For
a story that three weeks ago
gripped the world’s imagination, it has now all but dropped off the
radar.
Peculiar
really, for if one thing might have been expected in the aftermath of
Saddam Hussein’s capture, it was the endless political and media
mileage that the Bush administration would get out of it .
After
all, for 249 days Saddam’s elusiveness had been a symbol of America’s
ineptitude in Iraq, and, at last, with his capture came the
long-awaited chance to return some flak to the Pentagon’s critics.
It
also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of
America’s elite covert and intelligence units such as Task Force 20 and
Greyfox .
And it was a terrific chance for the perfect photo-op
showing the American soldier, and Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”,
hauling “High Value Target Number One” out of his filthy spiderhole in
the village of al-Dwar.
Then along came that story: the one about
the Kurds beating the US Army in the race to find Saddam first, and
details of Operation Red Dawn suddenly began to evaporate.
US
Army spokesmen – so effusive in the immediate wake of Saddam’s capture
– no longer seemed willing to comment, or simply went to ground.
But
rumours of the crucial Kurdish role persisted, even though it now seems
their previously euphoric spokesmen have now, similarly, been afflicted
by an inexplicable bout of reticence.
It was two weeks ago that
the Sunday Herald revealed how a Kurdish special forces unit belonging
to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had spearheaded and tracked
down Saddam, sealing off the al-Dwar farmhouse long “before the arrival
of the US forces”.
PUK leader Jalal Talabani had chosen to leak
the news and details of the operation’s commander, Qusrut Rasul Ali, to
the Iranian media long before Saddam’s capture was reported by the
mainstream Western press or confirmed by the US military.
By the
time Western press agencies were running the same story, the entire
emphasis had changed however, and the ousted Iraqi president had been
“captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters”.
In
the intervening few weeks that troublesome Kurdish story has gone
around the globe, picked up by newspapers from The Sydney Morning
Herald to the US Christian Science Monitor, as well as the Kurdish
press.
While Washington and the PUK remain schtum, further
confirmation that the Kurds were way ahead in Saddam’s capture
continues to leak out.
According to one Israeli source who was in
the company of Kurds at a meeting in Athens early on December 14, one
of the Kurdish representatives burst into the conference room in tears
and demanded an immediate halt to the discussions.
“Saddam Hussein has been captured,” he said, adding that
he had received word from Kurdistan – before any television reports.
According
to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the delegate also confirmed that most
of the information leading to the deposed dictator’s arrest had come
from the Kurds and – as our earlier Sunday Herald report revealed – who
had organised their own intelligence network which had been trying to
uncover Saddam’s tracks for months.
The delegate further claimed
that six months earlier the Kurds had discovered that Saddam’s wife was
in the Tikrit area. This intelligence, most likely obtained by Qusrut
Rasul Ali and his PUK special forces unit, was transferred to the
Americans. The Kurds, however, are said to have never received any
follow-up from the coalition forces on this vital tip-off and were
furious.
Whatever the full extent of their undoubted involvement
in providing intelligence or actively participating on the ground in
Saddam’s capture, the Kurds, and the PUK in particular, would benefit
handsomely.
Apart from a trifling $25
million bounty, their status would have been substantially boosted in
Washington, which may in part explain the recent vociferous Kurdish
reassertion of their long-term political ambitions in the “new Iraq”.
For
their own part the Kurds have already launched a political arrangement
designed to secure their aspirations with respect to autonomy, if not
nationalist or separatist aspirations.
To show how serious they
are, the two main Kurdish groups, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP), have decided to close ranks and set up a joint Kurdish
administration, with jobs being divided between the two camps. They
have made it clear to the Americans that their leadership has a
responsibility to their constituency.
Last week Massoud Barzani,
leader of the KDP, called for a revision of the power-transfer
agreement signed between the US-led coalition and Iraq’s interim
governing council to recognise “Kurdish rights”.
The November 15
agreement calls for the creation of a national assembly by the end of
May 2004 which will put in place a caretaker government by June, which
in turn will draft a new constitution and hold national elections
“The
November 15 accord must be revised and ‘Kurdish rights’ within an Iraqi
federation must be mentioned,” Barzani told a meeting of his supporters.
“The Kurds are today in a powerful position but must
continue the struggle to guard their unity,” he added.
This
renewed determination to fulfil their political objectives is shaking
up other ethnic residents in northern Iraq, who fear at best being
marginalised; at worst victimised. Over the last week there have been
increasingly violent clashes between Kurdish and Arab students, and
between Kurds and Turkemens, in the oil rich city of Kirkuk.
Such
ethnic confrontations point to another dangerous phase in Iraq’s
power-brokering. If the Kurds did indeed capture Saddam first, and a
deal was struck about his handover to the US, then it’s not
inconceivable that the terms might have included strong political and
strategic advantages that could ultimately determine the emerging power
structure in Iraq.
Sunday Herals - 04 January 2004