Iraqi regular army commanders in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and Arab tribes in the surrounding region, have told Kurdish leaders they will not resist in the event of a US-led war in Iraq, an Iraqi opposition official said on Tuesday. "The tribes and the army have switched to Masoud Barzani," said Saad Bazaaz, a member of the co-ordinating committee of the Iraqi opposition, referring to the head of the Kurdistan Democratic party. "We expect deep cooperation from the army and the tribes," he said. "We have had their representatives over here in the past few days, especially from Monday night. "If there is resistance, we will try to deal with it politically," he said. "If we pass Mosul and Kirkuk, the way to Tikrit and Baghdad will be clear."
| If true, that would mean the northern campaign is over before it started... |
Mr Barzani would not confirm the latest contacts on Tuesday but he said he hoped a transfer of power in the two cities would be peaceful. He told the Financial Times, however, that such contacts had taken place over a number of years. The KDP leader is on good terms with many of the Arab tribal leaders, who have nevertheless remained loyal to Saddam Hussein. The relationship was cemented in the past two years when he allowed Arab farmers to bring their flocks to Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq during a drought to the south. Mr Bazaaz said envoys of the army commanders had been told to keep quiet and to co-operate with US and opposition forces. In return, the Kurdish leadership would offer assurances that a takeover of the two cities would be peaceful and that their forces would prevent acts of revenge by Kurdish refugees returning to claim their expropriated properties in the region. A confident Mr Barzani told the FT: "It's the first time that the Kurds have the luck not to have the great powers against them."
| And Tom Daschle was saying just a day or two how inept our diplomacy's been... |
Friction in US-Turkish relations over Ankara's refusal to be used as a US staging post in the war, has helped Iraq's Kurds emerge recently as a potentially vital component of US President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing". Thousands of refugees from Mosul and Kirkuk are waiting in Arbil and elsewhere in the Kurdish- controlled north to reclaim their homes and lands once the Saddam Hussein regime falls. These are currently occupied by Arabs brought, sometimes unwillingly, from southern Iraq. Some are marsh Arabs displaced by the regime's destruction of their traditional habitat.
| And feeling out of place — not to mention vulnerable — in the north... |
Mr Barzani said it was not Kurdish policy to open a war front. "The main thing is to reverse the Arabisation programme." The Kurdish leadership would use all its efforts and influence with Arab tribes in the region to ensure that this process would not involve any fighting, he said. Some Kurdish officials have expressed concern that a sudden flood of refugees returning to the cities to reclaim their property could result in bloodshed. They said the role of KDP forces would be to try to manage the migration in an orderly fashion.
| Try to keep it down to name-calling and maybe a few fistfights... |
The head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) — the largest Shia opposition group — claimed that his forces had attacked security and command facilities in Baghdad and elsewhere in the south of Iraq. Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim said military operations had been under way "for the past few days". |