Posted on 12/03/2002 4:30:45 PM PST by blam
Day Saddam's soldiers fled at the sight of American uniforms
Wendell Steavenson
(Filed: 03/12/2002)
The front line between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and autonomous Kurdistan-Iraq is half an hour's drive outside the Kurdish city of Erbil.
Across the Euphrates, up on a ridge of low hills, Iraqi soldiers can be seen hanging their washing next to pillboxes of piled-up stones. Sometimes they come down to the riverbank to cadge cigarettes from the Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas.
"The condition of the Iraqi soldiers is very bad," said Najat Tahar Barzani, the Kurdish Democratic Party commander in the area. "They are like beggars. And they don't like this situation."
The front line is porous. There is a regular traffic of relatives going back and forth from the Kurdish communities of the oil centre of Mosul and Erbil. Smugglers take oil into Kurdistan over dirt tracks that avoid the checkpoints.
Information flows with the traffic. The Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, that have divided the territory between them, have a large network of informers in Iraq. Among those travelling to Kurdistan are defecting officers from the Iraqi army, both Kurds and Arabs. These, and officers from the Mukhabarat, Saddam's intelligence service, imprisoned by the Kurds, give an indication of life under the regime.
Their stories, although anecdotal and unverifiable, paint a picture of a demoralised Iraq where a general's salary is worth only about £3 and life is consumed by economic misery and repression.
Ali Husseini, an Arab who retired from the Iraqi army in 1991 and arrived in Kurdistan two months ago, said former colleagues report widespread desertion.
Saddam mistrusts the regular army, while lavishing resources on the Republican Guard. When the army was paraded on Jan 6, Army Day, Husseini said, infantry units were not issued with ammunition or were given the wrong calibre.
Tank crews were separated from their usual commanders so that there could be no collective effort at revolt. Husseini, a former major, said: "They are not permitted radios or television. All that exists for them is Saddam and their commanders."
Kurdish leaders say the army's reaction to an American attack would depend on how serious they believed the Americans were about a change of regime.
"If there is any chance Saddam will remain in power, they will fight," says Fawzi Hariri, a prominent member of the KDP. "If Saddam manages to stay they will be executed if they do not."
Many among both the defectors and the Kurdish peshmerga hierarchy believe that the Iraqis will not fight. Failed wars in Iran and Kuwait and purges after the 1991 uprisings have taken their toll.
"The morale of the Iraqi army is less than nothing," said Brusk Nouri, head of KDP military intelligence. He claimed that in 1999 when the army tried to take a Kurdish village the peshmerga counter-attacked, wearing camouflage uniforms left over from the Gulf war.
"Within one hour our peshmerga captured 480 Iraqi soldiers. They threw away their weapons. They saw us and our new uniforms and thought, 'The Americans are coming!' "
In the Mukhabarat, Saddam's secret police, discontent is also widespread according to Majid, a Mukhabarat captain in prison near Erbil for his part in a sabotage campaign that saw civilians bombed and Kurdish leaders assassinated.
"Many officers don't like the operations against civilians but in the Mukhabarat if you disobey an order you are killed."
I wonder how many this will be the 2nd time?
Wait till the heroin in the Iraqi bunkers starts all over again...pfft...canon fodder..
"Within one hour our peshmerga captured 480 Iraqi soldiers. They threw away their weapons. They saw us and our new uniforms and thought, 'The Americans are coming!' "
A good start to a great legacy. May it soon spread to all of Islam.
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