U.S. Offers to Evacuate More Iraqi Civilians

The Clinton administration offered Monday to evacuate about 5,000 people from northern Iraq to protect them from President Saddam Hussein’s secret police.

The offer, announced by State Department spokesman Glyn Davies, applies to employees of U.S.-affiliated nongovernmental organizations and their immediate families. Most of the nongovernmental organization workers are Kurds and other Iraqi citizens.

The move underlines the continued instability of the predominantly Kurdish area of Iraq three months after the Iraqi army overran what had been an internationally protected autonomous area.

Employees of 24 U.S.-based or U.S.-funded international relief organizations were left behind when the administration evacuated U.S. citizens, foreigners employed directly by the U.S. government and members of CIA-backed Iraqi opposition groups after the army’s invasion of Kurdistan in support of one faction in a long-running conflict between rival Kurdish groups.

Although Iraq’s Republican Guard pulled out of the region shortly after its incursion, U.S. officials say Hussein’s regime used the fighting to gain a foothold there for its secret police. Those inroads renewed a government presence in the region for the first time since 1991, when the U.S. government established it as a protected area for Kurds following Iraq’s defeat in the Persian Gulf War.

The administration had hoped that it would be safe for nongovernmental organizations to remain in northern Iraq. The decision to pull them out effectively ends the five-year effort by the United States and its allies to protect Kurds and other opponents of Hussein’s government who rebelled against Baghdad’s rule after the war.

Davies said all that remains of Operation Provide Comfort is a “no-fly” zone, patrolled by U.S. and allied warplanes, from which Iraqi aircraft are excluded.

Davies said the administration has been weighing the proposed evacuation for weeks. Like those pulled out earlier, the employees and their families will be taken across the border into Turkey, then flown to Guam, where they can apply for asylum in the United States.

“The situation for them hasn’t gotten better, so we decided, on balance, that since we can do it, we should do it, and we went ahead and made the decision,” he said.

“We’re right now discussing practical requirements of timing with the government of Turkey, although . . . this is something that will occur in the near term, in a matter of, we think, just a few weeks,” he added.

The latest evacuation will affect only employees of U.S.-based and U.S.-funded organizations. Foreign-based nongovernmental organizations will not be offered U.S. help in leaving northern Iraq, at least not for the time being.

Although U.S. officials said the evacuation was based on the assessment that the employees were in danger from Iraqi authorities, the decision to act also indicates the faltering pace of U.S. efforts to mediate between the Kurdish factions whose fighting gave Hussein an excuse to intervene.

A cease-fire has been generally effective, but the Kurds have not settled their differences despite U.S., British and Turkish mediation.

Iraqi forces intervened three months ago to assist Masoud Barzani’s Democratic Party of Kurdistan faction to dislodge Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan from the regional capital, Irbil. Barzani, who has since disavowed his alliance with Hussein, accused Talabani of getting support from Iran.