Home » Archives » "Tal Afar exposes divisions, shaky coalition hold"

Tal Afar exposes divisions, shaky coalition hold

Sep-19-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

[Link to Full Article]

SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TAL AFAR, Iraq -- After Najaf and Fallujah, suddenly it has been Tal Afar's turn to follow the familiar pattern: Militants move in, U.S. forces fight to drive them out and local leaders get caught in the middle trying to broker a peace.

The battle for this northern Iraqi city has highlighted the tangle of ethnicities that the U.S.-led coalition has to deal with and the fragility of its control over the country.

From Shiite strongholds in Basra, Nasiriyah, Kut and Najaf through the so-called "Sunni Triangle" of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, coalition forces for 17 months have been waging battles against insurgents with varying degrees of success, rarely registering any big, clear-cut victories.

Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, posed a different challenge.

The city of 250,000 is an ethnic stew of Turks intermarried with Arabs, re-embracing their Turkish roots after years of submission to Saddam Hussein's efforts to "Arabize" the country. Then there are the Kurds next door, who claim Tal Afar as part of their enclave.

There's also another big and important neighbor in the picture -- Turkey, a U.S. ally that is deeply suspicious of the Kurds and supportive of the ethnic Turks of Tal Afar.

Moreover, the Americans said -- and townspeople confirm -- that foreign fighters had moved in, though it is hard to know who they were. Duraid Kashmoula, governor of surrounding Nineveh province, likens Iraq's insurgency to "a pack of cards whose colors keep changing."

U.S. troops and Iraqi forces laid siege to Tal Afar in early September after it fell under insurgent control, and most of its inhabitants fled. On Sept. 12, they attacked with warplanes, helicopters and tanks. The blockade was lifted Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, spokesman for the Army's Task Force Olympia in charge of northern Iraq, said that over a two-month period, cells made up of religious extremists, foreign fighters and Saddam loyalists in Tal Afar "basically took control of the city."

It reached a point, he said, where "we couldn't drive down the road without getting attacked ... It was a daily occurrence." [...]


Advertisements