Exiled Kurd returns to add fire to revolt

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 12

Exiled Kurd returns to add fire to revolt

One of the Kurds’ most respected military leaders has escaped exile in southern Iraq and fled north to Kurdistan to join fellow guerrillas in revolt against the Iraqi Government in Bagdad. writes Gwynne

Roberts in the ‘‘Sunday Times,” London. Ali Askari, 39, was a field commando in General Mullah Mustafa Barzani's partisan army whose campaign against Bagdad was smashed 18 months ago. The result was the enforced re-

settlement of thousands of Kurds in the barren southern Iraqi deserts. Askari’s escape, confirmed by two independent sources, is significant because he is likely to serve as a rallying point for Kurdish national-

ism. He is seen by many Kurds as a natural successor to Barzani. For Bagdad, he adds a new element to the problem of Kurdish insurgency for his involvement indicates the fight will quickly intensify. During earlier revolts in the sixties, he switched allegiance from Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P.) to a Marxist-orientated faction led by one of Barzani’s former chief lieutenants, Jelal Talabani. In the early seventies, Askari made his peace and returned to the K.D.P., but paid the price for changing loyalties by being reinstated as a commander only in the dying phases of the last rebellion. Last year Askari returned home under an Iraqi Government amnesty and was exiled to southern Iraq. General Barzani is now in the United States undergoing treatment for lung cancer. Officially, Iraq denies there has been a renewed outbreak of fighting. But already, Iraqi forces are using helicopter gunships to stem the flow of Kurdish insurgents across the border from Turkey. The Iraqis are also switching troops from the Syrian frontier to troubled Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. Travellers who were in Kurdistan in late September, claim that Iraqi jets are now flying daily missions over Kurdistan.