Iraqi opposition forces clashed with units of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard last night on the outskirts of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, according to the Iraqi National Congress, a longstanding resistance group.
The Iraqi rebel troops have taken up fortified positions in preparation for an offensive against Saddam’s forces, said the umbrella group’s Washington, D.C., director, Entifadh Quanbar.
The resistance troops came under fire from Republican Guard units along the roads leading to Taqtaq and Chamchamal, he said. There were no reports of casualties.
The Iraqi forces opposing Saddam are working in coordination with coalition troops.
“They can play a huge role in the security of areas which will be liberated,” he told WND, “in helping minimize collateral damage, disseminating information, psychological warfare and in bridging between U.S. and Iraqi communications.”
 Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi |
INC leader Ahmed Chalabi is appealing to Iraqi armed forces to join the opposition in the liberation of his native land.
In a radio address broadcast to Iraqis, he said:
“We call on all officers, [non-commissioned officers] and soldiers not to obey the orders of the criminal, Saddam Hussein, but rather to serve the true interests of the Iraqi people by working for the liberation of our great nation. Come and join us and you will be safe.”
Chalabi was a wealthy Shi’ite businessman who left Iraq with his family when the Hashemite monarchy was overthrown in 1958. He studied at MIT and the University of Chicago, where he received a Ph.D. in mathematics.
Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie believes the INC should be in coalition plans for post-war Iraq, but there has been opposition from the State Department and CIA.
“We don’t want to stay there very long,” she said of U.S. troops, “and this is the one aspect of the war that hasn’t been sufficiently developed – to work with Iraqis.”
The INC was formed in June 1992 in Vienna in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to unite various factions of Shiites and Kurds. Despite a promise of support from the U.S., the group’s operatives in northern Iraq were ousted by Saddam’s army in 1996. Chalabi insists however, that he trusts the American people, Congress and President Bush.
“They should be playing a very prominent role in the transition to a constitutional government there,” said Mylroie, a Defense Department consultant, publisher of Iraq News and adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Pentagon is sympathetic to them, but one just doesn’t know what will happen.”
Mylroie said the INC is not trusted by the State Department and the CIA, which support a coalition of two former rivals that control northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
After the 1991 war, said Mylroie, “Arabists” in the State Department favored launching a coup to replace Saddam with a Sunni Arab strongman, a plan backed by Arab states.
A State Department officer promised a response to WND, but did not reply by press time.
Last August, Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, spokesman for the INC, urged the international community to work closely with opposition groups to develop a plan for a smooth transfer of power to an interim government.
“We refuse categorically to substitute one dictator for another,” he said. “This is not an option for the opposition, this is not an option for the Iraqi people, and we don’t believe it should be an option for anybody else in the international community or the region.”
Some opposition groups have called for a constitutional monarchy and others an American-style republic. Al Hussein said the most important issue is not the exact shape of the government, “but the return of democracy, and to give the Iraqi people fair treatment.”
