IRAQ NEWS, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2003
I. RAGGED TROOPS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, FEB 4
II. ARMY'S LOW MORALE, GUARDIAN, FEB 8
There is a build-up of Iraqi forces in the North, across from the Kurdish
lines. Two recent articles illustrate that morale among the Iraqi forces is
very low and many Iraqis are waiting expectantly for the war. The
Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb 4, quotes one Turkish truck driver who recently
spent several weeks in the Northern Iraqi city of Mosul, "[The Iraqis] ask
us drivers: 'Are the U.S. soldiers on the Turkish side yet? Are they
coming?' "
The Guardian, Feb 8, quotes a recent defector from the Iraqi army, "If
George Bush wants to give us freedom then we will welcome it."
I. RAGGED TROOPS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
The Philadelphia Inquirer
February 4, 2003
Truckers tell of Iraqi buildup
Turks ferry oil and see ragged troops gathering.
By Mark McDonald
Knight Ridder News Service
HABUR GATE, Turkey - The tough Turkish truckers who make weekly runs to
Saddam Hussein's oil refineries in northern Iraq are bringing back accounts
of a massive Iraqi military buildup in the region, along with descriptions
of a panicked population and barracks full of hungry and bedraggled Iraqi
soldiers.
"They are digging new bunkers and bomb shelters, and there are lots of tanks
now," said Resim Gul, 26, a trucker who has been hauling Iraqi crude for the
last four years. "Trucks full of new soldiers are arriving every day. And
lots of big antiaircraft guns. They're new. It's all new."
The Iraqi military may try to defend Mosul and Kirkuk, major refinery towns
and two of Iraq's most prized strategic assets, against coalition ground
troops who could attack south from Turkey through the Habur Gate. Worse,
some U.S. war planners believe Hussein may be preparing to destroy the oil
fields before the United States and its allies can seize them.
The Turkish truckers say the Iraqi soldiers who are moving into the north do
not look very fresh. One driver said they looked as if they already had been
through a war.
"The soldiers are going hungry," said Ismail Gergez, 26, a tanker driver
from the ancient Turkish hill town of Mardin, which overlooks the Syrian
border. "They are wearing old, dirty uniforms. They don't even look like
soldiers. They're living in their barracks in disaster conditions."
The truckers say many Iraqis are anxious and fearful - anxious about a war,
fearful of their leader.
"I know the Iraqi people very well - I spend a lot of time there - and
they're scared of Saddam," said Gergez, who recently spent 20 days in Mosul
when Iraqi customs officials impounded his truck.
"They speak against him, but only to the drivers and always very secretly.
"They ask us drivers: 'Are the U.S. soldiers on the Turkish side yet? Are
they coming?' "
The Turkish truckers are among the few outsiders who are allowed to enter
Iraq regularly. They seem to have better access than chief U.N. weapons
inspector Hans Blix. Every day, their trailers and tankers are backed up for
miles outside the Habur Gate, a grimy border crossing at the foot of the
majestic, snowcapped Cudiz Mountains.
The lineup of trucks now snakes past something new on the way to the Iraqi
border - a refugee camp being built in a sodden 200-acre field just off the
roadway. The tent camp, expected to be finished this week, will house some
of the 300,000 Iraqi refugees expected to cross the mountains into Turkey if
a war starts. In the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a half-million refugees crossed
over.
Truckers have dubbed the two-lane highway to Habur the Silk Road, although
their cargoes are much less elegant than silk - potatoes and sugar, clothes
and cement, all of it subject to approval by the U.N. oil-for-food program.
After the trucks unload in Iraq, they must return empty to Turkey.
The oil tankers work the opposite way: They enter Iraq empty and return to
Turkey with full loads of crude. The oil, pumped from various wellheads and
refineries in Iraq, is usually trucked back through Habur to the Turkish
port of Mersin on the Mediterranean Sea.
The inspections of the trucks going into Iraq are rigorous and round the
clock. Inspectors at the Habur Gate said they especially looked for
prohibited chemicals and industrial machinery - and anything radioactive.
One recent afternoon, an alarm sounded in the Habur Gate customs office as a
truckload of Turkish tobacco rolled past special sensors. The truck was
immediately stopped and an inspector, wearing no protection other than a
dark-blue windbreaker, swept the outside of the trailer with a handheld,
shoebox-sized Geiger counter.
"It's a dangerous job," the inspector said later, with a grimace. "Luckily,
we've never found anything serious."
The U.N. sanctions against Iraq have seriously damaged the Turkish economy.
With much less cargo to haul into Iraq and nothing but crude oil to carry
out, thousands of cabs and trailers are rusting away in "truck graveyards"
all over southeastern Turkey. Most of the drivers haven't found substitute
work.
"The drivers are very angry, yes," said Sharif Mustak, the caretaker of the
Basra Truck Park, who watches over hundreds of idle trucks. "The trucks just
sit here, and even though there's no work, the drivers still have to pay the
taxes."
Flatbed truckers used to bring refined diesel fuel back from Iraq. They
would pump the cheap diesel into 1,000-gallon fiberglass tanks and sell it
for huge profits back in Turkey. But after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
the Turkish government stopped this "fiber trade," and the local economy
went into the ditch.
Up and down the economic ladder, there has been collateral damage: Pushcart
vendor Selahaddin Eren, who hawks bread, boiled eggs, aspirin and razors to
Iraqi-bound truckers, has seen his daily sales drop from $11 to less than
$2.
"Life is difficult already, and war will make things worse," said Eren, 56,
a father of eight who sports a blue Sacramento Kings cap. "Everyone will
suffer. Children will die. We pray for no war."
Contact reporter Mark McDonald at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
II. ARMY'S LOW MORALE, GUARDIAN
The choice for Iraq's rag-tag army: be killed by the US or by Saddam
Luke Harding in Chamchamal hears a defector's tale of low morale
Saturday February 8, 2003
The Guardian
For Private Abass Shomail the war in Iraq ended before it had even begun.
Two days ago Abass slipped away from his sentry post and started running in
darkness across the muddy frontline. He stumbled past the newly dug trenches
designed to protect Iraq's conscript army from American bombardment.
He kept going. Eventually he found himself in a rolling landscape of green
hills and pine trees, the Kurdish self-rule enclave in the north of Iraq.
Abass was the first deserter from the Iraqi military to cross into Kurdistan
for several months. Yesterday, in an interview with the Guardian, he gave a
unique insight into the condition of the Iraqi army on the eve of an
imminent and massive US attack.
Though defectors are a notoriously unreliable source of intelligence, the
fact that he had crossed the border into Kurdish-held territory only days
earlier, together with his lowly rank and the lack of any apparent
incentives to embellish his story, all point to the credibility of his
account.
Morale was very low, he said, both among his fellow conscripts and among
civilians. "We want America to attack because of the bad situation in our
country. But we don't want America to launch air strikes against Iraqi
soldiers because we are forced to shoot and defend. We are also victims in
this situation."
Abass was yesterday in custody in Chamchamal, a small Kurdish smuggling town
overlooked by low green hills and Iraqi army posts. From the edge of town,
the silhouettes of Iraqi soldiers could be seen peering out from their
bunkers across the fields.
The Kurdish fighters or pershmerga ("those who do not fear death") who took
Abbas into custody interrogated him for a day to establish he was not a spy.
Yesterday he was still wearing his olive Iraqi army overcoat and woolly
balaclava. His new home was a small heated room with a TV set tuned to the
Arabic station al-Jazeera.
Conditions back in the Iraqi trenches were not so good, he said. "We have
two blankets for every soldier, but they are very thin and don't keep us
warm. The officers beat us. And the food is disgusting. I'm only paid 50
dinars [about �3] a month."
What would have happened if he had been caught trying to run away? "I would
have been executed."
As the US military puts the finishing touches to its invasion plan, it is
clear that Saddam Hussein's recruits and volunteers face bleak choices in
the coming weeks. If they remain in their positions they run the risk of
being pulverised by American missiles. But if they try to surrender they
risk being shot.
At the moment it is hard to know which is the greater danger. "There are two
groups in the Iraqi army," Abbas said.
"One is made up of soldiers like me. The other is the Republican Guard. The
special guard will support and defend Saddam. The ordinary soldiers and many
of the commanders will surrender."
But for the moment Iraq's military commanders are making frantic
preparations for a battle whose outcome nobody seems to doubt. Earlier this
week, troops manoeuvred four enormous Russian-made Katyusha rocket launchers
into position behind the frontline at Chamchamal.
Some 1,500 Iraqi reinforcements have just arrived. Dozens of tanks have been
concealed in trenches, Abbas confirmed, as well as anti-aircraft batteries.
"The Katyusha rocket launchers are not there for aesthetic reasons," the
town's Kurdish head of security, Adel Muhammad, joked. "But we have our
undercover agents. They tell us that when America attacks the Iraqi soldiers
will surrender."
Officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party that controls the
valleys and mountains around the town of Sulaymaniyah, say they are not
expecting a pre-emptive Iraqi offensive in the north, given the huge US
invasion force assembling in Kuwait.
But President Saddam's record against the Kurds is brutal. Nothing can be
ruled out. And the disconcerting possibility remains that, hidden among the
ordnance may be artillery shells fitted with chemical weapons.
Every day hundreds of Kurds cross an Iraqi checkpoint to the oil-rich
government-controlled town of Kirkuk, a 30-minute drive away. They bring
Kent cigarettes smuggled in from Turkey. They return with plastic containers
full of paraffin.
"We have to bribe the Iraqi guards $2 each time we cross," Hersh Abdul
Karim, an 18-year-old smuggler, said.
The soldiers Abbas left behind, meanwhile, sit in their hilltop bunkers,
pondering an unenviable fate. "We are all very tired," Abbas said. "I
haven't heard of Tony Blair. But if George Bush wants to give us freedom
then we will welcome it."
