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ARBIL,
Iraq Jan 19 (IPS) - My journey back to Iraq began,
as most trips to the north of the country do, at the
airport in Diyarbakkir, the largest Kurdish majority
city in Turkey.
>From there it's a four-hour taxi ride to the
border, provided you don't get stopped by the
Turkish army, whose war with Kurdish separatists was
reignited last year when the rebels called off their
five-year ceasefire and resumed attacks in Turkish
cities..
On the plane from Istanbul, I had met a 45-year-old
Kurd named Khass. A civil engineer living in London,
he had left his home in Sulaiymania in northern Iraq
to study in Britain in 1978, the year Saddam Hussein
came to power.
”I didn't return home for more than twenty years,”
he told me, ”because as soon as I finished school
Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. If I had returned home
I would have had to fight in a war I didn't believe
in..”
He married a British woman and brought up two
children. Now he was returning to Kurdistan to work
for an American company called U.I. building a
hospital in the city of his birth.
We hailed a taxi together and traveled uneventfully
towards Turkey's Habur border crossing, arriving at
2pm. Traffic was light. A month ago, the Turkish
lorry drivers who bring non-perishable goods and
refined petrol into Iraqi Kurdistan went on strike.
As tensions in Iraq have increased, the truckers
have become easy targets for the armed resistance.
More than 80 have been killed; some of them were
beheaded.
But on the Iraqi side of the border there was little
indication that I was entering a war-zone, and very
little sign that I was entering Iraq. A signpost on
the side of the road read 'Welcome to Iraqi
Kurdistan'. The green, white, and red pan-national
flag of the Kurds flew overhead, a yellow sun at its
centre.
In the customs office, pictures of Kurdish leaders
Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani were displayed
prominently. As we rested, the Kurdish border guards
served us tea and even offered us a ride to the
northern Iraqi city Zakho.
There some of the problems of Kurdistan began to
show themselves. Because of violence in the northern
city Mosul, it was no longer advisable for me to
take a direct route from Zakho to the Kurdistan
regional capital, Arbil. A circuitous route through
the country's northern mountains was required, and
because of the Turkish truckers strike, the black
market price of petrol in Iraq has skyrocketed. The
cost of a taxi had risen considerably as a result.
Luckily, an elderly Turkomen arrived in Zakho and I
was able, again, to share a taxi. His name was Adil
and he had fled Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War when
former U.S. president George Bush Sr. had urged the
Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein -- and
then withdrawn U.S. support when Saddam Hussein
began massacring his opponents.
After three years in Ankara, the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees had settled him in Vancouver
in Canada where he moved with his family.
Improbably, he said he was returning to his native
Kirkuk on advice from his Canadian doctor, who had
advised him to move to a warmer climate to ease the
pain of his aching joints.
”Surely there must have been warmer places that
aren't so dangerous?” I asked incredulously,
mentioning that many observers fear bloodshed in the
multi-ethnic, oil-rich city if Kurds sweep to power
in elections slated for the end of this month.
”Kirkuk is fine,” he told me. ”I have my brother
there and two of my cousins and they are still
working and their children are still going to
school. Maybe the Kurds will make some problems
there during the elections, but anyway no one will
bother me. No one would harm an 80-year-old man.”
At 9pm I finally arrived in Arbil. It was rainy,
cold and dark. Electricity is available in Arbil for
only four hours a day. I moved into a cheap hotel,
where I'll be living with another independent
journalist.
The next morning, I woke up and made my first trip
to the Asayeesh, Kurdish for the state security
police. After some back and forth a heavy man with a
thick moustache gave me a purple sheet of paper
granting me permission to work for two weeks in
sections of northern Iraq controlled by the
Kurdistan Democratic Party. If I travel to
Suleymania or Hallabja where the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan is in control, I will need to register
with their state security police.
”Welcome to Kurdistan,” the police officer said,
handing me the paper.
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