Word: tente
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...possible pitfalls of the allied relief operation were underscored last week when hundreds of armed Iraqis appeared in the town of Zakhu, near the tent cities the allies are building for the Kurds. The gunmen were defying U.S. military orders that all Iraqi security forces withdraw to a line 25 miles to the south. Though they wore police uniforms, the men, plainly soldiers, made a joke of their disguise, shouting to reporters, "Police, police!" and laughing...
...That was fine by Washington, provided that the 50 were natives of Zakhu -- not outsiders bused in -- and that they registered with the Americans. The Iraqi about-face, in turn, prompted the first small trickle of Kurdish refugees to come down from the mountains and move into an allied tent city...
Over time, though, returning home or at least relocating to one of the tent cities may begin to look more appealing to the Kurds than continuing to squat in their miserable mountain asylums along the border. Turkish forces patrolling their side of the frontier may speed up that reassessment. "When the weather gets better," says a U.N. worker, "the Turkish military will get the journalists out, then give the refugees a survival kit and push them out, at gunpoint if necessary." Other relief specialists add that within a month, the streams in the mountains will dry up, forcing the Kurds...
...rapprochement in Baghdad may enable the allies who are assisting the Kurds to extricate themselves more quickly from Iraq. Two days after the tentative accord was announced, the U.N. agreed to take over the administration of the tent cities, a role the allies had been pressing on the organization. For now, allied forces will remain to provide protection for the camps; the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops would require a Security Council resolution, which the Soviet Union and China would probably block for fear of setting a precedent for U.N. intervention in their own rebellious outlands. But if Saddam abides...
President George Bush calls it "a responsibility imposed by our successes" in the cold war. Columnist Pete Hamill calls it the new world odor. Fleeing Kurds, burying their dead in mountain tent cities, call it misery...