Just how do they keep smiling? 21 October 2004

NCF SECRETARY GENERAL PRIVATE REPORT:
Friday, October 22, 2004
Written from Halabja, Kurdistan, Northern Iraq

These personal notes are not for general circulation

Just how do they keep smiling?

A word or two about terrorism. These groups, Al Qa'eda and such, are not terrorists first and foremost. Terrorism is a second string to their bow. From Riyadh to Falujah, from Afghanistan to Baghdad, their primary activity is good old-fashioned insurgency. We forget that at our peril.

Alastair Crooke did his time serving in Afghanistan during the critical period when these people were the bulwark for our secret proxy war with the Russians. He knows them. "In all the camps they teach modules in basic infantry training", says Alastair. "The bases produced people who are capable of fighting an irregular war."

In Northern Iraq the principal mainstream terrorist group fighting alongside former regime loyalists is Al Ansar Al Islam. They change their name from time to time, but these are the ones. And their motivation? Well, it's quasi-nationalistic to be honest, as with most of these groups. And a lot of them are Kurds.

Let's step back a minute and look at the broad picture. The Kurds have a tradition of Peshmerga fighters. The word "Pershmerga" means, "ready to die". What that means is if you wander into a village in Kurdistan and some young blade steps up to you and says "I am Peshmerga", the fat old village elder sitting next to you is likely to leap to his feet and say "I am Peshmerga too." The personal bodyguards of the Russian Tsars were Peshmerga. By the way, there are plenty of female Peshmerga. Lots of them. Kurdistan has its more traditional towns like Arbil where the women dress in black abayahs and walk two paces behind, and its more sophisticated towns like Suleimaniyeh, where the women dress like Parisiennes and walk two paces in front. A slight exaggeration but . . .

There are official Peshmerga standing armies. But to most of us, all Kurds are Peshmerga. Ready to die. Especially when overtaking on mountain roads on blind bends against oncoming traffic. In Kurdistan it's a national disease, a culture evolved as a coping strategy to deal with countless wars and invasions.

There are three main Kurdish groups. The Communist P.K.K (The initials are from the Kurdish language - Communist starts with a "K" in Kurdish). Then there is the Suleimaniyeh based P.U.K loyal to the Talabani tribe (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). And then Barzani's more traditionalist K.D.P. (Kurdish Democratic Party).

The P.K.K operate in Turkey by and large. Turkey hates the Kurds. The total population of Iraq is about 26 million. But, wait for it, there are about 18 million Kurds in Turkey. These are people who have been fighting for their own state for 1,100 years. That puts Palestine in perspective doesn't it? Of course Turkey has a problem. There are only about 68 million people in Turkey altogether. As we've seen, a huge chunk of them are Kurds. Then there are the two Armenian provinces in the North. On top of which many of Turkey's coastal people are Greek. The true Anatolian Turks are a minority. Difficult for them.

Mainstream Kurdistan is run by the Barzanis and the Talabanis. They, like all Kurds, want independence. They are good dissemblers of course. Years of oppression have taught them that lesson at least. Their political leaders will mouth the rhetoric about federation but there is not a Kurd alive who does not want independence.

As was said in the last report, most Arabs balk at the idea of an independent Kurdistan thinking that it will mean another Israel in the Middle East. And, at the risk of repetition, it makes you smile because the Arab States, including Iraq itself, are putting immense, indeed colossal, pressure on Kurdistan to go independent. As indeed are USA, UK, Turkey and Iran. This is done through a deliberate policy of isolation in order to destroy prospects of a federated Iraq. Furthermore you have internal shifting alliances that are quasi-tribal and almost incomprehensible to the outsider. The point is that there are all sorts of forces at work here.

There are also levels of suffering that are incomprehensible to the outsider. There is a chapter in the Koran called "The Anfal", the "Permission to Destroy". Remember when Saddam appeared on Iraqi TV and announced that Allah had given him an Anfal to destroy the Kurds? Shortly thereafter 8,000 Barzan men aged from seven to seventy were rounded up and never seen again. And Saddam crowed, "People ask what I did with the Barzanis - I sent them to hell."

But remember that a few years later when Talabani's PUK held sway over most of Kurdistan, the Barzanis made a pact with Satan and invited Saddam in to help them regain control of Arbil. The Middle East can be very weird indeed. Mind you, we are just as bad. We turned a blind eye as Saddam's tanks rolled North, even though we controlled the No Fly Zone. We're all weird.

However, we were talking terrorism. Let's set the scene here. In 1991/92 everyone hated the militant Islamists. They were the fanatics who attacked the Christian run alcohol stores in Iraq. And they grew in strength, eventually fielding about 7,000 Islamist Peshmerga. How was this done?

Well the Barzanis and Talabanis had a hand in it. The Kurds wanted democracy. There were two major parties, the Barzani KDP and the Talabani PUK. Then there were a swathe of little parties ranging from the Communists (spelt with a K of course) to the Islamists. Dozens of them; some supported by specific quasi-racial sub-groups like the Turkomans or the Christian Assyrians. Individually they were small but collectively they could swamp the mainstream parties. What to do? Someone had a brilliant idea. One since copied by Tony Blair. They decided on the party list system for the elections. It's what we now use in the Euro-Elections in the UK. Kurdistan has a 105 seat parliament. So you make a list of 105 names (an opportunity to demand rigid party allegiance). If you won all the votes you'd get all the seats. It's an Israeli idea really. They do this sort of thing. But it's only half-a-brilliant-idea so far. Now you need to rig the process to see that minority parties cannot get elected. Difficult that because, collectively, in a democratic process there'd be a total of more minority MPs than from the mainstream parties. So what do you do? The Kurdish answer was to have a 7% threshold. If you don't get 7% of the vote you can't have names on your list included. Sheer genius. So the only MPs elected were PUK or KDP. About 50/50. Actually there were one or two more from Barzani's KDP but who's counting? Well they were. They immediately started a civil war. If they'd allowed a couple of minority parties to hold the balance it'd have been better for them.

So how does this encourage the Islamic Fundamentalists? It's obvious isn't it? People are disaffected. No more so than in the universities. And the Islamic militants soon find fertile ground in which to recruit.

Let's examine events from the perspective of one little town, Halabja. It may give you a feel for the suffering and for the cauldron from which terrorism emerges in this context.

Halabja is a little town of about 60,000 people, about the size of Bangor, Maine in the States, or Swansea in the UK. It looks much much smaller. Partly because all the houses are single story. Partly because so many live more to a room out of necessity (half the town was demolished in various wars).

Halabja sits at the end of a broad plain enclosed by a vast crescent sweep mountain range. Very beautiful. It is just within Kurdish Regional Government controlled area of Kurdistan, close to the border with Iran to the East and Iraq proper to the South.

Halabja is a thriving market town serving its agricultural hinterland. Thriving all the more so because of a legal cross-border trade in tea/TVs/cars/machinery/scrap iron/copper. Thriving still more because of an illegal cross-border trade smuggling alcohol/rice/sugar/sheep. There's a profit in smuggling alcohol, but rice, sugar and sheep? Funny world.

Halabja is famous for having had 5,000 of its citizens gassed by Saddam. The VIPs come to visit the town and go to the memorial to the dead, promise development that never comes, then drive away again. They never walk through the town and meet the people. As a consequence, the population of Halabja despise visiting VIPs. Despite their smuggling, the people of Halabja are comparatively poor. Their Kurdish baggy trousers are mostly threadbare and much abused like their wearers. Still, they walk tall and proud.

So to the history. It's confusing. Let's pick a few highlights.

1. In 1963 Abdul Zain Sadiq, an Iraqi military leader, demolished most of Halabja. At that time Halabja was a great cultural centre and hotbed of Kurdish nationalism as well as being fairly conservative. Good reason to demolish it? In time the people returned.

2. Next came that long-running period of cold war between Iraq and Iran. In 1974 the Shah and Saddam signed the Algerian Treaty under the terms of which Iran would not help the Peshmerga and Iraq would not help the Iranian opposition. Saddam's first act after signing the treaty was to bombard Halabja as precursor to taking it back under Iraqi central government control.

3. Then from 1980 to 1988 as the Iran-Iraq war raged, Iran bombed Halabja, repeatedly.

4. On 14th March 1988 Iranian troops crossed the border and captured the town of Halabja.

5. On the 16th March 1988 at 11:40am, lunchtime, Saddam Hussein attacked the town of Halabja with chemical weapons. The bombardment lasted 72 hours. Five thousand men, women and children died, either in the town itself, or at the side of the stream where they ran to wash, where the gas had already poisoned the water.

6. On 18th March 1988 the Iranians withdrew and Saddam moved in. The population of Halabja fled to the mountains or into Iran.

7. On 8th August 1988 Iran and Iraq made a peace treaty. Saddam invited the people of Halabja back saying he had prepared a refugee camp for them between Baghdad and Kirkuk. Some five or six thousand accepted the offer. Only a handful escaped that camp, the rest were never seen again. The mass grave has yet to be found.

8. Between 1988 and 1991 Halabja was controlled by Iraq. But it was a ghost town with no people. At this time, some of Halabja's citizens were refugees in Iran. The rest were refugees in Sulamaniyeh.

9. In 1991 the Kurds rose up against Saddam, fighting together as the United Kurdish Parties. The people returned to Halabja.

10. In 1994 Civil war had broken out between Barzani's KDP and Talabani's PUK and the PUK were winning. Whilst Barzani's main force was pushed back to Dohuk, four thousand of his Peshmergas fled Sulamaniyeh from the advancing PUK to Halabjah. There they dug in and there they stayed, combining forces with a few Islamists. In the rest of the country the war raged. Saddam came in on Barzani's side and fortunes ebbed and flowed.

11. In 1998 The Washington agreement was signed, a peace deal between Birzani and Talabani, giving the governorates of Dohuk and Arbil to Barzani and giving the governorate of Suleimaniyeh to Talabani. The city of Halabja now, theoretically, came under Talabani's dominion. The PUK told the 4,000 Barzani KDP Peshmerga in Halabja that they could go or stay. Many, but by no means all, went home.

12. From 1998 on Halabja became a no go zone with pockets of PUK/KDP/Islamic Groups. There was a covert war of assassination.

13. After 11th September 2002, Ansar Al Islam became stronger. These groups have many names and it can be confusing. But the hills around Halabja were their stronghold. Essentially Jamat Islami (The Islamic Group) combined with Marques Islami (The Islamic Centre) to become Jund al Islam (The Soldiers of Islam). These groups contained a large number of foreigners, mostly Saudi and Yemeni, who had trained in Afghanistan. But don't think of them as isolated, they married local girls, had children, and the women and children moved with them. They were entire communities. Meanwhile they joined forces with more local homegrown Islamic militants from cities like Arbil. Ansar Al Islam (The supporters of Islam) was born. They were joined by other local Islamist groups to form the Islamic Union. The Ansar Al Sunna, currently operating in Mosul is an outgrowth of these groups from Halabja.

14. By early 2003 the Islamists had become a frighteningly strong force. At one stage, as their strength increased, they stormed and took a PUK barracks on the Halabja road. That was just two months before liberation. In that one incident alone they beheaded one hundred and fifty PUK Peshmerga prisoners. And you thought things were brutal now? Things have always been brutal in Iraq.

15. In April 2003 came the liberation of Iraq. Fifty Americans came to Halabja. "They were not soldiers", say the local people; they describe them as huge men with huge guns. What they were were US crack special forces, with full body armour and high-tech laser guns and guidance systems - like something out of a Rambo movie - exactly like that, no exaggeration involved. They joined forces with the local PUK Pershmerga. The Islamists were told, in a very clear warning that rockets could be coming and they should surrender. They refused. The bombardment came in the middle of the night. It was laser guided and surprisingly effective. The surviving Islamic militants fled into Iran and made their way to Mosul to join forces with Saddam Hussein loyalists. But many held their ground and fought to their death, dramatically committing suicide in their final moments rather than face capture.

16. And now, the people of Halabja are living in peace, for the first time in decades. They have had more than a year of total peace. They quietly get on with their smuggling and their trade. They are very pro-Western because the Americans brought them this peace. But they remain fiercely independent. Because the VIPs promise help but never do anything, they remain very very poor, all 60, 000 or so of them, living amidst the rubble of their pretty little town. Go to Halabja someday. You'll find the welcome overwhelming. Our visit bought the entire bustling little town to a standstill, or so it seemed. But be sure to go into the town and meet the people. Not just visit the memorial like the VIPs do - or they'll despise you.

Meanwhile the Islamists are all long gone to Mosul and pretty little Halabja gets its respite. It deserves it, don't you think?

Was the situation in Halabja unique?

Well yes and no. Halabja undoubtedly has suffered more acutely than almost any other town in Iraq over the years. But most towns have suffered. In Kurdistan itself, Saddam destroyed some 25,000 villages. Many were little more than hamlets, small clusters of homes, but seventy percent of them have been rebuilt over the past decades by the diligent Kurds. A young female Peshmerga fighter from Suleimaniyeh by the name of Dildar Kitani recited a poem for us which captures the national mood of this frighteningly nationalistic people. It goes something like this:

One block beside the other
will be a wall

One wall beside the other
will be a house

One house beside the other
will be a village

One village beside the other
will be the rebuilt Kurdistan