Gen. Anwar Dolani commands a Kurdish Iraqi
Army battalion headed for the Iraqi capital.
Morning
Edition, January 18, 2007 · The
atmosphere was tense at the Iraqi National Army base in Sulaimani, (Southern
Kurdistan), Wednesday as soldiers finished up last-minute preparations for
the dangerous trip down south to Baghdad.
In a garage, one Kurdish soldier welded a
machine-gun mount for the gun turret on top of his British-made armored
vehicle. Outside, other soldiers milled around the base, against a stunning
backdrop of snow-covered mountains. They packed gear and food into the back
of Humvees and loaded bullets into machine ammunition belts.
The 1st battalion of the Iraqi Army's 3rd
Brigade, 4th division, consists almost entirely of Kurds. Until this week,
it has been based in the highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan, which without
question in the safest part of Iraq. But on Monday, the first Kurdish
soldiers began moving south to Baghdad.
Their mission, according to Gen. Anwar
Dolani, is to prop up the Iraqi central government and to stop "a very bad
massacre of the people of Baghdad."
A Kurdish soldier proudly
wears a wool cap with the flag of Kurdistan on it. Last year, the President
of the Iraqi Kurdistan region ordered the removal of Iraqi flags, which many
Kurds see as a symbol of oppression. This Iraqi Army base is one of the only
places where you can see Iraqi flags on display in the entire Kurdistan
region.
Like many of the soldiers he leads, the general
is former Pesh Merga. That's the name for Kurdish rebels who long fought against
successive Arab-dominated governments in Baghdad. He knows the job ahead will
not be easy.
"The biggest challenge will be the
communication," he said, speaking in Kurdish. "Also, our guys do not know the
area. And probably 90 percent of our soldiers do not speak Arabic."
The deployment is extremely unpopular in Iraqi
Kurdistan, where the president of the semi-autonomous region last year ordered
all Iraqi flags removed and replaced by the flag of Kurdistan.
"The public is adamantly against it up here,"
said Lt. Col. Dennis Chapman, who commands a small team of American military
advisers attached to the Kurdish battalion. "It's because there's a great fear
of the ethnic strife down there in Baghdad and a fear of it somehow making its
way up here."
Chapman says there have been desertions. He
expects only several hundred soldiers to show up in Baghdad, out of a battalion
of 1,600.
One who still expects to go is 23-year-old
Bakhtiar Mohammed Ali Sadik.
"Everybody disagrees in my family to go down to
Baghdad to fight, but we have to do this," he said.
The Kurdish soldiers who have agreed to the
deployment, say it is their duty to protect Iraq and carry out the orders of
Jalal Talabani, Iraq's first Kurdish president. Kurdish officials say their
soldiers should only fight insurgent groups and terrorists, and avoid getting
caught up in the raging sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite Arabs.
Asos Hardi, editor-in-chief of a Kurdish
newspaper, fears that if the Kurds clash with Shiite Arab militias, it could
spark a new conflict between Iraq's two main ethnic groups.
"It could become the first ignition for the
real conflict — real war between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq," Hardi warned.
Wednesday, more than 60 military vehicles
barreled down the highway, leaving Suleymaniye and heading south toward Baghdad.
At a small roadside gasoline stand, a small
crowd watched, but did not cheer as the convoy drove past.
"Why should we sacrifice ourselves for Arabs
who are killing each other?" asked a man named Serdar Ahmad.
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