Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/11/2003 4:29:07 PM PDT by MadIvan
KURDISH authorities in newly-liberated Kirkuk yesterday secured their regained territory with American forces, effectively marginalising the Turkish threat while maintaining their own power base in the city and all but halting civil unrest.
Looting and violence had already stopped as US troops from the 173rd Airborne Division deployed around key Kirkuk installations including the oilfields and airport on Thursday night, halted by police units from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who entered the city behind special peshmerga teams with the task of with securing hospitals, communication and business centres.
“We made a plan for the taking of Kirkuk over two months ago,” said Colonel Khatab Omar, head of a 400 PUK police unit. “We knew we had to step in quickly behind the Iraqi Army or else the situation would degenerate and we would lose the city infrastructure to looters. The courts should be back up and running here in three days. By next week the situation should have returned to normal.”
Colonel Khatab has good reason to sound smug. In contrast to other urban areas in Iraq, which have collapsed into anarchy, Kirkuk yesterday shone as a solitary example of fast postwar recovery. Though a few incidents of arson and looting continued and shops have yet to open, the hospitals functioned, electricity and water supplies were intact and traffic police controlled the roads.
His political masters have even greater reason for self-congratulation. In a takeover worthy of a Hollywood script, the PUK duped the Americans, played off the Turks and walked over the Iraqis.
The peshmerga leadership consistently assured Washington that it would not send its forces into Kirkuk for fear of antagonising the Turks. Yet it knew that it had to achieve a de facto control of Kirkuk, and neutralise the Turkish threat. So it orchestrated a “spontaneous” mini-uprising to coincide with the Thursday retreat of Iraqi units.
“We never planned to enter Kirkuk,” insisted Mam Rostam, a leading peshmerga commander, with flagrant disregard for the truth. “But we had to respond when the Iraqis fled and the people in then city took control of it themselves.”
Yesterday afternoon phase two of the sting was completed, as Kurdish political and military leaders graciously agreed to withdraw their peshmerga from the city, and hand over control to the American forces. In return the ploy keeps all but 15 Turkish military observers, attached to the US troops, out of the game, but preserves Kurdish control of Kirkuk.
“We said on Thursday that we would withdraw our peshmerga as soon as the Americans were ready for a hand-over,” said Mustafa Chalawea, personal representative to Jalal Talabani, head of the PUK, as he waited to finalise the deal with US commanders at the governor’s office in Kirkuk. “But our civil administration will remain here now, as will PUK security forces such as police. It’s not a Turkish plan, its our plan with the Americans.”
Critically, there has so far been no evidence of the anticipated wave of revenge attacks on the city’s Arab minority. Fewer than 20 people were killed in Thursday’s takeover of the city, most of them looters, and only five were reported killed yesterday.
“There are two reasons for the lack of vengeance killings,” said Colonel Khatab. “First, this was never an ethnic problem: Kurds hated the Baath regime, not the Arab community. Secondly, almost everyone connected with the Baath Party fled Kirkuk days ago.”
Lying in a hospital bed, treated by Kurdish and Arab doctors, Ali Hussein Lafta, 21, exemplified the Kurds’ apparent laissez-faire attitude to recent history. A Shia soldier from Amarah in southern Iraq, together with four comrades, he fled his bunker on the front north of Kirkuk on Thursday morning after noticing that his officers had disappeared.
The five men ran more than two miles back towards Kirkuk, until an armed Kurdish civilian opened fire, wounding Lafta and another soldier.
“As I fell a crowd of Kurdish men swarmed around me, most with guns,” he recalled. “But they didn’t beat me. Instead they slapped and insulted the man who had shot me.
“Two of them then took me in a car to the hospital with my friends. They gave me new clothes and were very good to us.”
Regards, Ivan
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“Two of them then took me in a car to the hospital with my friends. They gave me new clothes and were very good to us.”
A striking contrast to the normal behavior for the region. Maybe there is some hope.
Interesting how the Turks started whining when Kurds went into Kirkuk, bitching about the US not stopping them.
Maybe not letting us in through the north wasn't such a great idea after all.
Colonel Khatab has good reason to sound smug. In contrast to other urban areas in Iraq, which have collapsed into anarchy, Kirkuk yesterday shone as a solitary example of fast postwar recovery. Though a few incidents of arson and looting continued and shops have yet to open, the hospitals functioned, electricity and water supplies were intact and traffic police controlled the roads.
His political masters have even greater reason for self-congratulation. In a takeover worthy of a Hollywood script, the PUK duped the Americans, played off the Turks and walked over the Iraqis.
And the situation in Kirkuk was supposed to be the biggest disaster waiting to happen--instead, it's calmer than Basra or Baghdad! The PUK are very good friends of the US. I don't think it's accidental that we are using their troops here and not the KDP's.
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