US making peace with Kurds – to battle Iraq

In April, the CIA secretly flew two Iraqi opposition leaders to an agency training camp in tidewater Virginia. US officials wanted to persuade the pair – Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, leaders of Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq – to cooperate with an effort to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

But at the meeting it quickly became apparent that the two Kurds were suspicious of US intentions. They said that US officials had encouraged them to revolt against President Hussein's rule before, only to abandon them. Discussions became so strained that a senior American diplomat had to make a quick trip down from Washington in an attempt to assure them that this time the US meant what it said.

This little-noticed blow-up underscores just how difficult it will be for the Bush administration to put together an Iraqi fighting force like the Northern Alliance, the loose coalition of guerrillas that proved so crucial to the US victory over the Taliban.

The Kurds, the only Iraqi opposition groups with military forces inside Iraq itself, are not necessarily burning to confront President Hussein's armies. Iraqi rebel groups based outside the country would like to confront Hussein – but they have little apparent armed strength. And all the Iraq opposition factions have a history of sniping at each other, as well as at Hussein.

"Iraq is not Afghanistan," says Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at National Defense University. "Certain things were a success [against the Taliban], but to assume that they would give you success in Iraq is careless."

Take Messrs. Talabani and Barzani. Between them, they say they are able to field some 70,000 peshmerga (guerrilla fighters). But they are extremely leery about working with the US and of jeopardizing the virtual state in northern Iraq they have created, which is protected by the US aircraft that enforce no-fly zones in the country.

Twice in the past – in 1991 and 1996 – the US persuaded them to rise up against Hussein. Both times the US left them on their own – and the results were disastrous. In 1991, 1.5 million Kurds were forced to flee; hundreds, if not thousands, died. In 1996, the US pulled the plug on their operation just hours before it was set to begin and thousands had to be airlifted to safety.

"Don't count on Talabani and Barzani kicking something off," says Robert Baer, who was the CIA's point man in the 1996 operation in northern Iraq. "They've just been betrayed too many times – lied to, misled."

But another problem with the Iraqi Kurd leaders is that they don't get along – their two factions, in addition to keeping Hussein at bay, have been fighting each other for years.

There are at least three other viable opposition groups besides the Kurds. Then there's the umbrella organization intended to represent all of them, the Iraqi National Congress, founded in 1992 with US support and now led by Ahmed Chalabi.

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