KHAZNA, Iraq — At a small but heavily fortified outpost on the edge of this dust-blown town, a contingent of American soldiers has recently taken up residence alongside Kurdish and Arab forces in what is likely to be one of the last new missions undertaken by the U.S. military in Iraq.
Known simply as Checkpoint 3, the outpost in Nineveh province is one of about two dozen erected over the past six months along a line stretching across northern Iraq from Syria in the west to Iran in the east. It marks the ill-defined and highly disputed border between Kurdish- and Arab controlled territories.
At a time when U.S. forces elsewhere in the country are dismantling smaller bases in preparation either to withdraw or to regroup in larger camps, about 800 U.S. troops have been dispatched to posts along this line.
After U.S. combat troops have completed their withdrawal this summer, leaving behind a force of 50,000 to focus on training and advising Iraqi security forces, these soldiers will remain as advisers. This mission won’t wrap up until the end of 2011, when the last U.S. troops are scheduled to leave, U.S. military officials say.
The deployment is a sign of how seriously U.S. commanders view the threat of an Arab-Kurdish conflict. An initiative of Army Gen. Ray T. Odierno, the commander of American troops in Iraq, the deployment of U.S., Arab and Kurdish forces was originally billed as a means to protect lightly guarded towns and villages on both sides of the line that were hit last summer by al-Qaida-in-Iraq suicide bombings.
U.S. commanders worried that the bombings were an attempt to ignite sectarian strife in an already tense area.
American officials say they hope that cooperation between the Kurds and Arabs in the fight against al-Qaida can grow into a longer-term working relationship that reduces the likelihood of conflict between them.
This is the first time U.S. troops have had a regular presence in many of these areas. The locations have been mostly calm through the seven years that the Americans have been in Iraq, but increasingly unstable over the past year.
It is also the first time Arab and Kurdish forces have worked together in these areas. The U.S. soldiers help run checkpoints and mount patrols, while also encouraging their Arab and Kurdish counterparts to do things such as play volleyball and dominoes as a way of getting along.
“They live together, work together and they become family,” said Army Col. Max Dietrich, who oversees the effort in Nineveh along with Arabs and Kurds at a coordination center in the city of Mosul. “There’s a lot of respect, and some of them are friends.”
At Checkpoint 3, about 20 American soldiers live in small tents with Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Iraqi soldiers, and help supervise the control of traffic into the town.
Khazna, which had previously been protected only by a single peshmerga guard post, was the scene in August of a double suicide truck bombing that killed 35 people as they slept. Many residents feel reassured by the new post’s heavy fortifications, said peshmerga Sgt Maj. Rashid Suleiman.
But he worries about what will happen to the new relationship between Iraqi and Kurdish forces when the U.S. troops eventually leave. “There are no tensions between us now, but having the U.S. here to supervise us is a big boost,” he said.
At stake is a belt of territory hugging the border of the self-governing region of Kurdistan. Occupied in 2003 by the Kurds, who want it to be annexed to Kurdistan, the disputed territory includes the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, as well as this hotly contested part of northern Nineveh province that last year teetered on the edge of outright war.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 06/21/2010