Kurds in Combat

The Kurds are a fiercely independent people who inhabit the rugged mountains of northern Iraq as well as parts of Turkey, Syria, the Soviet Union and Iran. Many of them have long yearned to have an independent nation, called Kurdistan, and in 1970, after years of bruising clashes with the Iraqi army, they finally won an agreement that guaranteed regional autonomy by March of this year. As the date approached, neither side could agree on what autonomy meant, and when the pact finally came unstuck, a key problem was a familiar Middle East issue: oil. The Kurds took literally violent exception to Baghdad's plans to keep control of the oil-rich region around Kirkuk, a heavily Kurd-populated city.

Suddenly the underground Kurdish army re-emerged from a four-year furlough. Supply lines to several Iraqi army garrisons were cut, and other military units were surrounded. Last week the Kurds began shooting at helicopters resupplying the food-short garrisons. According to the Kurdish radio, the Iraqis responded by bringing their Soviet-built bombers into action for the first time, laying waste to eleven Kurdish villages.

Muslims but not Arabs, the baggy-trousered, occasionally blue-eyed Aryan Kurds of Iraq make up about one-fourth of the country's population of roughly 10.4 million. The Kurdish guerrilla army, called Pesh Merga (which means "facing death"), is led by a tenacious nationalist, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, 75. It numbers about 40,000 regulars. Iraq can draw on a 90,000-man army that is well equipped and advised by the Soviet Union; Defense Minister Andrei Grechko flew to Baghdad for consultations soon after the negotiations between the government and the Kurds broke off.

Iraq charges that the Kurds are supplied with sophisticated equipment by the U.S. and Iran. TIME'S Joseph Fitchett, who returned from a 13-day trip to Iraq last week, saw no evidence of this. The Kurds have only a few heavy weapons--notably World War II-vintage antiaircraft guns. But Iran, long at odds with the far-left Iraqi government, may well be providing the Kurds with small arms. The rifles carried by Barzani's bandoliered troops are mostly Czech-designed, Iran-manufactured Brno rifles.

"To the south of the Kurds' mountainous, 10,000-sq.-mi. redoubt," reports Fitchett, "are Kurdish valleys where villages have been largely deserted. Fearful of air raids, entire families have taken to living in caves. Even in towns farther back in the mountains, almost all activity occurs at night, including grammar school for pupils,, who carry flashlights to get to their classes. The foothills are now a contested no man's land that has already been the scene of several skirmishes." Among other triumphs, the Kurdish radio claims that the Pesh Merga killed one Iraqi general hi combat and shot down one of the Iraqis' Sukh017 fighter-bombers.

Bitter Repeat. Neither side seems eager for an all-out civil war. One reason the Baathist (Arab Socialist) government in Baghdad has been able to hold on to power since 1968 is that it recognized the need to compromise with the Kurds and thus defuse a debilitating feud that had undermined previous regimes. Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party is not demanding independence or control of the oilfields, as long as the fields--and their revenues--are funneled back into a regionally autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Barzani also wants further reforms, including power for the now ineffective Iraqi legislature and more Kurds in positions as army officers, diplomats and senior government officials; most of these posts are occupied by Arabs, often Baath Party members. Yet bitterness on both sides now is so strong that there could be a repetition of the sporadic fighting between 1961 and 1970. In battles then at least 100 villages were destroyed and as many as 15,000 Kurdish guerrillas and unknown thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed.

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