Allies Quit Northern Iraq Despite Kurdish Clashes

Allied troops Thursday completed their withdrawal from the Iraqi border with Turkey, winding down their Kurdish support mission despite heavy clashes around the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah.

As locals scavenged wood and leftovers from the dusty site of the base near the Turkish town of Silopi, Lt. Col. Jerry Guess, a U.S. military spokesman, said the Iraqi Kurds are not being abandoned.

“We will continue to monitor events in Iraq north of the 36th parallel and deter any potential aggression,” said Guess, speaking from the big U.S. air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey.

About 95 warplanes and helicopters from Incirlik and others from the U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal in the eastern Mediterranean will keep flying reconnaissance over northern Iraq as part of the mandate for the operation, dubbed “Provide Comfort II,” extended by Turkey until Dec. 31.

Further, a 20-member, six-nation Military Coordination Committee will move to Diyarbakir and fly by helicopter to continue meetings in northern Iraq between the allies, Kurdish leaders and Iraqi army commanders.

At its peak in May, the allies had 22,000 troops helping half a million Kurdish refugees return to northern Iraq, which they had fled after the collapse of their post-Persian Gulf War revolt against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. From mid-July to Sept. 30, the allies had 5,000 service personnel split evenly between Silopi and Incirlik. According to the old Silopi base commander, Col. E. E. (Butch) Whitehead, they had never had to intervene.

“What we have seen in the past two months is that there is quite a lot of stability in the region. . . . There is not a likelihood of renewed movement of Kurdish people out of Iraq to Turkey,” Whitehead said in a recent interview.

Despite Kurdish pleas for expanded guarantees, U.S. military officials disown responsibility for any area south of the 36th parallel, including the heavily populated area around Sulaymaniyah, where several hundred people were killed and wounded before a cease-fire began to take hold Tuesday. Kurdish leaders have admitted that their supporters executed 60 Iraqi prisoners of war in Sulaymaniyah on Monday, an action that the leadership condemned.

“If it’s south of the 36th parallel, the Iraqis can fly their helicopters and planes there,” said Guess, who added that both the Kurds and Iraqis have been told that the clashes were “actions that did not benefit anybody.”

Iraq did use helicopters during the fighting south of Sulaymaniyah, sending thousands of Kurds fleeing towards overcrowded refugee camps on the Iranian border, where the nights are freezing and rains are about to start, witnesses said.

“It was a test by Saddam, and he won the argument. (No Western government) said anything about the fighting, even though the Iraqis used helicopters,” said Serchil Kazzaz, an Iraqi Kurdish spokesman in Ankara.