Word: peshmerga
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Despite the calm in Erbil, few believed the crisis had passed. On Thursday morning in Degala, 15 miles beyond the Iraqi encampment southeast of Erbil, K.D.P. and P.U.K. peshmerga [those who face death] battled for control of a critical bridge. On Friday both sides were still shelling each other. Yet these battles produced few casualties and even fewer refugees. In fact the biggest headache for Erbil's nearly half a million residents was that almost all water had been cut off by the P.U.K., which controls the dam outside of town. The streets were choked with water trucks, while...
...planes in airspace north of the 36th parallel. The refugees came down from the mountains and tried to put their lives back together. But after most of the allied security forces left last summer, the Iraqis rushed into action to subdue the Kurds and their armed guerrilla units, the peshmerga...
...have set up checkpoints on the roads, and while they allow local traffic in and out, they confiscate all but the smallest quantities of food and fuel. At the town of Kifri, 96 miles north of Baghdad, in outposts separated by a tense 500 yards., Iraqi troops confront bearded peshmerga guerrillas in balloon trousers and tightly wrapped turbans. "We have been suffering from two blockades," says Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two leading political groups. "First the U.N. embargo directed at all of Iraq, and second the blockade Saddam is directing just against...
...night mercifully hides the dusty smoke of artillery. Three 175-mm field guns are outlined against the full-moon sky with piles of shells beside them and peshmerga pulling the lanyards. The subsequent roar deafens the ears with the sound of a thousand church bells ringing. Then a moment of magic silence, and somewhere a night bird's lilting song brings out the stars. God knows...
...first time Kurdish hopes for a homeland have ended in disaster. Their guerrillas call themselves peshmerga -- those who face death -- and over the years many have perished in aborted attempts to carve out a homeland of their own from the lands of rulers who despise them. In Iraq Saddam Hussein has for years tried to eliminate them. Since 1975 four of every five Kurdish villages have been leveled; many of their residents have been moved to resettlement towns and detention camps in the southern deserts. When the U.S.-led coalition drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait, hundreds of thousands...