Word: northerners
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Even as it closes in on Saddam, the military faces the larger task of maintaining order in a country full of conflicts waiting to erupt. Last week more than 1,000 Turkish troops crossed the border into Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq to reinforce up to 7,000 already there, raising the dreaded possibility of a confrontation between the Turks and anti-Saddam Kurdish forces, who fear the Turks will never leave. Because Ankara refused to allow the U.S. to send ground troops into northern Iraq through Turkey, the U.S. may not be able to do much if skirmishes break...
...about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. The round landed in front of a forward emplacement held by the Kurdish 61st Uprising Battalion, part of the anti-Saddam Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Moments later, a second round landed even closer. The soldiers scurried into their foxholes, me along with them, before they popped back...
...battle rages, fierce and bloody, perhaps the heaviest fighting northern Iraq has seen so far in this war. U.S. special forces are here, along with their Kurdish allies, facing down Ansar al-Islam, the diehard terrorist group based in Kurdish-controlled Iraq that the Americans believe is linked to al-Qaeda. "There are three or four isolated pockets of Ansar on very high ground. We're closing in on them from everywhere we can," says an American commando named Mark, who declines to give his rank or surname. The fire coming down from the craggy peak is torrid. Machineguns rattle...
...Mark says, "A lot of the senior cadre fled a long time ago leaving a fanatical hardcore to stay for the last stand. They had little intention of surviving." The Americans blasting away at the holdouts recognize this and lament past opportunities lost. "This is my second time in northern Iraq," says a Special Forces soldier. "I should be in Tampa with my wife enjoying spring break. Instead I'm here, and I wouldn't be if we'd done this right the first time...
...didn't occur to me that the missile flying over Camp Iwo Jima in the northern Kuwaiti desert might not be friendly. I'm a doctor, a medical correspondent, not a bang-bang journalist. But I noticed all the Marines around me were hitting the deck. Five seconds later, the alarm "Bunker! Bunker! Bunker!" blared over the P.A. system. Over the next 20 hours, I would share with 70 Marines and two CNN colleagues the same space and the same occupation: target...