Word: peshmerga
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...Iraq, in bunkers and staging posts only a few miles from an estimated 50,000 anti-Baghdad Kurdish fighters, Saddam Hussein has stationed tens of thousands of badly fed, sadly equipped conscripts from his I and V Corps of the Iraqi army. But the Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga (those who face death), are not worried about their enemy's proximity. These bedraggled Iraqi soldiers are unwilling to die for a leader they loathe...
...could have been worse. Four Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga (those who face death) were saved by their meal break. They'd been called for lunch at their unit's small command post on the other side of the road as the taxi approached. Another soldier, sitting in his gun emplacement overlooking the site, had watched his comrades cut down, unable to help. In the confusion afterwards a dozen armed men wandered among the wreckage, stepping gingerly through the human remains littering the asphalt. "We're distraught, this was a good man who died here, our friend...
...sentry post roof, more scattered up to 100 feet away. Most gruesome, yet most telling, were two large sets of remains left scornfully among the wreckage. "He'd shaved this morning and it looks like he'd trimmed his hair, probably so he would look less suspicious," said another peshmerga gazing down on his subject...
...Kurdish trenches are hit by mortar and heavy machinegun fire from the Ansar lines on a daily basis. On Monday night, TIME's correspondent had sheltered with a peshmerga frontline unit through a four-hour barrage. But the resort to suicide tactics shifts the boundaries. Some of the soldiers present during the attack at the Zamaqi roadblock claim a suicide bomber struck the Halabja bazaar last year. However, a Kurdish political officer assigned to oversee the Ansar front, Burhan Saeed Sofi from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party (which controls the Kurdish region's eastern half) says that attack...
...Northern Alliance was used as a proxy force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Though the "free" Kurds claim to have 100,000 fighters ready to help the Americans and its allies if a war starts, a senior U.S. official in the region says the Kurdish forces, called the peshmerga, are poorly equipped. Jalal Talabani, secretary-general of the P.U.K., says he has never received arms or ammunition from the Americans. But the CIA, intelligence officials say, will use its new stations in the north to win over to the U.S. side those Kurds who live south of the liberated zone...