- The US military assault on Tal Afar, an ethnically Turkmen
city in northern Iraq, has provoked a furious reaction from the Turkish
government which is demanding the US call off the attack.
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- American and Iraqi government forces last week sealed
off Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul belonging to Iraq's embattled Turkmen
minority. The US said it killed 67 insurgents while a Turkmen leader claims
60 civilians were killed and 100 wounded. The massive and indiscriminate
use of US firepower in built-up areas, leading to heavy civilian casualties
in cities like Tal Afar, Fallujah and Najaf, is coming under increasing
criticism in Iraq. The US "came into Iraq like an elephant astride
its war machine," said Ibrahim Jaafari, the influential Iraqi Vice
President.
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- The Americans claim that Tal Afar is a hub for militants
smuggling fighters and arms into Iraq from nearby Syria. Turkish officials
make clear in private they believe that the Kurds, the main ally of the
US in northern Iraq, have managed to get US troops involved on their side
in the simmering ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turkmen.
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- "The Iraqi government forces with the Americans
are mainly Kurdish," complained one Turkmen source. A Turkish official
simply referred to the Iraqi military units involved in the attack on Tal
Afar as "peshmerga", the name traditionally given to Kurdish
fighters.
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- The US army account of its aims in besieging Tal Afar
is largely at odds with that given by Turkmen and may indicate that its
officers are at sea in the complex ethnic mosaic of Iraq. The US says that
in recent weeks the city was taken over by anti-American militants who
repeatedly attacked US and Iraqi government forces.
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- "Tal Afar is a tribal city and its people were not
patient with the presence of American forces," said Farouq Abdullah
Abdul Rahman, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, in Baghdad yesterday.
He agreed that there was friction with US forces but denied that anything
justified the siege, with many Turkmen close to the front line fleeing
into the countryside. "More than 60 people have been killed, including
women and children, and 100 wounded."
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- There has been tension, sometimes boiling over into gun
battles, between the Kurds and the Turkmens since last year. As Saddam
Hussein's regime fell apart Kurdish troops, aided by the US air force,
advanced to take Kirkuk and Mosul. The Kurds felt they at last had a chance
to reverse 40 years of ethnic cleansing which had seen their people massacred
or driven from their homes.
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- Both Arabs and Turkmen fear ethnic cleansing in reverse.
In Tal Afar, a poor city with high unemployment, there was friction from
the beginning. Days after the fall of Saddam the Kurdistan Democratic Party
appointed its own mayor called Abdul Haleq in the city. He ran up a yellow
Kurdish flag outside his office. He was told by local people to take it
down or die. He refused and was killed the following day. His office, along
with the yellow flag, was burned by an angry crowd.
-
- Mr Rahman said that an agreement was hammered out by
tribal leaders and the Americans last week in Mosul whereby Iraqi police
would take charge in Tal Afar but American troops would not enter the city
or try to disarm people. This failed to stick when there was more shooting.
A Turkmen eyewitness in Tal Afar at the time claimed that seven Kurdish
gunmen had fired at the Americans to lure them into attacking the Turkmen.
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- The Turkmen of Tal Afar are Shia Muslims, unlike most
of the rest of their community who are Sunni. A leading Shia cleric, Abdel-Aziz
al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
said that the Americans' use of heavy force in the city caused "catastrophes"
that could have been avoided if Iraqis were in charge of security. Responding
to the US claim that there was a large terrorist organisation there, Mr
al-Hakim said: "Since the day after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed
Tal Afar had terrorist groups and this is not new. The new thing is that
the [US] military operations are huge."
-
- The US was probably more impressed by the furious Turkish
government reaction to the siege. Turkey's Foreign Ministry said: "We
have asked the US authorities to stop the offensive in Tal Afar as soon
as possible and avoid indiscriminate use of force." The Turkish General
Staff said it was also watching developments. On Friday medical supplies
were allowed into the city.
-
- The attack on Tal Afar shows how the US can capture any
city in Iraq but it must also pay a high political price for using its
great firepower in the middle of heavily populated areas.
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- ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=560815
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