March 15, 2003

Salih Says 70,000 Kurds Will Fight Alongside U.S. Troops

A Kurdish leader predicted Friday the quick collapse of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government if war comes. He said 70,000 Kurds were prepared to fight alongside U.S. troops.

Barhim Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, said the Iraqi army and even some of Saddam's Republican Guard would quit in what he predicted would be a short war.

Salih told reporters at the Council on Foreign Relations, a private research group, that Saddam had booby-trapped Iraqi oil fields in Kirkuk and probably elsewhere and would have them blown up as he sought refuge outside the country.

"We have to expect the worst of him," Salih said.

In Washington for talks with Bush administration officials, Salih said he hoped to discourage any U.S. invitation to Turkey to send troops into northern Iraq, which has a heavy Kurdish population.

If Turkey should intervene, so will Iran, Salih said, "opening a Pandora's Box" that would harm prospects for a transition to an independent, democratic government in Baghdad.

I'm liking the Kurds more and more and the Turks less and less...
The Kurds have been pretty much been running their own little independent and democratic state for the last 12 years, since the Allied Coalition set up the Northern No-Fly zone, and doing a good job of it (at least life is much better there than in Saddam's Iraq) and they've endured endless purges by him, including ethnic cleansing by poison gas.
They've also battled the Turks semi-successfully, costing them 35,000 lives, in the past couple of decades.
I think the Kurds are the main reason why Turkey is thwarting our efforts to use their country's resources to help wage our liberation of Iraq.
I think they'll come into the war sooner or later, but on their own side (with some help from Saddam and/or the French?)--they don't want their own Kurdish population to join forces with these Iraqi Kurds, but notice how Salih, the main Kurdish leader, is with us and pledging his men to fight on our side?
Maybe it's the Mafia philosophy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," but at this point, who's being picky, particularly when our enemies list has gotten a bit longer to include not only Saddam, but perhaps Islamist leader Erdogan of Turkey, too?
The Kurd factor, plus the phenomenon of Turkish
seeming coquettishness, if not outright fecklessness, at an inopportune time, is what I think is leading us to this tactical decision:
U.S. Drops Its Bid to Base Troops in Turkey

Washington warns Ankara not to send its soldiers into northern Iraq.
Pentagon moves some vessels from the Mediterranean Sea.

Update:More good news from Kurdish leader Salih
Kurd PM: French, Russians to lose Iraq oil

French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq "will not be honored," Barhim Salih, a leading Iraqi Kurdish official, said in Washington Friday, just before a series of high-level meetings with Bush administration officials.

"A new Iraqi government should not honor any of these contracts, signed against the interests of the Iraqi people. The new Iraqi government should respect those who stood by us, and not those who stood beside the dictator," added Salih, who is prime minister in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan government that controls Iraq's eastern Kurdish area.

Russian and French oil corporations have each signed draft contracts with Iraq, to come into force only when the United Nations sanctions are lifted, for exploration, development and exploitation of the country's energy resources -- which geologists believe may be the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia. The value of the draft contracts, if fully taken up, is estimated to have a potential of more than $20 billion.

Although there have been dark hints that French and Russian opposition to a second U.N. resolution in the Security Council could have economic consequences, this is the first clear threat from a leading opposition figure from inside Iraq that their oil contracts will not be honored.

Given the fact that many of Iraq's most productive oil fields and these leases are situated in the Kurdish part, Mr. Salih seems to be saying that he and his Kurdish troops and people won't "allow" the French and Russians to "make good" on their old contracts by trying to tap those fields.
I'm delighted to learn that my President and my government invited this wise man to Washington to discuss concrete ways in which Iraqi life will improve after Saddam's "regime changed."