Sitting ducks?
Feb 27th 2003 | CHAMCHAMAL AND KALAK
From The Economist print edition
Preparations for war in northern Iraq
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KURDISH agents and traders who pass through the checkpoints at Chamchamal and Kalak, the nearest Kurd-controlled points to Kirkuk and Mosul, report back on Saddam Hussein's preparations for defending the two northern cities. Kirkuk, which the Kurds briefly seized at the end of the Gulf war, has oil, as does the area round Mosul, which also controls a vital pipeline. Mr Hussein, says one Kurdish informant, is turning the towns into vast human shields.
According to these reports, residents have been ordered to stock up on food; once the fighting starts, those who venture outside will be shot. The army has put anti-aircraft batteries on the roofs of apartment buildings, while Baath Party and intelligence offices have been moved to secret places. Some say that Kirkuk's oil wells have been mined. In Kirkuk, the Iraqis are said to have built bunkers in Kurdish areas and are manning them with a home guard, reportedly of press-ganged locals. Mosul has a similar home-guard force.
The ruling factions in the autonomous zone, the PUK and the KDP, have had to promise the Americans and Turks that, this time, they will not make a lunge for either Kirkuk and Mosul. Turkey, in particular, is greatly concerned to prevent the oilfields from falling into Kurdish hands.
Even so, once the cities have been taken by the Americans, the PUK and the KDP intend to encourage tens of thousands of Kurds, expelled under Mr Hussein's policy of Arabisation, to return and reclaim their homes from the Arab Iraqis now occupying them. A smaller number of Turkmen, in whose welfare Turkey expresses fraternal interest, intend to do the same. Civil war could ensue, providing Turkey with yet another pretext to intervene. Around Mosul, where three Kurdish tribal chiefs support Mr Hussein, Kurds may kill each other.
If or when war breaks out, a mass exodus from Kurdish cities to the hills is expected. PUK and KDP officials are starting to warn people about Iraqi chemical attacks. But requests for gas masks and other protective equipment have been deferred by America and the EU, wary that help will imply political recognition. Foreign NGOs, reluctant to give the impression that war is inevitable, are not helping either.
Historically accustomed to isolation, Kurds wince at reports that Turkey, far to the north, is to receive early-warning aircraft and chemical-weapons defences from its NATO partners. Those same Turks, according to Kurdish officials, have vetoed Kurdish requests for defensive weapons. Local reports suggest that Iraqi missiles, possibly Scuds, have been brought to within easy range of the main towns in the autonomous zone. The Kurds, says a foreign-aid worker, are sitting ducks.
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