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The Kurds' Role in Saddam's Capture

When it emerged that the Kurds had captured the Iraqi dictator, the US celebrations evaporated. David Pratt asks whether a secret political trade-off has been engineered.

The Unexpected Story

For a story that three weeks ago gripped the world’s imagination, it has now all but dropped off the radar. Peculiar really, for if one thing might have been expected in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture, it was the endless political and media mileage that the Bush administration would get out of it. After all, for 249 days Saddam’s elusiveness had been a symbol of America’s ineptitude in Iraq, and, at last, with his capture came the long-awaited chance to return some flak to the Pentagon’s critics.

The Kurdish Involvement

It also afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of America’s elite covert and intelligence units such as Task Force 20 and Greyfox. And it was a terrific chance for the perfect photo-op showing the American soldier, and Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”, hauling “High Value Target Number One” out of his filthy spiderhole in the village of al-Dwar.

Then along came that story: the one about the Kurds beating the US Army in the race to find Saddam first, and details of Operation Red Dawn suddenly began to evaporate. US Army spokesmen – so effusive in the immediate wake of Saddam’s capture – no longer seemed willing to comment, or simply went to ground. But rumours of the crucial Kurdish role persisted, even though it now seems their previously euphoric spokesmen have now, similarly, been afflicted by an inexplicable bout of reticence.

The Kurdish Leak

It was two weeks ago that the Scottish Sunday revealed how a Kurdish special forces unit belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had spearheaded and tracked down Saddam, sealing off the al-Dwar farmhouse long “before the arrival of the US forces”. PUK leader Jalal Talabani had chosen to leak the news and details of the operation’s commander, Qusrut Rasul Ali, to the Iranian media long before Saddam’s capture was reported by the mainstream Western press or confirmed by the US military.

Confirmation of Kurdish Involvement

By the time Western press agencies were running the same story, the entire emphasis had changed, and the ousted Iraqi president had been “captured in a raid by US forces backed by Kurdish fighters”. In the intervening few weeks, that troublesome Kurdish story has gone around the globe, picked up by newspapers from The Sydney Morning Herald to the US Christian Science Monitor, as well as the Kurdish press.

While Washington and the PUK remain silent on the issue, further confirmation that the Kurds were way ahead in Saddam’s capture continues to leak out. According to one Israeli source who was in the company of Kurds at a meeting in Athens, one of the Kurdish representatives burst into the conference room in tears and demanded an immediate halt to the discussions. This delegate received a word from Kurdistan about Saddam Hussein’s capture, even before any television reports.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the delegate also confirmed that most of the information leading to the deposed dictator’s arrest had come from the Kurds. The Kurds had organized their own intelligence network, which had been trying to uncover Saddam’s tracks for months.

Kurdish Political Aspirations

Whatever the full extent of their undoubted involvement in providing intelligence or actively participating on the ground in Saddam’s capture, the Kurds, and the PUK in particular, would benefit handsomely. Apart from a trifling $25 million bounty, their status would have been substantially boosted in Washington, which may in part explain the recent vociferous Kurdish reassertion of their long-term political ambitions in the “new Iraq”.

For their own part, the Kurds have already launched a political arrangement designed to secure their aspirations with respect to autonomy, if not nationalist or separatist aspirations. To show how serious they are, the two main Kurdish groups, the PUK, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have decided to close ranks and set up a joint Kurdish administration, with jobs being divided between the two camps.

To secure their objectives, the Kurds have called for the revision of the power-transfer agreement signed between the US-led coalition and Iraq’s interim governing council to recognize "Kurdish rights". Such a revision would give the Kurds a powerful position in Iraq's emerging power structure.

Escalating Ethnic Tensions

This renewed Kurdish determination to fulfill their political objectives is causing concern among other ethnic residents in northern Iraq, who fear being marginalized or victimized. In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, there have been increasingly violent clashes between Kurdish and Arab students, as well as between Kurds and Turkemens. Such ethnic confrontations point to another dangerous phase in Iraq’s power-brokering.

The Impact on Iraq's Power Structure

If the Kurds did indeed capture Saddam first, and a deal was struck about his handover to the US, then it’s not inconceivable that the terms might have included strong political and strategic advantages that could ultimately determine the emerging power structure in Iraq.