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Roberts: Well, it’s a beautiful mountainous area,
breathtaking landscapes. It’s the sort of place
where you could, in winter, have a ski resort. You
get the sense of its being a really good holiday
venue, very much a Middle Eastern Switzerland.
And Kirkuk, we know Kirkuk as an oil city. And as a
city that is torn by ethnic divisions -- Saddam
moved Arabs in and Kurds out.
When we traveled there, we didn’t stop at all -- it
was considered too risky, and it’s very fractured.
As a foreign journalist going to that area, you have
to be really careful. The Kurdish areas are not too
bad, but the Arab areas -- things can go badly wrong
there. And for the Kurds, it’s an important city
because they want to claim it as their main city.
And, of course, it has vast reserves of oil and gas.
And if they’re successful, of course, some of the
revenue from that city and from the oil fields will
go to the central government -- but anything new
that’s discovered, the income from that, will go to
the regional government, and it could make this
particular region, the Kurdish region, extremely
rich.
For example, there’s a gas field there, and rumor
has it that it is so big, it would keep America
supplied for 10 years, for all its gas needs. Now if
that’s exploited properly, there’s an awful lot of
revenue. It’s going to turn Kurdistan into a
Switzerland, if they’re allowed to do that. And, of
course, that region has problems with its neighbors,
and they would not be happy to see a very prosperous
quasi-independent state building there because that
would be for them a danger signal for its own
Kurdish populations. There’s maybe 20 million Kurds
living in Turkey, who have quite a difficult time
with the Turks, who are nervous about Iraqi Kurds
building up an independent state. Iran is not happy
either, and Syria has a Kurdish problem, so the next
few years are going to be extremely interesting.
We will jump into this in a moment. But just as an
aside, the Kurds are really an extraordinary people;
their history is extraordinary because they are also
one of the last people in that region of the world
without a country.
We don’t really know how many Kurds there are,
probably 30 million, maybe 35 million, and it seems
that it’s in the interests of all the states there
that they do not have a country. And I think it’s
crazy because they clearly have their own language,
they have a separate culture from Arab culture and
they want to be one nation. You talk to any Kurd and
they want a Kurdish state, and no one is prepared to
give it to them. And if they don’t get what they’re
after, this could be a huge problem in the future
for the Middle East. It could even rival the
Palestinian problem. But what they haven’t done,
they haven’t resorted to terrorism. And that’s quite
extraordinary, given what’s happened to them. You
know, they lose hundreds of thousands of people,
they’re tortured, all sorts of things. And yet, they
fought -- they’re a warrior people -- but terrorism
is far removed from their interests. They keep well
away from it.
To go back to your journey. Let’s look at Baghdad,
which we all know is a pretty terrifying place. Was
security was a problem for you? What was it like
when you were there?
Well, I personally would not travel in Baghdad
unless I had very, very good security. I think it’s
too dangerous for journalists. Now major news
organizations are pulling out. It was pretty
chilling. We had the ninth floor of the Babylon
Hotel sealed off and anyone coming up to the ninth
floor after say 10, 11 o’clock at night would
probably be shot. We had Kurdish guards with their
guns protecting us. You don’t wander around, you
don’t go out at night -- it’s too risky. It’s a
pretty frightening place. And when you wander
through the hotel … the hotel is an interesting
place because it was once run by Saddam’s secret
police, and clearly a lot of the staff working in
that building probably still have links to Saddam,
and they see you there and they think maybe you’re a
few million dollars on legs, and maybe if they could
lure you out of that hotel, things could happen. So
the feeling is, this is a very, very scary place.
You take a long journey through the desert. You have
to worry about attacks from all sorts of people,
including possible accidental friendly fire attacks
from American helicopters overhead. You end up at a
fortress in the middle of the desert that looks like
something out of a Star Wars episode.
Nugra Salman [an abandoned prison] is a pretty
fearsome place, and you feel the atmosphere when you
go into that building. A lot of people have died and
been held in really inhumane conditions there. When
the Kurds were being held there, being imprisoned
there, they used to have dogs roaming around outside
the prison. And a number of eyewitnesses have said
that when people died inside the prison, they would
drag them outside and just leave them lying around
in the dirt. The dogs would come and consume these
bodies or just drag them away.
There weren’t that many survivors from Nugra. A
group was released, was given amnesty, and it’s from
them we get a picture what life there was like. They
would take small children. For example, nearby
there’s a local registry office where we found
evidence of 2-year-old children being incarcerated
there. There was another entry with a 94-year-old
man incarcerated. And it just defies comprehension,
that Saddam could have been punishing these sorts of
people.
One of the amazing things about this story is that
there are actual records of all of this and that
there are these document shops, as you call them,
filled with all these looted documents -- as if
someone had ransacked the CIA or the FBI, and these
videos and documents were on sale in the streets of
Washington.
Well, after the war, there were organized attempts
to acquire documentation by opposition political
groups because they saw through these documents --
they were a source of power for them -- because if
they could find incriminating evidence against
regime people, then that gives them a sort of power
over these people. But there was also a lot of
private endeavor to collect stacks of documents
because these people saw them also as a potential
source of massive income. And in the film, you see
the Kurds are paying a lot of money to these
centers, even providing, for example, copying
machines. So they find good information, good
documents, and they copy them, hand them across and
they would get really well rewarded.
It’s pretty depressing to think that these
documents, which do record the inner workings of a
most horrendous regime, are just being dissipated,
just being squandered. Because historically it would
provide an incredible insight into what happened
during Saddam’s reign. The comparable ones, of
course, are the Stazi in East Germany, where they
have been competently archived and now are a
valuable resource. And I think that this should have
happened with these particular files, but now, of
course, it’s too out of control for that to happen.
It’s a bit like the looted art treasures.
Yeah, yeah! I mean everyone is just driven by money.
And in this film, the Kurds are looking for bodies,
but basically at the end of the day, they find them
because they are prepared to pay, so there’s nothing
for free there. It’s just a hard, hard existence.
When did you first encounter the Kurds? What drew
you to that part of the world?
I used to work for Reuters, and I resigned in 1973.
I was being trained as a foreign correspondent, and
this was the first story I did. So in 1974, I set
out for the mountains of Kurdistan where there was a
rebellion, a revolt against Baghdad. The revolt, the
rebellion, was supported by the Americans. It was
supported by the shah of Iran. So that was my first
freelance venture, and I was covering it for The
Financial Times and The New York Times, and I went
back and forth a lot. And then early in March 1975,
the whole thing collapsed in ruins, because the CIA
-- Henry Kissinger -- had withdrawn support for the
Kurds abruptly, as had the shah, and they were left
completely destitute.
Hundreds of thousands were forced to go into refugee
camps in neighboring Iran. A lot of people stayed
on, and they were sent into exile in the south, in
the really blistering hot south -- and don’t forget
these are mountain people -- and they had a really,
really terrible time. Eventually, they began to
recover, and some of them were returned up north,
the ones who had been exiled to the south. Then in
1981, I went into the region clandestinely, and I
walked across from Syria into Turkey, illegally, I
may say, and right across northern Iraq with an
enormous convoy and into Iran at the height of the
Khomeini Revolution. In 1985, I did a return journey
from Iran, again hiding from the Iraqi army -- just
to see what had been going on -- and that’s when I
first encountered this story. Because in 1985, high
in the Zagros Mountains, I met this group of Kurds,
a family, several families, who were fleeing -- who
had been hiding for a year or two and now wanted to
escape to Iran. And these were Barzanis, and they
told about what had happened to them and it was the
first I’d ever heard about this story. And then in
1991, I returned toward the end of Desert Storm, the
1991 Gulf War. One of the first places I visited was
the camp, where these people had lost their loved
ones, and it was a pitiful site. These families, the
women, for example, had been completely humiliated
by the Iraqi soldiers, abused in the most grotesque
manner, and they came out onto the street holding
photographs, faces that looked -- it was like a
Greek tragedy -- they had really suffered. And I was
the first Westerner they talked to, and they just
broke down in tears as they told their story. So
I’ve been deeply moved by this story over the years.
Obviously I reported it, but there’s been virtually
no interest in it. The thing about this story, it’s
as important as a Halabja; OK, in Halabja they used
poisonous gas, but this one is really important
because we’re talking -- well, we don’t know exactly
the number, anything between 5,000 and 8,000 people
being murdered, in a campaign, an operation that
probably lasted just a few weeks. Just to get rid of
that many people is a massive undertaking. You’re
not talking just about Saddam Hussein, you’re
talking about a well-honed system, which can take
these people away, spirit them away, and then
execute them. This is not an easy job. A lot of
people were involved in it. I think that that’s a
really important story. It’s the tipping point, it’s
the point when his regime went from -- I mean, it
was quite murderous -- but went from relatively
isolated acts of brutality to mass murder. And it’s
that point when things really changed.
And why wasn’t this reported more widely? Why wasn’t
it picked up after you reported it?
Maybe there’s a form of racism involved here. They
were just Kurds, people didn’t care about them that
much. I don’t understand it -- as a journalist,
you’re taught to spell out a story and then you go
for it. But editors weren’t that interested. It was
exotic, horrible, but somehow well away from their
areas of interest. I can’t explain why this was not
regarded as important at the time. But don’t forget
what Saddam had done. He’d sealed off the north of
Iraq so journalists could not get into that area
easily. I mean, I had to swim the Tigris, for
example, from Syria to Turkey, and then into Iraq to
get there. And it was always a risky venture. I was
the only journalist in there for many years, in the
1980s, and so access was a huge problem. Now, of
course, everything’s changed. They’ve got satellite
TV, they’ve got access to the Internet. And that
will not happen again because of it. But at the
time, I can’t say there was massive interest in the
story.
You have a history with Frontline. You made a film
in the early 1990s.
Well, this film is actually a sequel to a film we
did back in 1992 for Frontline, and it was about the
Anfal. There was an infamous campaign in which
Saddam’s regime killed more than 100,000 men, women
and children in Iraqi Kurdistan. And what happened
in 1992 is that I went with Kanan Makiya, who lives
in Boston, and we found just by chance these secret
archives, security documents, and people were
telling us about this Anfal, this campaign, and we
just stumbled on it. But out of that came a really
moving story about what had really gone on. However,
we could only go to the border of Kurdistan, and the
final scene in this film is when we arrive at this
camp, which has cots and remnants of clothing of
Kurds who had just vanished. And that was the end
scene. And this film, of course, goes beyond that;
we go into Iraq proper, traveling right through the
country at the height of the insurgency to find out
what really went on after that. So I’m quite pleased
that I’ve been able to follow up and really get to
the heart of the story.
At the end of your journey, to pick up on our
geographical stops here, you go to this extremely
remote place, in the middle of a very forbidding
desert -- and remind us how hot it actually was
there -- to a town near the Saudi border.
The temperatures when we were there was 55 degrees
centigrade [131 degrees Fahrenheit], it was really,
really incredibly hot, and we could only seriously
work in the morning and at night. The town of Bussia,
we had never heard of it before. It’s really the
last outpost before the Saudi and Kuwaiti borders.
And it was run by the Mahabharata, and it’s a Sunni
town, and it’s the Jash’am tribe, very close to
Saddam Hussein and very supportive of Saddam
Hussein. There are Shi’iah living in this town, but
70 percent or 80 percent are Sunni. They were quite
hostile; they didn’t want anything to do with us and
would not give us any support at all because they
were clearly implicated. They worried if they gave
us any information that it would be used against
them, and who knows, they might be on trial
themselves. Because it was pretty certain that some
of them knew exactly what was going on, knew where
the graves were, and may have even been involved in
setting up and helping the Mahabharata carry out the
executions. So they didn’t want anything to do with
us. They promised help, they promised all sorts of
help, but nothing ever materialized. They kept well
away from us.
We were living in a local health center in the town.
We had guards on duty all the time, and we were
worried if we stayed there too long that things
would get difficult, and indeed at the end of our
stay, after about 14 to 15 days, insurgents were
spotted in the town monitoring our moves and the
decision came, literally from one moment to the
next: Leave, Out. They’d been seen the day before,
but then we had to leave because otherwise we would
have been attacked. And we just got out. But a
dreadful town -- hot, dirty, sandstorms fairly
frequently. And a town with a terrible secret.
Now you finally uncover that secret. And the end of
your film is very powerful, very frightening. Dr.
Ihsan, the human rights minister from Iraqi
Kurdistan there, with a team, with bulldozers,
finally uncover this grave of Barzanis.
Yeah, that’s a heart-wrenching moment. And I was
very impressed by him because it wasn’t a question
of just talking about this, it was a question of
getting onto his knees and digging and finding these
people and pulling their bones and remains out of
the ground. And he was deeply moved by it because he
felt like he had a responsibility to their families
to at least bring an end to their suffering. Because
the families actually believed their loved ones were
still alive. It’s extraordinary, but they really
thought they would still come back. He knew that
they were dead, but he wanted to bring the final
evidence so that they could begin their lives again,
so that they could end their grief, and they could
just start up a proper existence and deal with what
went on before. It was very moving, but it was also,
I think, politically revealing because right at the
end of the film he says that there’s just no way
that the Kurds could live with the Sunnis -- Arabs
-- it’s just not possible. It became for me
blindingly clear that that relationship is not
something that can be healed because the Sunni will
not and do not want to recognize what has been done
by Saddam’s regime. They want that to be forgotten.
And reconciliation, in my opinion, can only happen,
and Iraq can only exist as a single country, once
these problems are dealt with, once people
acknowledge what has gone on. If they don’t, Iraq in
my opinion will simply break up. There’s just no
way.
Some of what was uncovered in Bussia in these graves
will now, I assume, become part of the evidence in
the trial against Saddam Hussein.
Dr. Ihsan found 500 bodies. We’re talking thousands
more bodies. And clearly they want to go down again
and get as many bodies as they possibly can. And on
that journey down there, we went to a farm a few
hundred miles away from the desert locations, and we
found one grave -- it was a massive grave, 1,000
meters by 50 meters. And we found these graves on
the farm owned by Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid,
aka Chemical Ali.
This had evidently happened in 1988, and there must
have been thousands of bodies, we just dug the
surface and found the bodies of two children. Now
that has to be properly excavated. The Kurds want to
bring the bodies they found there back to the north.
It’s a massive job, hugely expensive. But how do you
deal with the grief, how do you feel about the
people who’ve orchestrated this, who’ve organized
this? And I just think that the depths of feeling
are such that these two communities will not be
reconciled for a long, long time. The majority of
the Kurds want independence, and that’s something I
can really understand. I mean, to be joined into a
state that has inflicted so much punishment and so
much suffering on you, it doesn’t make sense.
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