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Battle
lost: Bekas wins his freedom, Kurdistan doesn't
This final article in a three-part series traces the
escape to Canada of Bekas Garmiany, a Kurdish
soldier who endured torture in Iraq and Iran. Most
of the incidents related by Garmiany cannot be
corroborated. In many cases, the witnesses are dead.
The writer spoke to experts on the Middle East and
Amnesty International who said the accounts are
consistent with others they have heard.
By Eric Fleischauer
DAILY Staff Writer
eric@decaturdaily.com · 340-2435
His body battered by torture and battle, his mind
twisted by rage and desolation, Bekas Garmiany knew
he was of no use to his Kurdish people. He needed
medical help, and in Iraq he was a fugitive.
In 1987, carrying a knapsack and nightmares of death
and pain, he headed for Iran, although Kurds have
never been much more popular in Iran than in Iraq.
Since the fall of Iraq to coalition troops, tensions
within Iran have approached political chaos. The
signing of the Iraq constitution earlier this year
triggered massive Kurdish demonstrations in several
of Iran's Kurdish cities. Many fear that, as has
happened in the past, the demonstrations will lead
to mass imprisonment and executions.
New accusation
Twenty-year-old Bekas, knowing he would not be
welcomed in Iran as a Kurd, called himself "Rhamadan."
It turned out it was not his Kurdish ethnicity that
caused him problems. Rather, he was accused of being
a communist dissident.
Back to jail, this time in Karaj, Iran.
Again he was tortured, although without Saddam's
creativity. His torture sessions — a regimented
half-hour every day — consisted almost entirely of
beatings.
Bekas had no information of interest to his captors,
but he knew they would consider their accusations
verified if he spoke anything other than Kurdish or
Arabic. That was a problem because Bekas — who now
translates on a contract basis for the Canadian
government — was also fluent in Persian and Turkish.
"This guy was coming in (to the interrogation cell)
speaking either Persian or Turkish to me and I would
tell him I don't understand. If I had said, 'Yes, I
do speak Persian,' I would have been convicted right
there of being a spy for the communists," said Bekas,
who is now 37.
In addition to the 30 minutes of daily interrogation
and torture, guards let Bekas out of his cell three
times a day for 10 minutes.
The cell was about 5 feet square with a 40-foot-high
ceiling.
"I carved the date, a broken heart and a rose into
the mildew that grew on the prison walls," Bekas
recalls. He passed his days singing and reciting
poetry. He also developed an odd dependence on the
daily torture, a dependence he still does not
understand.
"If they forget to come and get me, I would miss
it," Bekas remembered. "I got used to it. I would
sing, bang on the walls, kick the doors, so they
would come and get me."
Twelve months and 45 days after he entered the Iran
prison, guards took Bekas and other inmates to a
point near the Pakistan border by bus. They chained
all the prisoners together before leading them on a
short walk into Pakistan — deportation Iranian style
— but Bekas was helpless.
'I am crippled completely '
"I couldn't walk," said Bekas, who still wears a leg
brace and walks only with crutches. "I told the
guys, 'You handcuffed me, but I can't walk. As you
see, I am crippled completely.' They said, 'OK,
we're not going to handcuff you, but we're going to
hold your hand.' "
And thus did the once-proud warrior limp into
Pakistan. The Iranian guards unchained the prisoners
and instructed them to head for the lights of Quetta
prison.
The torture was over, but not the fear. Six months
after the prisoners arrived at Quetta, they were
loaded on a train that guards said was headed for
the United Nations headquarters in Islamabad. One
guard, however, congratulated the Iraqi prisoners on
the fact they were returning home.
"We panicked. 'What do you mean we are going home?
We go home, we are dead.' This one guy on the
train," Bekas recalled, "a reporter from Iraq, said
Saddam would blow us up as soon as we got in Iraq.
There was communists (on the train) and a lot of PUK
and (Kurdistan Democratic Party) members, some
survivors from Halabja."
The group began writing dozens of letters, pressing
them into the hands of strangers at each train
station. The letters begged the recipients to
contact the United Nations. When they were herded
into a jail in Karachi, Pakistan, before the last
leg of the trip, they took the only action they
could to delay their journey to Iraq.
"We kicked all the Pakistanis out of the cell. There
was a bucket where you would get your own drinking
water. It had a metal handle. We took the handles
out and locked the door from the inside," Bekas
said.
The gamble paid off. A week later, clutching
U.N.-issued identification cards, they were released
in Islamabad.
Bekas' linguistic skills benefited him during his
three years in Pakistan. He assisted the United
Nations. He also gave language instruction to
foreigners in Afghanistan. He made friends with U.S.
and Canadian officials.
Bekas remembers his interview at the Canadian
embassy, an interview designed to determine whether
he was suitable for Canadian citizenship. The
question that made him sure he was destined to
remain in Pakistan was on the subject of death.
"They asked, 'How many people have you killed?'
Well, when you are in the army and you are shooting
and you are in the first line, obviously you kill or
get killed. I said, 'Intentionally, nobody.' "
There is an odd truth to his response, a military
blind that masks much violence and death.
"I don't just intentionally go and shoot people," he
explains now, having mulled over the question for
more than a decade.
"I'm not a murderer; I'm a soldier at war. A soldier
in war doesn't look a person in the eye to shoot. I
am afraid that today — despite all my experience in
the army, being a sniper, being a sergeant, being
undercover — I don't think I have the guts to look a
person in the eye and shoot them. It's not easy,"
Bekas said.
It is a truth that is not extinguished by the
bloodiest battle.
"You're sitting alongside a whole bunch of other
people," Bekas rationalizes. "Who says it was your
bullet that hit the man that fell and died?"
And then, in the Canadian embassy in Pakistan, came
surprise and joy.
"He put his pen down and said, 'Welcome to Canada,'
" Bekas remembers. "He shook my hand and gave me a
leather jacket with a Canadian flag on it."
Bekas loves his adopted home, just as he loves his
wife, his two stepchildren and three natural
children. But neither years nor miles erase the
memory of Kurdistan from its warriors.
'We are not Iraqis'
This is an important time for his homeland. Bekas
corresponds with family and friends in battle-torn
Iraq on a daily basis. What he hears frightens him.
The Kurds, he believes, will yet again be on the
brink of independence before falling into
oppression.
Plans for a unitary Iraqi state — with minimal
autonomy for the largest groups, Kurds, Shiites and
Sunnis — would be a mistake for his people, he said.
"We are not Iraqis. We are not Arabs or Turks or
Persians. We are Kurds. We are a distinct nation of
people, existing for thousands of years. ... We are
victims of genocide. We are over 30 million people
without a nation."
His sentiment is shared by most Kurds, according to
Sabah Salih, a Kurd from Irbil, Iraq, who is now a
professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.
"Kurdistan really has no connection, either
culturally or geographically, to the rest of Iraq,"
Salih said. "Why can't they, like everyone else, be
given the basic right to determine for themselves
what kind of future they want, with Iraq or
without?"
"Iraq is already a fractured country," Salih
continued. "It is better to work with this
fragmentation rather than pretend it does not exist.
... I think America would be wise to take that into
account."
Although still a member of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, Bekas is angry at the group's passivity
since the United States entered Iraq.
"Why did so many of us die through the years only to
give power to the U.S. or U.K.? So they could decide
our fate all over again?
"Our sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, daughters,
sons all died for the cause. You can't find one
Kurdish family who didn't lose at least one member
of their family for this cause," Bekas said.
He said many modern Kurds, especially the younger
generation, do not recognize the familiar pattern of
stronger nations depending on Kurds in battle, then
abandoning them when their goals are accomplished.
"This is why the older Peshmarga (Kurdish warriors)
believe we should be separate from Iraq. This is why
we feel betrayed by our leaders who stepped down and
accepted a deal to be part of Iraq," Bekas said.
Salih said autonomy — including control of Kirkuk
and a constitution that guarantees separation of
church and state — is so important to Kurds that
they would resort to military action before acceding
to a central government that impairs that autonomy.
"The U.S. seems to be taking the Kurds for granted,"
Salih said. "In the past, Kurds have always caved in
to U.S. demands."
He does not believe they will back down this time.
Kurds see similarities between themselves and
Israelis, another ethnic group surrounded by Arab
enemies. But Bekas said the similarities end there.
"Israel is not even half the size of the Kurdish
population and they are one of the most powerful
nations in the world. Because the U.S. and U.K. said
so," Bekas said. "We barely have recognition.
"Kuwait, barely the size of New York, has its own
country. The U.S. and the coalition were willing to
tear apart the whole Middle East to keep Kuwaitis
together."
Then Bekas asks the question on the lips of many
Kurds, a question sharp with bitterness and
confusion.
"Why don't we count?"
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