[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (5)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 09-16/04/03 (5)

KURDISH DAWN (see also 'Fall of Mosul')

*  Without a fight, oil city [Kirkuk] falls surprisingly fast
*  Kurds take northern Iraqi city
*  Northern Iraq: An imperialist game : A war within war? Part 2
*  Scores of MKO Terrorists Killed in Iraq
*  Eight die as kurds and arab tribes clash
*  Saboteurs Ravage Northern Iraq Oil Fields
*  Kurd Blames Rival Leader for Iraq Looting
*  Iraqi Arabs are driven from homes by Kurds
*  On the plains, Kurds and Arabs clash in the most dangerous flashpoint of
all
*  Bombarded Tikrit falls to marines

PROGRESS OF THE PRETEXT

*  Weapons teams scour Iraq
*  Nuclear weapons expert surrenders
*  Troops Find Terror Training Camp in Iraq
*  U.S. seizes a veteran terrorist in Baghdad


KURDISH DAWN (perhaps)

http://www.iht.com/articles/92594.html

*  WITHOUT A FIGHT, OIL CITY FALLS SURPRISINGLY FAST
by C.J. Chivers
International Herald Tribune, from New York Times, 11th April

KIRKUK, Iraq: The fall of this stategic city on the northern front came so
swiftly Thursday that it seemed to surprise the attacking soldiers as much
as the fleeing Iraqi troops.

The collapse came when Iraqi Army units gave in to the combined pressures of
a civilian uprising and a lightly equipped American and Kurdish attack.

Kirkuk is a city built on oil, and the initial American assessment of the
petroleum infrastructure on its outskirts said the equipment, aside from one
oil storage facility, had survived intact. As the city changed hands, there
was also no sign of the ethnic killings once feared by military planners.

But for all of its immediate successes, the advance occurred with so few
American and Kurdish forces that civil authority almost immediately broke
down.Kurds looted homes, business and government offices throughout the
day.At nightfall, highways to the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulaimaniya
were crowded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cars and trucks laden with
stolen goods.

One senior Kurdish official, lamenting the spectacle, said the attacks
Thursday had not been meant to penetrate the city, but only to continue to
strangle it by seizing nearby intersections and ground.Instead, the
uprising, and the Iraqi withdrawal, appeared to draw advancing forces in,
setting in motion a chaotic day.

"This shouldn't have happened at all," he said. "The understanding was to
stop."

Intentional or not, the seizure of Kirkuk carried deep military meaning.With
Baghdad and cities in southern Iraq already under American military control,
it bisected the northern front, isolating remnants of the Iraqi Army in two
remaining large cities and a belt of smaller towns and villages.

"The northern front is shrinking in two directions," said an American
special forces major who served as an operations officer in the
battle."Eventually there is going to be no front left."

The collapse brought remarkable scenes. After a morning of exchanges of fire
on the city's outskirts ‹ the brief if intense contests between the Iraqi
soldiers who remained behind and advancing Kurdish and American soldiers ‹
the city fell almost silent at lunchtime.

Kurdish fighters and a few journalists, advancing on two roads that enter
Kirkuk from the north and east, watched briefly from the last knoll at the
city's edge, and then entered to find a civilian populace ecstatic to meet
them. Ali Azad, a Kurdish man who appeared to be 70, hugged every foreigner
he saw.

He said he hated Saddam and now was rid of him. "I was born today!" he
shouted. "Today is the first free day of my life!"

More Kurdish fighters and a few special forces soldiers began to rush in,
trying to keep up with the pace.

According to several special forces soldiers and Kurdish officials, what had
been expected to be a slowly escalating battle accelerated wildly when most
of the Iraqi soldiers and government loyalists slipped away in the morning,
moving south, it seemed, toward Tikrit, the region of Saddam's birth.

The first large departures had been seen at about midnight, when the special
forces saw a convoy of about 75 vehicles leaving to the south. They
refrained from bombing it, the major said, because they could not confirm
that it did not include civilians.

The major said even then the speed of the collapse surprised them all.
American and Kurdish commanders were holding a meeting, talking about plans
for the second day of fighting, when a special forces unit accompanying
Kurds reported they had crossed the last ridge on the outskirts and were
about to enter Kirkuk.

>From signs on the streets Thursday, the Iraqi forces left in a hurry. In
places they had dropped cartridge belts and helmets, even stripped from
uniforms, apparently to flee in civilian attire.

Here and there were armored personnel carriers and tanks, doors open,
undamaged, silent, the litter of an army in retreat. Some fighting vehicles
were covered in long grass, an attempt to camouflage equipment for a battle
not joined.

Almost everything seemed to have been left behind, even food. Near one
military base, a donkey ate from a bunker, gorging itself on vegetables
abandoned by the case.

There were hints of what happened to loyalists who remained. At the Iskan
prison, a small jail, three prison officials were dead on the street at the
feet of a group of Kurds.

The men had been freshly shot; one had a wound in the face that appeared to
have been from a blow by an ax. A young Kurdish man pressed a sheet of paper
into a visitor's hand and said it was a list of the people the warden had
killed in his jail.

The list contained 18 Kurdish names.

"Now he is dead," the man shouted. It did not take long for Kirkuk's
civilians to realize that the Iraqi government no longer had influence here.
At the governor's office, a now-familiar outburst of joy, seen in other
cities, repeated itself anew.

The city's square contains a large statue of Saddam, dressed in robes, his
right hand raised perhaps 25 feet (7.5 meters) in the air.

As a contingent of American forces arrived, the crowd chanted, "Down, down
Saddam!" One man, using a green garden hose as a rope, scaled the statue and
began striking the head of Saddam's likeness with a shoe. Someone passed him
an iron mallet.

Similar scenes repeated themselves at the Saddam General Hospital, where the
emergency room was strained in the afternoon, with roughly 50 trauma
patients seeking care.

Among them were civilians shot by departing Iraqi soldiers, people who had
stepped on mines and those who had been struck by gunfire from neighbors who
were celebrating. One man stood over his 15-year-old son, whose legs were
laced with shrapnel. The boy's friend had stepped on a mine while looting an
Iraqi guardhouse, the father said. This boy was lucky; the other lost much
of his left leg.There were no American casualties; Kurdish military
casualties were described as light.

Looting, even more than cheering, seemed to be the sport of choice.

At one checkpoint near an industrial park crowded with oil storage tanks,
Kurdish fighters presided over a massive traffic jam of looters. Every car
and truck was packed with stolen office furniture, air conditioners, water
coolers, fire extinguishers and more.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1049567854343.html

*  KURDS TAKE NORTHERN IRAQI CITY
Sydney Morning Herald, 11th April

Crowds welcomed Kurdish fighters with flowers and sweets when they swept
into the strategic city of Khaneqin, capturing it without a fight.

On a day when the larger city of Kirkuk also fell, a phalanx of Kurdish
soldiers in pickups and other trucks - accompanied by US forces in Humvees -
moved into Khaneqin and occupied major government buildings.

Residents said the city had been under a 6am to 6pm curfew for several days
and that at 5pm on Wednesday they were told to stay in their homes as
soldiers and ruling Baath Party officials ringed the city 145 km north of
Baghdad.

"Everybody was frightened and didn't know what would happen," said Ayouksa
Karim, whose son was executed years ago for political activism.

At 7.30pm Iranian television, which is received in this city near the
Iranian border, first broadcast the now-famous images of Saddam's statue
torn down in downtown Baghdad.

"When I saw the statue falling I realised that we were free," said Ramzi
Amza, a woman in her 60s.

Residents slowly emerged and saw that the Baathist authorities had fled.

"I couldn't believe it," said Amza. "They were gone."

A small group of troops belonging to the Badr Brigades, an Iranian-based
Shi'ite Iraqi opposition group, entered the city first, in the dark,
followed by a force of up to 4,000 Kurds, witnesses and officials said.

The green flag of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which rules the
south-eastern half of the autonomous Kurdish area, flew atop the mayor's
office, which was guarded by two US special operations troops in desert
camouflage standing on the rooftop.

Kurdish Peshmerga warriors streaming into the city plastered posters of
Patriotic Union leader Jalal Talabani on cars and buildings.

In scenes reminiscent of Baghdad and Kirkuk, residents looted government
offices and defaced Saddam Hussein's portraits and monuments.

One young man was seen carting an air conditioner from a Baath Party office.

"Bush good! Bush good!" he cried.

Residents of the heavily Kurdish city have long wanted to unite it with the
rest of the autonomous Kurdish enclave, established in 1991 following the
Gulf War.


http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/apr/12/12042003pd.htm 

*  NORTHERN IRAQ: AN IMPERIALIST GAME : A WAR WITHIN WAR? PART 2
by Brig Gen(retd) M. Sakhawat Hussain
Bangladeshi Independent, 16th April

[.....]

While opening a new front the US military is rapidly becoming embroiled in a
war of manoeuvre and intrigue in northern Iraq, in league with its Kurdish
militia allies, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP). As first ever real time action in this war Kurds
backed by US forces with 6,000 PUK fighters under US helicopter support
attacked Islamic extremist, Ansar-al- Islam. The fight almost leveled
Halabja Valley adjacent to Iranian border. One may recall that Collin Powel,
while in Security Council in February, tried to establish links between
Al-Qaida and Ansar with oblique reference of Saddam's connection with them.
Ansar opposed such suggestion rather categorically and pronounced their
opposition to secular Baath and other Kurdish parties. Reportedly small band
of Ansars were driven out from the area under heavy air raids. But remains a
potential threat all along Iran's border. US cruise missile attack also
targeted the town of Khormal, which is under the control of a second Islamic
militia Komala Islami Kurdistan.

Unlike Ansar, Komala actively cooperates with the PUK administration in the
region, for which it receives a monthly payment of about $250,000.
Sandwiched in between PUK and Ansar militia, it has tried to maintain a
precarious neutrality accused by each of aiding the opposition. Komala
leaders reacted angrily to the attack, which left at least 46 people dead
and caused an exodus of refugees fleeing for safety in anticipation of
further bombing. Komala leader Sheikh Mohsin declared: "We deplore this
decision to attack us since we have been against the [Iraqi] regime, not
America. If we are targeted, America must clarify why that happened, and if
this has been an accident then there must be an apology."

There has, however, been no explanation and no apology from Washington. In
his speech to the UN Security Council last month, US Secretary of State
Colin Powell made great play of an alleged chemical weapons factory run by
Ansar. He exhibited an aerial photograph, giving its location as Khormal. As
it turned out, the building was not in Khormal but in the Ansar-held village
of Sargat. Moreover, an inspection of the building by Western journalists
found no evidence of a weapons factory, chemical or otherwise. It is
unlikely that the strike was accidental or that the US did not know the
political affiliation of the town.

The American military has been working closely with PUK leaders in
preparation for the assault on Ansar strongholds. PUK leaders have publicly
apologised for the attack and denied that they asked the US to target
Khormal. But no one really believes the claim.

[.....]


http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=4/13/03&Cat=2&Num=12

*  SCORES OF MKO TERRORISTS KILLED IN IRAQ
Tehran Times, 13th April

TEHRAN -- Iraqi Muslim combatants on Saturday attacked the terrorist group
Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Kirkuk and killed scores of them,
according to dispatches.

The Voice of Today's Iraq Radio yesterday announced that the bodies of MKO
members still lie in their camp.

Before the arrival of Kurdish and U.S. forces in Kirkuk, some MKO members
had already been killed by the people of Kirkuk, and their bodies were lying
alongside the bodies of Iraqi intelligence (Istekhbarat) agents, the radio
reported.

In another development, Jalal Talebani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), announced that the second phase of PUK attacks against the
MKO would start soon, the Central News Bureau (CNB) reported, citing PUK
sources in northern Iraq. The operation will be carried out with U.S. Air
Force support, the report added.

The MKO forces are said to number 500. It seems that they will be unable to
find a way out of the current situation.


http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=49147&Sn=WORL

*  EIGHT DIE AS KURDS AND ARAB TRIBES CLASH
Gulf Daily News (The Voice of Bahrain), 14th April

BAGHDAD: At least eight people were killed in running battles between
US-allied Iraqi Kurds and Arab tribes loyal to Saddam Hussein, Kurdish
fighters and tribal leaders in northern Iraq said yesterday.

Most of the fighting has been around the town of Huwaija, on the road
between Kirkuk, which US-backed Kurdish "peshmerga" fighters overran last
week, and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

US forces yesterday entered Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad, and met no
resistance, the US army said.

The Kurdish advance ushered in a wave of looting in ethnically divided
Kirkuk, which Arab tribal leaders said had spread to the fringes of their
villages on the road to Tikrit.

Arabs said five people were killed in the clashes, some of them civilians.
Kurdish fighters claim three dead.

"It has been chaos. The Kurds are here to steal, and have killed some of our
people while trying to rob them on the road," said one leader of the Al
Obeid tribe, one of several in the area Saddam wooed before the US-led war.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish forces have withdrawn from Kirkuk and Mosul in line
with assurances given by the US after the two cities fell, Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul said.


http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/5631784.htm

*  SABOTEURS RAVAGE NORTHERN IRAQ OIL FIELDS
by Scheherezade Faramarzi
The State, from Associated Press, 14th April

KIRKUK, Iraq - Deep beneath the parched earth, there is oil. Atop it, there
is chaos.

As the United States takes control of northern Iraq's oil fields, looters
have torn through. U.S. forces guard some places but are absent from others.
And though the wells appear safe, their support systems have been ravaged by
saboteurs.

"It's the worst destruction that I have seen in my life. It will set Iraq
back many years," said Shad, an electrical engineer with the Northern Oil
Co., who would not give his last name. His company administers all the
fields of northern Iraq.

Iraq has the world's second-largest proven crude reserves, at 112 billion
barrels. But its pipelines, pumping stations and oil reservoirs have
suffered for years from a dearth of funds and lack of maintenance. Now the
north can add sabotage to its list of problems.

In recent years, oil has accounted for 95 percent of Iraq's revenue, an
estimated $22 billion a year. With so much money at stake, a lot of people
are paying close attention.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks mentioned the oil situation at a Central
Command briefing Monday in Qatar, saying it probably will be at least a few
weeks before crude is flowing from Iraq again because fields in the north
and south need to be cleared of explosives and repaired.

"We will work as fast as we can," Maj. Bud Morgan, a U.S. Army engineer,
said Monday.

Local engineers said the wells were largely untouched, but production cannot
begin until damaged equipment is replaced. The United States says it is
trying to dispatch independent contractors to determine just what needs to
be done.

"It's a big system," Morgan said. "Even when we have the equipment, it will
be a slow process to get everything in place and going."

Iraq's primary oil fields are in the south near the Kuwaiti border, and in
the north around Kirkuk.

U.S.-led forces have secured all 1,000 oil wells in the south. Brigades put
out fires at four Iraqi wells sabotaged by Saddam Hussein's loyalists, with
Kuwaiti firefighters extinguishing the last one Sunday. Seven more blazes
went out by themselves.

Last week, the United States' Kurdish allies seized Kirkuk, Iraq's No. 2 oil
center, which pumps up to 900,000 barrels a day. Brooks said Monday that all
of northern Iraq's fields had been secured, although one well was still
burning.

Though early surveys suggest the northern oil fields appear undamaged, much
of the support equipment in the area - from offices to computer data to
heavy machinery - has been sabotaged or looted.

Inside the Northern Oil Co. offices in the Baba oil fields, the air was
smoky Monday, four days after someone looted the place as Saddam's forces
quit Kirkuk. The Americans entered the city on Friday.

"Here, there were 10 to 15 computers hooked up. Here ... oh my God, look
here," Shad said, pointing to the damage as he slipped on broken glass and
junk.

Addy, another engineer, fumed as he gazed at the rubble of his laboratory.
Shattered bottles of chemicals lay strewn on the floor and shelves. Green
liquid mixed with litter on his office floor.

"They stole everything - light bulbs, fans, phones, fax machines,
computers," he said. "And then they destroyed the building."

Addy accused the Kurdish fighters opposed to Saddam - and working with U.S.
troops - of causing the damage.

"That's not true," said Col. Ben Schrader, chief of the Army engineering
team at Baba. He said it was unclear who was responsible and refused to say
if the United States suspected Saddam's retreating forces of the sabotage.

Saddam's forces booby-trapped hundreds of Kuwait's oil wells after invading
the country in 1990, and blew them up during the 1991 Gulf War as U.S.
forces drove Iraq from Kuwait. It took months for the fires to be put out.

In Kirkuk, American military officials met Monday with Iraqi oil engineers
and executives, including some who had been members of Saddam's Baath party.
Among the participants were the director of Kirkuk's oil field, the
assistant general manager of Northern Oil and Kurdish opposition figures.

Imposing order and restoring normal production were the topics of the day.
It's a task as towering as the oil wells are deep, and it's going to require
the labors of people very unaccustomed to working together.

"We need everyone's cooperation," Shad said. "All the ethnic groups must
forget historical hatreds and pick up the pieces to bring back what we had."


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/apr/14/041409519.html

*  KURD BLAMES RIVAL LEADER FOR IRAQ LOOTING
by Brian Murphy
Las Vegas Sun, 14th April

SALAHUDDIN, Iraq (AP): In a possible danger sign for Kurdish unity, the
leader of the largest Kurdish faction blamed his rival-turned-partner Monday
for triggering looting and chaos in northern cities by storming into the oil
capital of Kirkuk in violation of a U.S. brokered military accord.

The sharp reprimand by Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, raised the prospect of internal rifts among the Kurds, one of
Washington's main allies against Saddam Hussein. The timing couldn't be more
sensitive: just as opposition groups begin important steps toward a future
democratic system.

"What happened was a violation of what we had agreed upon," Barzani told a
small group of foreign journalists. "There was definitely a decision not to
enter Kirkuk with a large force."

Barzani accused his former rivals - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by
Jalal Talabani - of breaking a pact with the United States to avoid a
large-scale Kurdish assault on Kirkuk and opt for a smaller, U.S.-led drive.
Instead, Barzani said Patriotic Union fighters took advantage of the
collapse of Iraqi defenses on Thursday and poured into the city, the center
of Iraq's No. 2 oil region.

The offensive - which U.S. Special Forces teams could not contain - threw
Kirkuk into what Barzani called a "security vacuum" that led to rampant
looting and ongoing tensions among the city's main groups: Kurds, Arabs and
ethnic Turks called Turkmen.

Turkey has threatened to send troops to northern Iraq if the Kurdish
militiamen don't fully carry out their promises to withdraw. Turkey, which
fears Kurdish control of Kirkuk's oil riches could lead to a drive for
independence that could inspire Turkish Kurds, has sent military observers
to Kirkuk.

Patriotic Union leaders could not immediately be reached for comment. The
U.S. military did not immediately confirm that the Kurds had such an
agreement with the United States.

The history between the two Kurdish groups has been rocky, degenerating into
civil war in 1996. They found common ground as partners with Washington,
however, and in October the full Kurdish parliament convened for the first
time in eight years.

Both Kurdish groups are scheduled to take part in a Tuesday gathering in the
southern city of Nasiriyah. The meeting, which is expected to include U.S.
envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, could help define the strategy to replace Saddam's
toppled regime.

The Patriotic Union has moved quickly to root its influence in Kirkuk - even
sending traffic police just days after the end of Saddam's control.
Barzani's group fears being sidelined and feels betrayed by the Patriotic
Union's battlefield dash.

Barzani's forces entered Kirkuk in ragtag convoys hours after the Patriotic
Union was in the city center. U.S. Special Forces troops told The Associated
Press they were powerless to hold back the Patriotic Union advance.

"I don't think it was a calculated thing but rather a rash move perhaps by a
young commander," said U.S. Lt. Col. Robert Waltemeyer after Kirkuk fell.

"We had made an agreement with the Americans that it would be organized and
a very small force would enter Kirkuk to concentrate on security," Barzani
said. "Large forces entered Kirkuk. It was disorganized and it has had an
impact, first of all, on the social, political and overall situation in
Kirkuk."

Barzani also claimed the Kirkuk tumult caused disarray among U.S. northern
front commanders that left them unprepared for the collapse of Iraq's 5th
Corps in Mosul, the region's other main city, where the university and other
institutions were ransacked in rampages that have left the city's Kurdish
and Arab residents deeply divided.

The looting and violence has mostly subsided, though Kirkuk faces rising
ethnic tensions. Turkmen held a funeral Monday for a child killed a day
earlier in a shooting they blame on Kurdish civilians. The claims could not
be independently confirmed.

Arab residents, many of whom were relocated to Kirkuk by Saddam in an
attempt to dilute the Kurdish dominance of the city, claim they've been told
by Kurds to leave.

Barzani supported reversing the "Arabization" of Kirkuk, but denounced any
attempts to use violence or threats.

"It should not remain," he said. "But people should not take the laws into
their own hands to do acts at random. All those Arabs who have been brought
to this area under the Arabization process - to change the ethnic balance of
Kirkuk city and also the characteristics of the city - should be taken
back."


http://www.iht.com/articles/93224.html

*  IRAQI ARABS ARE DRIVEN FROM HOMES BY KURDS
by C.J. Chivers
International Herald Tribune, from The New York Times, 15th April

SA'AD BIN ABI WAQAS: IraqTwo Arab mothers and their children sat forlornly
in a semicircle in the dirt, one household among scattered families living
in the open on the outskirts of this agricultural village.

Before them on dirty cushions were a pair of tiny, wheezing infants; one was
24 days old, the other 35 days old. Both looked ill. Shiya Juma Mohammed,
mother of the younger baby, pleaded for help. "We need food," she said. "We
need medical service. We need security. We need to go home."

Mohammed and her trembling infant were victims of a new wave of intimidation
and crime in northern Iraq. They are among thousands of Iraqi Arabs expelled
from their homes by armed Kurds, one of the Americans' most exuberant allies
in the war against Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Arabs here were ordered by the
Kurds to move away within three days.

Forced expulsion has long been a tool of the Iraqi government. Since the
late 1960s, Saddam Hussein's Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party relocated huge
segments of Iraq's population from place to place, either to suppress
uprisings or to skew demographics near oil fields in favor of the ruling
Arab class.

Now, days after seizing control of Kirkuk, an ethnically diverse city
located astride Iraq's northern oil field, Kurds are forcing Arabs in
outlying villages to move from their homes, leaving entire hamlets nearly
abandoned and crowding some families into wheat fields that have become home
to hastily erected camps.

For decades, Kurds have complained of abuses against them, including
intimidation, expulsions and property seizures. Now, the newly prominent
Kurds are indulging in some of Saddam's abuses themselves.

The intimidation appears widespread, and suggests problems for American
postwar plans in Iraq, and for efforts to improve relations with Arabs
suspicious of American intentions.

The rush of intimidation and theft dismayed senior Kurdish officials Sunday,
who said the crimes were not a matter of policy, but the work of
freebooters, perhaps even low-ranking Kurdish officials, who would soon be
brought into check.

"The mistakes of Saddam, we are repeating them," said Sheikh Abdul Karim
Haji, a member of Parliament in the Kurdish autonomous zone and an official
who has been trying to ease relations among ethnic groups in and around
Kirkuk. "We are against, absolutely against, what has happened."

Yet one official for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, the dominant
armed Kurdish party near Kirkuk, suggested that a policy of expelling Arabs
had the approval of the United States.

The official, Salam Kakai, deputy leader of the Patriotic Union's office in
Daquq, which has been issuing signed orders of expulsions to Arab Bedouins
in this village, said the same people who had defeated the Iraqi Army had
ordered Arabs to relocate.

It is a message radically different from what Washington had been hoping
would reach Arab ears. "We have an order that the people should go back to
their original places, from the PUK leaders, and from the coalition," he
said. "We carry out orders."

Senior Patriotic Union officials said Sunday night that no official order
for expulsions had ever been issued, and the order contradicted the stance
by Jalal Talabani, the Patriotic Union's general secretary, who has publicly
advocated a tolerant, multiethnic Iraq. Talabani's position and call for
tolerance face a difficult history. Kurds have been expelled from Kirkuk and
the surrounding villages for at least 35 years, and replaced in many cases
by Arabs who were forced in by the ruling Ba'ath Party, or lured to formerly
Kurdish neighborhoods with subsidized housing.

In many cases, Arabs now live in homes seized from Kurds years ago. A
central component of the Kurdish resistance to Saddam was the freedom of
Kirkuk and the restoration of property to Kurds.

Shalaw Ali Askari, a veteran Kurdish guerrilla and an envoy from Talabani to
try to improve relations in and around Kirkuk, said problems stemmed from
lawlessness, not from any decision by the party's leadership

He said he would try to meet tribal leaders Monday to assure them that Arabs
could remain in their homes, at least for now.

Sa'ad bin Abi Waqas is one of five villages south of Kirkuk where residents
have been notified by the Patriotic Union's office in Daquq to vacate their
homes by Monday. On a tour Sunday to the area, researchers for Human Rights
Watch, an independent group, said they found credible accounts of 2,000
people already displaced from the area.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=397386

*  ON THE PLAINS, KURDS AND ARABS CLASH IN THE MOST DANGEROUS FLASHPOINT OF
ALL
by Patrick Cockburn in northern Iraq
The Independent, 15th April

Ezedin al Mohammed, a thick-set cheerful man, was spending yesterday looking
for people killed in gun battles and bombing south of Kirkuk. When he finds
the bodies, which bloat fast under the fierce Iraqi sun, he buries them and
takes their identity cards so their relatives will know they are dead.

Villagers had just told Mr Mohammed, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent in
Kirkuk, that there were some bodies lying on a road nearby. He thought they
might be Kurds whom Arabs had shot on suspicion of looting or Arabs shot by
looters or just possibly the Americans might have had something to do with
it.

The plains of northern Iraq are a very dangerous place. Over the last week
Kurdish forces have pushed south, reclaiming lands from which they were
driven by Saddam Hussein in the last thirty years. Many Arabs have fled,
while others have stayed and shoot at any stranger entering their village.
Looters dart about in their shabby pick-up trucks, ransacking any undefended
house.

For decades Kurds in northern Iraq under government control were an
underclass, forbidden to hold jobs in the oilfields or even farm their
lands. Arabs brought from other parts of Iraq lived in settlements built on
the ruins of their villages. Some 300,000 Kurds were expelled or forced to
flee.

Now within a couple of weeks the balance of power has been reversed. It is
the Kurds who are on the offensive and the Arabs who remain on sufferance.
The result is a murderous ethnic conflict which will go on long after the
Anglo-American war to remove Saddam Hussein is over.

So far yesterday Mr Mohammed had collected some 38 identity cards from dead
bodies which he had buried with the help of volunteers, all wearing
distinctive red and blue jerkins in an effort to show that they are
non-combatants.

We met Mr Mohammed and his team from the Red Crescent at the last Kurdish
town on the main road between Kirkuk and Baghdad. They were traveling in a
decrepit taxi, because their official car had been stolen in Kirkuk a few
nights before. "It was local militia in Kirkuk which stole it," said Mr
Mohammed angrily. "They accused us of being pro-Saddam and threatened to
kill us, otherwise I would not have let them take the car."

In Dibbis, a pleasant Kurdish town shaded by trees on a river 10 miles west
of Kirkuk, freed from Iraqi government control last week, we met the
grieving family of a young man who had misjudged the dangers of the present
situation. He was called Sami Adull and last Saturday he had visited an Arab
village named Hawaijah to make sure that a Kurdish family he knew there was
safe.

On his way to Hawaijah he had run into a group of Peshmerga (Kurdish
soldiers) and they had decided to accompany him. The Arabs in the village,
who see all Peshmerga as potential looters, apparently thought they were
about to come under attack. They laid an ambush for the group and, according
to Sami Adull's family, killed ten or twelve of them.

Sami was captured. Although he was a civilian the Arabs in Hawaijah thought
he had been acting as a guide to the Peshmerga. Going by marks on his body
he was tortured and may have been dragged behind a car before being shot in
the face. His corpse, along with other bodies, was then returned to Dibbis
heaped in the back of a pick-up.

Incidents like this have created an atmosphere of terror in the borderlands
between Kurd and Arab. Strange rumours spread and are believed, such as fear
that Iraqi government officials poisoned the water supply for Kirkuk before
they fled. Not this would make much difference because looters stole
essential pumping equipment from the water treatment plant so it cannot
work.

US troops have taken over the Kirkuk oilfields and announced that oil
production would resume in a few weeks. The news did not impress the 900,000
people in Kirkuk who have no water or electricity. Mr Mohammed had gone to
see the US soldiers at the old Iraqi air force base in the city which has an
ancient Soviet Mig fighter as a monument outside the main gate.

The result was not encouraging. The Americans had brought in four tanker
loads of water but they refused to let any Iraqi distribute it. "They said
'everybody must come to us,'" recalled Mr Mohammed. "I told them that people
either did not have cars to collect the water or, if they did, they had no
petrol or if they had petrol they were too frightened to leave their own
districts." Even so the US soldiers said this was the only way they would
distribute the water.

The American presence is curiously detached from the lives of ordinary
Iraqis. On the main road from Arbil to Kirkuk there is an American
checkpoint with two American soldiers holding up signs in Kurdish saying
'drive in one lane' and another saying 'carrying weapons is forbidden.' But
on the other side of a ridge there was another road with not an American to
be seen where a crowd of looters, like cats eying the milk, were circling
round an oil company office.

The fate of Kirkuk, which Kurds see as their true capital, has been the
crucial issue on which negotiations between governments in Baghdad and the
Kurdish leaders have foundered again and again in the past. Under agreements
reached before the war the Kurdish parties agreed not to capture the city,
but, just as it became obvious that Saddam was falling, the temptation
apparently proved too strong for Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan. He sent his Peshmerga into Kirkuk. Although they are
meant to have withdrawn they still effectively control it.

It may have been a step too far. The Kurds have gained so much territory in
northern Iraq , that it will be difficult for any future Iraqi government to
accept this. Kurdish advances have frightened the Arabs across northern
Iraq. In the months to come Mr Mohammed and his team of volunteer
gravediggers will have a lot to do.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/14/1050172545486.html

*  BOMBARDED TIKRIT FALLS TO MARINES
by By Ed O'Loughlin, Herald Correspondent in Tikrit and agencies
Sydney Morning Herald, 15th April

[.....]

In northern Iraq ethnic tensions rose in Kurdish-held Kirkuk after members
of the city's large Turkmen minority accused Kurdish irregulars of shooting
dead a number of Turkmen civilians, including a young boy.

Police and soldiers from the nearby Kurdish autonomous zone continued to
secure the city yesterday despite US assurances to Turkey that its troops
would take control of the town. In Iraq's third largest city of Mosul, on
the other hand, US troops moved onto the streets to end days of looting and
reduce tensions between the city's Arab and Kurdish populations.

Dense clouds of cordite smoke choked Kirkuk last night and explosions shook
the city as an ammunition dump burned, hurling flames, sparks and unexploded
projectiles high into the air.

Locals said that the fire began after coalition forces - either Kurdish or
US - tried to destroy the dump in a controlled manner.


PROGRESS OF THE PRETEXT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,935169,00.html

*  WEAPONS TEAMS SCOUR IRAQ
by Nicholas Watt, Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, 12th April

Britain and the United States have bypassed the United Nations to establish
a secret team of inspectors to resume the search for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

It is a sign of the desperation in London and Washington to find a "smoking
gun" to justify the war that the Anglo-American team has already conducted
three inspections in the past two weeks.

No banned weapons have so far been found.

The decision to set up a new group of inspectors, dubbed US-movic because
they are an American-led rival to Unmovic, will infuriate the UN.

Kofi Annan, the secretary general, pointedly reminded Britain and the US
this week that Unmovic still has a mandate to carry out inspections.

Last night the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, added his criticism by
saying that war against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the
first shot was fired.

In a scathing attack on Britain and the US, Mr Blix accused them of planning
the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq to
justify their campaign.

Mr Blix told the Spanish daily El Pais: "There is evidence that this war was
planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude
to the [weapons] inspections."

He said Iraq was paying "a very high price - in terms of human lives and the
destruction of a country" when the threat of banned weapons could have been
contained by UN inspections.

The role played by the new inspectors, who set up a base in Kuwait a week
before the war began, was disclosed to the Guardian by David Kay, the former
head of Unscom, the arms inspections team which left Iraq in 1998 after Iraq
accused it of being infiltrated by spies.

No mention has been made of the new group by ministers or military
spokesmen, who have indicated that weapons inspections are carried out by
military forces. But the group, headed by Charles Duelfer, a former deputy
head of the Unscom weapons inspectors, has travelled extensively in Iraq.

It is understood that Mr Duelfer's team was called in to inspect weapons and
papers found at an airbase in Iraq's western desert two weeks ago. In the
past week it has made two separate visits to sites on the road between
Kuwait and Baghdad.

[.....]

Mr Kay described the new inspectors as a "robust group of people". "There
are special forces teams that carry out [immediate] inspections. But they
are not as technically based as the Kuwait team, who are heavily
science-based civilians."

A spokesman for Mr Blix, Ewen Buchanan, said the US-led team had tried and
failed to recruit some of his staff.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said the
existence of the secret team would lead to a major dispute. "You are more
likely to find what you want if you do it yourself," he said. "If this team
finds a smoking gun, people will not believe it."

The disclosure is likely to embarrass British ministers, who are officially
committed to allowing Unmovic a role.

Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, would only say yesterday that
Britain and the US had set up a "machinery" for resuming inspections. "It
may take some time," he added.

[.....]


http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/105/nation/Nuclear_weapons_expert_surrende
rs+.shtml

*  NUCLEAR WEAPONS EXPERT SURRENDERS
Boston Globe, 15th April

WASHINGTON (AP): A scientist described as the father of Iraq's nuclear
weapons program has surrendered in a Middle Eastern country and is being
questioned, US officials said yesterday. Jaffar al-Jaffer is believed to
know key people and locations of facilities connected to Iraq's nuclear
weapons program, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Al-Jaffer fled Iraq for Syria during the war, then went to another country
and turned himself in in the last few days, officials said. The officials
declined to specify what country was holding him. UN inspectors describe the
British-educated al-Jaffer as the father of Iraq's nuclear weapons program.


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/apr/16/041603508.html

*  TROOPS FIND TERROR TRAINING CAMP IN IRAQ
by David Espo
Las Vegas Sun (from AP), 16th April

American troops raided the home of the mastermind of Saddam Hussein's
biological weapons lab on Wednesday and discovered a sprawling, recently
abandoned terrorist training camp south of Baghdad as they dug for secrets
from a dead regime.

[.....]

American commandos backed by about 40 Marines staged the raid on the
residence of Rahib Taha, dubbed "Dr. Germ" by United Nations weapons
inspectors. Taha, a microbiologist, was in charge of Iraq's secret
biological laboratory, suspected of weaponizing anthrax.

She was present in at least one of Saddam's televised appearances during
war, seated around a table with the one-time ruler and his high command.

Three men emerged from the raid on her home with their hands up, and
American troops removed several boxes of documents. Her whereabouts were
unknown.

Administration officials said the desire to eliminate weapons of mass
destruction was one key reason for the war, although none has yet been
found.

The United Nations weapons inspectors also failed to find any banned weapons
in prewar searches. Hans Blix, the chief inspector, is expected to appear
before the U.N. Security Council next week to discuss a possible resumption
of the effort - even though the United States has not invited the
international team back into Iraq.

A Marine spokesman, Cpl. John Hoellwarth, said the terrorist training camp
consisted of about 20 permanent buildings on 25 acres south of Baghdad, and
was operated by the Palestine Liberation Front and the Iraqi government.

He said recruits were apparently instructed in the art of bomb-making,
adding that Marines found chemicals, beakers and pipes at the site, along
with questionnaires that asked recruits to state their preferences.
Hoellwarth said many volunteered for suicide missions.

[.....]


http://www.iht.com/articles/93424.html

*  U.S. SEIZES A VETERAN TERRORIST IN BAGHDAD
by James Risen and David Johnston
International Herald Tribune, from The New York Times, 17th April

WASHINGTON: American forces in Baghdad have captured the leader of a
Palestinian terrorist group responsible for the 1985 attack on an Italian
cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in which an American was killed.

The terrorist leader, Abu Abbas, led a faction of the Palestine Liberation
Front in the 1980s and 1990s and has been living in Baghdad since 2000. He
was captured Tuesday in a raid by special forces and is now in U.S. military
custody, officials said.

Under the protection of Saddam Hussein's government, Abbas had been living
unhindered in Baghdad since leaving his home in the Gaza Strip, and his
group had an office in the Iraqi capital. But he had been in hiding since
the Iraqi regime collapsed.

Abbas, who is in his mid-50s, is the first major terrorist figure found in
Iraq by U.S. forces since Saddam's government fell. But U.S. intelligence
and law-enforcement officials have not made a connection between his
Palestinian group and Al Qaeda, and said they had no evidence to tie Abbas
to terrorist acts in recent years.

Like Abu Nidal, the former Palestinian terrorist leader who died in Baghdad
last year, Abbas apparently went to Iraq to shield himself from justice for
old crimes, rather than to use it as a platform from which to launch new
ones, intelligence officials said. Abbas is not currently under indictment
in the United States, but he faces a life sentence in Italy in connection
with the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, 69, an American who was a passenger on
the Achille Lauro. After terrorists from Abbas's group commandeered the
ship, they shot Klinghoffer and pushed him, in his wheelchair, into the
Mediterranean. It was unclear Tuesday whether Abbas would be brought to the
United States to face new Justice Department charges in the Achille Lauro
case.

[In any case, Italy will seek Abbas's extradition, Justice Minister Roberto
Castelli said Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported from Rome.]

After the cruise ship attack, Abbas and his team of hijackers were
intercepted on an airplane flight by U.S. military aircraft, which forced
his plane to land at a U.S. air base in Italy. He was turned over to Italian
authorities, but he was soon released. Under U.S. pressure, Italy later
charged Abbas and sentenced him to life in prison, but by then he was gone.
His organization later made attacks against Israeli targets, including one
1990 operation that failed in spectacular fashion. The group sent 17
terrorists on hang gliders to land on Israeli beaches and open fire. But
they were intercepted by Israeli forces. Four of the 17 were killed; there
were no Israeli casualties. After the Palestinians signed the Oslo accords
with Israel, Abbas said he was abandoning terrorism. He was given amnesty
under an Oslo-related deal in 1996 and left Baghdad, where he was living, to
return to Gaza. The onset of the intifada in the Palestinian territory
prompted him to return to Baghdad in 2000.

As Abbas was taken into custody, U.S. officials were sifting through
documents and rounding up Iraqi officials in preparation for an examination
of the connections between the toppled government and the terrorist network
of Osama bin Laden. Early in the war, U.S. special forces and Kurdish troops
routed members of Ansar al Islam, a small terrorist group in northern Iraq
believed to be tied to Al Qaeda. Many of that group's fighters fled into
neighboring Iran, which has reportedly detained some of its leaders. But
that group's ties to Iraqi government were not conclusively established
before the war began. American officials are now sorting through records
found at its camp for such links. No top Qaeda operatives have been found in
Iraq.

In the months before the war, Abbas sought to distance himself from Al
Qaeda. In a rare interview with The New York Times last year, Abbas
condemned the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington, and denounced bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He asserted
that the Palestinian cause was completely separate from the fanatical
terrorism of Al Qaeda. "That" he said, referring to bin Laden's
anti-American jihad, "is terrorism."

[.....]




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