Judging from reports of MiG fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships, tanks and Katyusha rockets churning up the spectacular mountainscapes of the country's rugged north-west, the description is fitting.The UN says at least 50,000 people have fled since fighting began in August.
The peshmergas say that the Iranians have recently given the group truck-mounted Katyusha rocket-launchers, and helped them target their artillery from positions inside Iran.Elsewhere Iran has been helping America in its fight with al-Qaeda.
Most worryingly for Israel are the Iranian Zelzal-2 ballistic missiles with warheads weighing 600 kilos, which could carry chemical or biological agents 200km, putting all Israel's big towns at risk.The Katyusha rockets are small, mobile and easy to hide.
WHEN Katyusha rockets fly in the Middle East, the oil price tends to rise.
Iraqi Kurds armed by Iran with Katyusha rockets, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles are undoubtedly playing a part in the current Iranian push in the north-east.
Indeed, HRW has already deplored Israel's use of anti-personnel cluster bombs as well as Hizbullah's firing into Israeli towns of Katyusha rockets, "dirty" weapons that are too crude to discriminate between soldiers and civilians.
Most of the rockets have been of the short-range variety, though on February 3rd a Katyusha missile struck Ashkelon, causing damage but no casualties.
According to Jane's Defence Weekly, the bulk of these are Katyusha rockets.
The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her life of crime.
The Soviets mass-produced a 130-millimetre rocket known as the Katyusha.
In early April Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters fired Katyusha rockets at Israeli border towns and villages.
