Fear and loathing at Iraqi
crossing By Iason Athanasiadis
IBRAHIM KHALIL, northern Iraq - Rows on
rows of trucks lined the road on both sides of the
border post between Turkey and war-torn Iraq's
most economically successful northern part,
Kurdistan. But even in relatively stable
Ibrahim Khalil, such is the unpredictability of
the crossing that the lines of fuel containers
waiting to pass into Iraq can
stretch for up to 70 kilometers into Turkey at
times of gridlock.
On the Turkish side,
border guards deploy repeated random passport
checks on hapless diaspora Kurds who, in the
absence of direct flights, are completing the
final overland stage of their long journey from
Europe or the United States to reach their
families inside Iraqi Kurdistan.
On the
Iraqi side, Kurdish officials affiliated with the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) extort US$300
bribes from dejected businessmen and truck drivers
bringing Western and Turkish products across the
border.
The KDP is one half of Iraq's
Kurdish power equation. Its leader is veteran
politician Masoud Barzani, the current president
of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
His longtime rival is the head of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and current president of
Iraq, Jalal Talabani.
Ordinary Kurds,
whether at the crossing or elsewhere in Iraq,
complain that their leaders - who spend most of
their time nowadays in Baghdad - have forgotten
them. But this seems to be a generalized
phenomenon in a country gradually ripping itself
apart in an orgy of sectarian hate. Meanwhile,
Iraq's secular political elite appear ever more
irrelevant as they huddle inside Baghdad's
fortified Green Zone and bicker over government
appointments.
The political parties are
still deadlocked over the choice of the dominant
Shi'ite party, the United Iraqi Alliance, of
Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister. Talabani is
reported to have said he had joined Sunnis, Kurds
and secular Shi'ites in wanting to stop Jaafari
from becoming premier. Negotiations are
continuing, even though the new parliament was
sworn in last week, this after December's
elections.
Distant as Ibrahim Khalil may
be from the capital, it represents ground zero in
the question of northern Iraq's future and
Turkey's role in it. The border crossing has
traditionally been the point across which Turkish
tanks rumbled whenever Turkey sought to
demonstrate its reach.
While such
incursions have been restricted since the US-led
occupation of Iraq, Ankara's threats to deal the
Kurds a destructive blow should they declare
independence loom large. The Kurds already have a
high degree of autonomy, and the fear remains that
the country might be carved into three regions,
Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south, and
Sunnis in the middle.
An unseemly
controversy erupted last year when the Turkish
government insisted that the federal Iraqi flag
should fly at the border crossing, rather than the
Kurdish one. But Kurdish officials interviewed by
Asia Times Online insist that the distinctive
yellow sun set against a red, green and white
background will not come down. Across Kurdistan,
the issue of the flag is a matter of national
pride and a foreshadow of tensions to come.
At one of the many checkpoints dotting the
countryside once one crosses the border,
Kalashnikov-toting guards wearing standard-issue
US military uniforms and boots wave vehicles
along. Naqib Ziad, an Assyrian Christian on sentry
duty, said Iraq's larger northern neighbor
(Turkey) does not represent a threat to him. But
when he was joined by Ismail Ali Ismail, a Kurdish
colleague, his rhetoric changed abruptly.
"We don't like the Turks to take away the
[Kurdish] flag from the crossing and put an Iraqi
one in its place," he said. "If Turkey does not
allow us to have a state here, we'll fight for
it."
By now, night had descended over the
thousands of gleaming trucks waiting their turn to
cross into Iraq. Kokcal Huseyn Asim, a Turk, was
trying to keep warm as he sat by his truck. On his
first trip to Iraq, he claimed not to feel any
fear about traveling here, even though he added
the caveat that he intended not to move beyond the
Kurdish area.
"I'm not scared because it's
so safe here," he said. "I don't have a problem
with the flag of Kurdistan flying as of the moment
Kurdistan remains a part of federal Iraq. It's
their right to fly their flag."
Asim's
colleague, a Turkish Kurd, confessed to having
stopped coming to Iraq since the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein as the security situation
deteriorated and economic opportunities dried up.
But now that he had returned, he said he felt
completely safe.
"That side is Turkey and
this side is Iraq," he said. "I don't see
Kurdistan anywhere around here, and let's not
forget that it's not just Turkey but Syria and
Iran that also insist that the Kurdish flag not be
raised."
It was an extraordinary statement
for a Kurd standing inside the autonomous
Kurdistan region to make. But the presence of his
Turkish colleague Asim, who was listening to
everything he said, explained his timidity.
"This guy is terrified to speak out," an
Iraqi Kurdish bystander commented later. "He knows
that while he may speak freely here, his colleague
could turn him over to MIT [Milli Istihbarat
Teskilati, the Turkish National Intelligence
Agency] once they're in Turkey again."
But
more commonplace concerns such as the fear of
being struck by anti-US insurgents abound among
the thousands of truck drivers working to keep the
occupation supplied. Abdullah Ramadan Guli, a
57-year-old driver, said he has never felt more
endangered in 28 years of criss-crossing Iraq and
the Arabian Peninsula than now.
Guli is
currently employed by the US Army, whose military
base in Mosul he supplies with aircraft fuel.
Turkish truck drivers such as Guli are some of the
last professionals in the region to accept the
risky business of working for the Americans. But
even Guli is critical of the lack of security that
the US Army provides on the often lethal
three-hour drive down from the border to the
strife-torn city of Mosul.
"Should there
be an attack, the Americans just run away," he
complained. "They only come back to tug the
damaged trucks off the road."
In two years
of driving his highly flammable truck within the
1.5-kilometer-long US convoys that cross the
northern Iraqi countryside, Guli has been caught
up in three attacks. So far he has been lucky,
never having had his truck directly struck by
insurgent fire. "Six months ago they hit us with
mines and rockets, but more usually we're just
pelted with stones," he said.
On the road
leading away from the border toward the nearby
town of Dohuk, a cluster of waiting cars revved
their engines impatiently, anxious to thrust
forward across the hundred or so meters of empty
road separating them from a convoy of heavy
vehicles filing on to the road from a separate
enclosure.
Just visible through the heavy
darkness that had descended was a waiting area for
heavy trucks that marks the end of the border
zone. Under the protection of US
machine-gun-mounted military trucks and a Humvee,
several hundred Turkish trucks filed out.
Loaded down with supplies for the US
military camp in the medieval city of Mosul, the
convoy drove through the night, its drivers
vigilant for ambushes. A US military truck brought
up the rear, its rear-fixed spotlight used to warn
away errant vehicles that might stray too close.
Once the convoy got going, the procession
of cars started its slow, ponderous journey behind
the convoy toward Dohuk. Every time one of them
crossed the 200-meter separating space that the
Americans insisted on maintaining from civilian
traffic, the gunner sitting in the military
vehicle bringing up the rear flashed his powerful
spotlight aggressively.
Fearing car-bombs,
US convoys insist that no one overtakes them and
that a clear distance be maintained from them. For
more than an hour, the convoy and the traffic jam
behind it made tortuously slow progress until a
fork in the road was reached and the cars
accelerated away defiantly.
Back in the
Kurdish-dominated city of Arbil, a group of
brightly dressed Kurdish schoolgirls piled into
the handicrafts museum inside the medieval castle
dominating the city skyline. Chattering excitedly,
they rushed from display to display, examining the
elaborate patters on show.
Outside, the
mid-morning bustle at the ticket office was
interrupted by five massive trucks powering up the
driveway. Screeching to a halt, heavily armed
American guards emerged from the first few trucks,
aiming high-powered M-4 rifles at the bemused
onlookers.
The fourth car was carrying
extra tires and medical equipment, while the
vehicle bringing up the rear had been specially
modified to accommodate a heavy-machine-gun nest
that could blow up cars judged to be behaving in a
threatening manner. All the trucks were plastered
with large stickers warning others cars in English
and Arabic not to approach closer than 100 meters.
A foreign photographer who asked
permission to photograph the convoy was bluntly
told not to point his camera in its direction.
Visibly frustrated by the Americans' manner, one
of the photographer's US-trained Kurdish guards
blurted out his anger: "We're capable of beating
them but don't for the time being. But they should
respect our country the way in which we respect
their presence here. They shouldn't act in this
disrespectful way while they're our guests."
Iason Athanasiadis is an
Iran-based correspondent.
(Copyright
2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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