Americans Carve Out Bases for Refugee Effort : Military: One of them, ‘Toontown,’ is a week old and growing fast. It’s the focus of the fast-moving operation to get aid to suffering Kurds.

This youngest and most improbable town in Turkey, population 680 and growing rapidly, is one week old today. Grimy residents will celebrate by taking a shower, the mayor promises.

It is not a big place, sandwiched between the main runway and a practice bombing range on the rim of the airport at Diyarbakir here in southeastern Turkey. Still, American is spoken and also English. There is a McDonald’s--of sorts--and movies every night. City limits are marked along Main Street, the only street, by painted signs reading “Toontown” in the balloon script Roger Rabbit might use.

Toontown exists to keep people alive. It is a rare blossom amid a cruel spring in Turkey this year.

With breathtaking speed and intensity, the U.S. armed forces are building overnight little Americas in Turkey as cornerstones of the race to rescue nearly half a million Iraqis who fled their homes in fear of Saddam Hussein.

“There’s only one country, and one organization, that can get this relief effort moving this fast--the U.S. military,” said Marine Lt. Col. Paul Wisniewski, the logistics officer of a massive aid program that will soon be feeding more people than the total U.S. force involved in Operation Desert Storm. “I’m at war here as soon as I hit the ground, with troops to feed--in this case the refugees.”

The goal is to supply food, water, sanitation and medical help to a dozen concentrations of refugees trapped in deadly conditions in the mountains along the Iraqi-Turkish border for up to three weeks.

Once the camps have been stabilized, the United States promises to quickly relocate the mostly Kurdish refugees in havens being built in northern Iraq. At President Bush’s order, the refugees will be fed and sheltered there until they believe it is safe to return home.

The refugees, who dream of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq and a number of neighboring countries, fled when their rebellion against Hussein collapsed at the end of March. Tens of thousands expect to remain under U.S. and allied care until Hussein leaves power. Turkish newspapers are calling the haven “Bushistan.” Since early April, the encampments have been supplied haphazardly with food and shelter materials airdropped by U.S., British and French planes. Now there are helicopter landing zones in most refugee areas manned by U.S. Special Forces teams cooperating with Turkish and international relief workers.

This week, U.S.-organized convoys of American and international relief supplies will begin regular visits to the camps. The first, in the next day or two, will go to the largest and most disorderly camp, a concentration of up to 100,000 refugees at mile-high Isikveren.

Simultaneously, American trucks and helicopters have begun to carry construction materials to the haven camp being built a few miles across the Turkish border, near the Iraqi town of Zakhu.

Once the Zakhu camp is ready, the United States says it will help transport refugees there, beginning with Kurdish clan leaders who--as satisfied customers--will be counted on to attract their followers to return to Iraq as well.

Some of the refugees will be ferried back from the mountains. Others may walk. Some may drive the cars they abandoned during their panic flight. American troops may supply gas and mechanics to get the cars running. There are also plans to build manned and supplied way stations for refugees who make their own way down the mountain.

The enormous and still growing logistics effort has founded two mushrooming tent towns that have brought America to Turkey.

Besides Toontown, the second is in a wheat field near the Turkish town of Silopi, a few miles from the border. When the first U.S. military officers arrived 10 days ago, they immediately strung concertina wire around their tents to keep out the sheep.

Now the sheep are gone and the young wheat is a memory. There are 2,200 American and allied soldiers living in Camp Silopi. Outside the gate, Turkish children sell brackish soda as a remedy against the suddenly glaring sun.

From Silopi, helicopters and trucks carry supplies to the refugee camps and the construction site in Iraq, a seven-minute ride by helicopter.

The troops and supplies reached Silopi from Diyarbakir, the world’s largest Kurdish city, the last big airport in southeastern Turkey and the main entry point into the country for the relief effort.

American and British helicopters are based at the airport here, where one day last week a giant U.S. C-5A transport plane was parked nose to nose with an even bigger Soviet Antonov.

Americans, British and allies in transit sleep in the tents that reverberate all day long from the whoosh of helicopters on one side of them and, on the other, the roar of Turkish air force jets overflying the practice bomb range. In another week, after the Italians arrive, around 1,400 allied troops will be living in Toontown.

Even without pasta, Toontown is a wondrous place: One of the Americans who came to help manage the Kurdish crisis is a U.S. Army information officer named Maj. John Curd.

“We decided to call it Toontown because it was built by loony-toons,” said the mayor of the settlement, Capt. Steve Jackson who commands the U.S. Air Force detachment that built the place. Jackson knows small towns: His father is mayor of Sylvan Grove, Kan., population 480.

Amid the continuing aid effort, Monday was a big day for Toontown: It got its first shower, a 24-head monstrosity cobbled together from an unlikely mixture of Turkish and American water drums and fixtures.

“It’s an engineering marvel,” Jackson said.

Other creature comforts at Toontown are still mostly conspicuous by their absence. But up to a hundred tired young Americans turn out for Jackson’s nightly VCR movies--”Lethal Weapon II” the other night.

After 10 days of eating field rations, there is never any shortage of customers at the Toontown mess hall, built and run by another Air Force specialist team. Yes, the Toontown McDonald’s serves cheeseburgers.

PROFILE: LT. GEN. JOHN SHALIKASHVILI

Army Lt. Gen. John Shalikashvili was sent from his base in Germany this week to head up the allied operation to provide thousands of tons of food, water, tents and other supplies to the Kurdish refugees. Age: 54

Born: Warsaw, Poland

Education: Holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Bradley University and a master’s degree in international relations from George Washington University.

Background: “Shali,” as the general is known, taught for two years in the high-altitude missile department of the Army’s Air Defense School at Ft. Bliss, Tex. He was a senior military adviser in Vietnam during the war there and has attended both the U.S. Army War College and the Naval Command and Staff College. Shalikashvili was commanding general of the 9th Infantry Division at Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Military assignment: Deputy commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe. Although the Army’s Central Command, based in Tampa, Fla., ran operations during the Gulf War, the European Command is overseeing the operation to set up refugee camps in northern Iraq and provide aid to the Kurds.