U.S. Team Visits Airstrip Repaired by Kurds, Fueling Talk of War
By C. J. CHIVERS
AKRAJO, Iraq, Jan. 22 — An intelligence team from the United States visited a large asphalt airstrip in the Kurdish-controlled zone of northern Iraq today, even as Kurdish laborers and soldiers were preparing the strip for aircraft and building infantry bunkers around it.
The visit, and the recent improvements at this long neglected Iraqi military airfield, were regarded here as further signs of preparations inside Iraq for war against Saddam Hussein.
The airstrip is at the edge of an extensive military complex abandoned when Iraq withdrew its forces from the Kurdish region in 1991. It is about a 30-minute drive from the current front lines with the Iraqi Army, and within an hour of Kirkuk, an industrial city, rich in oil and petroleum infrastructure, still controlled by Mr. Hussein.
Work has been continuing at the airfield since Saturday, when two firetrucks from the nearby city of Sulaimaniya were sent to Bakrajo and began spraying its surface with water, removing a coating of caked mud and gravel and exposing the asphalt below.
Municipal workers have followed in the days since, blowing away small bits of dust and gravel with pressurized air and grading the dirt along the airfield’s edges. About two dozen workers were on the field on Tuesday, with a contingent of Kurdish soldiers who were building a crescent of infantry fighting positions where a dirt road provides access.
The work so far has hardly been secretive. Bakrajo is on the main road into Sulaimaniya, and the workers and their vehicles are in plain view of bustling traffic.
Still, Kurdish officials have been circumspect in discussions about the sudden activity, trying to tamp down suggestions of American military interest, even as residents of Sulaimaniya, aware of the recent work, have been saying that American interest is clear.
Simko Diyazee, chief of staff for military forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern Kurdish zone, said he was unaware of any specific military intentions.
**“We are getting prepared for the coming war, getting trained and ready to face any critical situations,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean America is planning to use this airfield.”
Speaking of the work at the field, he said, “We are just doing it for ourselves.”
When reminded that Kurds do not have airplanes, the chief of staff allowed himself a broad smile. **
The American team visited in the morning and left in a convoy of sport utility vehicles at about 11 a.m. Security was tightened during the team’s visit, and a detachment of the elite guards of Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, remained afterward and forbade access to the field.
The guards said they had been ordered by the Kurdish liaison to the American team to close access to the field indefinitely. Until this morning the airfield had been lightly guarded and accessible to the public.
More bunkers were being built today, and Kurdish officials said further work was planned.
“The condition of the airfield is good, but the access road is in ruins,” said Yadgar Muhammad Jaff, director of Sulaimaniya’s civil defense department, who supervised the strip’s initial cleaning. “So I suggested that we repair the road, and they’re going to do that, to pave it.”
Another Kurdish official said that the airstrip was to be upgraded soon with lighting and a tower and that its asphalt would be patched.
Bakrajo is one of several airfields in the Kurdish-controlled zone, part of a network of aviation infrastructure that includes a concrete strip in in the region’s strategic center, in Harir, and strips in Bamarni and Erbil.
There is also an asphalt helicopter field in Tanjaro, just west of Sulaimaniya, although that field remained in poor condition today, covered with trash, stones and sheep droppings.
The field at Bakrajo offers unmistakable military utility. It is roughly two miles long, long enough for landings by heavily-laden transport aircraft, including the C-17, C-141 and C-130, or for use as an emergency strip for fighter or attack jets damaged over Iraq.
“A combat-loaded C-17, with 72 tons of cargo, could land in half of that runway,” said Paul Jackson, editor of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.
A tour of the field on Tuesday showed that it has emerged largely undamaged from its layer of dirt and mud, although one long section of the strip is not paved with as many layers of asphalt as the rest — a condition roughly equivalent to one lane on a highway being about an inch-and-a-half lower than the others. Mr. Jackson said this defect would not limit its military use. A Kurdish official said the anticipated repairs would soon correct this uneven surface nonetheless.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/international/middleeast/23KURD.html
Yea Right.