Newark Star Ledger

Kurd rebels take northern Iraqi city - U.S. strikes help oust tenacious militants

29 March 2003

 

BORZOU DARAGAHI

FOR THE STAR-LEDGER

(c) 2003. The Star-Ledger. All rights reserved.

 

QARA HANJIR, Iraq - Inside the newly abandoned local office of Saddam's Hussein's Ba'ath Party, gas masks and vials of nerve gas antidote littered the floor. A notebook marked "political lessons" contained handwritten anti-American essays: " Iraq discovered America 's conspiracy to destroy the Iraqi military and the Arab nation," one read. "When Iraq discovered this reality, Washington and London destroyed Iraq 's infrastructure."

The northern front to topple Saddam gained momentum yesterday as rebel Kurds took over a key Iraqi city and Americans helped target Islamic militants with alleged ties to both al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. Kurdish militiamen, from their outposts in the autonomous Kurdish-run northern sliver of Iraq , also took over a key hilltop position overlooking the Baghdad-controlled city of Kirkuk 13 miles to the west that had until recently been manned by the Iraqi army.

 

Meanwhile, thousands of Kurdish soldiers assisted by American airstrikes and Special Forces operatives swept through an area controlled by an Islamic militant group, effectively dislodging them from their stronghold.

 

More than 1,000 American troops are in the autonomous Kurdish area in possible preparation for a larger influx of coalition troops and equipment to launch an assault on the northern Iraqi cities of Kirkuk , Mosul and Tikrit, all of which remain firmly under Baghdad 's grip.

 

The strongly pro-American Kurds have been under U.S.-British aerial protection

since 1991. In Qara Hanjir, a resort destination before the Baghdad regime turned it into a military barracks in the late 1980s, jubilant Kurds cheered as they tore down a portrait of Saddam Hussein in the center of town.

 

"It's like I've been born again," said Baqer Faraj, a Kurd who drove a bulldozer into the monument with Saddam's picture.

 

Witnesses also described scenes of celebrating soldiers 100 miles to the southeast where Kurdish soldiers and dozens of U.S. Special Forces in the Halabja area attacked towns held by a militant Islamic group, said Western journalists accompanying the Kurds.

Ansar al Islam, an Islamic fundamentalist group with alleged ties to al Qaeda, has kept a Taliban-like grip on a cluster of towns along the Iranian border. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has described Ansar as part of a "sinister nexus" tying Saddam to international terrorism.

 

Two Kurdish fighters were killed and perhaps 20 wounded, the journalists said. There was no information about Ansar casualties. The offensive effectively dislodged Ansar from its Biyare headquarters and the area in northeastern Iraq under its control.

"All of the villages are controlled now by us," said Kosrat Rasool Ali, a Kurdish political and military leader. Kurdish irregular troops advanced without orders upon Qara Hanjir, 12 miles inside government- controlled Iraq . The hilltop town offers a clear view of Kirkuk , where several fires raged and plumes of smoke rose, possibly as a result of American bombing.

 

"Iraqi troops were defending Kirkuk from this position," said Mohammad Galali, a Kurdish "Peshmerga" militiaman at the village. "If they have pulled back, it means they can no longer defend it."

 

Iraqi soldiers appeared to have abandoned many of their positions along the front with Kurdish-held northern Iraq , moving closer in toward Kirkuk . Kurds have eagerly and quickly moved in to take up the positions.

 

But the Kurds' hold on the newly won territory remained far from secure. About a dozen Iraqi shells and rockets from Kirkuk landed in and around the Kurdish-held city of Chamchamal , Kurdish military officials said. At least one person was injured, witnesses said.

 

The dilapidated roads leading from the frontline city of Chamchamal to Qala Hanjir go through territory depopulated in the late 1980s as a result of campaign to relocate Kurds from rural villages to cities. The area is a no-man's land dotted with ruined villages.

Kurdish locals eagerly took control of the area in the last 24 hours. Nazem Hussein, carrying a Kalashnikov rifle, and guarding an outpost near the farthest point of Kurdish control, said he once owned much of the land in the area, before he was deported and his properties declared military areas.

 

"That's when I became a Peshmerga," he said.

 

He and several friends returned last night for the first time in a dozen years and engaged in a gunfight with three Iraqi soldiers guarding the area. One was captured and two others fled, he said.

 

Kurds have promised the U.S. they won't make a move toward the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to avoid provoking an invasion of Iraq by Turkey , which is worried that the Kurds will establish an independent state and inspire Turkey 's large Kurdish minority to revolt.

But Kurdish officials have said they will fill security vacuums as Iraqi control over areas considered Kurdish disintegrates. "We're here for security, to prevent robbing and looting," said Nazem Hussein.

 

The Iraqi positions appeared hastily abandoned. A network of freshly dug trenches crisscrossed the positions. Bullets, plastic slippers and macaroni littered the floor of a building belonging to Saddam's Ba'ath Party.

 

A rock garden spelled out some words in Arabic: "Long live Saddam."