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ZAKHO,
Kurdistan-Iraq, Jan. 25 - Musa Jamail leaned against
his mud-brick home and drew a pocketknife from his
baggy pants to re-enact how he sliced the heads off
his 20 chickens about a week ago, when Kurdish
authorities paid a visit to his tiny village outside
Zakho, near the Turkish border.
"They told everybody to slaughter their chickens,"
he said.
Urging villagers in the border areas to cull their
poultry was one tactic Kurdish authorities adopted
to try to prevent bird flu from spreading south from
Turkey, after an outbreak was reported there in
December.
They also outlawed the sale of live chickens in many
places and banned the import of poultry raised or
processed in Turkey. Vehicles crossing the border
are now sprayed with disinfectant in case they have
traces of bird feces, while passengers and drivers
are checked for symptoms.
Yet given the close commercial ties to Turkey and
the prevalence of chickens in the villages, where
eggs are a crucial source of food and income, public
health experts had warned it was only a matter of
time before the disease spread.
[Iraqi authorities said this week that preliminary
tests showed that a 15-year-old Kurdish girl who
died last week was a victim of bird flu, and that at
least a dozen other people were suspected of having
contracted the flu, the deadly A(H5N1) virus.]
Even those leading efforts to prevent an outbreak
conceded that some major factors were out of their
hands, particularly migratory birds, which are
thought to have brought the flu from the Far East.
"The major concern we have is flying birds," said
Hamid Ali, the chief of the Kurdish border station
at Zakho. "They are out of our control."
While health services are in poor shape or
nonexistent in most of Iraq, those in the Kurdish
area, which has enjoyed semiautonomous status for
almost 15 years, react reasonably well to the sort
of threat posed by bird flu. "Everybody is busy with
this disease," Mr. Ali said.
But even so, villagers like Mr. Jamail were asked to
slaughter chickens with their own hands, potentially
exposing them to the virus.
And at the border crossing, the new safeguards did
not always work. On this day, at least, the spray
machines used to disinfect vehicles were all broken,
forcing officials to come up with a rudimentary
surrogate: sending cars and trucks splashing through
puddles of water laced with disinfectant.
Cheap and easy to raise and prepare, chicken and
other poultry have long been an important staple
among Kurds, whose region spreads into Turkey, Iran
and Syria.
In the cities, roast chicken and chicken tikka, tiny
pieces of meat cooked over flame on skewers, are
favored restaurant dishes. In the villages, Kurds
who raise large families on paltry incomes keep
chickens for eggs that can feed hungry children or
can be sold for a crucial income.
While villagers said they understood and largely
agreed with the new restrictions, it was creating a
major hardship.
One of Mr. Jamail's neighbors, Salam Mirza, a
38-year-old father of 12, said a flock of 100
chickens would generate about $6 a day in eggs for
the market. "Some families' incomes depend on
selling eggs," he said. Mr. Mirza said he
slaughtered 34 of his chickens last week after
officials came by his village, Bachika, a few miles
west of Zakho, in the shadow of snow-capped
mountains.
Another neighbor, Amer Ramadan, a 68-year-old father
of nine, had about 50 chickens wandering about his
small patch of land on a bare rolling foothill. But
he culled them all.
"It was very good food for us, but now we've lost
it," Mr. Ramadan said. "When our children would come
back from school and were hungry, their mother would
cook eggs for them." Instead, he says, the children
will get yogurt from sheep's milk.
Kurds have been discouraged from traveling to and
from Turkey unless absolutely necessary, and fewer
than half the normal numbers are now crossing the
border each week, Mr. Ali said. The 1,500 or so
people who cross into Iraq each day are briefly
examined by a doctor who asks them whether they have
any symptoms and where in Turkey they have come
from.
Some Kurds have done more than the government has
asked. At the popular Sadir restaurant in Dohuk,
southeast of Zakho, managers removed chicken from
the menu even though they were still allowed to buy
and cook frozen chicken.
"We don't want anybody to get sick at our
restaurant," said one of the managers, Subhi Tatar.
The changes have really hurt business, he said,
adding, "The majority of people ask for chicken, but
when we say we don't have it, they go."
Yerevan Adham contributed reporting from Zakho
and Dohuk for this article.
www.nytimes.com
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