Rebels Without a Pause

They are some of the toughest fighters around. But will they give their loyalty to the new Iraq?

NORTHERN IRAQ - The peshmerga know a thing or two about insurgent warfare. The Kurdish militia have fought the Iraqi government for nearly half a century using hit-and-run tactics, dating as far back as 1961. They attacked Iraqi forces then took refuge in the rugged terrain of Mt. Halgurd,

Iraq's highest mountain, and other mountains in the region.

Sheik Mahmoud Junaid was one of the first peshmerga, which means "those who face death." He fought alongside Kurdish guerilla leader Mustafa Barzani, known here as Barzani the Great.

Over a lunch of dolma (stuffed grape leaves), mutton and rice, Junaid recalls the early days of the Kurdish resistance.

"The first fight was at a place called Rania. We attacked 16 Iraqi army vehicles. We had just nine fighters," he says, pausing to finger his prayer beads. "We surprised them and they ran away. We captured some of the vehicles. But the Iraqis came back the next day and burned the village."

It was a fight that would continue off and on for the next 44 years, largely dying down in 1991 when the Iraqi army was forced to withdraw from much of the northern Kurdish regions.

The peace agreement that ended the

Gulf War created a "no-fly zone" over the Kurdish territories, enforced by coalition fighter jets. It also compelled the Iraqi army to pull back behind a predetermined "green line." From that time forward, the Kurdish-controlled regions have enjoyed unparalleled autonomy in Iraq and have developed well beyond the rest of the country, both economically and politically.

The peshmerga, once easily recognized by their traditional baggy pants, called sharwals, and their peshdens -- long scarves wrapped like cummerbunds around their waists -- became the de facto army of Kurdistan.

Despite the new peace and stability, they stood ready to defend their homeland not only against the Iraqis, but an even more hated enemy to the north: Turkey.

But now, as the Kurdish regions prepare to rejoin Iraq, many experts say the peshmerga, newly outfitted in desert camouflage, could play a significant role in creating security for the entire nation by integrating into the new Iraqi army -- if they can be convinced in large enough numbers.

The Bush administration would certainly like to see that integration, as it works to train Iraqi forces and outline an exit strategy for Iraq. In his major Iraq policy speech on Nov. 30 at the U.S. Naval Academy,

President Bush said that out of 120 Iraqi army and police battalions, "about 80 Iraqi battalions are fighting side-by-side with coalition forces, and about 40 others are taking the lead in the fight... at this moment over 30 Iraqi battalions have assumed primary control of their own areas of responsibility."

Peshmerga commander Ali Abdul Karim, who is in charge of a brigade loyal to the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) -- dominant in the city of Erbil and areas along the Turkish border -- believes that more peshmerga in the Iraqi army would certainly strengthen the burgeoning force. But he says there are concerns about the future of Iraq.

"The peshmerga will become a part of the army if there is a democratic regime," he says. "But with a  non-democratic regime the army could be used against the will of the people, as it was in the past."

Many Kurds would like to see an independent Kurdistan, completely separate from Iraq. But pressure from the U.S., as well as threats from both Turkey and

Iran -- who fear independence could create instability among their own Kurdish populations -- is keeping the Kurdish territories in Iraq for now.

But pesghmerga soldiers at the KDP Brigade all openly voice their desire for separation.

"We prefer independence," says Hakim Kadir Tagarny. "We also know the reality, but if there is persecution again we will fight for our independence."

Asked about the insecurity in the rest of Iraq and the potential for the pesghmerga to help stabilize the country, Tagarny waves off the idea, as if the Kurdish territories were already their own nation.

"So what if

Syria is unstable or Iran is unstable?" he says, dismissively. "Should we join their army to help keeps those countries more secure? No. It's the same thing."

Many of these pesghmerga had family killed or injured in

Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Seventeen years later the memories are still raw.

"We don't want the Arabs in Kurdistan," says Ramazan Muhammad Hussein Ali. The dozen or so others gathered in the hallways all nod their heads in agreement.

Meanwhile, at a former Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) peshmerga military academy just outside of Sulaymaniyah, where the PUK faction is dominant, there is no choice. The academy now literally gets its marching orders from Baghdad and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

It's a plan that was likely fast-tracked because Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is also the leader of the PUK.

The academy, which was created in 1991, just after the withdrawal of Iraqi forces, now has been integrated into the Iraqi army. Here both Kurdish and Arab cadets are put through an abbreviated one-year program to commission them as second lieutenants in the new Iraqi army.

The commandant of the academy, Maj. General Sarwad Qader Barzingy, a Kurd, is philosophical about past Arab persecution and the order to integrate the academy.

"As Kurds we don't care much about the past," he says. "We are confident now and need to move forward."

Currently the academy has 105 Arab cadets. Ironically, all were admitted to the Iraqi army's military academy in southern Baghdad during the regime of Saddam Hussein. They are sons of Baath Party members who weren't able to finish their studies because of the war. Now they are here, training in the mountains of east of Sulaymaniyah. Barzingy says things don't always go smoothly.

"We are having lots of problems, not so much because of the ethnic backgrounds, but because of the different cultures. There are two cultures here: one that grew up under the dictatorship [Arabs] and one that grew up under democracy [Kurds]. But that is starting to melt away," he says.

The academy uses the traditional Iraqi army training curriculum and even teaches all the courses in Arabic. In one of the nearby buildings, Maj. Salim Tofiq uses a pointer to describe a large room-sized topography display, complete with depictions of roads, rivers and houses.

In another area, called the darkroom, is a scaled replica of a nighttime battlefield with toy tanks on pulley wires, sound effects and even tiny lights in the ceiling to teach cadets to navigate by the stars.

The instruction seems all too conventional for young officers that will be joining a war that is anything but. Yet Barzingy says there's much more to it.

"We Kurds know about partisan warfare," he says, smiling. "We are instructing the cadets on counterinsurgency and that is something that those in [the Iraqi Ministry of Defense] are learning from us."

And while they're united against a common foe, there are still ethnic tensions between the students.

"Some of our cadets from the Baathist families complained that the Kurdish cadets were cursing them in Kurdish," says Barzingy. "So one of our instructors made them stop speaking Kurdish completely. But that was going too far. I told him Saddam Hussein couldn't stop us from speaking Kurdish and neither will you."

At the same time Barzingy looks up at the television monitor tuned to Al-Jazeera broadcasting the trial of Saddam Hussein in his office and says this: "The despotic tyrant. No one would believe one day he would stand in a cage. But without the help of the Americans this would not have happened. The Iraqis could not have done it."

He takes a sip of Seven Up, ready to give an example of why the integration of his academy and the integration of Kurds into the Iraqi army will ultimately work.

"We face problems here, yes," he says. "But we shock the Arabs with our morals and dedication to democratic principles. They can't really believe it at first, how we live -- but they are learning."

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