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Kurds scared of turkey { March 8 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59052-2003Mar7.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59052-2003Mar7.html
Kurds Set for War, But Not With Iraq
Militia Trains to Repel Turkish Troops
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A14
ATRUSH, Iraq -- A line of 25 soldiers in green uniforms, camouflaged with pine branches stuffed into their ammunition belts, crept along the skirt of a conical hill approaching a bunker. Shots rang out, and the line broke into two, half to storm the bunker from the rear, the other to produce diversionary fire from the front. A few simulated explosions on the hillside, some war whoops, a sprint and the troops took the position.
The choreographed training maneuver was carried out at a camp of the pesh merga, the storied Kurdish militia. The pesh merga were once a ragtag, baggy-pants guerrilla group famed for stoic perseverance against better-armed adversaries in the harsh conditions of northern Iraq's mountains. The Kurds are trying to convert the force into a modern fighting group, although still steeped in its guerrilla traditions. It has been refashioned along the lines of the Iraqi army, with spit and polish borrowed from the British.
For the first time since the modernization program began in 1997, the pesh merga are being deployed to defend against an invasion of their territory, a U.S.-protected haven in the northern stretches of Iraq where the Kurds have enjoyed self-rule since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But the pesh merga are not deploying against the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the south. Rather, units are taking up posts in towns and villages along the border with Turkey, preparing to repel Turkish troops if they try to occupy the Kurdish zone during the expected U.S.-led war against Iraq.
The Turks are their historic enemies, having repressed Kurdish nationalism inside Turkey. The Kurds believe Turkey is now poised to do the same inside Iraq.
The Bush administration appears to be a partner in the Turkish plan. To persuade its NATO ally to provide it with bases and easy access to northern Iraq, the United States has discussed letting the Turks into the Kurdish zone. The Turks say they will move in -- reports from Turkey say troops and equipment are already moving toward the border. The purpose, Turkish leaders say, is to prohibit refugees from flowing into Turkey, keep the Kurds from declaring independence and disarm the pesh merga.
The Kurds say they will fight the Turks, creating a formula for a war within a war. While the United States and its allies take on the Iraqis, the Kurds say they will take on the Turks.
No one at this Kurdish base or at military headquarters in Dahuk, 30 miles to the west, believes the pesh merga can stop a Turkish invasion. But with their recent training, the fighters can hurt them, the Kurds contend.
"They will be sorry if they come. Anyone who invades our territory will regret it, especially the Turks," said Gen. Aziz Huwas, commander of the troops in training here.
Pesh merga means "those who face death," and that pretty much sums up their history over the decades. The guerrillas have been battered by Iraqi armies several times and, occasionally, killed one another in internecine wars.
Northern Kurdistan is run by two Kurdish political parties, each with its own pesh merga force of about 30,000 troops: the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. In advance of a possible Turkish arrival, the KDP and PUK have agreed to combine their military command. The forces are armed with rifles, mortars and antitank weapons.
Atrush is in the KDP zone. To the east, where the PUK rules, the militia is also being spruced up. "We are trying to mix our own guerrilla experience with modern techniques," said Huwas.
The pesh merga in Atrush put on a recent demonstration. About 250 fighters marched to the beat of drums and chants of "Kurdistan or death." They stomped their feet and saluted in the palms-out British style. Besides the "assault" up the hill, black-shirted martial arts trainees flipped each other over their shoulders, dove through flaming hoops, somersaulted off elevated platforms and hopped over logs and around poles.
It was something that Huwas, a 20-year pesh merga veteran, never experienced. "My training was in a cave. We lived off the land and off the population. It was very different," he said. Huwas is a veteran of several battles with Iraqi troops, and suffered temporary breathing problems from a gas attack during Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988.
The pesh merga was founded in 1970 by the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani, who had led Kurdish revolts since the 1940s. Barzani's forces had long bedeviled Iraqi governments, which were unable to subdue them. However, in the 1970s, growing Iraqi oil wealth fed a buildup of Baghdad's army. The Kurds' patrons, including Iran, the United States and Israel, stopped their support in 1975, after a bargain was struck in Algiers between Baghdad and Tehran. As a result, the Kurdish forces were crushed. Other rebellions, during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and after the Gulf War, were also put down.
"After 1991, we knew we had to change," said Huwas.
So the trademark pants, sash and cloth headgear are disappearing. Fatigues are in. Recruits must be bachelors between 18 and 28 years old. They live on bases, not in their home villages, and are taught weaponry, history and military theory. Basic training lasts three months and recruits sign up for a 31/2-year stint. The troops are paid although Huwas declined to say how much. Kurdish officials also declined to provide a numerical breakdown between the old pesh merga and new.
The new pesh merga have also added former officers from the Iraqi army. Indeed, with their red berets and eagle medallions, they would not look out of place in Baghdad. "There is little difference now between the structure of our army and the Iraqis," said Faisal Amin Rostinki, a deputy to the area commander, Gen. Babakir Zubari.
To reinforce front-line positions in the defense against the Turks, trained units have been sent to border towns and villages. In the town of Ibrahim Khalil, the troops arrived a week ago, residents said. In nearby Bachuka, they reportedly came five days ago.
The Kurdish defense appears to be designed to use all branches of the pesh merga -- the old style, with vintage rifles to harass the Turks on roads and in and around villages, and the newer troops for ambushes and mortar and rocket propelled grenade attacks on fixed posts.
Both the units in baggy pants and sashes and the soldiers in fatigues man stone outposts along roads leading to Turkey. Mountain refuges, the Kurds' best wartime friend, appear to be the main area of operation in case of Turkish intervention.
"We will withdraw to the mountains as usual in our way of partisan warfare," said Rostinki during an interview in Dahuk.
The headquarters complex is a far cry from the ambience of the pesh merga of old. The buildings are cream-colored limestone with porticos that vaguely resemble the front of the White House. But traditional pesh merga can still be found in the rudimentary mud or cement block buildings that predominate in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is a mantra among Kurds that everyone is a pesh merga. At a refugee camp outside the city of Irbil, a group guards the KDP's local headquarters. There, Hama Raza Amin, 57, recalls fighting for the first time in 1963, defending the village of Chiman against Iraqi troops. "They just kept coming and we kept shooting," he said. "We were all miserable, so we took our rifles and fought."
In 1974, Amin faced heavy Iraqi weapons for the first time. In 1988, he fought again. "When the leadership calls, I go," he said. He is a refugee from Kirkuk, a city under central government control. "My land and house are over there. We ask only one thing, that Saddam goes. The Turks have no business here if they don't want to fight Saddam."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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