Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has ordered the expulsion of families within a 20-mile border strip between the Kurdish north and the rest of Iraq, apparently to prepare a buffer zone in anticipation of a U.S. invasion, reports the Associated Press.
According to the report, within the last 10 to 15 days, Baghdad reportedly has moved forces of the Mujahedeen Khalq – a militant Iranian opposition group under Saddam’s control – near the boundary with the Kurdish zone, said Rasool Razgai, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP.
“It seems like they’re clearing a buffer zone,” said Fawzi Hariri, a KDP spokesman, according to AP. “It may be a new method or strategy, and it could well be part of a military maneuver.”
The KDP governs the northwest section of the self-rule area set up by oppressed Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War. The autonomous region operates under the protection of U.S.-British warplanes that patrol a northern no-fly zone.
Today, British and U.S. jets attacked Iraqi air defenses in the no-fly zone for the first time in nearly two months, reports the Reuters news agency.
According to the AP report, Kurdish Ministry of Interior officials estimated that 50 Kurdish families living near the border zone have been forcibly expelled in the past two weeks.
Villagers who were hustled out of their homes in the border region near Irbil, 200 miles north of Baghdad, say they were ordered to move deeper into Baghdad-controlled Iraq and managed to slip into the Gushtapa area in the Kurdish zone only after bribing Iraqi officials.
An 18-year-old Kurd described the force taken against his family to the Associated Press.
“The commander was very cruel with us,” said Zeerak Zaher. “My mother began to cry. She’s been crying ever since.”
Zaher’s mother reported that overnight, her family lost practically all its material possessions as well as its home.
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