A Kurdish military commander pointed to the folds of the snow-capped mountain range in a remote corner of northern Iraq and insisted the enemy was there. Burhan Said Sofi, 40, was not pointing to Saddam Hussein’s army, but to hidden fighters of Ansar al Islam, an Islamic militant group that Kurdish militias have been battling in this semi-autonomous enclave in northern Iraq. Kurdish commanders insist that their battle against Ansar al Islam will become a secondary front in the US-led attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Kurds are expected to fight alongside US special forces already in the area. Iraqi opposition groups, meeting with a US envoy in Turkey, agreed yesterday to put thousands of Kurdish forces under US command during a war. The United States is pushing them to fight against Ansar, senior Kurdish officials say, in part to keep Kurdish groups from the temptation to take over Kirkuk, an oil-rich city and an ethnic tinderbox of tensions. Full Story
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