Kurdish officials said on Tuesday that Kurdish guerrillas have been acting as guides and scouts inside Iraqi-controlled territory, helping small teams of American soldiers to enter Iraq for missions behind the Iraqi lines.
Larger groups of Kurdish soldiers were seen moving into at least four front-line villages around Kirkuk and Mosul on Tuesday, feeding speculation that Kurdish forces would be asked to play a significant role in any US effort to open a northern front against the Iraqi army. The original plan to deploy a large US force was derailed by Turkey's refusal to allow the use of its ports and roads.
Kurdish officials also said that US Special Operations forces and Kurdish fighters are within days of launching a ground offensive against Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamic movement. The group, which the State Department says has ties to al-Qaeda, controls a small pocket of territory sandwiched between Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq and Iran.
Combined with the continued attacks by allied warplanes on Iraqi positions around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, the pace of activity here seemed to quicken. Senior Kurdish officials in northern Iraq have expressed surprise at what they said was the slow pace of the US-led offensive, not only in the north but in southern Iraq too.
"Unless you show some visible gains, people will be emboldened," Hoshyar Zebari, a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said of the Baghdad government and its supporters. "There will be more resistance."
Kurds who served in the Iraqi army during the Persian Gulf War contrasted the relatively light air war in the current campaign with the 38 days of pre-invasion bombardment they endured in 1991.
"From early morning until late evening, this intense bombing, I could not even move," said a Kurdish official who spoke on condition that he not be identified. "I myself left my unit and went home."
Kurds on Tuesday also appeared to have negotiated successfully with an Islamic group that posed potential risks to US soldiers in the anticipated battle against Ansar al-Islam. The group, Komali Islami Kurdistan, occupies a town and military positions adjacent to territory held by Ansar al-Islam.
US cruise missiles struck Komali military offices and barracks last weekend, raising concerns that the group, which has maintained relationships with both Ansar and the main Kurdish groups, would be driven into Ansar's ranks. Komali is believed to have between 700 and 1,200 guerrillas.
Komali, a comparatively moderate group that had never declared hostility toward the US, said on Tuesday that it had no idea why US forces attacked its bases. It said more than 40 of its members were killed, a figure smaller than the Kurdish authorities' estimate that more than 130 Komali fighters died.
Whatever the number, on Tuesday, after two days of talks brokered by Iranian intelligence officials, Komali announced that it was moving to a village away from the front.
A senior Komali member, Anwar Mohammad, said the move was not a surrender so much as a practical necessity "so we don't give another excuse for the Americans to attack."
Four militants from Ansar al-Islam infiltrated Kurdish front lines near Halabja on Monday night and attacked a Kurdish post in the village of Anab, not far from where US soldiers have been meeting Kurdish commanders.
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