Kurdish Enclave Becomes a State in All but the Name : Refugees: A dozen Arab townships have been abandoned in the face of threats as roles shift.

For the crushed Arab tribespeople of the villages near Sumail, the allied security zone in northern Iraq has already turned into what the Western coalition vowed it would never be: a Kurdish enclave that is a virtual mini-state in all but name.

“The Kurds came here and told us, ‘We’ll massacre you if you don’t get out,’ ” said Jamila Shaaba, an Arab mother loading a truck with bedsteads and hardware, adding her voice to the cries for justice that have become familiar in this troubled land.

Most Arabs in the south of the security zone have heeded the Kurds’ warnings, and a dozen Arab townships are now almost completely deserted. Dust rises from the broad wheat fields beside the road to Baghdad as herds of sheep, goats and cows are driven south by Arab shepherds on donkeys and mules.

The roles have changed in the drama being played out in this corner of northern Iraq. The Kurds, who only recently were seen as wretched victims of the Iraqi military, now enjoy the protection of the U.S. military and its allies along a broad swath of countryside, and they are coming down from mountain camps to resume a more normal life here.

With their protection from Saddam Hussein’s army now assured, some of the armed Kurdish groups that failed to topple the Iraqi dictator during their short-lived rebellion in March are now assuming an oppressive role against the only population weaker than they--the Arab minority.

“The Arabs were settled there by Saddam Hussein. Now they are leaving. The land is ours,” said Hussein Sinjari, an unrepentant commander of the Kurdistan Front, the main armed force in most areas of Iraqi Kurdistan under allied control.

Here in the north, a part of the area historically known as Kurdistan, the Kurds believe that they have reason to hate the Arabs, since they see them as intruders. Using nationalized land, the Iraqi government built colonies for Arabs in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1970s and 1980s, fencing off the new communities close to the Baghdad-Istanbul Highway and defending them from Kurdish guerrilla attacks by placing guard posts every 100 yards.

The Kurds, although widespread in this region, are a minority in Arabic-speaking Iraq, and the Arab and Kurdish lifestyles are notably different. The Arabs here in the north, whose women have the facial tattoos and bright silk head scarves of the Bedouin, developed the farmland allotted to them by the government, whereas the Kurds have traditionally been herdsmen.

The trouble brewing in the haven does not stop with the Arab farmers whose rich harvest will be reaped by the Kurds. Most senior Arab officials have left the security zone, and soon even the northwest provincial capital of Dahuk is likely to be in allied hands.

The cultural clash and the potential for violence has a familiar ring to Capt. Chris Mulholland, a veteran of duty in Beirut and now the commander of the southernmost company of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which suffered hundreds of casualties when a suicide-bomber hit the Marines’ barracks in Beirut in 1983.

“We’re giving the impression that we are protecting the Kurds,” said Mulholland, who is from Boston. “In that way, you could say it’s like Beirut. We protected one group against another, and the other group got upset.”

The allies are aware of the dangers. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jay Garner, the chief commander of the security zone, called in Kurdish guerrilla leaders this week to tell them to dismantle a checkpoint thought to be intimidating passers-by, especially non-Kurds.

But the urbane Sinjari, one of the two guerrilla commanders of the Kurdistan Front in the security zone, appeared unimpressed. “We told the general the checkpoint was for their own security. We know the people here better than them,” said Sinjari, regional head of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and clad in a black guerrilla fighter’s uniform but speaking an English refined by years of study and exile in London.

At the front’s headquarters five miles east of the town of Zakhu, walls are hung with ammunition clips and Kalashnikov rifles. Scores of armed guerrillas were there, dressed in the Kurdish men’s distinctive baggy-trousered costume.

Poring over an allied map that depicts the coalition security zone just south of the Iraqi-Turkish border, Sinjari said the guerrillas want the allies to move eastward to secure the other two-thirds of Iraqi Kurdistan still under only fragile Kurdish guerrilla control.

“If you don’t do it, the 1 million refugees in Iran will never come back, and the Christian communities who stayed behind already feel very insecure,” Sinjari said.

Guerrilla leaders in Baghdad are negotiating with Hussein for regional autonomy with international guarantees--something their commanders here feel can be assured only by the continued presence of allied troops until the hoped-for fall of the Iraqi strongman.

In the meantime, Iraqi central government control over the area is steadily weakening. Baghdad’s presence in the security zone is not impressive--50 armed police officers headquartered at the district prefect’s office in Zakhu to protect Gen. Nushwan Danoon, the Iraqi liaison officer with the allies.

“It’s not like previous times. They (Baghdad) can’t order me around,” said Zakhu Mayor Abdulhalek Ahmed, sitting at home in his pajamas and sipping tea three days after returning with his family from a mountain refugee camp in Turkey.

“We are not quite comfortable with it,” he said of the American military presence. “We are caught between two powers. For now, every Kurd agrees to be Iraqi. . . . Autonomy is enough for some time.”

A shabby, relaxed group of central government customs officials still keep the Iraqi flag flying on a small pole on the Iraqi side of the Turkish border crossing at Habur, helplessly watching as convoy after convoy of allied troops, international relief trucks and reporters’ cars violate Iraqi bureaucratic sovereignty.

At Zakhu General Hospital, the only serious health facility in the zone, half the doctors are still paid by Iraq. But they are mostly Arabs, including a hospital director who still takes long weekends off despite a constant flow of would-be patients--some of whom are handled by allied medics.

“They resent us, I think, and only do the morning work they are paid for by Baghdad. It leaves me speechless,” said Maj. Jan Robert Zijp, the Dutch army doctor in effective charge of the hospital until its expected hand-over to an international relief group.

Private international agencies are eager to help the U.S.-led coalition in its move to demilitarize Operation Provide Comfort, as the allied Kurdish relief program is known.

Baghdad has agreed to allow civilian U.N. distribution centers all over Iraq. Implementing that agreement is the job of Staffan de Mistura, the independent-minded and controversial U.N. troubleshooter.

At the small compound where he flies the U.N. flag near the Zakhu refugee camp, De Mistura affects an aristocratic style and pince-nez glasses, but his approach is all business, and he speaks of the need for a “bulldozer approach” to the refugee problem.

“We want to provide international cover for various activities,” the 44-year-old Swede said, finding time for an interview by hiding from his staff amid relief supplies.

“If given the right resources, I am optimistic that the U.N. can also reassure the Kurds about humanitarian assistance.”