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Sunday, March 23, 2003

By Borzou Daragahi, Special to the Post-Gazette

GERDIGO, Iraq -- Early yesterday morning, a barrage of American cruise missiles slammed into strongholds in northern Iraq believed to be held by Ansar al Islam, a militant Islamic group with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

But it appears that many of the casualties may have been members of a moderate Kurdish group unallied with the Ansar militants.

Minutes after the missile attack and less than 20 kilometers away, a massive car bomb shattered the afternoon calm, killing at least five, including Australian television journalist Paul Moran, 39.

For nearly two years, Ansar extremists have wreaked havoc on the forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which rules the eastern half of the autonomous Kurdish section of northern Iraq. They have killed scores with bombings, assassinations and ambushes.

"We are very happy to get rid of these terrorists," Mustafa Said Qader, a top Kurdish military commander, told journalists yesterday after the U.S. attack on Ansar. "We have tried a lot to get them to abandon their terrorist acts. They caused instability in our country and their destruction is a cause for happiness."

The celebration was short-lived.

The U.S. airstrikes, far from stabilizing the north of Iraq where American forces may soon enter to launch a northern front in their quest to topple Saddam Hussein, may have stirred up tensions and new dangers in the jittery Kurdish enclave.

As it turned out, many of those killed in the airstrikes weren't members of Ansar, but Islamists belonging to the Kurdistan Islamic Group. The Islamic Group maintains friendly relations with the Kurdish government as well as with Ansar, which controls adjacent territory.

Most of Ansar's 700 fighters had been warned of the attack and fled into the mountains, said Mohammad Haji Mahmoud, leader of the Kurdistan Social Democratic Party, which has a military base in the area and controls several villages. "Unfortunately, the Islamic Group fighters didn't take such precautions."

Mahmoud said the Islamic Group's 1,000 fighters had been uninvolved in the region's ongoing dirty war between Islamists and secularists, and in the coming battle between Kurdish forces allied with America and factions aligned with Saddam. "Now, they're involved," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his February address to the U.N. Security Council, said the Islamists living in the mountains of northern Iraq were linked to both al-Qaida and Saddam's regime. But some analysts don't agree.

The International Crisis Group, a Belgian think tank, says Ansar is a local group with dubious ties to international terrorism. In a February report, it said, "Having lost a number of its fighters in clashes with Ansar al-Islam, it is not surprising that the [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] has sought to emphasize the group's putative terrorist connections ... [But] there is no hard evidence to suggest that Ansar al-Islam is more than a minor irritant in local Kurdish politics."

Mahmoud said about 65 members of the Islamic Group were killed in yesterday's bombing. Qader estimated the number at 100, but did not specify how his forces reached that figure. He said one civilian was injured.

"Frankly we pleaded to them to keep away from Ansar's areas," said Qader. "They didn't think the Americans would strike them."

The attack disrupted the entire area, spurring a minor exodus of residents. Groups of villagers walked hurriedly along country roads away from the towns of Biyare, Ansar's stronghold, and Khurmal, under the control of the Islamic Group. Some crowded onto slow-moving tractors, clutching handfuls of possessions.

Qader said hundreds of residents fled areas near Khurmal and Biyare fearing more strikes would follow. "We, as the government of Kurdistan, will help them," he said. "But they all have other relatives in other towns."

He predicted the Ansar operation would last no more than a week. The promise of a short war in this corner of northeast Iraq provided little comfort for residents here, who said the attacks had uprooted their lives.

Mohammed Rahman, 17, walked away from Khurmal with his cousins, carrying a bag of clothing. "I am afraid of another barrage of missiles coming at us," he said.

The cruise missile attack was the latest act in a long-running drama of misery for the Iraqi Kurds in this area.

The valley here was a major battleground in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Saddam's forces attacked Halabja and nearby villages with chemical weapons in 1988. It was the scene of a massive refugee exodus following an uprising against Saddam that was crushed in 1991. And it has been the theater for a bloody ongoing war between Islamists and secularists for the last decade.

"We're living an abnormal life, said Rangi Said, 18, who carried a basket with food. "We're living in endless fear and war."

Borzou Daragahi is a writer based in Tehran, who has spent the past few months in northeastern Iraq.