Sulaymaniyah, Iraq — Nawshirwan Mustafa Amin pores over maps of Iraq in his study and charts the progress of U.S.-led forces with delight. As a man once sentenced to death by Saddam Hussein for criticizing his regime, Mr. Mustafa is delighted to see the troops on the outskirts of Baghdad.
He is a founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which rules half of the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq and whose troops look poised to fight with the United States on the northern front. But he is baffled by many of the decisions the U.S. military command has made in this war — bizarre choices of strategy and foolish errors of judgment that he says will only prolong it and lead to more casualties. "This is unlike any war; I don't understand this new war."
Mr. Mustafa speaks with the rare expertise of someone who has launched a battle against Mr. Hussein's forces and succeeded. In 1991 he was a key organizer of the Kurdish uprising against the regime, a carefully executed plan in which just a few thousand troops with 16 wireless radios managed to drive the Iraqi army out of city after city in a matter of days.
Taking advantage of disarray in the Iraqi army at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Kurdish <ic>peshmerga <nm> fighters moved on key cities such as Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk and Mosul, sending the army into retreat.
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Although Baghdad quickly regained the key oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul, three Kurdish provinces succeeded in breaking away from Mr. Hussein's control and have governed the crescent-shaped slice of territory ever since with help from U.S. and British air patrols that have kept Iraq from attacking from the sky.
He was a journalist in Baghdad in the 1960s and 1970s, until he was sentenced to death by the regime for "sabotage" because critical articles appeared in his political magazine.
He went into exile in Europe, then came home to join the Kurdish resistance in the mountains. Since the Kurdish government was established in 1991, he has become the philosopher king of the Kurds. He sits in a well-appointed house on a hill in the city, something of a recluse yet intimately aware of the most recent political machinations, both here and south of the Iraqi front line.
Mr. Mustafa is broadly pleased with the progress of the war, proclaiming the rapid advance to Baghdad "excellent." He praised U.S. military commander General Tommy Franks's decision to snake up the middle of the country, skipping most of the towns and cities between Basra and Nasiriyah and thus avoiding the bulk of the Iraqi defences in the south. He believes Gen. Franks intends to surround Baghdad, forcing a surrender of the whole army, rather than taking it division by division.
But before the war began, he said, the coalition made a handful of strategic errors, the most grave being its dependence on Turkey as an ally. The war plan was clearly predicated on the use of a northern front to push down and to help surround Baghdad, with troops brought through Turkey.
The diminishment of that front will delay the fall of Baghdad by several weeks, Mr. Mustafa said, and greatly increase the cost in human casualties. Turkey should not have been counted on.
With the war under way, fundamental aspects of the U.S. strategy bewilder him. He doesn't understand why it hasn't knocked out telecommunications in Iraq. (He has heard the rumours that the U.S. generals are e-mailing and phoning senior Iraqi leaders, encouraging and negotiating surrenders.) But the effect is grave. "Up to now, Saddam remains in control of the Iraqi army and in control of all Iraq. Really, I cannot understand this. Their command and control is still functioning."
Similarly, the electrical system remains up and running. "Electricity is very important for any army."
Then there is Iraqi television. "I don't understand why they left the Iraqi mass media intact — the television and radio are still working" despite a U.S. air strike in the early hours of yesterday morning, a strike Mr. Mustafa said should have come on the first day of the war. "The media are very important for the morale of the army and the Baath party."
Mr. Mustafa also believes the United States has made a mistake in not including a political element alongside the military campaign. "America's army does not call for uprisings — the leaflets they drop just say, 'Stay in your house.' " He mused that there would have seemed to be obvious value in bringing in prominent exiled figures, such as a Shia leader from Basra, to address the residents of the southern city by radio. "Until now the Iraqi population has no confidence that this is permanent change. They believe that in one or two months, when the army is gone, the Baath party will return. Put someone from the opposition on the radio and give the people confidence that this is the end of the Baath party regime. It is a crucial part of psychological warfare."
Looking at his minutely detailed maps, Mr. Mustafa pointed to the Medina unit of Republican Guard and predicted the worst fight of the war will happen in the next day or two when the coalition troops engage with them in the outer ring around Baghdad.
"You will see mass surrenders eventually, but until now the political system is functioning very well in Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk and Mosul. The country is still under the control of Saddam Hussein and his comrades."
