Erbil Diary

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Erbil, Northern Iraq/Kurdistan) The war started pretty much on time in Iraq ... but not here. Up in the Kurdish autonomous area in the north, the Northern Front has yet to be activated as I write this on Sunday evening. I would be very surprised if the situation changes before this diary is posted. The reasons for the delay are simple. The Turkish government's refusal to allow U.S. troops to be based there. It's a relatively short hop or long drive from military bases in Southeastern Turkey to the main objectives in the North: the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.

Kirkuk, of course, is the site of a huge oil field and is the place where the oil pipeline into Turkey begins.

Mosul is the site of the biblical town of Nineveh. It is a city of more than a million people and is home to one of the many palaces of Saddam Hussein. More important it is the site of a massive dam on the Tigris River. Kurds in Erbil will tell you that if Saddam decides to go down in a blaze of deluded glory, blowing up that dam would flood vast areas to the south. Mosul is perhaps 25 miles from my hotel and most every night I go out to watch and wait.

And watch and wait. And watch and wait. And watch and wait.

The border, the frontline between this part of the Kurdish Autonomous region and the rest of Iraq is the Greater Zab river. I go to the Kurdish end of the new bridge over the Zab near the town of Kalak. The sound of war is hard to hear instead I listen to the river, running fast after a month of heavy rains and with the spring melt beginning in the beautiful mountains where the river rises. Frogs and crickets make a heavy racket. The moon, when it rises reveals in black and silver silhouette the ridge on the Iraqi side of the river, where some of Saddam's soldiers wait for the war to come to them. Beyond the ridge is Mosul.

In three nights of waiting I was rewarded with only one glimpse of an air strike: a video game view of a fast moving flashing red light, an American jet, presumably, followed by the forlorn white tracer streaks of outmoded by anti-aircraft batteries shooting and missing the plane. The sound of the bomb striking its target in Mosul was brought on the wind. I actually feel the blasts more often than I see them. My room in Erbil is on the top floor under the tin roof of the hotel. I can tell when a bombing raid is going on because the ground concussion makes the roof rattle.

During the day I visit the outposts of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters along the front, checking out what happened to them during the night. Nothing, is the usual answer. After the first two nights of inactivity the fighters seemed untroubled by the lack of action but now patience is giving way to frustration. The Iraqi's so far have not engaged with the Peshmerga in a major way

At the Peshemrga forward observation post at Dola Bakir small games are played. The Iraqi's periodically lob mortar shells at Kurdish villages in the fields between the two lines. The peshmerga mortar back but no one is trying to kill anyone. In the village of Kalak, a Kurdish hamlet stuck on the wrong side of the Zab, snipers fire during the day, mostly at journalists interviewing the few residents of the place who haven't fled. Periodically they shoot off a 106mm field gun. But it isn't aimed anywhere in particular.

There's a kind of unofficial cease-fire. My first night at the bridge the Peshmerga commander told me that a shepherd living on the other side of the river had brought a message from the Iraqi's saying they would not fight unless they were fired upon.

And that's been the state of play since the U.S. struck at its "target of opportunity" and started the war. Iraq is at war, but up here Iraqi soldiers and Peshmerga - potential combatants -- sit tight and wait. But I get the sense that Kurdish patience is beginning to wear thin. At Dola Bakir Sunday, the commander, pointed to the Iraqi encampment a few kilometers across some green fields and asked, "Why don't the Americans bomb the Iraqis here? Then they will fight and we can fight back." In Kalak, Najad Salim Shaklo, one of the few residents of the town who has not fled had the same request. "If only two or three planes bombed them. They would fight."

But that doesn't seem likely. The reason goes back to Turkey. The Turks simply won't stand for Kurds seizing either Mosul or Kirkuk. It was reported that Turkish army special forces were already in Northern Iraq. That was a mistake. But if the Kurds start action on their own against those two cities they will be here pronto.

So we all sit around waiting for American troops to arrive. There are some Special Forces operatives here but not enough to seize and secure the two cities. We spend the day speculating where they might come from. Flown up from Kuwait, perhaps? Or flown from recently secured airfields in Iraq's western desert? Wherever they come from the critical mass won't be reached for several days. I wonder if the Peshmerga can wait that long?

Explore Goldfarb's latest documentary on the Kurdish region, Turkey and Jordan: "On Iraq's Borders"