Defiant Turkey thwarts US plans to take north

By PATRICK COCKBURN in Arbil, Northern Iraq

The failure of the United States to persuade Turkey to allow its bases to be used by American troops for an attack on Iraq has complicated US military plans to create a northern front against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The US had hoped to attack Iraq from north and south. Some 62,000 US soldiers and 310 military aircraft were to be deployed in Turkey to enable the US Army's 4th Infantry Division to push south. Suddenly the northern pincer is now in doubt.

The two key prizes in the great flat plain stretching north from Baghdad are the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The capture of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, would be a serious blow to the Iraqi Government as it is the home of many Army officers and officials.

Kirkuk is, if anything, more essential. The province is a major producer of oil. The US fears if its attack is delayed Saddam might use the time to blow up the oilfields, as he did in Kuwait in 1991, though he has promised not to.

Securing Kirkuk swiftly has also been considered important by US policy makers due to its political significance. The Kurds consider Kirkuk to be a Kurdish city from which they have been ethnically cleansed for decades under Saddam's campaign of Arabisation. Turkey has said it will invade if the Kurds attack it.

Now all this is in doubt. The US has been claiming that it can simply redeploy its troops destined for the north to the southern front, but this would allow Saddam to withdraw troops from around Kirkuk and Mosul. A central US purpose was to pin these Iraqi soldiers down.

The Iraqi Army has 12 divisions defending the two northern cities. Each is supplemented with one Republican Guard division and local militia called the Al-Quds Army, though this appears to be mainly designed to quell local dissent.

Depending on how far these divisions are up to strength, Saddam has at least 120,000 regular soldiers and possibly as many as 180,000 in the north, according to Karim Sinjari, the Kurdish Interior Minister in Arbil.

Does the US have an alternative strategy to take northern Iraq if Turkey does not buckle under pressure to allow the US to use its bases? For a full deployment these facilities are essential. But the US could base smaller and lighter forces in Iraqi Kurdistan using local airfields.

There are a number of problems here. There is an old Iraqi Army airfield at Harir near Shaqlawa, 32km from Arbil, the largest Kurdish city. There are two smaller airstrips at Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah but none of the three provide the facilities a large US force would require.

US troops could deploy in Turkey before a war started. If they used Iraqi Kurdistan as an alternative base this would immediately start a war.

The area is under the control of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan but is Iraqi territory. What would happen if Baghdad responded to a build-up of US forces here by launching a counter-attack or bombarded Arbil, close to the front line, with long-range artillery?

The Iraqi regular forces are considered weak. At the bridge over the Greater Zaab river, west of Arbil, the local security commander, Barzan Ismail, said yesterday: "The Iraqis have thinned out their front line. They only have 60 men in the bunkers overlooking us and don't get much food."

But even these seem to be on the alert. Ismail said the previous day they had shot and slightly wounded a foreign journalist taking photos of their positions.

- INDEPENDENT