Union Tribune March 23, 2003 Tensions rise to the north Regional clashes are in stark contrast to sophisticated operation in southern Iraq By MARCUS STERN COPLEY NEWS SERVICE HALABJAH, Iraq – Three days into the military campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, complex regional clashes igniting in northern Iraq offered a stark contrast to the spectacle of massive bombing and speedy advances of armor seen in the south. Here, the onset of the campaign activated ethnic and political tensions. It has the Kurds, who control the north, facing three separate military threats: the Turks bolstering their military presence to the north; Islamic "holy warriors" attacking from the east; and Hussein's forces remaining a menacing power to the south and west. And while the campaign in southern Iraq promises to be one of the most sophisticated command-and-control operations ever launched, the conflict in the north features classic characteristics of a low-intensity conflict. Yesterday, that included a suicide bombing. Rebwar Omer Muhammad, 26, was manning a checkpoint yesterday when the bomber drove up and detonated a car bomb, killing himself and four others: Muhammad, an Australian journalist, a taxi driver and a farmer. The blast injured 24 others. Muhammad's brother, Akbar Omer Muhammad, also was working the checkpoint at the time of the attack but was uninjured. Not long after the blast, Akbar and three comrades placed Rebwar's badly burned body in the back of a Nissan pickup truck. With the tailgate down, they drove his charred remains to the city of Sulaimaniyah. During the two-hour drive, the men were buffeted by cold winds whipping the bed of the speeding pickup. But Akbar sat cross-legged, motionless, his face a mask of numbed grief, one of his hands always at rest on his brother's left leg. His Kalashnikov rifle lay in his lap; his hair seemed untouched by the wind. At one checkpoint, a guard recognized the significance of the four men and the body in the back of the pickup. In consolation, he extended his hand toward Akbar as the truck passed. Akbar replied by placing his right hand across his heart in thanks. For the most part, nobody along the road seemed to notice the dead man lying in the bed of the speeding pickup under a thin blanket with his face toward the sky. Nor did they notice his grieving brother or the three comrades. The suicide attack in the afternoon was believed to be in retaliation for a U.S. attack that had started shortly after midnight. The United States had fired scores of cruise missiles into a rural area occupied by a group of Islamic holy warriors known as Ansar al-Islam. The group has been waging a terrorist campaign to occupy a sliver of northern Iraq alongside the Iranian border. It allegedly has ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The United States was expected to make Ansar an early target if it attacked inside Iraq. And it did. But Ansar, which is made up of Arab and Kurdish fighters who trained and fought together in Afghanistan, apparently answered back by shelling the village of Khelehamma and unleashing the afternoon suicide attack at the Khormal checkpoint that killed Muhammad and Australian cameraman Paul Moran. The same night that the United States launched dozens of cruise missiles at Ansar in the Halabjah region, it apparently also sent 10 to 12 cruise missiles into Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in the middle of the Kurdish-controlled area of Iraq. Hussein controls Kirkuk and another urban oil center in the Kurdish area, Mosul. From Chamchamal, a Kurdish-controlled enclave on the line of control between Hussein's portion of Iraq and the Kurds, barrages of arcing, red tracers could be seen in the sky above Kirkuk beginning shortly before 9 Friday night. At the same time, periodic white splashes of light could be seen, but not heard, from a distance of about 20 miles away. A pale orange glow began flickering over the city. It appears that the United States targeted Al-Khalid, a major Iraqi military installation just outside Kirkuk, with a salvo of cruise missiles and possibly planes that drew anti-aircraft fire. It also seems that Iraqi forces lit oil fires in the city with the intention of filling the skies with black smoke to make it difficult for U.S. planes to target the city. People fleeing Kirkuk in recent days have said the Iraqis have dug trenches and installed a network of pipelines, planning to fill the trenches with oil and set them ablaze if attacked. Yesterday morning, several people in Chamchamal called relatives in Kirkuk. The relatives declined to pass on news about the attack. They feared Iraqi intelligence forces were tapping their lines. No helpful radio news reports came out of Kirkuk either. So, from here, it was impossible to know for certain what had happened in Kirkuk Friday night. On one side of the city lies an oil field known as Laylan. On the other side is one called Babagurgur. It is Iraq's richest single oil field and the Kurds view its presence on their lands as a historic curse. They believe the vast financial potential of Babagurgur has attracted interference from neighbors and past colonial powers like Britain. It also is one of the reasons, the Kurds believe, that the Turks reportedly have moved 1,500 troops across the border into northern Iraq. However, Turkish officials yesterday denied they had sent in troops. The Turks have long signaled their intention to move troops across the border if war breaks out. They said it would be to avert a wave of refugees from reaching Turkey. But most observers also believe it's intended as a warning to an estimated 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds not to push for an independent homeland if the Iraqi government disintegrates. Turkish Kurds fought a brutal and unsuccessful 15-year war of separation, and the Turks don't want to see it rekindled. As Akbar Muhammad and his brother's body approached Sulaimaniyah, golden shafts of sunlight splashed across the verdant wheat and barley fields of one of the world's most fertile regions. Dark clouds spilled a brief shower. Some hail fell. They delivered his body to Shorish Hospital, which serves the Kurdish fighting forces, known as peshmergas, and their families. Inside the hospital, several peshmergas wounded in the suicide attack were being treated. Mariwan Kamal, 27, lay in a bed. The sheet under him was collecting blood from an untreated wound. His forehead was circled with a strip of blood-stained gauze. His face was blistered and swollen from being burned by a blast. Outside, his mother, Talat Abdulrahman Tofiq, pushed her way to the front of a crowd of surging, babbling people trying to push their way into the hospital to see if one of the wounded or dead was a relative. The hospital guards let her and two of her sisters through the gate, and they made their way frantically to Kamal's bedside. When Kamal's mother caught sight of him, she began wailing and beating herself hysterically. She fell to the floor momentarily, but then rose. One of her sisters fell to the floor and had to be lifted onto a nearby hospital bed. Kamal rolled away from his mother at the scene she was making over his injuries. Meanwhile, not far from where the suicide bombing took place outside Halabjah, the Ansar forces that had been targeted by U.S. missiles the night before were manning many of their outposts. They had fled their bunkers when the cruise missiles struck Friday night. Yesterday afternoon, they were back. More missile strikes were expected last night.