Kurds push U.S. for a promise of protection No guarantee, no base to launch invasion, leaders say

USA TODAY

By Barbara Slavin
Oct 23, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Iraqi Kurds are demanding -- but not getting -- a public U.S. pledge to protect them in the event of an attack by Saddam Hussein's forces. The Kurds warn that without such a guarantee, they will not allow their territory to be used as a staging ground for a possible U.S. invasion.

Farhad Barzani, Washington representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party says that absent a promise of U.S. protection, the Kurds will also bar Iraqi exiles from using Iraqi Kurdistan as a staging area for attacks against the Iraqi regime. The party is one of two main factions in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Barzani and other Kurdish leaders say they worry that unless the United States sends strong signals to Saddam, Iraqi forces could attack the Kurds during the buildup to an invasion. The Bush administration recently gave the go-ahead to train several thousand Iraqi exiles to assist U.S. forces in a possible invasion of Iraq.

Sources close to the other main Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, say that group is also demanding ''robust and publicly stated'' U.S. assurances, as well as material assistance to deal with a possible chemical weapons strike.

The United States wants Kurdish cooperation to oust Saddam. The only indigenous Iraqi forces with significant military strength -- about 70,000 men in arms -- Iraq's 4 million Kurds control the routes needed to cut off Saddam's home town of Tikrit and to seal off Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, from the north. The Kurds also have ties to Iraqi Arab tribal leaders that could help influence them to support a U.S. effort to oust Saddam.

Kurds are the predominant ethnic group in the northern fifth of Iraq. They have enjoyed relative autonomy for the past 11 years because of aggressive U.S. and British patrols of the northern no-fly zone. Iraqi aircraft are forbidden to enter the zone.

Though the Bush administration probably would reach an agreement with the Kurds before an invasion, U.S. officials have refused to offer explicit guarantees or ease Kurds' fears of what might happen in the months before an attack. The administration has promised only to respond to any attack on the Kurds ''at a time and place of our choosing,'' a vague formulation that goes back to the Clinton administration, which feared being drawn into a war should Saddam attack the Kurds. The White House declined to comment on whether the policy would be changed.

U.S. officials say they have retained the policy because they want to avoid being baited into acting prematurely should Saddam attack the Kurds to try to force a U.S. response. They are also wary of angering Turkey, a crucial U.S. ally on Iraq's northern border. The Turkish government is highly sensitive to any gestures that might foster nationalism among Turkey's own large Kurdish minority.

The Kurds have reason to be apprehensive. From 1987 through 1990, Saddam's forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed more than 100,000 Kurds, including 5,000 who were gassed in the town of Halabjah in 1988. Elite Iraqi Republican Guards are still based in Kirkuk and Mosul, cities just outside the Kurds' so-called autonomous zone in northern Iraq.

''The bottom line is that it's easier for Saddam to hit the Kurds than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Israel,'' says Carole O'Leary, a Kurds expert at American University.

In addition to more public and concrete guarantees, the Kurds want the United States to provide clinics, gas masks, vaccines and protective suits.