March 2003
TIME: Dispatches From the Front
March 31, 2003
By SIMON ROBINSON; MICHAEL WARE
KURDISTAN -- MICHAEL WARE
At about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. Read More...
KURDISTAN -- MICHAEL WARE
At about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the Kurdish city of Gerdigo, in northern Iraq, I heard the thump of a mortar firing. It was coming from the battle line held by Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish fundamentalist Islamic group that's allied with al-Qaeda, with some support from Saddam Hussein. Read More...
TIME: Battling Terrorists in the Hills
March 30, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / I SHRAM MOUNTAIN
The battle rages, fierce and bloody, perhaps the heaviest fighting northern Iraq has seen so far in this war. U.S. special forces are here, along with their Kurdish allies, facing down Ansar al-Islam, the diehard terrorist group based in Kurdish-controlled Iraq that the Americans believe is linked to al-Qaeda. "There are three or four isolated pockets of Ansar on very high ground. We're closing in on them from everywhere we can," says an American commando named Mark, who declines to give his rank or surname. The fire coming down from the craggy peak is torrid. Machineguns rattle from above. Ansar snipers pin down troops, their rounds pinging off rocks and buzzing past heads. In return, Kurdish artillery fires in from the flat plains about 2 miles below. Thick whistles sound uncomfortably overhead as a shell passes the Americans' position. It thwacks into the mountainside. "If we can get the blocking force in place, we can smoke them," shouts a U.S. soldier.
Read More...
The battle rages, fierce and bloody, perhaps the heaviest fighting northern Iraq has seen so far in this war. U.S. special forces are here, along with their Kurdish allies, facing down Ansar al-Islam, the diehard terrorist group based in Kurdish-controlled Iraq that the Americans believe is linked to al-Qaeda. "There are three or four isolated pockets of Ansar on very high ground. We're closing in on them from everywhere we can," says an American commando named Mark, who declines to give his rank or surname. The fire coming down from the craggy peak is torrid. Machineguns rattle from above. Ansar snipers pin down troops, their rounds pinging off rocks and buzzing past heads. In return, Kurdish artillery fires in from the flat plains about 2 miles below. Thick whistles sound uncomfortably overhead as a shell passes the Americans' position. It thwacks into the mountainside. "If we can get the blocking force in place, we can smoke them," shouts a U.S. soldier.
Read More...
ABC RADIO (AUS) PM: Ceremony held in northern Iraq for Paul Moran [transcript]
March 24, 2003
Ceremony held in northern Iraq for Paul Moran
Reporter: Louise Willis
HAMISH ROBERTSON: A simple ceremony has been held in northern Iraq to celebrate the life of Australian ABC cameraman Paul Moran. He was killed in a suicide bomb attack in the town of Sayed Sadik as he worked with our reporter, Eric Campbell.
Eric is now on his way back to Australia, but other journalists are staying on in the area to cover the war, while they mourn the loss of a colleague.
As Louise Willis reports, one of those journalists is Michael Ware from Time Magazine.
Read More...
Reporter: Louise Willis
HAMISH ROBERTSON: A simple ceremony has been held in northern Iraq to celebrate the life of Australian ABC cameraman Paul Moran. He was killed in a suicide bomb attack in the town of Sayed Sadik as he worked with our reporter, Eric Campbell.
Eric is now on his way back to Australia, but other journalists are staying on in the area to cover the war, while they mourn the loss of a colleague.
As Louise Willis reports, one of those journalists is Michael Ware from Time Magazine.
Read More...
TIME: The War and Kurdistan
March 20, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE; JOSHUA KUCERA
On the Iraqi Front
As the first cruise missiles plunged into Baghdad on Thursday morning the conscripts of the 8th Division of the Iraqi army's 1st Corps hunkered down in their gunpits. During the bombardment hitting far to the south the Iraqis sat tight while below them the Kurdish villagers of Shorish waited hopefully for American bombs to rain down. But they did not come.
Read More...
On the Iraqi Front
As the first cruise missiles plunged into Baghdad on Thursday morning the conscripts of the 8th Division of the Iraqi army's 1st Corps hunkered down in their gunpits. During the bombardment hitting far to the south the Iraqis sat tight while below them the Kurdish villagers of Shorish waited hopefully for American bombs to rain down. But they did not come.
Read More...
TIME: Iraq Jockeys for Position in Kurdistan
March 08, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE
As Saddam Hussein prepares for a possible U.S. invasion, his troops are quietly jockeying for strategic position in Kurdistan. One example came last week in Duanzasimam, a dust-blown village of about 600 people separated from the Iraqi frontline bunkers by a ripple of dirty brown ridges. On the morning of February 28, Salam Rahim heard the unmistakable, and familiar, crack of explosions skirting the hamlet. He reached for the Kalashnikov he keeps on his sitting room floor as his wife and children ran out the gate. "The women and children were scared and half of the people fled to the mountain behind us," he says. "Once we heard the mortars all the armed men of the village ran to the hill near the Iraqis."
Read More...
As Saddam Hussein prepares for a possible U.S. invasion, his troops are quietly jockeying for strategic position in Kurdistan. One example came last week in Duanzasimam, a dust-blown village of about 600 people separated from the Iraqi frontline bunkers by a ripple of dirty brown ridges. On the morning of February 28, Salam Rahim heard the unmistakable, and familiar, crack of explosions skirting the hamlet. He reached for the Kalashnikov he keeps on his sitting room floor as his wife and children ran out the gate. "The women and children were scared and half of the people fled to the mountain behind us," he says. "Once we heard the mortars all the armed men of the village ran to the hill near the Iraqis."
Read More...
TIME: More Killings in Kurdistan
March 05, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
The Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a pivotal staging point for any U.S. invasion, is an unsettling place at the best of times. Five bodies left sprawled on the road by a checkpoint on March 4 has made it even more so. Among the dead was Abullah Qasre, a leading figure in a local militant Islamic group known as Komal, one of the plethora of sectarian factions that riddle Kurdish politics. Komal, however, has come to be particularly important in recent months in light of the bloody war raging between ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan and Islamist groups linked with al-Qaeda, such as Ansar al-Islam. The local government had entered into a covert dialogue with Komal, hoping to draw it out of the Islamist nexus. The bloody checkpoint scene, captured by a Time photographer who arrived during the gun battle, has now thrown that dialogue into disarray. Komal supporters immediately blamed local government forces for the ambush.
Read More...
The Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a pivotal staging point for any U.S. invasion, is an unsettling place at the best of times. Five bodies left sprawled on the road by a checkpoint on March 4 has made it even more so. Among the dead was Abullah Qasre, a leading figure in a local militant Islamic group known as Komal, one of the plethora of sectarian factions that riddle Kurdish politics. Komal, however, has come to be particularly important in recent months in light of the bloody war raging between ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan and Islamist groups linked with al-Qaeda, such as Ansar al-Islam. The local government had entered into a covert dialogue with Komal, hoping to draw it out of the Islamist nexus. The bloody checkpoint scene, captured by a Time photographer who arrived during the gun battle, has now thrown that dialogue into disarray. Komal supporters immediately blamed local government forces for the ambush.
Read More...
TIME: Lying in Wait in Kurdistan
March 03, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
Along a vast front line snaking through northern 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.
Read More...
Along a vast front line snaking through northern 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.
Read More...