IZMIR, Turkey
“The legacy is the 4 million Kurds in northern Iraq alive today and raising their
children without the fear of being gassed or attacked by helicopters,” said Navy
Cmdr. E.T. “Skipper” Allen in a late-April interview. “That should be
Northern Watch’s legacy.”
Allen flies an EA-6B Prowler enemy-defense-suppression jet for Electronic Attack
Squadron 133.
Now, there are new signs that the mission established to protect the people in Northern
Iraq is about to become just that — a legacy.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, the commander and chief of the U.S. European Command, had recommended to the Bush Administration that the ONW patrols should end.
Stars and Stripes carried the Post story in
its Thursday editions.
Instead, the report said, the U.S. would keep planes at Incirlik Air Base and strike
only if Iraqi forces threatened the Kurds or other people in northern Iraq.
The recommendation is based on concerns that intensifying Iraqi anti-aircraft attacks
against American and British patrols might eventually bring down American pilots in the
no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, according to the news report.
Just what the recommendation will mean in practical terms is unclear. Turkey-based American military and embassy spokesmen declined to discuss the recommendation.
“We will not comment on policy issues or media speculation considering the future
of Operation Northern Watch,” said Maj. Mike Caldwell, a spokesman at Incirlik Air
Base, where the mission is based. “We’re currently executing the ONW mission of
enforcing the no-fly zone and monitoring the Iraqis force, and will continue to do so
until directed otherwise.”
EUCOM officials also declined to comment on the accuracy of the Post story.
“We don’t comment on future operations,” said Maj. Ed Loomis, a
spokesman for EUCOM. Loomis added there have been no changes in the ONW mission and that
the Post story quoted unattributed Pentagon officials, not Ralston directly.
“[The Washington Post] quoted a Pentagon source, who threw around some general
officers’ names,” Loomis said. “We continue to perform our mission, and we
will use whatever means necessary to reduce risk to aircrew members.”
The Bush administration has not commented on whether it would change the mission.
News of ending the mission did not surprise Kurdish leaders.
“It’s not a big deal,” said Bahros Galali, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s Ankara office. The PUK is one of the two main armed Kurdish groups controlling northern Iraq.
“If the Americans have made a decision, we’ll just have to live with it,” Galali said. But he added that U.S. officials whom he declined to identify have assured his group that the no-fly zones will remain in place, and that American planes will fly if Iraq crosses the line. Galali said he also has assurances that British planes will fly from the Persian Gulf, as well.
If those jets didn’t patrol the area above the 36th parallel, things would get very dangerous, very quickly, with Saddam tempted to move in to eradicate Kurds in northern Iraq, said Michael Gunter, a Tennessee Technological University professor of political science who has traveled frequently to northern Iraq.
Saddam has not hesitated to kill his own people during his 22-year dictatorship. ONW
officers often refer to the 1988 Halabja massacre, where an Iraqi nerve gas attack killed
an estimated 5,000 Kurds.
In addition to Kurds, there are an estimated 1.5 million Assyrians, a million Turkmens,
and assorted Iranians, Armenians and Christian and Muslim Arabs living uneasily alongside
the Kurds.
American military officers at Incirlik Air Base have no direct contact with the various Kurdish groups using the safe haven the no-fly mission creates.
“We don’t know them. They don’t know us,” said Brig. Gen. Edward
“Buster” Ellis, ONW’s new U.S. commander, in an April interview. But, ONW
flyers and crews assure that Kurds live relatively routine lives, unmolested by Saddam,
Ellis said.
With at least three major Kurdish groups maneuvering to control the area, the reality of life on the ground in northern Iraq is a lot more complicated than that, say Middle East experts and Kurdish leaders. But, by and large, they agree that ONW guarantees a thriving Kurdish sanctuary in northern Iraq, and, indeed, Kurdish survival.
“Success in the north mainly is due to ONW,” said Qubad Talabany, the
PUK’s Washington-based U.S. representative. People live normal lives with no fear of
Saddam, according to Talabany.
While northern Iraq might be “a little lacking in law and order,” Kurds are prospering, compared to Arabs in the rest of the country, Gunter said. That’s because 13 percent of the 5-year-old United Nations “oil-for-food” program — about $100 million every six months — goes directly to the Kurds from Iraqi escrow accounts, never to be siphoned off by Saddam, he said.
Though the region’s 50-plus million Kurds — an Indo-European people related
to Iranians — have dreamed of a homeland, Gunter hastened to add that Kurdish leaders
try to play down their goal.
And indeed, PUK spokesman Talabany said his group’s goal is not an independent
Kurdistan.
“We have to be realistic. We’re surrounded by our good brothers in the region
who act in their own interests,” Talabany said. “And a Kurdish state is not one
of their interests.”
Instead, the group wants to dispose of Saddam so that Iraqi Kurds can be re-integrated into Iraq, he said.
“We’re Iraqis, and we deserve all the benefits of being Iraqis,” he
said.
“It’s a word game,” counters Gunter. “The Kurds take pains to
stress that they don’t want statehood, but they already have it. That’s exactly
what they have, in part thanks to ONW and Turkey.”
Turkey needs ONW to monitor the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Gunter said. But a minister with one of three parties in Turkey’s ruling coalition said that ending ONW would have little effect on Turkey’s surveillance abilities.
“It’s no weakness to Turkey if this happens,” said the minister with The
Motherland Party, who asked not to be identified by name. Even if ONW surveillance planes
don’t fly, the Turkish military still has information coming in via satellites, he
added.
Gunter contends that Kurds still are under attack. In recent weeks, Iran has launched missiles across the border at a renegade Iranian group.
“The problem with ONW is that it doesn’t do anything about the Turks bombing the hell out of the PKK, or the Iranians shelling Kurds on the Iran/Iraq border,” Gunter said.
ONW jets do protect the majority of Kurds, he said, “but it’s not a complete shield.”
Levent Uransel contributed to this report.