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ZOWER
CHUM, on the Iran-Iraq Border - With a
Kalashnikov rifle slung over one shoulder, Kadhum
Mahmoud took a few brisk steps on the snow-packed
earth and crossed from Iraq into Iran.
The mountain trail snaked through clusters of
denuded pomegranate trees and fields of land mines
to a hamlet of mud homes clinging to a hillside. The
Iranian guards had left their concrete watchtower
for lunch. Mr. Mahmoud, a wiry Kurdish border guard
dressed in American desert fatigues, said it was
near this valley that he recently arrested a man
headed into Iran with 60 pieces of antiquities -
masks, plates and stone or clay busts of women,
among other things.
"The local newspapers all wrote about it," he said,
with more than a hint of pride.
So goes life these days along the 2,268 miles of
border that separate Iraq from its six neighbors.
Newly minted guards are arresting smugglers with
camels, cows, cars, computers, cartons of
cigarettes, even boats along the southern waterways.
In 2004, the border police seized 13,039 sheep, most
of them being taken illegally across the western
desert to Syria, where Iraqi sheep are reputed to be
"the tastiest in the region," said Maj. Gen. Hussein
Mustafa Abdul-Kareem, the head of Iraq's border
police.
The interim Iraqi government is struggling to deal
with this sharp rise in smuggling two years after
the American-led invasion left the borders wide
open, even as it grapples with the border's more
heralded problem: the movement of money and fighters
that is helping to sustain the guerrilla war. The
list of items seized by the border police last year
reads like a catalog of the riches of the region -
3,350 pieces of antiquities, 2,200 tons of oil and
fuel products and 23 tons of minerals, not to
mention 112 cows and buffalo.
But the back-and-forth flow along the forgotten
margins of Iraq also reflects a sense of renewed
life in the post-Saddam Hussein era. There have been
days, for example, when thousands of Shiite pilgrims
- some from as far away as the arid highlands of
Afghanistan - have streamed in from Iran to worship
at the holy shrines of the south, forbidden under
the old government.
"Some come with their children, with their
families," General Abdul-Kareem said. "Some even
come here looking for work."
Here in the jagged Suren Mountains of the north,
Kurdish militiamen like Mr. Mahmoud, who fought for
15 years against Mr. Hussein's forces, are being
employed to hunt down smugglers and infiltrators.
Mr. Mahmoud commands 34 men in the village of
Tuwella. Working in two shifts of five days each,
they sleep in bunk beds in a cramped room with a
single television set.
"The Kurds in these villages go back and forth
across the border all the time to do business," said
Mr. Mahmoud, 33. "We look for people trying to
smuggle weapons or hashish. Three times we've caught
people with antiquities."
To the west, along the flat, barren expanse of the
376-mile Syrian border, the Interior Ministry has
deployed an Iraqi battalion called the Desert Wolves
to help keep watch. The security situation "with the
neighboring countries and on the borders is more or
less at a standstill right now, and we have to work
on that as soon as possible," Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
the Shiite candidate for prime minister, said in an
interview. "The majority of the issues affecting us
comes from the borders."
The border police force has grown to 22,000 members
since the invasion, but the numbers are still far
short of what they should be to provide effective
security, General Abdul-Kareem said. Ninety border
police stations are open, with another 59 being
built. Ideally, the country would have many more
than that, with at least 180 posts just along the
905-mile Iranian border, by far the country's
longest, he said.
To track infiltrators and smugglers, each station
needs to be outfitted with vehicles, communications
devices and night-vision equipment, the general
added.
Kurdish and American officials are especially wary
of jihadists crossing from Iran into this verdant
valley, because this area was once the base for
Ansar al-Islam, a militant group of mostly Kurdish
guerrillas that was routed during the invasion.
Ansar cells have sought refuge in Iranian towns
right across the border, and Kurdish soldiers
detained an Ansar fighter just a few months ago on
the road to the nearby provincial capital of
Sulaimaniya, said Anwar Hajji Osman, the regional
security director.
"The truth is they're dangerous," he said, "but we
have good people, we have smart people, and we take
our job at the border very seriously."
Mr. Mahmoud said he and his fellow Kurdish guards
recently caught a thick-bearded Pakistani man trying
to cross into Iraq carrying nothing but a Koran and
a white funeral shroud.
"That showed he was ready to die," Mr. Mahmoud said.
"We sent him to our security office, then they
brought him back here, and we sent him back to
Iran."
The three major American detention centers in Iraq
are holding a total of 325 foreign prisoners, said
Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the
detention system. The number has steadily risen
since September, when the system had 133. Colonel
Johnson said the prisoners were from 16 countries,
but he declined to specify which ones.
The flood of Shiite pilgrims into Iraq has made it
much harder to figure out who is coming into the
country, General Abdul-Kareem said. In February, the
time of the Shiite holy festival of Ashura, the
Iraqi border forces caught 1,541 people entering the
country illegally, mostly from across the Iranian
border. That was the most of any month since the
invasion, the general said.
Outside of foreign fighters, the surge in drug
trafficking has Iraqi officials most concerned. Last
year, government statistics show, the border police
seized 323 pounds of drugs, mostly hashish and opium
coming from Iran. Drug trafficking was rarely a
problem under Mr. Hussein because the government
executed smugglers.
The drugs are generally being carried by traffickers
from Iran to other Arab countries, General
Abdul-Kareem said. But as with any country that
serves as a conduit for drugs, he said, there is a
growing concern that addiction will soon take root
in Iraq.
From the border post in Tuwella, Mr. Mahmoud can
watch every vehicle that rumbles past on a twisting
dirt road running up to the official crossing with
Iran. There, Iranian soldiers in green uniforms
stand guard by a wide gate flanked by concertina
wire. Mr. Mahmoud said he and his men made a
thorough search of every truck coming and going, and
wrote down information on everyone who crossed the
border. American soldiers occasionally stop in at
the Tuwella post for several days at a time.
Mr. Mahmoud invited a reporter and photographer
along on a patrol. A half-dozen Kurdish border
guards in a red pickup truck and sport utility
vehicle drove up a narrow muddy track above Tuwella,
then trudged for 20 minutes to the invisible
boundary with Iran at Zower. Fresh snow and a deep
silence draped the valley and surrounding peaks; a
man chopped up a tree for firewood next to a rushing
stream.
"These Iranian Kurds sometimes come over for work,"
Mr. Mahmoud said. "Their villages are like relatives
of Tuwella."
The scene is far different in the wastelands of
western Iraq, where American marines regularly
patrol the border with Syria. Lt. Gen. John F.
Sattler, the top Marine commander in Iraq, said the
Interior Ministry had in recent weeks assigned 450
Iraqi soldiers from the Desert Wolves, a
Jordanian-trained unit, to help with patrols.
American and Iraqi forces have tightened up on
border security, he said, but some arms and foreign
fighters are still making their way from Syria, and
smuggling operations along old trading routes
continue.
"I'd have to be Pollyannaish to say it's stopped
altogether, but we've made it extremely hard and
risky for them," General Sattler said.
General Abdul-Kareem, the head of border security,
said that in February his forces seized five cars
full of insurgents who had laid siege for an hour to
a police station in the west. The leader of the
group, a Syrian, was killed in the battle. Several
Saudis were among the attackers, the general said.
"During Saddam's time, the borders were very tightly
controlled," he said. "But we have a history of
thousands of years of law, dating back to
Hammurabi's Code, and we will establish order
again."
www.nytimes.com
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