Authors: Dale Brown
BBC NEWS ONLINE,
30 OCTOBER 2007:…Tensions between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish region had been rising steadily in the months running up to the current crisis, triggered by PKK attacks which have killed some forty Turkish troops in recent weeks.
…In May, Turkey was angered when the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan were handed security control by the US-led multinational forces, and promptly raised the Kurdish flag instead of the Iraqi one.
…“You don’t need 100,000 [Turkish] troops to take their positions,” said a senior Iraqi Kurd politician. “What they’re clearly planning to do is to stage a major incursion and take control of the major land routes inside Iraqi Kurdistan leading up into the border mountains from the Iraqi side.”
…There is speculation in Kurdish circles that the Turks might also try to bomb or otherwise neutralize the two Iraqi Kurdish airports,
at Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, which Ankara asserts have been allowing PKK fighters to gain refuge.
…“The Turks could wipe them out or bomb them as they have done in the past. What they are proposing is something larger than that. They are talking about a large-scale military incursion, which is getting people extremely, extremely nervous and worried. The concern of many people is that Turkish ambition may stretch beyond taking out the PKK…”
BBC NEWS ONLINE,
18 JANUARY 2008:…Turkey has been threatening military action against the PKK ever since insurgents intensified their attacks on Turkish troops, putting the government here under immense public pressure to respond with force. Last month, the government authorized the military to carry out cross-border operations [into Iraq] against the PKK whenever necessary.
The air strikes on Sunday night were the first serious sign of that.
…Ankara says it has tacit approval from the U.S. for its operations, under an agreement reached in Washington last month by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President George W. Bush.
“I believe the USA supplied actionable intelligence, and the Turkish military took action,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Levent Bilman told the BBC…
“TURKISH TROOPS KILL 11 REBELS IN SOUTHEAST TURKEY NEAR BORDER WITH IRAQ—ASSOCIATED PRESS,” 12 MARCH 2007—ANKARA, TURKEY: Turkish troops killed 11 Kurdish rebels during clashes in southeastern Turkey near the border with Iraq, a private news agency reported Wednesday. The fighting comes two weeks after
Turkey’s eight-day incursion into northern Iraq to flush out the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, who have been battling the Turkish government since 1984.
…Some Turkish nationalists fear that increasing cultural rights could lead to the breakup of the country along ethnic lines. They worry that Turkish Kurds could be encouraged by the U.S.-supported Kurdish region in northern Iraq, which has its own government and militia…
SECOND QUARTER 2008 FORECAST, © STRATFOR.COM, 4 APRIL 2008: Regional trend: Turkey is emerging as a major regional power and in 2008 will begin to exert influence throughout its periphery—most notably in northern Iraq…
Turkey is feeling strong not only in northern Iraq, but also in the nearby Balkans and Caucasus, where it is seeking to mentor newly independent Kosovo and a newly oil-rich Azerbaijan…
“‘IRON MAN’ IS THE NEW FACE OF MILITARY CONTRACTORS,” JEREMY HSU, SPACE.COM, 6 MAY 2008: When superhero Tony Stark isn’t donning his Iron Man armor to personally rough up villains, he’s pitching the U.S. military on new gadgets to fight the War on Terror.
…Private individuals and companies might not be as visible as UAVs soaring above the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq, yet their role has grown just as dramatically during the recent conflicts.
…No one questions that the United States could not fight a war now without outsourcing to military contractors…That means military contractors have also expanded beyond just selling military hardware. They now run supply lines, feed troops, build base camps, consult on strategy and even fight as private security forces…
“IRAN: U.S.–IRAQI DEAL WOULD ‘ENSLAVE’ IRAQIS—RAFSANJANI,” STRATFOR.COM, JUNE 4, 2008: Iranian Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on June 4 said the Islamic world will try to stop a long-term security agreement between Iraq and the United States, saying the terms of the deal would “enslave” Iraqis, the Associated Press reported. Rafsanjani said the U.S.–Iraqi deal would lead to a permanent occupation of Iraq, and that such an occupation is dangerous for all states in the region…
THIRD QUARTER FORECAST,
STRATFOR.COM, 8 JULY 2008:…Regional trend: Turkey is emerging as a major regional power and in 2008 will begin to exert influence throughout its periphery—most notably in northern Iraq…Turkey is becoming bolder on the international stage: sending troops into northern Iraq, mediating Israeli-Syrian peace talks, pushing energy projects in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and making its influence felt in the Balkans…
“IRAQI PARLIAMENT CALLS SESSION ON KIRKUK,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 30 JULY 2008:…Tensions escalated Monday after a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk during a Kurdish protest against the elections law killed 25 people and injured more than 180.
Kirkuk is home to Kurds, Turkomans, Arabs, and other minorities. After the explosion in Kirkuk, dozens of angry Kurds stormed the offices of a Turkoman political party that opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk, opening fire and burning cars amid accusations that their rivals were to blame. Nine Turkomen, or ethnic Turks, were reported wounded.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which has been defending the rights of Turkomen, called Iraqi authorities to express concern over the incidents in Kirkuk and proposed to send a
plane to bring the wounded to Turkey for treatment, the Iraqi president’s office said…
“TURKEY CONCERNED WITH CITY OF KIRKUK,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2 AUGUST 2008: Baghdad—The Turkish government has expressed concern regarding the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where ethnic Turks are locked in a territory dispute, an Iraqi official says.
An unidentified Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had been contacted by Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babican regarding the situation in the city, the Kuwait News Agency KUNA reported Saturday.
The province of Kirkuk has demanded the city become part of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, while Turkey has steadfastly opposed such a movement.
While the city holds the largest concentration of ethnic Turks in Iraq, the spokesman said Zebari has maintained that any attempts to solve the dispute will be conducted solely by Iraq.
Zebari said any outside attempts to become involved in the dispute would not be welcomed by Iraq, the spokesman told KUNA.
“LASER GUN’S FIRST BLAST,”
WIRED,
DANGER ROOM, 13 AUGUST 2008: Boeing announced today the first ever test firing of a real-life ray gun that could become U.S. Special Forces’ way to carry out covert strikes with “plausible deniability.”
In tests earlier this month at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, Boeing’s Advanced Tactical Laser—a modified C-130H aircraft—“fired its high-energy chemical laser through its beam control system. The beam control system acquired a ground target and guided the laser beam to the target, as directed by ATL’s battle management system…”
“RECORD NUMBER OF U.S. CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ,”
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR,
PETER GRIER, 18 AUGUST 2008: Washington—The American military has depended on private contractors since sutlers sold paper, bacon, sugar, and other small luxuries to Continental Army troops during the Revolutionary War.
But the scale of the use of contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in US history, according to a new congressional report that may be the most thorough official account yet of the practice. As of early 2008, at least 190,000 private personnel were working on US-funded projects in the Iraq theater, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) survey found. That means that for each uniformed member of the US military in the region, there was also a contract employee—a ratio of 1 to 1.
…Critics of military outsourcing say the real problem is flexibility and command-and-control over private workers…
“ANKARA’S S-300 CURIOSITY,” STRATEGIC FORECASTING INC., 26 AUGUST 2008:…Turkey is in the process of acquiring several variants of the Russian S-300 air defense system, Turkish daily
Today’s Zaman
reported August 25…
…Should Turkey succeed in this acquisition, Ankara’s subsequent work would take two important approaches. The first is reverse engineering, where key components are disassembled and their inner workings closely examined. The second is training in electronic warfare against actual systems…
“TURKISH ARMY SEEKS EXPANDED POWERS,” ASSOCIATED PRESS, ANKARA, TURKEY—10 OCTOBER 2008: Turkey’s leaders met Thursday to discuss increas
ing the military’s powers to combat Kurdish rebels following a surge in attacks, some launched from rebel bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey’s parliament already voted Wednesday to extend the military’s mandate to carry out operations against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, including cross-border ground operations.
But the military has requested increased powers to fight rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Thursday’s meeting was focused on extending the options available to the military and police…
O
UTSIDE AL
-A
MADIYAH
, D
AHUK
P
ROVINCE
, R
EPUBLIC OF
I
RAQ
S
PRING
2010
The
dilok
, or traditional wedding celebration, had been going on now for several hours, but no one appeared to be tired in the least. Men were dancing on large
defs
, or frame drums, and tap-dancing to folk music performed with amplified
zurna
and
temburs
, while the other guests cheered them on.
Outside, it was a warm, dry, clear evening. Knots of men stood in groups here and there, smoking and drinking small cups of thick coffee. Women and older girls in colorful dresses and scarves carried trays of food to them, helped by sons or younger brothers carrying flashlights.
After serving the men outside the wedding reception, a woman carried a tray down the road beyond the lights, her ten-year-old son leading the way, to two Toyota pickup trucks semihidden in the trees, one on each side of the road leading to the farm. The boy shined the flashlight at the pickup truck to his left, right into the eyes of his older brother. “
Alslam ylikm!
Caught you sleeping again!” he shouted.
“I was not!” the brother retorted, much louder than he intended.
“Hani, don’t do that. Now your brother will not be able to see in the darkness for some time,” the boy’s mother scolded him. “Go give your brother some treats and tell him you’re sorry. Come, Mazen,” she said to her husband, “I have more coffee for you.”
The husband set his AK-47 aside on the truck’s front bumper and gratefully accepted the treats. He was dressed for the celebration, not for guard duty. “You’re a good woman, Zilar,” the man said. “But next time, send your lazy brother out here to do the work for you. It was his idea to place guards outside the reception.” He could sense her pained expression. “I see. He is busy recruiting again, no? His own daughter’s wedding and he can’t stop?”
“He feels very strongly—”
“I know, I know,” the husband interrupted, gently placing a hand on his wife’s cheek to reassure her. “He is a patriotic and committed Kurdish nationalist. Good for him. But he knows the militias, police, and military monitor such events, take photographs from unmanned aircraft, use sensitive microphones, and tap telephones. Why does he continue? He risks too much.”
“Nevertheless, I thank you again for agreeing to take a shift out here for security,” the wife said, taking his hand from her face and kissing it. “It makes him feel better.”
“I haven’t picked up a rifle in years since I left the
peshmerga
militias in Kirkuk. I find myself checking the safety every three seconds.”
“Oh, do you, my husband?” The woman stepped toward the AK-47 leaning against the bumper and examined it with her fingers.
“Ah, la, tell me I didn’t…”
“You did.” She flicked the safety lever back up to “safe.”
“I’m glad your brothers aren’t around to see you do that,” her husband said. “Perhaps I need more lessons from a former High Commune of Women commander.”
“I have a family to raise and a house to take care of—I put in my time in the Kurdistan independence movement. Let the younger women do some fighting for a change.”
“You can put any younger woman to shame—on the rifle range, and in bed.”
“Oh, and how would you know about the skills of younger women?” she asked playfully. She placed the weapon back down and approached her husband, swaying her hips seductively. “I have many more lessons I’d prefer to give you, husband.” He gave her a kiss. “Now, how much longer are you going to keep my oldest son out here?”
“Not long. Maybe another hour.” He nodded toward his son, who was busy fending off his younger brother from the few remaining baklava on the tray. “It’s nice to be out here with Neaz. He takes this task very seriously. He—” The man stopped because he thought he heard an approaching bicycle or small scooter, a sort of quiet hushing sound that indicated speed but not power. There were no lights on the road or highway beyond. He frowned, then placed his coffee cup in his wife’s hand. “Take Hani back to the community center.”
“What is it?”
“Probably nothing.” He looked down the dirt road again and saw no sign of any movement—no birds, no rustling trees. “Tell your brother I’m going to roam around a bit. I’ll tell the others.” He kissed his wife on the cheek, then went to retrieve his AK-47. “I’ll be ready to come in after I get…”
Out of the corner of an eye, high above to the west, he spotted it: a brief spurt of yellow light, not solid like a searchlight but flickering like a torch. Why he did it, he wasn’t sure, but he pushed his wife aside, into the trees beside the gate. “
Get down
!” he shouted. “Stay down! Stay—”
Suddenly the ground vibrated as if a thousand horses were stampeding right beside them. The husband’s face, eyes, and throat were choked by clouds of dust and dirt that appeared from nowhere, and rocks were thrown in every direction. The wife screamed as she saw her husband literally disintegrate into chunks of human flesh. The pickup truck was similarly chewed apart before the gas tank ruptured, sending a massive fireball into the sky.
Then she heard it—a horrible sound, impossibly loud, lasting only a fraction of a second. It was like a giant growling animal standing over her, like a house-size chain saw. The sound was followed moments later by the loud
whoosh
of a jet plane flying overhead, so low that she thought it could be landing on the dirt road.
In the space of just a few heartbeats, her husband and two sons were dead before her eyes. Somehow the woman got to her feet and ran back toward the wedding reception, thinking of nothing else but warning the other members of her family to flee for their lives.
“Lead is clear,” the lead pilot of the three-ship A-10 Thunderbolt II bomber radioed. He pulled up sharply to make sure he was well clear of the other aircraft and the terrain. “Two, cleared in hot.”
“Good pass, lead,” the pilot of the second A-10 Thunderbolt radioed. “Two’s in hot.” He checked the AGM-65G Maverick missile’s forward-looking infrared video display, which clearly showed the two pickup trucks at the end of the road, one burning and the other still intact, and lined up on the second pickup with a gentle touch of his control stick. His A-10 was not modified with a dedicated infrared sensor pod, but the “poor man’s FLIR” video from the Maverick missile did the job nicely.
Nighttime cannon runs were not normally advisable, especially in such hilly terrain, but what pilot would not take the risk for a chance to fire the incredible GAU-8A Avenger cannon, a thirty-millimeter Gatling gun that fired huge depleted uranium shells at almost four thousand rounds per minute? Besides, with the first target burning nicely, it was easy to see the next target now.
When the Maverick aiming reticle showed thirty degrees depression, the pilot dropped his plane’s nose, made a final adjustment, announced “Guns, guns, guns!” on the radio, and pulled the trigger. The roar of that big cannon firing between his legs was the most incredible feeling. In a single three-second spurt, almost two hundred huge shells flew to their target. The pilot centered the first second’s worth on the pickup, covering it with fifty shells and caus
ing yet another spectacular explosion, and then raised the A-10’s nose to let the remaining hundred and thirty shells stitch up along the road toward a fleeing terrorist target.
Careful not to get target fixated, and very aware of the surrounding terrain, he pulled up sharply and vectored right to climb to his assigned altitude. The maneuverability of the American-made A-10 was amazing—it did not deserve its unofficial nickname of “Warthog.” “Two’s clear. Three, cleared in hot.”
“Three’s in hot,” the pilot of the third A-10 in the formation responded. He was the least experienced pilot in the four-ship formation, so he was not going to do a cannon pass…but it was going to be just as exciting.
He centered the target—a large garage beside a house—in his Maverick missile aiming screen, pressed the “lock” button on his throttle quadrant, said “Rifle one” on the radio, turned his head right to avoid the glare of the missile’s motor, and pressed the “launch” button on his control stick. An AGM-65G Maverick missile flew off the launch rail on the left wing and quickly disappeared from view. He selected a second missile, moved the aiming reticle to the second target—the house itself—and fired a Maverick from the right wing. He was rewarded seconds later with two bright explosions.
“Lead has a visual, looks like two direct hits.”
“Three’s clear,” he radioed as he climbed and turned toward his planned rendezvous anchor. “Four, cleared in hot.”
“Four copies, going in hot,” the fourth A-10 pilot acknowledged. His was possibly the least exciting attack profile and one that normally was not even performed by the A-10, but the A-10s were the new members of the fleet, and their full capabilities had yet to be explored.
The routine was far simpler than his wingmen’s: stores control switches set to stations four and eight; follow the GPS navigation cues to the release point; master arming switch to “arm”; and press the release button on the control stick at the preplanned release point. Two thousand-pound GBU-32 GPS-guided bombs dropped
into the night sky. The pilot didn’t have to lock anything on or risk diving toward the terrain: the guidance kits on the weapons used GPS satellite navigation signals to guide the bombs to their target, a large building near the farm that was advertised as a “community center” but that intelligence sources insisted was a major gathering and recruiting spot for PKK terrorists.
Well, not anymore. Two direct hits obliterated the building, creating one massive crater over fifty feet in diameter. Even flying at fifteen thousand feet above ground, the A-10 was rocked by the twin explosions. “Four’s clear. Weapon panel safe and clear.”
“Two good
infilaks
,” the lead pilot radioed. He didn’t see any secondary explosions, but the terrorists might have moved the large cache of weapons and explosions reportedly being stored in the building. “
Muhtesem!
Good job, Thunderbolts. Check arming switches safe, and don’t forget to turn off ECM and turn on transponders at the border or we’ll be sweeping you up in the wreckage like they’ll be doing with those PKK scum back there. See you in the rendezvous anchor.”
Minutes later, all four A-10 Thunderbolts, newly acquired warplanes of the Turkish Air Force, were safely back across the border. Another successful antiterrorist mission against the rebels hiding out in Iraq.
The woman, Zilar Azzawi, groaned in agony as she awoke a short time later. Her left hand was in terrible pain, as if she had broken a finger or thumb when she fell…and then she realized with shock that her left hand was
gone,
severed off at midforearm. Whatever had killed her husband and sons and destroyed the truck had almost succeeded in killing her. Her PKK commando training took over, and she managed to tie a strip of cloth from her dress around her arm as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
The entire area around her was in flames, and she had no choice but to stay where she was, on the side of the road, until she could get her bearings. Everything around her, except this little patch of dirt
road, was burning, and she had lost so much blood that she didn’t think she could go very far even if she did know which way to go.
Everything and everyone was gone, utterly blasted away—the buildings, wedding reception, all the guests, the children…my God, the
children
,
her
children…!
Azzawi was helpless now, hoping just to stay alive…
“But, God, if you let me live,” she said aloud over the sounds of death and destruction around her, “I will find the ones responsible for this attack, and I will use all of my powers to raise an army and destroy them. My previous life is over—they have taken my family from me with brutal indifference. With your blessing, God, my new life shall begin right now, and I will avenge all those who died here tonight.”