Analysis: Kurds serve warning as U.S. withdrawal nears (Reuters)

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) – When Iraq's northern Kurdish region sent a division of troops to surround Kirkuk in February, it may have been a signal of the delicate balancing act to come when U.S. forces leave the disputed oil city.

Officially, the 10,000 or so peshmerga fighters were there to protect Kirkukis from any violence associated with nationwide protests. But their presence sparked a furious diplomatic offensive by the United States to calm tensions between the central government in Baghdad and Arbil, the Kurdish capital.

The deployment may have been a trial balloon, analysts said, to test Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and to warn Baghdad and Washington that U.S. troops are needed as a buffer in the disputed northern territories claimed by both capitals.

"The Kurdish military maneuver in Kirkuk in February was both a message to the U.S. to keep its troops on the ground beyond 2011 - which is a Kurdish interest - and a way of testing the resolve of the Baghdad government," said Joost Hiltermann, an analyst with International Crisis Group.

It took a month to persuade semi-autonomous Kurdistan, comprised of three northern provinces, to withdraw the unit.

"It was a lot of diplomacy in saying 'look this isn't right. It's upsetting the area. It doesn't lead to stability,'" said Colonel Michael Pappal, commander of the U.S. Devil Brigade in Kirkuk. "It showed to me that a third party was necessary for that to happen."

Eight years after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein, Iraq is still building its police and army to battle a lethal Sunni Islamist insurgency and Shi'ite militias within, as well as defending against external threats.

As violence ebbs, Kirkuk and other disputed northern areas are considered potential flashpoints for future conflict in a country hobbled by ethnic, religious and political strife.

The late February incursion was no spur-of-the-moment decision and prompted a quick response from the Americans, who told Kurdish commanders their soldiers would not be allowed into Kirkuk, U.S. military officials said.

"You don't send a division across a border without a lot of planning and preparation ... it takes a while to put an army on the road and that's what they did," said Lieutenant Colonel Joe Holland, a U.S. commander in Kirkuk.

The unit was 12,000 strong, a Kurdish official told Reuters, while the U.S. military estimated it at 8,000-9,000. Sources said the Kurds had AK-47s, artillery and armored vehicles.

CLOSE TO BLOWS

Holland said it was the third time in 20 years the Kurds had moved into the Kirkuk area; the first in 1991 after the invasion of Kuwait and the second in 2003 when Saddam was ousted.

Maliki's government demanded the peshmerga withdraw and the Kurdistan Regional Government at first refused, escalating tensions. Iraqi and Kurdish troops have come close to blows in the past two years as Baghdad tightened its grip on Kirkuk.

Iraqi officials said the incursion was illegal. Officially, the city -- which by some estimates sits atop 4 percent of the world's oil reserves -- is secured by central government forces.

"The effect was a significant schism in the relationship between us and the Kurds," Holland said.

Kirkuk has suffered huge population upheavals in recent decades, from Saddam's "Arabization" campaigns to more recent moves by Kurds to reclaim parts of the city.

"They were sending a message to the central government, saying 'we can enter Kirkuk any time and you cannot stop us,'" a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official told Reuters.

The official said the KRG would not invade Kirkuk after the U.S. leaves but would seek to displace Arabs. He said the Kurd population had soared from 150,000 to 350,000 since 2003.

The peshmerga, however, represent a formidable challenge to the Iraqi army. The Kurds have 100,000 troops, better weaponry and experienced leaders, the official said.

"After 2003, they captured the former Iraqi army tanks. About 4,000 tanks left by the former Iraqi army in the streets and cities disappeared, and our investigations indicate that the Kurds have most of them and Iran got the rest," he said.

The peshmerga deployment served notice that without the neutral buffer of U.S. forces, the Kurdish region might "feel compelled to use military muscle to defend its interests," said Wayne White, an analyst with the Middle East Institute.

"So, while a signal that the KRG will not tolerate any perceived trampling of its interests in Kirkuk, this deployment also was meant as a reminder to both Washington and Baghdad that greater consideration should be given to the prolongation of a more meaningful U.S. presence," he said.

But because Maliki, perhaps calculating that the Americans would pressure their Kurdish allies to withdraw, did not offer a serious challenge, the deployment was not an effective trial run for securing Kurdish control of Kirkuk, Hiltermann said.

"This will have to wait till the time when U.S. troops will no longer be there," he said. "At that point, all bets are off and tensions could easily escalate, intentionally or inadvertently, to a bigger conflict, at least as long as the dispute between Baghdad and Arbil remains unsettled."

(Additional reporting by Suadad al-Salhy; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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With Afghan withdrawal, US focus turns to Pakistan (AP)

ISLAMABAD – As the U.S. looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al-Qaida and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.

They argue that threat has been effectively neutralized in Afghanistan, a key justification for President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because al-Qaida used it as the base to launch the 9/11 attacks.

Afghanistan could take on new significance for the U.S. as a base to launch unilateral strikes against militants inside neighboring Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-armed country that many analysts say is more strategically important than Afghanistan.

That future has become more likely as the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. has deteriorated following the American raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden not far from the Pakistani capital last month. The operation humiliated Pakistan, which cut back on counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S., a popular move in a country where anti-American sentiment is rife.

"We haven't seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years," said a senior administration official in a briefing given to reporters in Washington before Obama's speech. "The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer."

One of the most high-profile attempted attacks against the U.S. homeland coming from Pakistan recently was by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square last year. He allegedly traveled to Pakistan's tribal areas and coordinated his attack with the Pakistani Taliban.

Since Pakistan effectively prohibits American troops inside the country and has been a reluctant ally in targeting militants the U.S. deems a threat, Washington has increasingly relied on covert CIA drone missile strikes to target al-Qaida and Taliban fighters holed up in Pakistan's mountainous border region with Afghanistan.

The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but Obama alluded to its effectiveness in his speech, saying "together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al-Qaida's leadership."

But the future of the drone program in Pakistan could be threatened by pervasive anti-American sentiment and anger over the U.S. commando raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2.

The drones are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and lawmakers took the opportunity to demand the government, which is widely believed to allow the drones to take off from bases inside the country, halt the program.

That demand found resonance with Pakistanis, nearly 70 percent of whom view the U.S. as an enemy despite billions of dollars in American aid, according to a recent poll conducted after the bin Laden raid by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the U.S., according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

If Pakistan were to prevent drones from taking off from inside the country, the U.S. would have to launch them from Afghanistan, an act that would further increase tensions in the region, said Riffat Hussain, a defense professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

"The staging area would then become Afghanistan, which would be totally anathema to Pakistan because then you are using another country's territory for attacks against Pakistan," Hussain said. "That will not only escalate tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it means America has declared war on Pakistan."

The U.S. has also made it clear that if it obtains intelligence on future high-value terrorist targets inside Pakistan, it could stage special forces attacks from Afghanistan like the one that killed bin Laden.

The raid infuriated Pakistan because the government wasn't told of it beforehand. U.S. officials have said they kept the Pakistanis in the dark because they were worried that bin Laden would be tipped off by extremist sympathizers in the Pakistani military.

Pakistan responded to the raid by kicking out more than 100 U.S. troops training Pakistanis in counterterrorism operations and reduced the level of intelligence cooperation — something that could make it more difficult for the U.S. to target militants in the country.

One of the primary causes of U.S. frustration with Pakistan is its unwillingness to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies in the country who launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan says its troops are stretched too thin by other operations, but many analysts believe the government is reluctant to attack groups with which it has historical ties and could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.

Hussain, the defense professor, said the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama's admission that the U.S. would support reconciliation talks with the Taliban made it even less likely that Pakistan would target militants deemed a threat by Washington.

"If you are talking to the Taliban, then you can't expect Pakistan to go after them," Hussain said.

Obama said he would press Pakistan to tackle the militant threat inside the country, but also implied the U.S. would not hesitate to go it alone when its security was endangered.

"For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us," Obama said.

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