US and Britain fail to impress the Kurds

By PATRICK COCKBURN in Qush Tappa

General Nasrudin Mustafa, commander of Kurdish forces north of Kirkuk, had just finished a sentence, saying: "There is nothing new happening on my front."

But as he spoke there was a thunderous roar, the building shook and his office door rattled.

A United States plane had bombed the long ridge on the Iraqi side of the front line, which protects the city and oil fields of Kirkuk. Mustafa looked briefly impressed, saying: "Well, I haven't seen that before."

War is slowly coming to northern Iraq and is likely to be hastened by the setbacks the US-led coalition is experiencing in the south.

US Marines Major General Henry Osman arrived yesterday, the first open sign of the several hundred American troops who have landed during the past three nights.

Kurdish officials reported bombing near Mosul city and a Reuters television crew heard a powerful explosion near Arbil. So far the Kurds - with decades of war against Baghdad behind them - are singularly unimpressed.

"People in Iraq are beginning to think that they [the US and Britain] are not invincible,"said Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari. "There have been no major victories: Umm Qasr and Basra have not fallen."

He criticised the allies for making a dash for Baghdad without securing the cities along the way or using the support of local opponents of President Saddam Hussein. "The impression Iraqis are getting is that there are no Iraqis involved in this campaign, but this is an occupation."

The Kurds, with perhaps 70,000 peshmerga under their command, believe that the longer the war goes on the more likely it is that the US will need them to open a northern front against Saddam.

This would help them to return to the provinces of Kirkuk and Mosul, from which 300,000 were ethnically cleansed, and give them a strong hand in postwar settlement.



Disappointment with allied performance is widespread. In Sifaya, a village of smugglers and farmers 1.6km from Government-controlled territory, people watch every step of the war on television. They think Saddam is a long way from falling.

Even in Kurdistan there are flickers of Iraqi patriotism. A Kurdish official, who has spent years opposing Baghdad, admitted: "Iraqis won't like to see American soldiers ripping down posters of Saddam Hussein, though they might like to do it themselves. They didn't enjoy watching the Stars and Stripes being raised near Umm Qasr."

So far the northern front has been a fiasco. A month ago the US was expected to land 62,000 troops and 310 aircraft in Turkey, the northern pincer of a two-pronged attack. But the Turkish Parliament's refusal to sanction American use of Turkish bases lopped off the northern pincer.

Osman's appearance in the Kurdistan Democratic Party headquarters in Salahudin yesterday marked an escalation of US involvement in northern Iraq.

He announced that he was there to establish the Military Co-ordination and Liaison Command, ostensibly to co-ordinate humanitarian relief, in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.

In fact Osman is here to prevent the Turks fighting the Kurds. There is no sign of the refugees the Turkish Government says it wants to stop entering its country, but Osman's presence will, the Kurds hope, make it harder for the Turkish Army to invade them.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq