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American Morning
Kurdish Soldiers on Patrol in Northern Iraq
Aired March 21, 2003 - 07:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get back to northern Iraq right now. CNN's Brent Sadler is in a very peculiar place. He is right along some sort of line that separates the Kurdish soldiers from Iraqi soldiers. It's been quiet for hours, but Brent has been watching it closely, at times very tense as well.
What's happening now -- Brent?
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Bill, I've been here for about the past 12 hours or so, and if we just swing the camera off of me, you can see some Kurdish troops here. This is their territory this side of the bridge. You can see them standing there. The other side of where they are at the other end are the Iraqis.
So they can eyeball each other, have been doing throughout the day. These Kurds that have just arrived, these commanders, interested to see what's happening in those rolling hills behind me.
Now, we've been using throughout much of this day a very high- powered lens. We'll use it again now to show you what is behind me. If it zooms through there, you can go up to the top of those hills and you'll see the Iraqi positions. We've been watching these now for very many days, if not weeks, this year and in fact last year when I was here.
This line does seem to be holding. There have been reports passed onto Kurdish commanders here that they believed a unit wanted to defect. That's the message that was sent through. And we've seen here in the past few hours a changeover of the troops it seems in those positions. This line is holding firm.
But certainly very tense occasionally during the day. There was a couple of rounds of heavy machine gunfire several hours ago in the early part of the day. Just before and after daybreak, there were two airstrikes around Iraqi troop concentrations in the Mosul theater; Mosul being Iraq's second largest city.
Now, one wonders what's going to happen here. The so-called northern front that everyone expected has not materialized. No U.S. military personnel in large numbers on the ground here. Kurdish forces not doing anything to move from their positions. No shooting at each other, which is surprising given that the U.S.-led invasion is now well under way. No real direct gunfire at each other here. Maybe what we heard today was warning shots, according to one of the commanders.
And we have this extraordinary situation where this bridge separates Saddam Hussein's loyalists, at least for now it seems, and the Kurds on this side. We really wonder what's going to happen next. After all, the Turkish government applied for and got parliamentary clearance for the U.S. to use Turkish air space.
So will we see several thousand, if not more, U.S. troops coming here? Will we see troops from the U.S. coordinate with the Kurds on the ground and make moves towards Kirkuk or Mosul? Or will the pressure on Baghdad cause the regime to collapse and then have a ripple effect so that you see then the collapse following Baghdad of Kirkuk or Mosul?
It's anybody's guess, and it's also anybody's guess as to just how those troops feel on the hills behind me. Saddam Hussein's troops, how they feel knowing that at the southern end of their country they've got all of that U.S. armor heading towards the Iraqi capital and their commander-in-chief, Saddam Hussein -- Bill.
HEMMER: Brent, there are questions back in London and questions back in Washington as to how the strength of the command and control center is right now within the Iraqi government. Are you getting reports up there in any way that may lead you to believe one way or another as to whether or not the command and control has indeed been impacted so far?
SADLER: It's difficult to say. What I can tell you is from this side Kurdish military intelligence -- and we've heard a lot. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, was talking about it earlier, talking about the expectation, the hope of mass surrenders, defections. Reports of 250 soldiers, white flags, handing themselves over at Umm Qasr.
Kurdish military commanders here say they have had really a lot of contacts expecting desertions in this field of operations, but I can tell you that that line behind me over there seems to be holding firm still. No signs of any cracks in that line at the moment.
And of course, the unit changeover we saw earlier today would suggest that command and control, at least in this part of the country, seems to be intact, and there's no reason, real reason why it shouldn't be, because there's been no heavy use of air power and no hostile territorial intention coming from here, the Kurdish side -- Bill.
HEMMER: Thank you, Brent -- Brent Sadler in northern Iraq.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired March 21, 2003 - 07:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get back to northern Iraq right now. CNN's Brent Sadler is in a very peculiar place. He is right along some sort of line that separates the Kurdish soldiers from Iraqi soldiers. It's been quiet for hours, but Brent has been watching it closely, at times very tense as well.
What's happening now -- Brent?
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Bill, I've been here for about the past 12 hours or so, and if we just swing the camera off of me, you can see some Kurdish troops here. This is their territory this side of the bridge. You can see them standing there. The other side of where they are at the other end are the Iraqis.
So they can eyeball each other, have been doing throughout the day. These Kurds that have just arrived, these commanders, interested to see what's happening in those rolling hills behind me.
Now, we've been using throughout much of this day a very high- powered lens. We'll use it again now to show you what is behind me. If it zooms through there, you can go up to the top of those hills and you'll see the Iraqi positions. We've been watching these now for very many days, if not weeks, this year and in fact last year when I was here.
This line does seem to be holding. There have been reports passed onto Kurdish commanders here that they believed a unit wanted to defect. That's the message that was sent through. And we've seen here in the past few hours a changeover of the troops it seems in those positions. This line is holding firm.
But certainly very tense occasionally during the day. There was a couple of rounds of heavy machine gunfire several hours ago in the early part of the day. Just before and after daybreak, there were two airstrikes around Iraqi troop concentrations in the Mosul theater; Mosul being Iraq's second largest city.
Now, one wonders what's going to happen here. The so-called northern front that everyone expected has not materialized. No U.S. military personnel in large numbers on the ground here. Kurdish forces not doing anything to move from their positions. No shooting at each other, which is surprising given that the U.S.-led invasion is now well under way. No real direct gunfire at each other here. Maybe what we heard today was warning shots, according to one of the commanders.
And we have this extraordinary situation where this bridge separates Saddam Hussein's loyalists, at least for now it seems, and the Kurds on this side. We really wonder what's going to happen next. After all, the Turkish government applied for and got parliamentary clearance for the U.S. to use Turkish air space.
So will we see several thousand, if not more, U.S. troops coming here? Will we see troops from the U.S. coordinate with the Kurds on the ground and make moves towards Kirkuk or Mosul? Or will the pressure on Baghdad cause the regime to collapse and then have a ripple effect so that you see then the collapse following Baghdad of Kirkuk or Mosul?
It's anybody's guess, and it's also anybody's guess as to just how those troops feel on the hills behind me. Saddam Hussein's troops, how they feel knowing that at the southern end of their country they've got all of that U.S. armor heading towards the Iraqi capital and their commander-in-chief, Saddam Hussein -- Bill.
HEMMER: Brent, there are questions back in London and questions back in Washington as to how the strength of the command and control center is right now within the Iraqi government. Are you getting reports up there in any way that may lead you to believe one way or another as to whether or not the command and control has indeed been impacted so far?
SADLER: It's difficult to say. What I can tell you is from this side Kurdish military intelligence -- and we've heard a lot. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, was talking about it earlier, talking about the expectation, the hope of mass surrenders, defections. Reports of 250 soldiers, white flags, handing themselves over at Umm Qasr.
Kurdish military commanders here say they have had really a lot of contacts expecting desertions in this field of operations, but I can tell you that that line behind me over there seems to be holding firm still. No signs of any cracks in that line at the moment.
And of course, the unit changeover we saw earlier today would suggest that command and control, at least in this part of the country, seems to be intact, and there's no reason, real reason why it shouldn't be, because there's been no heavy use of air power and no hostile territorial intention coming from here, the Kurdish side -- Bill.
HEMMER: Thank you, Brent -- Brent Sadler in northern Iraq.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
