TIME: Iraq Jockeys for
Position in Kurdistan
Saturday, March 08, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
As Saddam Hussein prepares for a possible U.S.
invasion, his troops are quietly jockeying for
strategic position in Kurdistan. One example came
last week in Duanzasimam, a dust-blown village of
about 600 people separated from the Iraqi frontline
bunkers by a ripple of dirty brown ridges. On the
morning of February 28, Salam Rahim heard the
unmistakable, and familiar, crack of explosions
skirting the hamlet. He reached for the Kalashnikov
he keeps on his sitting room floor as his wife and
children ran out the gate. "The women and children
were scared and half of the people fled to the
mountain behind us," he says. "Once we heard the
mortars all the armed men of the village ran to the
hill near the Iraqis."
On the slopes a dozen villagers joined a ragtag band
from the Kurdistan Communist Party that maintains the
sole defensive bunker in the area. In all, no more
than twenty-five men headed out to meet the Iraqi
column. What they found was a company of about 100
infantry soldiers, backed by armored vehicles and at
least two or three tanks. As the Iraqi column neared
they spotted the local men with their rifles. The men
waited for the Iraqis to turn on them.
It appears, however, Baghdad had dispatched its
troops on orders with strict rules of engagement.
Instead of easily overwhelming the hastily collected
defenders the Iraqi advance halted and eventually
turned back, just three hours after the operation
began. They covered their retreat with renewed mortar
fire and drove their trucks, armored vehicles and
tanks back over the ridge, re-entering their own
lines.
These forays, the villagers say, are a means to test
the border villages' resolve and sympathies.
According to Tariq, one of 50,000 peshmerga (one who
faces death) stationed on Kurdistan's front lines
with Iraq, the Iraqis are "taking the pulse of the
people to see whether they are with the regime or
not." The ultimate aim, he says, is to gain advantage
and push deeper into the Kurdish region. Baghdad's
orders not to engage any opposition, says communist
commander Rahim Samin Omer, allows them deniability.
"When they see men approaching they withdraw and say
they were only doing an exercise."
Kurdish soldiers and intelligence officers on the
front claim the February 28 operation was
well-rehearsed. Ten days before the assault peshmerga
positions along the line of control were swamped by
an artillery barrage as infantry maneuvers played out
on the Iraqi side. "It kept our heads down while they
practiced and tried to gauge how many were in their
target villages," says a security official at the
crossing checkpoint. On the day of the attack they
claim artillery fire hit other positions further
inside Kurdistan that could have offered support to
the villages under threat.
As at other vantage points dotted along the Iraqi
front, the peshmerga near Duanzasimam say they have
watched Saddam's forces prepare for American bombers.
Bunkers are being reinforced, ammunition is being
brought forward andtanks are being deployed around
Tuz Khurmatu and, more worrying, mysterious covered
vehicles the peshmerga say "are like the ones Colin
Powell had pictured at the UN" are supposedly
arriving at night at a nearby airfield. Tougher
restrictions are being imposed on the civilian
traffic passing into Baghdad's territory. At
Chamchamal, west of Sulaimaniya, fewer and fewer cars
are allowed to cross each day. At Kifri, further
south, goods had been smuggling back and forth thanks
to bribes to the Iraqi border guards. On March 1
Iraqi secret police posed as travelers and arrested
the Iraqi border detail in a sting. Since then
nothing has made it through. Trucks and aged Land
Rovers that a week ago carried lucrative petrol and
foodstuffs now make do with fare-paying passengers.
Taxi drivers say the underpaid Iraqi soldiers are
asking for "pocket money" so they can return to their
homes before the war. It's a war the Kurds of
Duanzasiman hope comes soon, and with decisive
result. "Tell the Americans not to betray us like
they did before," says one angry man. "Please do not
forget us."