The Kurdish Revolt 1961 - 1970
Edgar O’ballance
from Persia, allowing Persian soldiers to march against it. A fighting escape into Iraq by Mullah Mustafa and his Barzanis was followed by an epic fighting retreat across the mountains until he found refuge in the Soviet Union, where he remained for eleven years. When Kassem came to power in 1958, Mullah Mustafa was allowed to return to Iraq on the condition that he became Chairman of the United Democratic Party of Kurdistan. It was only in 1961 when he realized that Kassem was not going to grant any of the Kurdish political demands that he took to the mountains.
The pattern of the military operations in the Revolt was the old constantly repeated story: the Kurds could hold out in, or retreat farther into, the mountains in the face of attacks and pressure from conventional Government forces, but were unable to counter-attack successfully down on to the plains of Iraq, while the Iraqi army, with nearly 600 tanks, was strong on the plains but comparatively ineffectual and vulnerable when it attempted to penetrate into the mountains, which terrain, with few tracks and hardly any motorable roads, was ideal for partisan-type warfare. Repeated Government military offensives, while hurting the Kurds, were almost always abortive, and maintaining or combating them sapped the strength of both sides, causing periods of prolonged inactivity; during these they issued boastful and wildly inaccurate communiques, prompting months of sterile negotiations when Kurds and the Iraqi Government sat down to ‘catch their breath’ and to play for time. The Revolt underlined the lesson, still barely and reluctantly accepted by many, that while causing fear, casualties, hardship and a refugee problem, air power was not a decisive factor in this type of warfare, and that protracted resistance by a determined people can be put up without any at all.
https://yadi.sk/d/KEjrcWGbsx9ZX