Los Angeles Times
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Although Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his allies offered them the olive branch of an amnesty, thousands of Kurds yesterday began fleeing areas that have collapsed into the control of a Baghdad-backed Kurdish faction.
Estimates varied greatly about the numbers of refugees streaming from the eastern cities of Sulaymaniyah and Dukan, captured Monday by the Iraqi-supported Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) run by leader Masoud Barzani.
Neighboring Iran appealed yesterday for international assistance in handling as many as 200,000 people.
Most U.N. sources, though, spoke of 50,000 Kurds and others pouring out of Sulaymaniyah, which once had been a guerrilla stronghold of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and its leader, Jalal Talabani.
Only about 10,000 people actually had reached the Iraqi-Iranian border, where they were camping in minefields without proper food or sanitation, observers said yesterday.
And they noted that, when it became clear that frontier was closed and that Iraqi troops were taking no direct part in the KDP advance on Sulaymaniyah, many of the refugees began to return to northern Iraq.
In Sulaymaniyah, there were reports that a carnival atmosphere prevailed as Barzani and his forces exulted in their apparent victory, which gave them seemingly undisputed mastery over the 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds living under guerrilla rule in northern Iraq.
Barzani's forces were reported to have conducted an impromptu parade, with fighters carrying AK-47 rifles riding through the city streets in pickup trucks.
By nightfall, Sulaymaniyah's population of 750,000 seemed to be swelling with returning Kurds, who were traveling home by truck, taxi and on foot. Shops had reopened and residents had swapped flying their green PUK flags for the yellow color of the victorious PDK. Merchants were plastering their businesses with photocopied pictures of Barzani.
Outside the city, about 20 miles northeast at the PUK headquarters, KDP fighters looted everything they could carry.
At Talabani's nearby two-story villa, looters filled trucks with furniture not completely destroyed in a fire. KDP soldiers claimed Talabani ordered the blaze set when it was certain that the town would be overrun.
In Sairan Ban, one of at least four border crossings where U.N. officials had expected up to 75,000 Kurds to gather after the KDP takeover of northern Iraq, there were expressions among the thousands there of fear about the Iraqi regime.
Such mistrust, analysts said, seemed warranted among those Kurds who recalled that Hussein just eight years earlier had poison-gassed Kurdish villagers.
Those who trudged to the crossing at Sairan Ban found it shut already, leaving thousands backed up, hanging from cars that jammed a hot, dusty road from Penjwin, 18 miles away. Tractors pulled wagons piled with belongings.
Apparently to avert this sort of an exodus, the Iraqi government and its PDK allies spoke in extremes of amnesty for their Kurdish opposition.
Baghdad broadcast a promise to end the five-year-old Iraqi government embargo on Kurdish areas and talked of re-integrating Iraq by reviving 1970s negotiations on autonomy for an area known as Iraqi Kurdistan.
As for Barzani, while relishing his faction's triumphs, he announced his own amnesty for all members of Talabani's group.
Irbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, fell to Barzani's forces Aug. 31 with the support of Iraqi army artillery and armored support.
As for the PUK, it continued to complain, calling the KDP a pawn of the Iraqi regime, which the rival faction asserted has killed 180,000 Kurds and razed 4,000 Kurdish villages.
"In aligning with Baghdad, the KDP has mounted a tiger which will destroy us all," the PUK said in a statement. "Once Saddam controls Kurdistan, he will no longer need his Kurdish ally and will consume the KDP and what remains of the Kurdish people."
AP PHOTO
Fighters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party celebrate yesterday as they drive through Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. The victory gave Saddam Hussein control over Northern Iraq for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War.