Mysterious US Strike involving Kurds

[Moses]

Mysterious US strike in Irbil Condemned by Kurds

The US military appears to have become convinced that Ansar al-Sunnah, a breakaway group from the largely Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, has been operating from dormitories at the Salahuddin University in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil. US special forces accompanied by Kurdish fighters and helicopter gunships struck at the dormitory on Wednesday evening. There are rumors that the US captured a senior Ansar al-Islam leader. Seven persons were injured in the attack, and a number were captured.

The odd thing is that Irbil is under the control of Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, a close ally of the United States. If the US wanted something done in Irbil, why wouldn't it just ask Barzani's peshmerga or paramilitary to do it? Had Ansar al-Islam terrified or bribed local Irbil officials into ignoring the AI cell in the city?

Some reports say the US was accompanied by Kurdish commandoes. But they weren't local peshmerga from Irbil.

Kurdistan Interior Minister Kerim Sinjari condemned the operation. Al-Zaman says he complained that several innocent civilians were killed by US forces in the course of it, including one woman. He said that such actions could jeopardize Kurdistan-US relations.

US news outlets continually blame Saddam for Ansar al-Islam, consisting of a few hundred Kurdish guerrillas, some of whom had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan. In fact, however, they operated from the de facto no-fly zone that was under US control, not that of Saddam.

South Korea's troops are stationed in the north, which may have contributed to the urgency of the US operation.

In my view, the threat of a serious conflict between the Kurdish paramilitary and the US is imminent. Once a new government is elected, if it can be, it may take decisions that the Kurds don't like. The US will then have a choice of supporting the Kurds or the government it itself had formed.



posted by Juan @ 1/6/2005 02:17:24 AM

[Moses]

KRG “severely condemns” US operation in Arbil
05/01/2005   Peyamner
Sinjari: US operation in Irbil

January 5, 2005

Kurdistan Regional Government “severely condemns” last night’s military raid on a dormitory in Irbil, a Kurdish Interior Ministry statement said Wednesday.

“There are no justifications for pounding the facility. Preliminary investigations show that the helicopters were not being shot at on the ground,” Kerim Sinjari, the Kurdish Interior Minister told reporters at a press conference in Irbil.

Unconfirmed reports say that US special forces were accompanied by Kurdish fighters and have been seen in several places in the Kurdish capital during the night. Some reports also indicate that a senior member of the radical group of Ansar al Sunna was reportedly captured during the operation.

“We contacted the Coalition Forces in Mosul. They had no information. We asked even the American forces in Irbil, they were not informed either. Last night’s forces might have been deployed from Baghdad;” Mr Sinjari said who also warned that such operations would undermine the Kurdish authority.

US gunship pound suspected terrorist facility in Irbil

January 5, 2005
Peyamner

US special forces supported by armed helicopters pounded a university dormitory in Irbil Wednesday night. Initial reports say that several suspected insurgents were detained and at least 7 others were injured. According to the eyewitnesses, the operation was launched at 0115 am and lasted for at least one hour.

“We saw four American helicopters flying around our student house late Tuesday night. Two of the choppers remained in the air while the other ones disappeared. The remaining choppers started to shoot at the dormitory by mortar gun around 01 am. Then they launched a racket towards the house in which we were sleeping,” Karzan Hama Ali, a Kurdish student told Peyamner.

Kurdish police says that they were not informed about the operation and do not know what the targets might have been.

“There were no coordination between us and the Americans, they did not even let the police and fire-fighters to get through to the sight,” a police spokesman told Peyamner on condition of anonymity.

Kurdish Interior Ministry has not commented on the operation which is in itself unique since the Kurdish forces are recognized as capable of establishing control in Kurdish administrated areas without the military intervention of the coalition forces in Iraq.

This is the first time after the collapse of the former regime that the US military operates in a Kurdish city.

[Moses]

With the Iraqi defeat against the international forces, in October 1991 Irbil became the capital of the semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Northern Iraq has been independent of Saddam (and guarded by U.S. and British patrols) since the Kurdish uprising that followed the Gulf war in 1991. In March 1996 a CIA-backed rebel operation to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed. The Iraqi incursion into the territory left hundreds of Kurds dead and forced 7,000 more to be evacuated to the United States.

In late August 1996, backed by Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) launched an offensive in northern Iraq that led to the takeover of the regional capital of Irbil and placed most of the region under Massoud Barzani's control. On 31 August 1996 Iraqi troops seized Irbil. The Iraqi troops massed at Irbil consisted of three divisions of 30,000 to 40,000 Republican Guard troops equipped with heavy artillery and surface-to-air missiles. This was the first such deployment by Iraq since shortly after the end of the Gulf War in 1991. When they left, their man Barzani was put in administration. This marked the end of Iraqi Kurdistan's semi-independence. Irbil suffered little damage in the fighting. Most of the destruction was limited to buildings controlled by or identified with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the rival party to Barzani's. The destruction in Irbil of the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, which Washington set up in 1992 to undermine Saddam Hussein, fulfilled a major ambition of Hussein's security services.

The the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) controls Irbil and Dohuk, and its rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) administers Sulaymaniyah. By late 2003 Irbil had been renamed Hawler, and everywhere Kurdish signs have replaced those in Arabic.

www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/irbil.htm