Bridge capture displays U.S.-Kurdish partnership

? The Kurds’ yellow flag was wedged into the rusty bridge at Khazer, a key crossing point on the road to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Militiamen allied with U.S. forces marched over single file, their rucksacks and guns swaying on their backs.

The two-day battle for the bridge that ended Friday put an unusual partnership on display: computer-coordinated U.S. air power and the rugged simplicity of the Kurdish guerrillas known as peshmerga, or “those who face death.”

“The Iraqis are running,” an Iraqi Kurd shouted as he crossed the bridge. “And we are chasing.”

The Iraqis still clung to a position about half a mile west of the bridge and unleashed a heavy artillery barrage early in the evening around Khazer. The battle still raged at dusk, with U.S. B-52s bombing Iraqi positions.

Air attacks during the past week have forced Iraqi troops back from the border with the Western-protected Kurdish zone.

Friday and early today, about 50 bombing missions were flown over northern Iraq from the USS Roosevelt, hitting targets around Kirkuk. In most places, Kurds simply moved into the abandoned territory to advance closer to the key prizes of Mosul and the oil center around Kirkuk.

At the far southern part of the Kurdish autonomous zone, Kurdish fighters are massing in preparation to move on a key target, the oil city of Khaneqin, 85 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Some 1,800 fighters have gathered on the nearby front, up from 400 only weeks ago, and more than a 1,000 others are expected to join them in the next few days, said Mola Bakhtiyar, a high-level Kurdish political and military leader.

The thrust toward Khazer — 18 miles east of Mosul and about 250 miles northeast of Baghdad — reflected a new, aggressive Kurdish strategy. With U.S.-led soldiers on Baghdad’s doorstep in the south, it could indicate the start of a bolder push to the capital from the north.

Kurdish fighters fill the back of a truck as they move to front lines from the outskirts of Kalak, some 24 miles from the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq. Kurdish fighters backed by U.S. airstrikes repelled an Iraqi attempt Thursday to retake a bridge on the road to Mosul that the Kurds won two nights earlier.

This was never part of the Kurdish fighters’ doctrine. Through decades of conflict with Baghdad, the peshmerga was known for its fearless but uncoordinated tactics, each group acting as a free-lance strike force. But the Pentagon has demanded strict obedience to its war planning against Saddam Hussein.

The result has been unexpected restraint by the Kurds.

“The Americans decide every battle and how far we can go,” said Shoukrin Nerwey, a top coordinator for Kurdish fighters.

The Kurds say they are fighting for a future semiautonomous state within an Iraqi federation, something they say they have been assured will include Kirkuk and Mosul.