World | A NATION AT WAR: NORTHERN IRAQ

A NATION AT WAR: NORTHERN IRAQ; With Smaller Operation Than First Planned, U.S. Opens Northern Front

By ERIC SCHMITT WITH DAVID ROHDE

The United States military opened its long-awaited northern front in Iraq tonight, but the initial operation was significantly smaller than what the Pentagon originally planned.

On a freezing and rainy night, 1,000 paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade swooped down on an airfield in Kurdish-controlled Iraq in one of the largest airborne operations since World War II, an Army officer said. In advance of the air drop, allied warplanes attacked surface-to-surface missiles and Iraqi front-line positions.

Their paratroopers' mission will be to secure the Harir airfield, which tonight was heavily guarded by Kurdish fighters opposed to Saddam Hussein, to allow cargo planes to bring in M1A1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and other American combat forces. Attack helicopters may also be flown in later. Backed by allied warplanes, the ground force is intended to help secure the northern oil fields, keep Turkish troops from clashing with American-backed Kurdish forces, and attack any Iraqi forces that challenge them.

Equipped with mortars, 105-millimeter artillery and Humvees armed with missiles and .50-caliber machine guns, the brigade is a lightly armed but highly versatile unit that will pave the way for a larger buildup in the north that could number several thousand within the next week or so.

This was not how Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the allied commander, envisioned taking the north from Saddam Hussein's troops. The Army's Fourth Infantry Division was originally scheduled to flow into northern Iraq from Turkey and force Mr. Hussein to face a formidable two-front campaign. The Fourth Division and its 21,000 soldiers, the Army's most technologically advanced armored unit, could pin down or attack the Nebuchadnezzar Republican Guard division near Kirkuk, as well as ensure security in the north.

But the Turkish Parliament rejected letting the troops operate from Turkey, and some 40 ships carrying the division's equipment circled in the eastern Mediterranean for weeks until diplomatic talks collapsed. The Pentagon last weekend ordered the ships to sail south through the Suez Canal to Kuwaiti ports. General Franks waited as long as possible before diverting the division, military officials said, to preserve the option of a strong northern front.

The lack of a sizable armored force in the north has deprived the American ground campaign of the ability to pressure Mr. Hussein from two fronts and left the north without a large stabilizing force. How exactly General Franks would have used the division would have depended on the unfolding battlefield, but the Fourth Division could have pinned down Iraqi forces that might retreat in defense of Baghdad, or surge toward the Iraqi capital and force Mr. Hussein's government into a vise.

Troops from the Fourth Division have been flying from Fort Hood, Tex., into Kuwait on chartered commercial jets this week. They will marry up with their tanks and other heavy equipment, which are to begin arriving by ship on April 1.

The first combat units will be ready to roll north and reinforce the Army and Marine forces closing in on Baghdad about five days after that, Army officials said today. All the division's equipment is expected to be unloaded by about April 11, a Navy official said.

The delayed deployment of the heavy armor division left the United States relying on a skeletal force in northern Iraq. When the war started last week, there were fewer than 100 Special Forces in the north, working with Kurdish soldiers, safe-guarding the oil fields and conducting reconnaissance.

In recent days, however, American military activity in the north had steadily increased. Just this morning, a New York Times reporter observed special operations forces surveying a section of the front line between Kurdish forces and pro-Hussein Iraqis near Mosul. American planes also continued to bomb targets near the front lines in northern Iraq. An Iraqi command bunker, ringed with antennas, that overlooked a key road from Kurdish territory to the Iraqi-held city of Kirkuk was destroyed in a thunderous attack this morning.

Two of the biggest questions of the war include why Mr. Hussein's forces have not ignited the northern oil fields and why they have not mounted rocket attacks against the Kurdish-controlled enclave. A senior Pentagon official said today it was a combination of good fortune and stealthy Special Forces missions.

But within the last week, there were clear signs of battle preparations. Several hundred additional Special Forces troops quietly flowed into the north.

At 11 p.m. tonight in northern Iraq, several dozen tense and heavily armed Kurdish soldiers blocked roads within a mile of the Harir airfield, waved a pistol in one driver's face and declared the area closed. As the soldiers spoke, the jet engines of a plane could be heard idling on the nearby runway as empty trucks drove into the area to pick up cargo.

Ninety minutes earlier, a slow-moving propeller driven aircraft, presumably an American C-130 cargo plane, was heard flying in.

Kurdish and American forces are also expected to launch a joint ground attack soon against Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamic group that the State Department says has links to Al Qaeda. Last weekend, American warplanes and missiles bombarded the group's small enclave, which sits between Kurdish and Iraqi government lines near the Iranian border.

The 173rd Brigade, whose commander, Col. William C. Mayville Jr., led the jump tonight, has a long history. It deployed to France in World War I, but did not fight in any major battles, according to a brigade history. After fighting in Europe in World War II, the brigade was deactivated.

In 1963, the unit was reactivated under the command of Brig. Gen. Ellis W. Williamson, who trained the brigade to carry out mass parachute jumps in its new role as the Army's quick-reaction force for the Pacific. The brigade was given the nickname Sky Soldiers.

Dispatched to Vietnam in May 1965, the 173rd Brigade was the first major Army ground combat unit to serve there. Under General Williamson, the brigade introduced the use of long-range patrols, and conducted the only combat parachute jump in the war, according to the brigade's history.

Nearly three decades lapsed before the brigade was activated again in June 2000, this time to act as the European Command's elite airborne force.