has
already begun to be palpable: the risk that it will unleash a religious
conflict. Right now, in the mountains along the Iranian border, the United
States has launched Tomahawk missiles as well as airstrikes against the
base camps of two groups of Islamic militants. The most publicized attacks
have been against Ansar al-Islam, a fighting force of roughly 1,000 people,
with almost-certain ties to Al Qaeda. For two nights, the allied forces
attacked the militants' bases, killing 150 people, according to the secular
governing forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). But most of
these casualties were not Ansar fighters. They were members of a more
moderate Islamic group, Komal, who were at peace with both the PUK and the
United States. While there is some debate over the extremism of Komal, many
Kurds are angry and confused that the United States would target an Islamic
group seeking to form a coalition with the secular government.

Yesterday, at funerals around the city of Halabja, many of Komal's leaders
were buried in their bloody clothes to signify their martyrdom at Christian
hands.

The attack has become one more piece of evidence militant Islamists can use
to fuel their hatred of the West; one more piece of evidence that George W.
Bush--our born-again President--is truly waging war against Islam. Already,
that same afternoon, a suicide bomber exploded himself and killed the first
journalist to die here in northern Iraq, an Australian cameraman named Paul
Moran--an attack that the PUK attributed to Komal. Since then, Komal has
publicly warned that it is targeting journalists as symbols of the West.

Two nights ago, I lay in a mountaintop bunker watching US-led airstrikes
pummel the city of Kirkuk. Round after round of red antiaircraft fire rose
from the city, and white flares illuminated the mountainside. The air-raid
siren sounded, and the city went dark. I worried about the casualties, but
I also worried about the rage the attack likely provoked.

I was at least ten miles from the bombing, but I could feel the impact of
the strikes. This is what we have to fear from the war: not only the strike
point but also the impact felt at a distance and its reverberations in the
decades to come. War may be the cost of the Kurds' liberation. But its full
price, here and elsewhere in the Arab world, cannot yet be calculated.

------

14) Kurds Ready Camps to Hold 500,000 People
By BRIAN MURPHY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 28, 2003

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi Kurds are preparing camps to hold as many as
500,000 people fleeing Saddam
Hussein's territory, but face severe shortages of tents and other
equipment, officials said Friday.

The plans are part of Kurdish efforts to mobilize limited resources if the
fighting intensifies in northern Iraq, where Iraqis and U.S.-allied Kurds
have yet to engage in serious clashes.

Airstrikes have targeted Iraqi positions near the borders of the Kurds'
autonomous enclave, which is protected by Western powers. U.S. ground
forces have started to assemble for a possible offensive south to the
strategic city of Mosul and the major oil region around Kirkuk - both
claimed by Kurds as part of their future territory.

Lt. Col. Robert Waltemeyer, commander of a special forces unit in the area,
met Kurdish military and civilian leaders Friday. He said there were no
signs of refugee problems or terrorist threats.

The interior minister of the Kurdish administration, Karim Sinjari, said
crews were installing electricity, roads and sanitation at sites for as
many as a half- million refugees. Iraqi authorities apparently closed the
border with the Kurdish region shortly before the war began.

"If the border opens, we expect people could start coming over," said Sinjari.

But he said Kurds are struggling with a severe shortage of tents and other
necessary items such as generators and fuel. He claimed many supplies were
stockpiled by aid agencies and governments in neighboring countries and
appealed for relief convoys to begin before possible battles in the area.

"We could be approaching an emergency situation," he said.

Separate camps will be constructed to handle 6,000 possible POWs and Iraqi
Army defectors, he said. The number of defectors currently in Kurdish hands
has not been announced, but is believed to number several hundred.

Sinjari also said Kurds have no supplies of gas masks and will begin
teaching their people how to protect against chemical or biological attacks
using common household items.

----

15) Kurds Waiting Out War in Cold, Rain
Newsday
By Mohamad Bazzi
MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT
March 28, 2003

Qala Chogha, Iraq - They huddle under tattered blankets in makeshift tents
pitched between the rocks. The plastic sheeting over their heads is held
down by sacks of mud, but it does little to protect them from the fierce
winds and freezing rain that batter these mountains at night.

Since war started last week, 18 Kurdish families have taken refuge beneath
a series of boulders on a hillside here, barely 10 miles from the front
line that separates the Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq from
Saddam Hussein's forces.

Fleeing in panic as the war neared, they were unsure of where to go, but
guessed that the plains and hills beyond the front lines were the safest
place. They did not consider the rain and winds, and they did not prepare
for a long war.

A few families have been here for 10 days, and they're running out of food.
Most of their children dash around barefoot in the mud, and nearly all have
hacking coughs. There's a stream nearby, but three days of rain filled it
with mud. All 18 families share two kerosene heaters to cook simple meals
of rice and lentils.

One family has a battered taxi, but it's nearly out of fuel. The nearest
village is four miles away, and only a few cars pass by the encampment each
day. These refugees are trapped in a remote corner of northern Iraq, where
the Kurdish self-government has little reach. The United Nations and
international aid groups pulled out of the region before war began.

"We left our homes because we were afraid," said Jayran Zorab, 78, her
hands as coarse as rope. "We didn't know where to go, and when we found
these rocks and the stream, we decided to stay here. We put up plastic
sheets because we don't have tents. Now, we can't go anywhere because we
don't have any cars."

With her two daughters and five grandchildren, Zorab fled the
Iraq-controlled city of Kirkuk, home to some of Iraq's richest oil fields.
U.S. forces were expected to quickly sweep into Kirkuk, secure its oil
fields and move south toward Baghdad. But that attack did not materialize
after Turkey refused to allow U.S. ground troops and heavy armor to deploy
from its soil.

Zorab's family, and two others that fled Kirkuk, expected to return home in
a less than a week. They escaped at night, along back roads used by
smugglers in calmer days to bring luxury cars and heavy tractors into the
Kurdish enclave.

If Zorab was a refugee by necessity given the expectation that Kirkuk would
be attacked, most of the other families came here by choice. They fled the
Kurdish-controlled town of Chamchamal, about two miles from forward Iraqi
positions protecting Kirkuk. Most of Chamchamal's 60,000 residents have
fled into plains and villages deeper inside Kurdish territory.

The lucky ones found refuge with friends or relatives. The unlucky ended up
out in the open, with only plastic sheeting and blankets protecting them
from the elements.

Across the autonomous Kurdish enclave - where 3.5 million people have lived
free from Baghdad's control since 1991 under a "no-fly" zone protected by
U.S. and British warplanes - hundreds of thousands have fled their homes in
the past two weeks. There is no way to tell how many are camped out in the
hillsides, canyons and caves scattered across this mountainous region.

As war approached, the Kurds worried that Hussein might attack them with
chemical or biological weapons, as he has done before. Tens of thousands of
Kurds were killed in ethnic cleansing campaigns after Hussein took power in
1979. Toward the end of the Iraq-Iran war in 1988, the Iraqi army dropped
chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabjah, near the Iranian border.
More than 5,000 people were killed in that attack, which has been etched in
the consciousness of Iraqi Kurds.

"Two days before the war began, we were very afraid that we would be
attacked with chemical weapons, like the people in Halabjah," said
Nishtiman Fattah, 22, who fled from Chamchamal with his mother and six
siblings. "So we ended up here on this hill, in the rain and the mud. We
want to go back to our homes, but what if something happens? We can survive
the cold and the rain, but not Saddam's chemical weapons."

-----

16) Saddam's Right-Hand Man
U.S. Fears ‘Chemical Ali’ Will Use Chemical Weapons Again
By Brian Ross and David Scott
ABC News
March 28, 2003

Some 14 tons of evidence against Gen. Ali Hassan Al Majid, Saddam Hussein's
cousin and the man called "Chemical Ali," from more than 10 years
ago videotapes, audiotapes and documents were airlifted out of Iraq in
1992 in the days following the Persian Gulf War.

Today that information is being scrutinized more than ever as U.S. forces
approach Baghdad, and as "Chemical Ali" is believed to be one of the
lynchpins of the defense of Iraq. All who know him fear he will do what
he's done before and use chemical weapons.

Majid, believed to be now leading the resistance to U.S. forces in the
south of Iraq, was nicknamed "Chemical Ali" because he, with apparent zeal
and relish, allegedly carried out a chemical attack that killed and
permanently maimed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Majid denies that he has carried out such atrocities, but U.S.
investigators say the trove of evidence against him is damning.

Former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith first discovered the evidence of
Chemical Ali's activities more than 12 years ago.

"Mass killers do turn out to be bureaucrats," said Galbraith. "Nazi Germany
kept its records. Saddam Hussein kept his records."

One particular videotape Galbraith and his team of war crime investigators
found, made by the Iraqi security services, is of an execution of Kurdish
dissidents, one of countless acts of brutality ordered by Majid.

"This is an incredibly cruel figure. This, this is a man who knows how to
marshal all the instruments of terror and cruelty to promote his
objectives," Galbraith told ABCNEWS. "And I think he's doing it today in
the south of Iraq."

And people throughout Iraq know what Chemical Ali will do to those in his way.

"You can see here the crowd that's been forced to turn out for these
executions," said Galbraith, pointing to the mass of people on the
videotape, including children. It was a message to not defy Saddam's rule.

And after the executions, a final indignity: "All the officials come and
each of them put a bullet into the body," said Galbraith, "Everybody then
bonds together in committing these acts."

"This video is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

General Isn't Afraid to Use Chemical Weapons Again

But it was the chemical attacks, allegedly ordered by Majid, that horrified
the world and serve as a warning to U.S. and British troops now.

"Children, women, men, vomiting, screaming, crying with swollen eyes," one
female victim said. "Everybody was, kids, they were, they were screaming,
'We are blind.' 250 villages were attacked, the victims left lying in the
streets where they died from the clouds of gas."

"They were experimenting with the lethality of different kinds of chemical
weapons. Mustard gas, cyanide, nerve agents," said Galbraith. "Women,
children, men, they were the guinea pigs in these experiments."

In what is described as a tape recording of one military planning session,
a voice Galbraith and other war criminal investigators say is that of
Chemical Ali, boasts of his willingness to use chemicals: "I will kill them
all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international
community? F--- them. The international community, and those who listen to
them."

And now, those in Iraq who survived the chemical attacks are the living
testament of the tactics of Saddam Hussein and his cousin Chemical Ali.

"This is the world's largest population ever subjected to weapons of mass
destruction," said Christine Godsen, an expert on malformations in babies,
who went back to the area where Majid killed thousands in order to track
the lasting effects on those who survived.

"They hate Chemical Ali," she said. "They see him as the cause of their
relatives dying, their children being born and dying. Their own suffering."

Godsen described examples of horror, of a man who was gassed as a teenager
and 10 years later, is barely able to walk a few feet.

"Some of them can't feel their fingers and toes or have terrible tremors,"
said Godsen. "They had increased incidences of cancers and birth defects.
They were suffering terribly."

Gotten Away With Murder

And for his efforts, Majid has lived the good life as Hussein's trusted
henchman and mass murderer. He is cool and calculated, according to former
CIA agent Bob Baer, now an ABCNEWS consultant on the Middle East.

"I don't think he is a psychopath at all," said Baer. "He just, there is
nothing that he'll stop at to keep Saddam in power."

Baer also says the U.S. ignored reports of Majid's cruelty when the U.S.
was helping Iraq fight Iran in the 1980s.

"The U.S. certainly knew what he was doing in the '80s," said Baer. "I mean
this was not a big secret. Iraq was under threat, Saddam was about ready to
fall and we turned a blind eye. So if Saddam and Chemical Ali wanted to
kill Kurds no one complained."

It's a much different story now as Majid plays a pivotal role leading the
fight against U.S. and British forces in the south, in the southern city of
Basra, where he is also well remembered for how he put down a short-lived
rebellion in 1991.

Survivors say Ali's forces arbitrarily rounded up and executed young men by
the thousands.

"They take them for interrogation and mostly their fate would be
execution," said Mohammed Hanon, a Shiite uprising survivor. "It was
horrible, they were left to be eaten by dogs and animals."

An estimated 200,000 people were killed in Basra on Majid's orders.

"If we believed that there would not be sufficient force in the south,
loyal to Saddam, willing to take the orders of Ali Hassan Majid, that was a
huge miscalculation," said Galbraith.

-----

17) Two Kurds shuffle across border and into history
The Times
From Anthony Loyd in Banimaqan, northern Iraq
March 28, 2003

AFTER a week of war characterised by divisional armoured thrust and massed
air attack, the breach of the Iraqi lines at Banimaqan was an operation of
glorious nonchalance.

Part of no plan but their own, two armed Kurdish customs officials, Salar
Fayaq and Hayas Ali, ventured from their post at the western edge of
Kurdish-held Chamchamal, northern Iraq, and shuffled down a bare stretch of
road beneath the Banimaqan Heights into local history.

It was 2.45pm. Between them the men had two assault rifles, four grenades,
a pistol, knife and torch.
Approaching the first Iraqi checkpoint position with their Kalashnikovs at
the ready, the unlikely vanguard of the northern front peered nervously
about them.

The post was deserted, and from the hills above them the barnacle-like
chain of Iraqi firebases that have shadowed Chamchamal for 12 years were
still and silent. The Iraqis had fled. The pair then did what any
self-respecting male Kurd would do under the circumstances. They tore the
Iraqi swing barrier, which has since 1991 marked the division of Iraqi
control from Kurdish territory, from its hinges and threw it on the ground.

“The Iraqis have killed and burned Kurdish people here at this point,” said
Fayaq, aged 30. “The barrier was the symbol of torture.” Their great moment
complete, the two then looked around for things to loot. “But there was
nothing,” complained Ali, 27. “The Iraqis had taken everything with them.
There was not one thing left worth grabbing.”

The small details of their action may never find a place in any American
history of the war, but for the Kurds it was a momentous occasion,
heralding the first significant shift in the war of the northern front.

The Banimaqan Heights are key terrain on the approach road linking
Kurdish-held Chamchamal with the Iraqi-controlled city of Kirkuk 40
kilometres (25 miles) westwards, and their abandonment marks a huge
pyschological boost to Kurds and Americans alike on a front so far
sidelined from the war by action in the south of the country.

“We had been watching the Iraqis through our binoculars and saw them begin
to pull back from Banimaqan at midnight,” explained Fayaq, scratching the
chest of his serge uniform thoughtfully and apparently unmarked by his new
celebrity status.

“The Americans have been bombing them from time to time for the last three
days. Then just after 2pm we noticed two Russian-made army trucks taking
the last bits of equipment out of the bunkers and disappear in the
direction of Kirkuk. We wondered what to do for a while and then I said to
Mister Ali, ‘Come on, lets see if they’ve really gone’. It was a bit
frightening at the beginning. We weren’t sure if they had really gone or not.”

Within an hour of the impromptu seizure of the Banimaqan checkpoint,
hundreds of Kurds, peshmerga and civilians alike, streamed from Chamchamal
beneath the grey skies on to the vacated Iraqi positions, in a futile
search for booty.

Yet all that greeted them were empty trenches, scattered sandbags, the
occassional gas mask and ammunition box. They fired bursts of gunfire into
the sky and lobbed a few grenades into bunkers in celebration. By 4.30pm
the spontaneous party was stopped by the arrival of a senior peshmerga
commander, Mam Rostam, with his armed cortege. “Get back,” he yelled at the
crowd as his men jostled would-be looters away from the positions. “There
are American jets in the sky that will bomb us in the belief we may be
Iraqis,” he shouted, a conflicting mixture of anger and exuberance. The
crowd reluctantly obeyed, and as dusk gathered the heights were inhabited
only by scattered peshmerga forces, looking westwards through the gloom.

One party chanced upon two Iraqi officers who had chosen to defect before
dawn and hide in bushes beneath the heights a lieutenant-colonel and a
major from infantry and artillery units respectively.

“Seven of my men in an observation post were killed by an American missile
two days ago,” the colonel admitted as he was treated to a meal of chicken
hotdogs, tea and biscuits by his captors. “Four men were blown to pieces.
That’s when I started to think about leaving. Twelve hours before being
found, I was frightened and scared but now I am sure, thank God, that I am
among friends.”

The Kurds of Chamchamal may not have long to wait until the war allows them
a better chance for spoils.

The arrival of US paratroops in other areas of northern Iraq, together with
the news that thousands of irregular peshmerga fighters will participate in
coming action under the auspices of coalition commanders, has transformed
this territory from a place of idle war rumour and occasional gunfire into
an active theatre alive with the buzz of impending action.

##################################
www.kurd.org for searchable news archive

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