Kurdish influence grows in fledgling army REBUILDING IRAQ:

Saturday, Feb 12, 2005

Yesterday's unannounced visit by Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was not simply a morale booster for US troops. It was also intended to highlight the work of Iraq's fledgling security forces and underline that the rebuilding of the Iraqi army is the key ingredient for an eventual withdrawal of US troops.

The Iraqi National Guard (ING) has played a growing role in and around Mosul. And the prevalence of Kurdish fighters in those ING units illustrates growing Kurdish influence in Iraq's emerging army.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister and a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic party (KDP), told the FT that after violence flared in Mosul in November, Kurdish forces "did move into securing at least the eastern part of the city" (which is mainly Kurdish) and the main roads.

"Now they are all controlled by the ING but the units are of Kurdish origin," he said.

Both Kurds and Americans say events over the past six months have overcome US reluctance to involve the Kurdish parties in military affairs.

"There was a fear of negative Arab reaction and of internal rivalries among the Kurds, but this has changed, both from practical experience and with the need to Iraqi-ise security," said Harry Schute, the former US military commander in Kurdish-held northern Iraq who now advises the KDP administration in northern Iraq.

The performance of mainly Kurdish units in ING in November and December's fighting in Najaf and Falluja, as well as Mosul, was widely noticed.

"They stood their ground, they didn't abandon their positions," said Mr Zebari.

Iyad Allawi's government last month decided to make the ING part of the new army rather than a separate force, and the Kurdish parties are encouraging their fighters, or peshmerga, to join up.

The pool is potentially large. The KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have used Kurdish self-rule to enhance their peshmerga from 10,000 in 1991 to more than 60,000 today. "Many of the young, trained officers have joined the ING," said Mr Zebari. "We send the best ones, because we know the dangers."

The real challenge in building a new army was one of education, said Bruska Shaways, secretary general of Iraq's defence ministry and a senior KDP member. "The Ba'athists used force, including the army, to divide people. The new army must be based on a new kind of understanding of its role, which will be to defend the Iraqi people and its democratic constitution."

The new army's chief of staff, Babekir Zebari, is Kurdish, but many former peshmerga are under Arab officers.

According to Mr Shaways, around 80 per cent of the new officers above colonel are from the former Iraqi army, which was dissolved by Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator after the US-led invasion.

Efforts have been made, with varying success, to integrate fighters from the former Arab opposition to Saddam Hussein - including Badr corps, the military group within the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Mr Allawi's Iraq National Accord, and the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi. But none of these groups has the experience of the Kurds.

"In one battalion, the 36th, each opposition group sent around 100 men each, but apart from the peshmerga, 50 per cent dropped out," he said.

The Ministry of Defence plans to increase the army from its current strength of about 35,000-40,000 men to 100,000-120,000 by the end of 2006.

But many Kurds still doubt Iraq's majority Arabs will ever accept Kurdish political autonomy. Many are wary of rebuilding an army that repressed the Kurds for decades, burning 4,500 Kurdish villages and using chemical weapons in the 1988-90 Anfal' campaign.

"It's not in our interests to have a strong Iraqi army, whether it has Kurds in it or not," said a PUK official.

"If you look back at the 1920s (when Iraq was created), the first head of the military academy in Baghdad was Toufiq Wehbi, a Kurd."

By GARETH SMYTH