'THE MIDDLE EASTERN WAR NOBODY KNOWS', BY SMITH HEMPSTONE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000100540001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 9, 1974
• Content Type: REPORT

25X1 C1 Ob
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100540001-6
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100540001-6
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This is the first in a series of six articles on
the war between the Iraqi government and its
2.5 million Kurdish minority ? "The War No.
body Knows."
By Smith llempstone
Star-News Staff Writer
I-IAJ OMRAN. Iraoi Kurdistan ? "You are-
welcome," said Idriss Barzani. The uncertain,
light of the flickering kerosene lantern illumi-
nated his red-and-white turban and his finely-
honed features. "You are very welcome in-
deed."
Outside the sandbagged bunker, one sensed;
rather than saw the groups of armed men
hunkered down in the moonlight, one eye on
the Rumi?(Roman, hence any Westerner) who
had made his way to Idriss' tent, the other on
the Big Dipper and the Bear, from which an,
Iraqi air raid might come.
AND INDEED, the 30-year-old third son and
chief of staff of the leader of the Kurdish rebel
movement had, cause to welcome an Ameri-
can newsman to his camp high in the moun-
tains of northern Iraq. Since serious fighting
erupted here in mid-April, no American cOrre-
.spondent had made his way to this mountain
fastness east of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Yet here, in this stark and beautiful land of
towering peaks capped by eternal snows, a
Middle Eastern war without witnesses is being
waged by the ,Arab Baathist government of
Iraq against its Kurdish minority of 2.5 million
people.
As we sat cross-legged on a Persian carpet,
sipping tiny glasses of heavily-sugared tea,
messengers from the front 'came and went on.
sandaled feet and a field telephone rang insist-
ently in the back of the bunker. Idriss hitched
his Belgian-made .45-caliber automatic pistol
into a more comfortable position and gave me
a brief accounting of the situation.
It was, he said, a war pitting his turbanned,.
Kurdish tribesmen and their bolt-action Brno
rifles against the most modern Russian T-60
tanks, of a few ancient and villages, leaving his
Dushka 12.7mm. anti-air- people destitute but defiant.
craft machine guns against This war, Idriss said, his
the most sophisticated words punctuated by the
supersonic Soviet Tupolev- dull thud of Iraqi bombs
22 bombers, of curved falling westward down the
Kurdish daggers wielded si- valley toward Chouman,
lently in the night and roll- was the fifth and most seri-
ing fireballs of Iraqi na- ous Kurdish war since 1961.
palm that consunctip.glifld 'pierce, kaa, he saring-.9
tion of a black mustache, be
only one outcome to this
conflict: autonomy for his
people within a democratic.
Iraq or their extinction.
I knew it was not the first
time the Kurds had faced
such a prospect in the 4,000
years since the founding of
the Kingdom of Gutium.
They, who like their cousins
the Iranians are Moslems
but not Semites, harried
Xemophon's 10,000, battled
the Romans, Parthians and
Mongols, and made war
against half a hundred king-
doms, governments and em-
pires.
But despite, a deserved
reputation for ferocity, the
Kutels have seldom left.
their land of swift-flowing
mountain streams, ancient
oak trees and red-legged
partridges to harass their
neighbors. This war, like
earlier ones, is in defense of
the land and integrity of a
people denied their own na-
tion. The Kurds here in
Iraq, led by 71-year-old
Mulla Mustapha Barzani,
are locked in a make-or-
break struggle with their
Arab rulers; if they fail, the
Kurdish nationalist move-
ment, like that of their
Armenian neighbors, will
disappear into history.
TIIE KURDS, who were
promised their own nation
by the never-implemented
1920 Treaty of Sevres, are
.divided among five nations.
Kurdish nationalists say
there are 5 million in Tur-
key, 4 million in Iran, 2.5
million here in Iraq, 600,000
in Syria and 150,000 in the?
Soviet Union. The govern-
ments concerned say those
figures are high.
The Turks deny the very
existence of the Kurds. "We
have only mountain Turks
who have forgotten their
native tongue," they say
And they have done their
best to make this so. In the
last century and the first ,
third of the present one,
there were countless rebel-
lions in eastern Turkey that
resulted in the massacre
and deportation of hundreds
of$sii.
ing for their survival
against their Arab over-
lords, the Turks have closed
their border against the
rebels.
The Kurds have fared
better in Iran. There was a
brief reign of terror there
atter the collapse in 1946 of
the Kardish Mahabad
republic set up in northern
Iran by the departing Rus-
sians. The republic's lead-
ers were hanged, their sup-
porters .mprisoned and the
wearing of the Kurdish na-
tional ccstume and the use
of the language were ban-
ned.
IRAN'S SHAH Moham-
med Rea Pahlavi has re-
moved these proscriptions
and distributed many of his
persona estates to his
Kurdish subjects. The Ira-
nians have left open their
border for trade and a
small flow of arms and am-
munition to the rebellious
Iraqi Ku -ds, more than 60,-
000 of whom (mostly women
and chil iren) have taken
-refuge in Iran.
The Sah's help is not
wholly cisinterested: Iran
and Iraq dispute the sover-
eignty of the waterway call-
ed the Shatt al-Arab, some
90,000 Iranians were expell-
Bd from Iraq a couple of
years ag (at which time
:here w 1,re artillery ex-
.thanges )etween Iraqi and
Iranian ' forces), Iraqi
agents continue to infiltrate
Iran to snuggle arms to dis-
sident E aluchi tribesmen
and Ira liar' troops are
fighting Iraqi-backed Dho-
fari rebels in the Persian
Gulf emirate of Oman. .
The Societ Union, al-
though it gave sanctuary to
Barzani nd 500 of his fol-
lowers in 1947 after the col-
lapse or the Mahabad
republic, long ago snuffed
out the spark of nationalism
among itr own Kurds. Mos-
cow, which seeks in Iraq a
base from which to extend
its influence over the oil-
rich Pers an Gulf, is pour-
ing sophisticated aircraft
and tanks into Iraq at a rate
of more than $1 billion
annually. Soviet air force
officers c )ordinate the air
attacks on undefended
Kurdish villages, their air-
men reportedly fly an occa-
sional oombat mission
thernselv rs, and Russian
advisors serve with the
?Iiajii. zn',,atjeast down to
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g.
the brigade ldWIJI VVU rut citoV t
Just as Barzani's Kurdish
rebels would have no
chance of success without
Iranian help, Iraq could not
hope for victory against the
Kurds without this massive
flow of Russian military.,
hardware. Indeed, the
Sunni Baathists, the Kurds
say, are so unpopular with
their more numerous Shiite
subjects ? the theological
distinction is roughly com-
parable to that between
Protestants and Catholics
? that the government in
Baghdad almost certainly
would fall of its own repres-
sive weight were it not
propped up by Russia.
SYRIA, TOO, is a
Baathist state (the Beath
party is a pan-Arabist, non-
Communist movement that
rejects Egyptian Arab
socialism) and the 600,000
Kurds who live there do so;
as a depressed and distrust-
ed minority.
There is a Kurdish saying
that "the Kurds have no
friends." But Israel, like
Iran, has an obvious inter-
est in and sympathy for the
Iraqi Kurds, if only because
the five Kurdish revolts
since 1961 have effectively
tied down the bulk of Iraq's
air force, its 7.,000 tanks and
six of its eight infantry divi-
sions. There have been
reputable reports of Israeli
aid to the Kurds, but both,
sides deny these and they
cannot be confirmed.
Whatever and from whom
the flow of arms and
money, it is not enough to
give the Kurds the sophisti-
cated anti-tank and anti-air-
craft weapons necessary to
launch and sustain the
major offensive into the oil
fields of the lowlands that is
necessary to give them
victory.
On the other hand, the
Iraqis, despite their vast su-
periority in weapons and
equipment, particularly
tanks and aircraft (of which
the Kurds have neither),
Jack either the will or the
ability to fight their way
into the mountainous heart-
land of Kurdistan.
In the first five weeks
after fighting broke out on
March 11, heavy spring
rains kept the conflict at a
low level. But with the
bombing on April 24 of the
undefended Kurdish town of
Qara Dizeh, in which 130
fighting has grown ;i;
ally.
THE KURDS appear to
have had the best of it. Ma-
s'oud Barzani, the national-
ist leader's 28-year-old fourth
son, who is head of Kurdish
military intelligence, esti-
mates that nearly 2,000
Iraqis have been killed (the
bodies of more than 600,
abandoned on the battlefield,
have been recovered by the
Kurds, he says), 3,000
wounded and 100 captured,
In addition, he reports that
more than 700 members of
the Iraqi army, 500 of them
officers and most of them
Kurds, have defected to the
rebels, as have 315 Kurdish
mercenaries employed by
Baghdad.
? Despite the small numbe? r
and inadequate caliber of
their weapons, the Kurds
claim to have destroyed
more than 100 Iraqi tanks
and armored cars, and to
have knocked out nearly 300
other vehicles. They say
they have downed 23 air-
planes and damaged 16
others.
This has been accom-
plished, the Kurds say, at a
cost of fewer than 200 of
their own men, called Pesh
Merge (literally, "those
who face death") killed and
400 wounded. But nearly 400
civilians have been killed
and 700 wounded in the
more than 2,000 around-the-
clock Iraqi air raids that
have destroyed nearly 500
undefended villages and
hamlets.
THESE STATISTICS may
not be entirely accurate; if
only because firm informa-
tion is difficult to get here.
At any rate, they are all one
has to go on, since it was
not until late July, with the
casualties mounting and the
reserves mobilized, that the
Iraqi government admitted
there was anything like a
war going on in Kurdistan.
On the basis of visits to four
fronts, it would seem that
the Kurdish claims are at
least within the ballpark.
The Kurdish Pesh Merga
are possibly the world's fin-
est mountain troops. Armed
with a bizarre assortment
of Sniders, Martinis, Brnos,
Lee-Enfields and Russian
Kalashvikov automatic
rifles captured from the
Iraqis, they scamper like
to peak. At the front, they
live on yoghurt, grey, ;
doughy bread and heavily-
sugared tea. There are only
walking wounded: The:
others die before they can
be brought down from the
mountains.
The Pesh Merga are
superbly led by men some
of whorn have been -with
Barzani for nearly 30 years.
Many of the division and
battalion commanders have
served in one particular
mountain range, every foot
of Which they know, for
eight, 10 or 12 years.
While the Kurds hold
three static fronts vital to
them in which no retreat is
allowed ? Barzan, Bilak
and Shaqlawah ? the con-
flict in most areas is essen-
tially a guerrilla one. When
government forces, heavily
supported by tanks and air-
craft, move up a valley, the
Kurds inflict such losses as
they can upon them, then
pull back into the moun-
ss the flanks
and rear of the invaders.
The Iraqis, remembering a:
-disaster in the1 1966 war
when a 1,200-
force was cu
massacred to th
tend to be estr
tious. Usually,
ing or havestin
and destroying
under their co
pull back to th
the plains.
an Iraqi
off and
last man,
mely cau-
f ter burn-
the crops
y villages
trot, they
safety of
The Kurdish territory
under 24-hour r bel control
is limited to th mountain-
ous country in a riangle be-
tween the Turld h and Per-
sian frontiers, a area 200
miles in length d no more
than 60 deep. B t there are
Kurdish partis ns far be-
hind the Iraqi lines and
when night falls, the territo-
ry under Baghd d's control
shrinks to that lighted by
the searchlight of their
garrisons.
The Kurds, Who after
dark move and raid virtual-
TURKEY
U.S.S.R.
Lake Urmis
IRAQ
11PIAGHDAD
REBEL HELD
0 50 100 150 200 rl TRADITIONAL
)iZQITM2Tg La KURDISTAN
Since this map was drawn the Iraqis have
broken through to take Qal'a Dizeh, split-
ting the rebel-held area in two. Ruwandiz
and Rania also have fallen in battles that
the Kurds say cost the Iraqis more ban
1,000 dead. Iran has reinforced her troops in
the Iraqi frontier.
pprovea ror Feiease 1 iUiUi. - -
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'Isr at will over much of Iraq,
have 60,000 Pesh Merga in
the field, organized in 40
battalions, and 40,000 tribal
irregulars. They claim that
if they had the arms to give
them, they could easily
raise another 100,000 fight-
ing men. Arrayed against
them are more than 70,000
Iraqi troops supported by
150 jet airplanes and 1300
tanks.
The Kurds are extremely
sensitive to suggestions that
MuIla Mustapha Barzani
does not have the total sup-
port of the entire Kurdish
people. The Baghdad gov-
ernment has managed to
find 60 Kurds to serve in a
puppet advisory council and
has enlisted 6,000 Kurdish
mercenaries, drawn mainly
from the Kurdish Commu-
nist Party and from tribes
traditionally opposed to Bar-
zani. Obeiclullah Barzani ("a
traitor and a mercenary
who will be treated as such,"
according to his brother
Mas'oud), the general's
eldest son, is a minister
without portfolio in the
Baathist government.
HAVING SAID THIS,
however, it must be added
that Barzani does seem to
have the firm support of the
great majority of the
Kurds, both tribal and edu-
cated, who regard him with
a reverence bordering on
awe. Perhaps the greatest
tribute to the legitimacy of
his leadership is the $2 mil-
lion price the Baathists re-
portedly have put on his
head.
Barzani agreed to a truce
in March 1970 when the
Baathists granted the
principle of Kurdish autono-
my. Kurdistan was to have
its own schools, courts,
local administration, inter-
nal security forces and a
share of the Iraqi oil reve-
nues commensurate with its
percentage of the popula-
tion.
But after the signing in
1972 of Iraq's 20-year treaty
of friendship and coopera-
tion with the Soviet Union,
the Baathists, given access
to the most sophisticated
Russian weapons, saw no
reason to negotiate Kurdish
autonomy. Instead, they
unilaterally promulgated a
take-it-or-leave-it decree
Release 1999/09/02 ?
that afforded the Kurds no
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GiA-RnP7A-n1 I cuAnnninnstionni-R
of dawn. There was rnuch "are? on our side.- We will
'hawking and spitting fight and, if necessary, we
among the bodyguards
clustered outside Idriss'
tent.
"And what," I asked him,
"will you do if you do not
get American help?"
He shrugged his narrow
shoulders.
Gut] tind the mutuataluz
share in the oil revenues
and amounted, the Kurds
'claim, to no more than
decentralization, with an
appointive Kurdish council
rather than elected one.
When Barzani rejected the
offer, fighting broke out.
And this year, for the first
time, he has been joined in
the mountains by a great
mass of urban intellectual
Kurds who in the past had
been troubled by the con-
servative nature of his lead-
ership. ?
? If one is to judge by the
fury of their air raids on
undefended villages and
their treatment of Kurdish
civilians who fall into their
hands, the Iraqis are deter-
mined this time to seek a
"final solution" to their
Kurdish problem (the
Kurds have been trying
without success to press
charges of genocide against
Baghdad at the United Na-
tions). For their part, the
Kurds say there is no
? chance of negotiations with
a repressive Baathist re-
gime that already, and more
than once, has demonstrated
its bad faith.
There is, Idriss Barzani
told me, only one question:
Will an Arab military dicta-
torship, supported by the
full military might of the
Soviet Union, crush the
Kurds? Or will the Kurds
somewhere find the anti-
tank and anti-aircraft guns
that will enable them to
come down out of the moun-
tains and inflict a telling de-
feat on the Iraqis?
"WE CAN BEAT the
Iraqis," Idriss said, pound-
ing his small fist into the
? palm of his hand for empha-
sis. "we always have. But
we cannot defeat the Rus-
sians without American
help."
"Kissinger must see,"
Idriss continued, "that the
Russian presence in Iraq
has as its objective Soviet
dominance of the Persian
Gulf and its oil. Is this real-
ly in America's interest?
And, if it is not, why not
give us the little bit of help
that we need to defeat the
Baathists and expel the
Russians from our coun-
try?"
It was very late, the stars
were fading and in the east
were the first pale streaks
?
will die. But we will never
give in, for this would mear
the end of us as a people."
The Iraqi artillery could
be heard grumbling faintly
far away to the west. There
would, it seemed, be some
dying this day in the Gorge
of All Rog.
Chapter 2
By Smith Hempstone
Star-News Staff Writer
DERBND, Iraqi Kurdistan ?
Getting there, they say, is halt the
fun. If war-wracked and remote
Iraqi Kurdistan is your destination,
it can also demand the cunning of a
Machiavelli, the patience of a Job
and a healthy set of spinal. discs.
Which perhaps is one reason so few
Ainerican reporters have covered
the five Kurdish rebellions since
1961.
It began for me with a telephone
call on a Monday morning late in
June. Would I, my friend asked, be
willing to talk to a delegation of
Iraqi Kurds? Knowing that fierce
fighting had broken out once again
between the Kurds, an Indo-Aryan
Moslem people, and their Arab
overlords ? and on a far more seri-
ous level than ever before --I said I
'would see them the next morning.
When I arrived at work the next
day, the three Kurds were waiting
for me: Abdul (Semi) Rahman, a
former Communist, until March the
Iraqi minister for Northern (Le.,
Kurdish) Affairs and a member of
the Kurdish Democratic Party's
, seven-man ruling politburo:
' Mohammed Dizayee, a former Iraqi
ambassador (to Czechoslovakia
and, later, Canada) and, until fight-
ing broke out in March, minister of
public works and housing in the
Baghdad government, and M. S.
Dosky, another former Iraqi diplo-
mat
All were dressed in well-cut busi-
ness suits and, except for the bris-
tling mustaches without which any
Kurd feels naked, they bore little
resemblance to the bandoleered
mountaineers who for 4,000 years
defended their mountain homeland
in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran and the-
Soviet Union, (In 260 A.D., a Kurd-
ish army in the service of the Sassa-
nid Persians defeated the Boman
emperor Valerian; he was flayed
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and his stuffed App 'e
as a war trophy in the imperial pal-
ace at Seleucia Ctesiphon.)
? TIIE PURPOSE of their visit,
Abdul Rahman said, was to try to
This is the second in a series
Of six articles On the war_be-
tween the Iraqi government and
its 2.5 million Kurdish minority
--The War Nobody Knows."
rally American support for the 2.5
million Iraqi Kurds against whom
the Baathist government had
launched a genocidal war, bombing
undefended villages, burning crops
and driving 60,000 refugees across
the Iranian border.
" For reasons I can only partially
Analyze, I decided on the spur of the
moment that I would, if it were
possible, make my way to Kurdis-
tan to see what was happening with
my own eyes.
That, Dosky said, could easily be'
arranged. While the Turkish fron-
tier was closed, I had only to get
myself to Tehran, and the Kurdish
Democratic Party would see to it
.that I reached the liberated zone of
Iraqi Kurdistan. But although I had
never been to Iran, I knew that I
couldn't reach Kurdistan without
the knowledge and consent of
SAVAK, the ubiquitous Iranian se-
cret police. Dosky suggested that
SAVAK would pose no problem.
I obtained a multiple-entry visa at
the Iranian embassy and let it be'
known that my ultimate destination
was Iraqi Kurdistan where, in ,the
eyes of the Baghdad government, I
would be an illegal :Ind highly un-
wanted visitor. Since relations be-
tween Iran and Iraq, rivals for
hegemony in the Shatt al-Arab and
the Persian Gulf, are characterized
by a thinly veiled hostility punctuat-
ed by gunfire, it seemed unlikely,
that the Iranians would be unduly
distressed by my travel plans.
"Where you go after you leave my
country," the Iranian official said
with just a suggestion of a smile
playing on his lip's, "is no concern of
mine. By the way, I would not be
surprised if someone called on you
at your hotel in Tehran."
I made discreet inquiries at the
Central Intelligence Agency as to
whether a request on my part for an
informal 'briefing on the Kurdish
situation would be Well received.
Because of Watergate and other
publicity ? or perhaps because CIA
was embarrassed by its lack of
knowledge on the situation ? the re-
sponse was negative.
From the State Department, I re-
ceived a rather sketchy low-level
briefing, two invaluable large-scale
British maps of northern Iraq and
the distinct feeling that they wished
I eaSeeedr9i9a14942eincilAtROR79 -13 100649049 (4154QQ4) t &With"
,
United States, while it sympathizes you; if you can, make hiri your
friend. In this affair, he ca help
you ? or hurt you ? a great eal." ?
4' The day before my scheduled'
'departure, I ran into CIA Director
William Colby at a Blair Honse re-
tirement party for Adm. Tho as H.
Moorer, who was stepping d wn as
chairman of the Joint Chiefs o1 Staff.
"I'm on my way to Iraqi urdis-
tan," I said. "What can yoi tell.
me?"
on humanitarian grounds with the
plight of the Kurds, is intent on,
warming up its rather frosty rela-
tions with the Baathist regime in
Baghdad. That, too, is the position
of the other major powers with
interests in the area ? the Soviet
Union, Britain and France ? and
the reason is oil: Iraq exports about
$9 billion worth annually, and much
of it goes to the West.
DOSKY AND I met again in a
Washington restaurant where he
"gave me letters of introduction to
Kurdish agent's in London, Paris
and Tehran, and to other Kurdish
officials at the rebel headquarters
in the mountains of Iraq.
I started getting my inoculations
? typhoid, gamma globulin, chol-
era, smallpox and polio ? began a
mustache that I hoped would enable
me to pass more easily as a Circas-
sian among tribes of doubtful loyal-
ty to the rebel cause, and checked
out from the Library of Congress its
seven books on Kurdistan. Both of
the reporters who had gotten into
Kurdistan during the fighting in the
1960s and had written books about it
had entered on horseback. So I
started to assemble camping gear.
With my departure set for July 29,
by then only four days away, I
began to get a little concerned
about my lack of current informa-
tion on the state of the rebellion. I
was, after all, entrusting my life to
two men I had met only once, and a
third I had seen but twice.
Since it was pretty clear that I
was not going to receive' much help
from the United States government,
I decided to take a chance and in-
crease the number of people who
knew of my plans. I got in touch
with a friend at the British embassy
and told him of my destination and
my problem.
"You ought to call on M in London
on your way out," he said. "He is
extremely knowledgeable."
That did not help much, so I re-
vealed my plan to another friend,
the ambassador of an Asian nation
that has no reason to love the
Iraqis. My Asian friend, who is no
stranger to the murky world of
intelligence operations, offered
what help he could and gave me this
advice:
"Unless they are essential to your
mission, do not make contact with
the Kurdish, representatives in Lon-
don and Paris. Both cities are
swarming with AMN-AAM (Iraqi
intelligence) agents. The Kurds are
bound to be under surveillance and
the Iraqis are a ruthless lot who will
stop at nothing. Secondly, gain the
confidence of your SAVAK contact,
"NOT MUCH," Colby relied,.
"but keep your head down. It' get-
ting pretty mean out there." hat I
already knew,
When we met in London, M t rned
out to be a bouncy little manj with'
ruddy cheeks and bright blue yes,
who shook his tightly furled u brel-
la at passing taxis as if urging on a
company of Assyrian levies ag inst
some mountain fortress, as in eed
he had in times past. Over a 1 nch4
of cold salmon and Sancerre a the
Belfry Club, he had these reasur-
ing words for me:
"You'll have a jolly good time.
But remember to break bread and
eat salt with a Kurd just as soo as
you can: Then he can't kill you. at
only with your right hand and d 'n't
point the soles of your feet tow rd
anyone. I shouldn't worry about the
Iraqis too much. They're dam ed
bad shots or I wouldn't be ?al ve
today, and no good at all in he
mountains. About the only way t ey
might hit you is if they're aimin at
the chap next to you. Of cour e,
with napalm and all that, one can e
unlucky. And don't fall into th ir
hands if you can avoid it; they st'll
impale people. Funny you want to
go there."
In Paris as in London, I avoid ;d
the Kurdish representative. But I,
did call on a French friend w o
knows the Middle East.
"I'm going to Iraqi Kurdistan," I
said over a kir on the BouleVard S.
Germaine.
"Then you are a fool," he replied,
echoing a view expressed by tithe
friends familiar with my plan
"C'est- I 'ennui du Watergate?"
"Perhaps."
It was as good a reason as any t
explain why an editor, fat and 45,
thought he could find happiness
dodging MIGs in the Zagros
Mountains in the company of men
but a step removed from brigandage.
My flight from Paris arrived in
Tehran, the Iranian capital, late on
the sweltering night of July 3. At 8
a.m. the next morning, there was a
light tap on my hotel door. I opened
it to find a very small well-dressed
Iranian, clean-shaven and wearing
an enormous embossed ring on the
little finger of his right hand.
"I am Ceti. Fariborz," he an-
? CPYRGHT
CPYRGHT
'nounced. Qvgg FigAgeleaseilinaggialaiclikrgPK379-01
are not ready to receive you. Per-
haps next week." He hung up.
I gave up and telephoned Gen.
Fariborz. And that is how I came tet
view the wonders of Isfahan and
Shiraz, the oil refinery at Abadan,
the computerized supertanker at
Khark Island in the Persian Gulf,
the lonely tomb of Cyrus the Great
near Persepolis and the duck-haunt-
ed waters of the Caspian Sea, all in
the company of a genial and intelli-
gent SAVAK officer.
one?",
I said that r was and invited him
"You are going to Kurdistan?" he ,
inquired.
I said that I hoped to.
"Good. You have been wise to be
honest with us. So many reporters .
waste a great deal of time?theirs
and ours?playing little games with
us. But you cannot go immediately
to Kurdistan."
"And why not?
ILE SHRUGGED his well-tailored
shoulders.
"It seems that Gen. Mae. Mus-
tapha Barzani (the 7I-year-old Kur-
dish nationalist leader) is not pre-
pared to receive you at this time. He
is away in the mountains. You can
cross in a week or 10 days. Mean-
while, why not see something of
Iran? We will, of course, send some-
one to accompany you." ?
I knew that the worst thing I
could do was to lose my temper. So I
tried to explain quietly how impor-
tant it was for me to get to Kurdis-
tan immediately, that no staff
correspondent of an American
newspaper had managed to get to
Kurdistan since the intensification
of the fighting and that I wanted to
be the first.
"But I have explained: It is not in
our hands. Barzani is not yet ready
to receive you. Besides, is it so bad
to see something of my country?"
I promised Gen. Fariborz that
I would think about it and let him
know.
"Do that, Mr. Hempstone," he
said evenly. "It is the best course."
I called on a friend at the Ameri-
can Embassy for advice.
"You've got to play it their way,"
he said. "There may be. a hundred
reasons?some good, some bad?
why SAVAK or the Kurds don't
want you to cross over now. But
you're in their hands and you won't
make it without their help. So why
not relax and enjoy it? This is, after
all, the Middle East."
- It seemed at least possible, how-
ever, that if SAVAK would not help
me unless I cooperated, at least
they might not obstruct me if I tried
to enter Kurdistan solely under
Kurdish auspices.
I called the number of the Kurd-
ish agent in Tehran, Shaffiq Quaz-
zaz. The line sounded as if someone
were frying bacon on it. There were
a number of suspicious clicks and
bleeps, but no answer. On the eighth
attempt, some six hours later, a
man answered the phone.
"Mr. Quazzaz?" I inquired.
"No He is away. This is a
friend."
? 'My name is Hempstone and I
come from Mr. Dosky in Washing-
ton."
BACK IN TEHRAN a week later,
I finally caught up with the elusive
Mr. Quazzaz in a sleazy hotel off
Pahlavi Avenue. I told him I expect-
ed to cross the frontier in the
company of my new-found Iranians
friend in three days' time.
' "We will have someone there to
meet you," he promised, giving me
a letter of introduction to Idriss
Barzani, the nationalist leader's
third son and chief-of-staff. As I was
leaving Quazzaz's hotel, a SAVAK
underling I had seen once in Gen.
Fariborz's company popped out
from behind a potted palm, smiled
and wished me a good morning. It
was indeed the Middle East.
From Rizaiyeh on the shores of
Lake Urmia, near where the Turk-
ish, Iraqi and Iranian frontiers
meet, we drove in a southwesterly
.direction over bone-jarring inoun-
tain roads to the Iranian town of
Khaneh, where we picked up a
Kurdish liaison officer wearing the
baggy-seated brown trousers gath-
ered at the ankle that are the uni-
form of the Pesh Merga (the 60,000-
man Kurdish partisan force) and
the red and white turban of the
Barzani tribe.
The Landrover groaned up over
the Shinak Pass, past the Iranian
fortifications and police post and
rushed down the dirt mountain road
to Haj Omran, the Kurdish cross-
road where I said goodbye to my
Iranian escorts. They eyed the '
armed Kurds uneasily and did not
linger.
Ahmed Hadji, a genial middle-
aged Kurd with the bright blue
eyes, bristling mustache and car-
riage of a British sergeant-major,
led me into a low stone building,
leaned his Kalashnikov AK-47 Rus-
sian assault rifle against the wall
and ordered metal chairs, a table,
cool water, English Craven A ciga-
rettes and tea brought for me.
Idriss, he said, was off directing
the fighting. But he would receive
me later, perhaps that very
evening. Meanwhile, when I had fin-
ished my tea, he, Ahmed Hadji,
would take Me to a place where I
could rest.
I said I was ready and indeed I
was: Having once known the agony
lei4SiNagg44401QAT?ght
horseback, I had taken the precau-
tion of applying tincture of benzoin,
a skin-toughener, to my backside,
for a couple of weeks, the net effect
of which had been to make my
trousers stick to my skin.
I strode purposefully into the
courtyard toward a group of tether--
ed horses. But Ahmed Hadji waved
me away with a depreciating ges-
ture, threw his AK-47 on the front
seat and indicated I was to get into
an ancient yellow automobile with a
Persian carpet on its floor, mud
smeared on its roof by way of
camouflage and its headlights dim-
med by blue paint.
And that is how I came to enter
Kurdistan in a Mercedes-Benz rath-
er than on a horse It had when all
was said and done, taken some
, doing. -- set-
Chapter 3
By. Smith 1/Impstone
, :iStsr?News Sttg.t Writer
QA.t.A DIZEII, Iraqi KurdiStaii
t/at'a vizen is Kurdistan's Guernica.
But no Kurdish Picasso has emerg-
ed to make of this raVaged town Oat
once sheltered 25,000 people a Sym-
bol of man's inhumanity to man,
Like the Basque village of 7,000
people devastated by Nazi-Germa-
ny's Condor Legion in the Spanish
Civil War, Qal'a Dizeh had little
military Importance. It nestles in
the wheat fields and melon patches
of the valley of the Lesser Zab -
River, 13 miles from the Kanirash
Pass that leads into Iran, and an
equal distance from tile hirge -lake
formed by the Iraqi-held Dukan
Darn. .
It is true that the headquarters of
Itasso Mir IChan's Kawe Division is
here, thaLa certain amount of rebel
Military .traffic goes through the
town; that there are Pesh Merga
(Kurdish soldiers; literally, !'those
who face death") in Qal'a Dizeh..
(Since this dispatch was written,
Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01 t94Auuu1 u0540001-6
yvvei Fut Reiretw
Iraqi arinored column tvith a heavy quent Iraqi aerial tactics ' %id
loss of life.)
But justatflhe Nazi allies of
General Franco bombed Guernica .
primarily because it contained the .
ancient. oak tree' symbolic of the
liberty sof the Basque people, the ?
- Iraqi pilots and the Russian staff
officers who plan their operations
had a particuld' reason ? and one -
- that was political rather than mili-
tary ? . for Wanting, to wipe: Qal!da.
Dizeh off the map.
CPYRGHT
4 001 8
1999/09/02 . CIA-Rp1179-01194A0001005
S?lairn?ya
eYes as notl
have to- the
StrtIgglet.`Ei
tvill win their
Baethists WI
Of there is no middle way."'
Despite the historic enrni-
ty between
non-Semitic
non-Kurds,
forcibly retir
als, have
Barzani. wh
(2al'a Dizeh hanY8 s ormed by an th ar the. pattern of subse- -I'd AT AliOUT'i-P.-3i Ala,: the
J
WHEN THE UNEASY four-year,
armed, truce between the Iraqi
-Arabs and their Kurdish co-
religionists broke down on March 11,
the entire Kurdish faculty and stu-
dent body of the university of Sulal-
maniya, 30 Miles to the southeast Of
here,' tobk, to the hills. They were d-
joined here in Qal'a Dizeh by Kurd=
? ish students and professors from
universities in Baghdad and Kirkuk.
The students and their professors
did not join the partisans of 71-year-
old General Mulla Mustapha Barza-
- ni, the Kurdish nationalist leader.
'But with a staff that included 23
? 'Ph.D.s, 20 Masters and 30 13.A.s, the
..:+100 Kurdish students planned to con-
di tinue their studies in the liberated
d.tone, out of reach of Iraq's hated rul-
-'1,:ing Baath party.
This was something that in all the
- Kurdish people's long struggle to be ,
free never had happened. In the four
. previous Arab-Kurdish wars since
1961; Kurdish intellectuals, many of
Whom had been heavily influenced
d. 1)y Marxism, in the main had stood
! aloof from Barzani, a conservative,
liti:Comniitnist tribal ieader whom
most of them admired but did not
entirely trust.
:But now the Kurdish Democratic
party, the mouthpiece of the urban
KurdiSti' intellectuals, purged. of its .
Communists by Barzaiii (wile is its
? president)- and KpB' secretary-d
d-gen'etaf Habib Mohammed Kassim,
wa"e.ge'lidly behind Barzank That the
Russians since 1972 had been sup-
plying Iraq with modern arms obvi-
ously intended by the Baathists to be
used against 'the Kurds ? made the
decisiOn Of the' intellectuels easier.? .
So'in striking 'Qal'a Dizeh, the seat
of the university-in-exile, the Iraqis
clearly intended to teach the intel-
lectuals a lesson and to drive a
wedge between. the 'DP's urban
members and the Kurdish tribal
fighting men.
ANOTHER POSSIBLE reason for
attacking Qal'a Dizeh, and one
lends credence to, was that
the town was jammed with *
several thousand refdgees.
These were mainly women
and Children from Iraqi-held
lowland areas who were,
making for the Iranian sane4
ttiar on the other side of the
Ramesh Pass.
Fat the first six weeks ,
aftekL the breakdown of the.'
truce on March 11, heavy
spring rains kept all mili-
tary activity, including ,
aerial attacks, at a load
level. No Kurdish villages
were attacked by air during
thit period. The weather
cleared in the third week of
April and Qal'a Dizeh's fate
was sealed.
This is .how it was on the
morning of April 24, 1974,,
just two days short of the
39t1r - anniversary of the
bohtbing of Guernica by the
Nazis, as pieced, together
from eye-witness reports: '
Spring is a time of ecstasy
in Iraqi' Kurdistan, which
has' boiling hot summers
and,- brutally, cold winters.'
With the end of the rains,
Atiril 24 gave a promise of
rebirth and pienitude,,..the
wheat fields tossing In a
Boit spring breeze, the sun
getktle on the wild flowers
and pale green wattle trees
cloaking the banks of the
Lesser lab as it meandered
Its way down from the
k in ou rita int and through the
valley to Dukan Lake.
In the marketplace it' wad:
too earls/ for the peaches,
apricots, plums and grapes,
that are the small luxuries
of this hard and poor land.
But the vendors had put out
clots of wild honey, coarse
salt, piles of yellow spices,
bars of homemade soap and
sides of freshly slaughtered
sheep and goats.
The refugees and the
townspeople, although it
was well past 9 (the
Kurds are notoriously late
risers for Middle /Eastern-
ers), were just finishing
their breakfasts of yoghurt,
rough gray bread and sweet
tea. , Only a few students
were catnapping in the two
university dormitories,
since classes were not due
to start until the following
week.
bombers Came Irt at rdoftbp
level from the west talong
Qal'a Dizeh's main mos. Be-
cause the Kurds are 'very
short of antiaircraft guns,
the town was totally unde-
fended. Because It Was the
first air raid of the war,' tni
alit. trenches, or other shet-
terg had been dug. It %dile, as
? they say, a piece of cake for
the Iraqi pilots. .
?
While the few Pesh Mea
in Qal'a Dizeh fired their
bolt-action Brno rifles at the
jets, the Sukhois dumped
Atheir bombs, scoring a di-
? feet hit on a primary school.,
another on the marketplace
and a near-miss on the uni-
?versity, the concussion Of
which buckled the steel
doors and tore parts of the
roofs off the two university
dormitories, The bombers
wheeled lazily around in the
Sky and came in for a Sec-
ond run, with the rising sun
at their backs, sfraffing the
toWn and the university
? -dormitories with high-
.explosive rockets. It was all
?f`over, survivors say, in 'about
three minutes, -?
-
,
The Iraqi pilots flew ay
to the west to riceive the
congratulations of their
Russian mentors at the Kir-
kuk airbase. And the Kurds
began the sad task of pull-
ing the dead and wounded
from the flattened build-
ings. The toll was 131 killed
and more than 300 wounded,
Arthluding seven university ?
gtudents and one professor.
Most of the remainder of the
casualties were women and
children, since the majority
Of the men were at the front
The raPe of Qal'a DLteh?
provoked a reaction among
the Kurdish intellectuals
who heretofore had been
cool toward Barzani, but it
Must not have been precise-
ly what the Iraqis had in
mind: On the day after the
bombing, the student!: and
their professors voted not to
reopen the university until s
the. war :was won, ? and :
marched off to join the Pesh
Merge. 4
"Qal'a Dizeh," Says Majib.
Yutsif, a senior majoring In
physics at the University Of
"opened' my'
lag else could
nature of this'
her the Kurds
freedom or the-
I exterminate
ti-abs and the -
kurds, a few
neluding two
d Iraqi genet--
one over to
already had
the support o Iraq's 150,000
Assyrian Ch istians and its
50,000 Yezi i "Devil-wor-
shipers." This had broad-
ened and de pened Barza-
-ni's movemelttt from one for
Kurdish auto omy to one for
freedom .and 'emocracy for
all Iraqis.
MEANWI-kILE, there
have been other Qal'a
Dizehs since April 24, al-
though 'none so costly.
Halabja has been partially
flattened, R nia has been
heavily damaged, Zakho is
a burned-ou shell. In all,
the Kurds s y, 80 big vil-
lages and ore than 400
hamlets hay been destroy-
ed or heavily damaged.
Columns of refugees have
been straf fed and crops na-
palmed. Lac Ing other tar-
gets, the Iraqi Migs, Suk-
hois and even Tupolev-22s,
the most advanced Russian
, supersonic lornber, have
' attacked floc ids of sheep and
herds of catt e.
The Iraqi objective, the
Kurds say (a 'td their intelli-
gence is exce lent),.is clear:
to make a wasteland out of
Kurdistan, to terrorize civil-
ians, to turn them against
Barzani's I adership to
threaten the with starva-
tion this wijiter when the
passes from ran are block-
ed with sno and there is
nothing to replace the burn-
ed- crops and the slaughter-
ed animals.
? "If this is
says Idriss
nationalist le
not genocide,"
Barzani, the
ader's son and
chief-of-staff, ?it will do
until a better example
comes along."
But the 1..I deaf ear tonited Nations
has turned
Kurdish chtes of geno-
cide, although the bombing
goes on aro nd the clock, .
night and da.
Since Qal'a -Dizeh, the
Kurds know Isthat to expect
ancl arc a tittle beats s-
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CPYRGHT
Approved
pared. Whole villages have
moved into the caves that
honeycomb these rugged
mountains, an estimated
250,000 people having been
made homeless by the war,
73,000 of whom have fled to
Iran. The peasants carry on
their lives as best they can,.
coming down into the plains
to harvest their crops by the
light of full moons.
THE KURDS simply 416
not have enough antiair-
craft guns to .defend the
civilian population. The few.
Dushka 12.7mm antiair-
craft_ machine guns and -
Hispano Suiza 30mm can-
non that they have must be.,
concentrated to defend
Barzani's headquarters and
that of the KDP, the Haj
Omran-Chouman road that
is Kurdistan's principal life-
line to Iran and the outside
world, and the troops at the
front., And these weapons
are of such small caliber
that, even when they are
emplaced on 9,000-foot
peaks, the Iraqi aircraft can
/ZAP swIthl u Flaw o 2
from high altitudes.
The civilian population's
only -real defenses are dis-
persal, the caves and Slit
trenches, supplemented by
a primitive but ingenious
"early-warning system":
sentries with the sharpest
eyes and the keenest ears.,
are posted on the mountain'
peaks. At the approach of
Iraqi planes, the first sentry
to spot them fires a rifle
...shot, which is repeated by ,
other sentries as the planes
move within their ken. -
"The Kurds have no
friends," a Kurdish saying
goes, and that has been
about the size of it for the
past 4,000 years. Since the
recent series of five wars
began in 1961, only Iran and
possibly some of the Persian
Gulf emirates and Israel
(which isnot unmindful of
the fact that the lairds are
tying down six of Iran's
eight divisions, half of
Baghdad's '2,000 tanks and
most of its air force) have
given Barzani any assistanc
-
ciAlr )P IM:OsliliPift? ?Li 1914FWel rb the Soviet
Union, and that is who we
are fighting. The Russians
send the Baathists advisers,
'-aircraft, tanks, artillery,
boinbs, napalm, even poison
gas, although the Iraqis
ehave_not used this yet. Yet
America will not send us a
single cartridge to help us
1.-defend our homes, not atoll
,;..of bandages to bind the
wounds of our: women and
.-little children:
.'.'.?Go away,' your State
Department says to our
emissaries, 'and die quiet-
ly: this is not our affair.' But
does your President so love
the Russians that he will
allow them to butcher a
small nation that would be
your friend? If this is so,
then we have only God and
our mountains to protect
us."
But neither God nor the
mountains had been atle to
save Qal'a Dizeh any more
? than the Basques' tree of
liberty had been able to
shelter Guernica.
Tomorrow: To the Duken
front
exception of Iranian hu-
trianitarian assistance to the
73,000 Kurdish refugees on
her soil, has been both small
and clandestine.
Because of the huge
amount of Russian .military
? aid to the Baathist govern-
ment in Baghdad, the ab-
sence of any American help
to-the Kurds is a particular-
ly sore point with Idriss
?;Barzani and his father. Says
Idriss:
ASKEEParor Araeri-
acan help as long as 10 years
and to this day we have
had no answer. Ten years is
a long time to wait for an
e answer. The doors of
American embassies are
open_to all other, people of
-'the sworld, but they are
- closed to Kurds: `Go away,'
they say, 'you are Ira,qis and
we cannot help you:
"We can defeat this re:-.
.pressive, anti-American
Iraqi -regime, as we have
always done before. But we
Washington Stariltws
Tuesday, September 3, 1974
a
CPYRGHT
By Smith Hempstone
Star-News Staff Writer
NITRGAII, Iraqi Kurdistan ? In a
post-mictnignt tam, wmle we sipped
tea and squatted cross-legged on
carpets in his sand-bagged tent,
Idriss Barzani, the Kurdish leader's
third son, chief of staff and possible
political heir, gave me leave to pass
to Hasso Mir Khan's Kawe Division
guarding the Dukan front.
To be my personal bodyguard, he
gave me Ahmed Saids from his own
retinue. "This kak's (respected
older brother's) life is your life,"
Idriss told Ahmed, and from the
serious look on Ahmed's face, I
gathered that .the injunction was
something more than rhetoric.
And so it was that we passed
through Haj Omran with Yacub, a
Nestorian Christian whiskey smug-
gler from Kirkuk, at the wheel of
the Jeep, and along the Iranian bor-
der by the rushing waters of the
Lesser Zab, past fields of sunflow-
ers, winnowed. wheat and ri_penin_g
Approved For Rel
CPYRGHT
melons, to Sardasht, then across the
throat-tightening Kanirash Pass
and down into bomb-scarred Qal'a.
Dizeh, a ghost town that once had
25,000 inhabitants and now has
5,000.,
WHILE YACUB went in search
of 'lasso. we sat in his garden and I
questioned Ahmed through Moham-
med Ter, the Erbil secondary school
headmaster who had joined the
Pesh Merga and was my interpret-
er.
Ahmed is 45 years old, stands
about 5'5" and has an outsized leo-
nine head that would be in propor-
tion on a man more than six feet
tall. He looks like the actor
Anthony Quinn, has several missing
teeth and .a number of gold ones of
which he is inordinately proud, and
a deep, gravelly laugh that begins
in the neighborhood of his blue-and-
white cummerbund and erupts from
his barrel chest like a mountain
freshet.
P2S
(he concedes with a chuckle) of 21.
Between them, they have given him
, seven sons and six daughters. He
hoped to have 21 children before he
is through ? a program that he al-
leges has the enthusiastic support of
the two Mrs. Ahmeds ? but he
admits that he may have to take a
third young wife in his declining
years to achieve this objective.
Ahmed, a Barzani tribesman, was
with the General at the lVfahabad
uprising as a boy of 16. He has more
than compensated for his personal
population explosion by killing be-
tween 60 and 70 men. These are the
ones, he says, "whose faces he has
seen." He has wounded many
others, and some of these may have
died of their wounds. He bears the
white crease of a bullet on his chest.
and has another wound in his left
leg. He has a fund of stories mostly
involving war, tribal feuds and his
years in Iraqi jails and exile. He is
a very funny and gentle man.
He has a wife of 35, and another Basso Mir Khan, who fought be-
I ciA_RnP7q_n1 IclaAnnni nnsannni-R
CPYRGHT
side tsarzanlitRIAMACklit9r9Rele4Pitni PegR(192.18?Eit WrRYRZ3tililagft32911F4g2Pki, -sL1 g;ven, all tart
and followed the General on his epic
52-day march across Iran, Iraq and
I Turkey, ending with an 11-year
exile in the Soviet Union, came
swaggering in about dusk.
pelt, a cloud of dust pluming
out behind us. But there
were no Migs (it was a
Friday, and perhaps the
Iraqi pilots_ were enjoying
tne Moslem sabbath) and in
due course we reached the,
village of Khoshaw, a mean.
place set in dusty wattle
trees. (Khoshaw now is in
Iraqi hands). There I left
my pack after Ahmed had
told the headman in gory
detail what would happen to
him if so much as a thread
of it were damages, or a
sock stolen from it.
Ahmed's reputation as a
killer of men obviously had
preceded him, and the
headman swore that he
? would guard the pack as if it
were his wife's honor, a turn
of phrase that provoked a
remark' from Ahmed that
set the entire village into
laughter. After a draught
of cool water from the vil-
lage spring, we boarded two
?balems and, hugging the
east shore of the reservoir,
wound our way under rocky
, cliffs to a small, flinty cove
where we debarked. The
face of the cliff was nearly
sheer and its height about
300 feet, which for a 95-
year-old Sunday doubles
player proved to be a little
too much. I was well winded
. by the time we reached the
top? where carpets had been
spread for us by refugees
living in caves, and tea,
served in three-ounce
glasses and sickly sweet,
was offered us.
Mercifully, mules were
produced for Yussif Hamad
and myself, raw-boned,
spindly-shanked beasts
with mouths like iron. I
started to mount from the
left, in the American fash-
ion, but Ahmed tut-tutted
me around to the other side
and, there being no stirrups,
gave me a leg up. The
Kurds, being good Mos-
lems, regard the left as un-
clean, knot their turbans on
the right, step off on the
right foot and mount their
horses and mules from the
right. Christian I might be,
he muttered, but as Idriss"
honored guest I might as
well learn proper behavior.
As we rode off into the
foothills, Ahmed, perhaps to
make up for his sternness on
matters theological,
scampered into a vineyard
and returned to hand me a
huge bunch of grapes, some
and delicioils.
THE PA up the 4,000-
foot mount in, over which
all of the f urth battalion's
food, water nd ammunition
must pass in the backs of
men or th se of the four
mules assig ed to it, is nar-
row,- steep nd precipitous.
The angle, as so steep that,
without sti rups, one could
only cling d sperately to the
pommel an apply as much
knee and thigh pressure as a
wide freig t saddle would
permit. It t ok more than an
hour to reac the top, where
perhaps th world's finest
mountain tr ops, the Kurd-
ish Pesh erga (literally,
"those wh face death")
stared do a like gaunt
wolves from the crags at the
hated Iraqi
While we waited in the
battalion C for the men on
foot to cat h up with us,
Yussif told e his problems.
The Iraqis at times had
massed as many as 175
tanks against him. He had
no anti-tan guns, but had
managed to knock out four
with mines He had one
anti-aircraft gun, an obso."
lete" Dushk 12.7mm, ma-
chine gun that had succeed-
ed in dam ging one Iraqi
Mig. The ase plate was
cracked an the firing pin
broken on hi most powerful
artillery pi ce, a 122mm
mortar. Ne t to that, the
biggest gun he had was an
82.nm Russian mortar, and
of these he ad only one.
, That he ha to defend two .
mountain r nges 12 miles
apart with 50 Pesh Merge
and 500 trib 1 irregulars did
not concern im unduly. The
Iraqis wer cowards, he
said, and, regrettably,
never attac ed him. But it
was frustra ing not to have
the weapons to go down into
the plains nd destroy the
Dukan gars son. "Send me
just one ant -tank gun from
America, jut one. Kak, and
_ I will be your slave," Yussif
asserted.
A SHORT MAN with a bristling
mustache, a twinkle in his eye and a
? chest like a pouter pigeon, Hasso
commands 2,000 Pesh Merga and
1,500 tribal irregulars. But 150 of the
latter lack rifles. Hasso,
* who has been in charge of
this sector for eight years, is '
faced with the 12,000 troops
of the Iraqi III Division that
guard the Dukan Dam.
(Since this dispatch was
written, an Iraqi armored
column has broken through
and taken Qal'a Dizeh with
a heavy loss of life.)
We dined by the light of a
kerosene lantern in Hasso's,
garden. There was roast
chicken, bits of fried lamb,
mounds of rice, bowls of
tomato gravy, rice wrapped
in grape leaves, dishes of
finely ground salad cooled
by ice cut from the moun-
tains in winter, and a foot-
high stack of rough, grey
bread in thin loaves the size
Of dinner plates, all washed
down with mastow, a mix-
ture of water and yoghurt
? made from sheep's milk.
We washed our hands
when we had eaten our fill
from the common bowls and
sat cross-legged on carpets
Under the stars while Hasso
waved his guards to the
table to deal with the re-
mains of the feast.
Hasso, who says he is 43
but looks older, said he had
not enjoyed his stay in the
' Soviet Union. The Kurds
had been -conscripted into
the Red Army for a year,
then put to work and not al-,
lowed to move about freely.
Hasso had learned Russian
and read Tolstoi, Chekov
and Turgenev; also Solz-
henitsyn. Solzhenitsyn,
Hasso said, had written
truly of the nature of
Stalin's dictatorship. The
Russians, he added, were
not a hospitable people.
Yes, Hasso said, he knew I
had Idriss' firman to see
whom and what I wished.
The Dukan front I would
find interesting. If he had
one big gun and the orders
to destroy the dam, he could
flood Baghdad. He would
send me within the hour to
Yussif Hamad's fourth bat-
IT WAS BETTER to
travel at night because of
the Iraqi Migs and Sukhois.
They were bombing and
strafing all the time. As an
escort, he would give me his
own nephew, Nuri Sulei-
man, and five red-turban-
ned Barzani fighting men.
We lurched off into the
night in a wheezing land
Rover with no superstruc-
ture, the top halves of its
headlights painted blue to
reduce their visibility from
the air. After an hour over a
rough track, we reached the
banks of the Lesser Zab,
where it makes a great bend
to flow southward to form,
behind the Iraqi-held Dukan
Dam, a lake 20 miles long
and perhaps four wide.
In a few minutes, a 15-foot
wooden boat called a balem,
its outboard motor cut,
glided silently out of the
shadows and into the muddy
shore and we climbed
aboard for the half-mile trip
?to the other bank.
On the other bank another
Landrover, in even more
atrocious condition than the
first, was waiting for us,
with Nuri Suleiman at the
wheel.
It was not until well past
midnight that we reached
,Mirgah, a substantial vil-
lage of stone-and-mud
houses through and around
which flowed a number of
streams. The houses were
terraced so that the door of.
one opened out onto the roof
of another. Sentries having
been posted, I unrolled my
sleeping bag and fell quick-
ly asleep on the flat roof of
Mirgah's principal home.
The next morning, Yussif
Hamad, the fourth battalion
commander, who is even
shorter and burlier - than
Hasso, joined us at a break-
fast of boiled bits of goat,
onions, bread and watered
yoghurt. It was a five-hour
march to the base of /the
mountain overlooking the
?Dukan Dam, so, he said,
perhaps it would be best to
take a chance and cross the
plain by Land Rover and
approach the mountain by
balem. I thought I detected
a look of apprehension on
Ahmed's face, but he re-
mained silent.
WE DROVE for more
than an hour over a treeless
We lunch
chickpea so
of the occ
Iraqi co
through ti
Baghdad b
eat smuggl
tive of the
move at wi
darkness t
war, smug
d on bread and
p and, in honor
sion, a box of
kies carried
e lines from
some whimsi-
ie (it is indica-
urds' ability to
1 under cover of
at, despite the
ling to and from
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CPYRGHT
Iraq accountsARMIMIMPta F ("I &hi/1PN rileMPalWri"C I AstiPTATli 1 UMW?
9YPaggil gys ago).
of liberated Kurdistan's
total trade).
In the afternoon, I watch-
ed through Yussif's binocu-
lars while the 82mm shelled
the Iraqi garrison. There
are no such luxuries as field '
telephones, and range cor-
rections were shouted down '
to the gun crew 100 yards
below us. Every round hit
within the fort's walls, send-
ing two Russian T-54 tanks
parked outside it into action.
Since a mule can carry '
only four rounds of 82mm
ammunition, we fired only
eight rounds and hurried
back down from the crest.
By the time the Iraqi tanks
and guns began returning
our fire, we were safely
napping on the, reverse
slope.
IN THE AFTERNOON,
we walked down the moun-
boats were to meet us. Since
they were not there, those of
us who could swim (which
seemed to include about a
third of the Kurds) stripped
and threw ourselves into the
cooling waters of the lake.
Ahmed stripped to the paja-
ma bottoms that all older
Kurds wear as underwear
and, with a blood-curdling
yell, did a magnificent
belly-flop into the lake.
When an hour had passed
and our boats hd not come,
we hailed a passing balem
that leaked prodigiously.
Leaving half of our retinue
to make their own way
home, we, with two men
bailing constantly, just
made it back to Khoshaw.
There we said goodbye to
Yussif, since it was our plan
to go all the way to the Qal'a
Dizeh shore by boat, thus
avoiding the finery and
rip.
We left at dark. An hour,
later, the wind through the
gorge began to howl and we
had begun to ship water
over the bow. The boatman
said he could not make the
turn into the gorge without
swamping us, so he was
putting into shore. We
waded ashore in the pitch
dark somewhere between
the gorge and Mirgah and
sat down in a melon patch to
decide what to do.
Finally, we stumbled five
miles in the dark until we
set to barking the big, crop-
eared sheep dogs of
Mamandana, a /village
where we rested on the roof
of the headman's house
while his women, saucily
unveiled and dressed in
bright colors as all Kurdish
women are, brought us cool
melon fritarl eggs yoghurt
and tea. (Mamandana al
Eventually, another Land
Rover turned up, the wind
died down and we found a
' boatman willing to take us
over to the Qal'a Dizeh shore
where Yacub had been
waiting for us in the Jeep. It
was 1:30 a.m. before we
staggered into Hasso Mir
Khan's compound and fell
alseep on his lawn.
Next, I decided, I would
ask Idriss' leave to pass to
his cousin, Sheikh Abdullah,
who commanded the Ager
("Fire") Division defend-
ing Barzan, the heart of the.
Kurdish rebellion.
That meant a chance for
Ahmed to see his two eldest
sons, serving in the Pesh
Merga there, and to visit the
? home he had not seen since
March. And so it was
agreed.
TOMORROW: Barzan:
Thc Ll n'
CPYRGHT
By Smith Hempstone
Star-News Staff Writer
BARZAN, Iraqi Kurdistan ? My
motives tor wanting to visit 13arzan
were several: It seemed important
that I see the homeland of the war-
like tribe that was the heart of the
Kurdish rebellion. There was
always the chance that there I
might run across General Mulla
Mustapha Barzani, the 7I-year-old
rebel leader. I wanted to meet his
second son, Luqman, who had
taken over the day-to-day leader-
ship of the Barzani tribe. And there
was always the possibility that
there might be heavy fighting
there.
Although Barzan was only a
day's drive to the north over one of
Kurdistan's three roads, this trip,
like all others, had to be personally
approved by Idriss Barzani, the
general's third son and chief of
staff. Like other meetings with
Idriss, who at 30 looks like a young-
er edition of King Hussein of Jor-
dan, this one took place late at
night at a different location from
the previous one.
On three of the four counts,
Idriss was discouraging: He did
not know where his father was, but
he was not in Barzan; Luqman was
six days' mule-ride from Barzan,
somewhere near the Turkish fron-
tier; there had been no reports of
heavy fighting in Barzan. But if I
wished to go, I could do so, and he
would give me a letter of introduc-
tion to Sheikh Abdullah, his first
cousin and the commander of the
Ager ("Fire") Division guarding
the western approaches to Barzan.
And so it was that the-four of us
? Syamand, my interpreter,
,Yacub, the Assyrian Christian
driver of the Jeep, Ahmed Saids,
my Barzan bodyguard, and I ? left
at 8:30 the following morning for
Barzan. The red-turbanned Ahmed
Saids was in high spirits: The visit
to Barzan would give him his first
chance since the fighting began in
March to see his home in Spindar
and his two sons there, Hassan and
Khalil.
WE PASSED by way of Galala
over George's Road, built by a sin-
gle Assyrian Christian bulldozer
operator in the lull between the
1970 fighting and the present war,
to give the Kurds an access route
to Barzan not exposed to direct fire
from the Iraqi fortress of Spilak.
As the crow flies, the diatance
from Chouman to Barzan is no
more than 80 miles. But the road
crosses such rugged mountain
country that the distance is at least
twice that far, and the trip cannot
be done in less than seven hours.
George's Road had been heavily
bombed and it was pock-marked
with bomb craters. Burned-out
Landrovers and Jeeps, their bodies
twisted into surrealistic shapes by
Iraqi rockets, stood like warning
mileposts along its verges. The
mountains through which George's
Road twisted and turned were
blackened with napalm. The Chris-
tian villages tucked into their folds,
once famous for their wine-making,
were abandoned and silent, their
inhabitants having taken shelter
from the air raids in the caves of
the Barodosti Mountains.
Yacub drove as fast as the road's
bad condition would permit, a
plume of red dust billowing out be-
hind the Jeep, while the rest of us
kept an eye out for MIGs.
We made good time and by one
o'clock had reached Spindar,
Ahmed's yillage just inside the
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Approved For
marches of Barzan, each ot whose
75 inhabitants was in some way
related to him. Of his immediate
family, only Khalil and Hassan
were still in Spindar, his wives and
his other 11 children having accom-
panied him to Haj Orman where he
was attached to Idriss' personal
retinue.
LIKE MOST Kurdish homes,
Ahmed's single-storied, flat-roofed
house of mud, stone and wattle con-
tained no furniture. So we sat
cross-legged on mattresses brought
to the porch on the shady side of
the building.
Ahmed said that until 1969, when
the Iraqis had managed to seize
Barzan, Spindar had boasted a
great chestnut tree, "the like of
which was unknown throughout all.
Kurdistan, and perhaps the
world," When they had been forced
to evacuate the village, the Iraqis
had poured gasoline on the chest-
nut tree and set it aflame, depriv-
ing the village of an important
source of food during the winter
months.
As we talked on the porch, the
men of the village, ranging in age
from 12 to 70, gathered to hear
Ahmed's news and to view his visi-
tor. Although Kurdish women go
unveiled, they stay out of the way
of strangers, and neither in Spin-
dar nor anywhere else did they
share a meal with us.
Having lunched on a meal of
mastow (watered yoghurt), fruit
and bread, dispatched a teen-aged
nephew to the market for news of
Luqman Barzani's whereabouts
(there was none) and left a bottle
of beer in the village spring to cool
against our return, we left for the
Valley of Barzan, following
George's Road in a generally
northwesterly direction along the
ridgelines, skirting sheer drops
into g?es hundreds of feet below.
There were, Aluted said, many
great caves in the mountains of
Barzan, where one could walk for
hours without reaching the end.
And in these mountains were bears,
wolves, mountain goats, wild boars
and red-legged partridges, al-
though all were fewer than in his
youth, because everyone was
armed and the people were hungry.
The mountain goats had been al-
most wiped out, but Barzani had
ordered that they no longer be kill-
ed, and they were comine back;
but a bounty was still paid for the
skins of wolves, which caused
much damage to the flocks.
CRESTING A RIDGE, there
spread out beneath us the Valley of
Barzan, protected on all sides by
mountain ramparts and through it
Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-0
flowing the twistmt Greater
. Looking down upon this green and
pleasant land, studded by oak
trees, it was easy to understand
why MuIla Mustapha Barzani, his
family and his retainers had been
willing to fight for it.
Having rattled down the moun-
tain road to the floor of the valley,
Ahmed and I were swimming at
dusk beside a bombed-out bridge
over the Rukuchuk River, a tribu-
? tary of the Greater Zab, when
Sheikh Abdullah, a shortish, blue-
? eyed man with fair ,skin and a gin-
gery little mustache, presented
himself. It was dangerous, he said,
to swim so close to the bridge,
which the Iraqi airplanes still at-
tacked from time to time. And
would we not join him for dinner?
Sheikh Abdullah's house stood in
the middle of the village of Barzan,
and we dined in its garden, along
with some 20 of his retainers. And
there began the familiar business
of attempting to dissuade me from
proceeding farther in the direction
of the front: The Iraqi air and artil-
lery had been very active, there
was no bridge or ford across the
Greater Zab, the land mines had
not been cleared from the crest of
the Pins Mountains to the west,
which his battalions were holding.
I thanked Sheikh Abdullah for his
concern, but said that, inshallah
(God willing), I would sleep the fol-
lowing night upon the crest of the
Pins. Inshallah, Sheikh Abdullah
replied somewhat doubtfully, and
showed us to the roof of the build-
ing where we were to sleep.
At breakfast, Sheikh Abdullah
confirmed that Lugman Barzani
was wandering in the mountains
near the Turkish fronLer and could
not be reached. He said he was
sure I would not want to leave for
the Phis front before seeing Barza-
ni's home, visiting the mosque and
looking in on the hospital. It being
but 7 a.m. and protocol demanding
agreement, I said I would see these
things and then, inshallah, leave
for Pins.
BARZANI'S HOME has been
razed to its foundations 14 times
over the years' by the Iraqis', and
the present structure is remark-
able only in that it is three stories
high and of concrete, with a fine
view out over the village to the val-
ley and the river.
Having seen this, the mosque and
the hospital (all of whose patients
were civilians), I pointed out to
Sheikh Abdullah that the tempera-
ture was rising and that I was
eager to leave for the Pins. The
mules, Sheikh Abdullah replied,
had not yet been found and he had
invited a number of notables to a
lunch in my honor. Surely I would
not disappoint him? Syamand, the
CRYFkGHt
1194A000100540001-6
"0 interpreter, whispered that I idarei
. not refuse, so I accepted with the?
best grace possible, which I fear
was not very much.
There followed a three-hour
during which the temperature
into the high 90s. The flies hi
insistently over bowls of m
and mounds of rice and the
eal
rose '
zzed
tton
?ta-
bles and I stared at each oth r in
silence.
Sheikh Abdullah observed t at it
was very warm. Since all f us
were sweating profusely, it se med
pointless to disagree. In that ase,
? asked Sheikh Abdullah, wh not
rest during the heat of the da and
ride up to the Pins in the cdol of
the evening? This was a bi too
? much: I told the quaking Sy mad
to inform Sheikh Abdullah th t, by
my eyes, I would leave that very
minute for the Pins, with or ith-
put him, mules or no mules. Sheikh
Abdullah nodded and smiled sWeet-
ly: Of course we would go; he had
not realized I was in such a hurry,
MIRACULOUSLY, a raft,
rickety wooden platform set n six
innertubes and propelled by sin-
gle oarsman, was waiting a the
Zab. Even more remarkably two
mules were grazing on the west
bank, with the promise of the hree
more we needed (since the divi-
sion's doctor was to accompa y us
t6 the front) at the next villa.g
At that village, which we re ched
after a half-hour's climb, a wi man,
apologizing that she had no hing
better to offer us, brought us cool
bowl of buttermilk from whi bh we
drank in turn. With the air o one
who has known better times she
said she was from the Irania side
of the border, but had "grow old
in this place."
Here Sheikh Abdullah mad his
apologies for not accompanyi g us
to the top of the mountain, an4 said
he hoped on our return we sfrould
have a swim at his headquart rs on
the banks of the Rukuchuk. That
was, I knew by now,, as m ch a
command as an invitation.
The mule track followed a idge,
dipping down from time to ti into
gorges where it was incredibl hot.
No birds sang, and the only ound
was the "hatchas" of the mul tears
urging on our mounts.
More than three hours pass ;d be-
fore, at a turning in the Ira 1, we
came upon Gazi Haj Melo, the
dark, taciturn and thrice-wo nded
commander of the battalion ard-
ing the Pins Pass.
From the pass, which we re ched
in another half-hour, we couli see
the abandoned town of Am dan,
the Berat Hills held by a K rdish
skirmish line and the interlocking
system of nine strong Iraqi fOrts to
the north of them. There had been
CPYRGHT
ppro or Kci
reports, Gazi Haj said, of an Iraqi
tank build-up, and the leaders of
the fash, the Kurdish mercenaries
fighting on the side. of the govern-
n-ient, had been summoned to Bagh-
dad, so it would not be surprising if
there were an Iraqi attempt to
break through to the Valley of Bar-
zan.
Gazi Haj said his instructions.
were that he and his men were to
die there rather than yield a foot,
and he had no doubts as to his
men's ability to hold the pass. All
leaves had been canceled and
Sheikh Abdullah could easily more
than double within 24 hours the size
of the 6,000-man Ager Division by
calling the red-turbanned Barzanis
away from their harvesting and
threshing.
AS NIGHT FELL, we made Our-
selves comfortable on the 15-foot-
wide rock shelf above a sheer,
3,000-foot drop to the valley of the
Zab that was Gazi Haj's headquar-
ters. "It is your bad luck," he said,
"that there is no fighting; but at
least there is meat for dinner."
While small arms fire crackled
and popped from the picket lines in
the Berat Hills, we talked into the
? IA RDP79 01
night. The substance was`the same'
as on previous visits to the front:
the need for anti-tank and anti-air-
craft guns, the attitude of the West
in general and America in particu-
lar toward the Kurdish cause.
"When a few hundred Greeks
and Turks are killed on Cyprus,"
Gazi Haj said bitterly, "there is an
uproar. But if we all die here, the
world does not care."
Since I was due back in Haj
Omran the following dy for a tenta-
tive interview with the elusive
General Barzani, we said goodbye
to Gazi Haj at dawn and sent the
mules on ahead. It-was fine walk-
ing down the mountain in the cool
of the morning to the village of the
Iranian woman, where we break-
fasted on yoghurt, bread and tea. '
At the bottom of the mountain, on
the west bank of the Greater Zab,
there were refugees and their
flocks waiting to pass over. Their
homes on the west slope of the Finis
had been destroyed by Iraqi air
strikes that they sensed were a pre-
lude to the expected offensive
The river was swift-flowing but
inviting and, leaving my clothes for
the others to bring over on the raft,
I wailed In dud struck out the
'oppo40001
site Phore,q)eing carRed by
' the current to a spot a half-mile
'below where I had gone in. As I
pulled myself from the water;
cooled by the snows of Turkey, r
could see time-fused artillery shells
bursting above the crest of the
Phis.
Yacub rescued the Jeep from the
depression where he had left it
camouflaged with branches and we
lurched off to Sheikh Abdullah's
headquarters, a leafy bower by the
banks of the Rukuchuk, where be
was busily decoding a message
from Idriss to all 17 division com-
manders: An Iraqi offensive was
expected when the moon was full
the following week.
After a swim and tea?and refus-
ing yet another invitation to lunch
from the remorseless Sheikh
Abdullah?we said our farewells
and headed back down George's
Road toward Chouman.
On the way, we passed a convoy
of battered Landrovers loaded with
Pesh Merga heading in the direc-
tion of the Valley of Barzan. It was
clear where Idriss thought the
Iraqi offensive would come.
Tomorrow: The quest for Balza-
ni.
CPYRGHT
By Smith Hempstone
Star-News Staff Writer
HAJ OMRAN, Iraqi Kurdistan
in wastungton oack in June,
Mohammed Rahman, a former
Iraqi cabinet minister and a mem-
ber of the seven-man ruling politbu-
ro of the Kurdish Democratic
Party, had assured me that I would
have an interview in rebel Kurdis-
tan with General Mulla Mustapha
Barzani, the 71-year-old father of
Kurdish nationalism.
This is the last in a series of six
articles on the war between the
Iraqi government and its 2.5 million
Kurdish minority ? "The War No-
body Knows."
When I had been delayed for 12
days in Iran enroute to the liberated
zone of Kurdistan, the reason given
by both the Iranians and the Kurds
had been that Barzani was travel-.
ing among his people and hence was
not prepared to receive me. So
when I finally was allowed to cross
into Kurdistan, it was on the not
unnatural assumption that Barzani
was prepared to see me.
But things are never quite what
they seem in the Middle East, and all
assumptions are dangerous.
After each of five trips to the
front, I sought a meeting with Idriss
Barzani, the general's principal
aide, to inquire about my interview
With his father. Each time the an-
swer was the same: I was not to
worry I would see Barzani, but
only in Haj Omran, his headquar-
ters. He was traveling in the coun-
tryside and could not be reached.
Finally, an appointment was
made for the day before I was
scheduled to return to Iran, I re-
turned dusty and exhausted from
the Betwatae front to be sum-
moned to a midnight meeting with
Idriss. His father, he said with some
evident embarrassment, had not re-
turned. He was expected within
three days. Would I extend my
stay?
For a number of reasons, this was
extremely inconvenient, and I let
Idriss know that it was. Could he
guarantee an interview at the end of
the three days?
CPYRGHT
Idriss hesitated tor a moment,
fidgeting with the :not of his tur-
ban. He looked very tired. Nothing
in life, he finally replied, was cer-
tain; he could only say that he
would try.
I WAS TEMPTED to call the
whole thing off and return to Iran.
But coming to Kurdistan in 1974 and
not seeing Barzani would be like
visiting revolutionary America in
1779 and failing to see George Wash-
ington. I said that I would stay, but
only for three days.
With the corning of the full moon,-
the Iraqi air raids on the headquar-
ters area intensified, there was no
news of my interview and I began to
fear that Barzani's advisors had
made him hole up somewhere in the
mountains.
On the morning of the third day, I
began to stuff my things into my
pack and to distribute presents to
those who had been my companions
during my stay in Kurdistan. In
mid-afternoon, 10 minutes before my
scheduled departure for Iran, the
word came. I would see Barzani
that night.
Just as the moon rose, a car came
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CPYR G HT
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there were three assassination at-
tempts on Barzani between 1970 and
1973, and the Iraqis are said to have
placed a price of $2 million on his
head the short trip to the Gener-
al's headquarters was made in
three stages. At each, there was an
identity check, a change in vehicles
and retinue, and an inspection of
the presents I brought for the Gen-
eral, Idriss and Mas'oud, his fourth
son and head of the Kurdish mili-
tary intelligence.
The last few miles of the journey
were at a hair-raising speed over a
twisting mountain road in a totally
blacked-out Landrover. At the end
of the road, we reached a single-
story and well-sandbagged concrete
building surrounded by anti-aircraft
guns and bunkers. Clusters of
armed men stood in the shadows of
the building, talking softly.
MAS'OUD, who is a carbon copy
of his better-known older brother,
greeted me on the steps and led me
into a room lighted by two flicker-
ing kerosene lanterns, where we
were met by Idriss. A few minutes
later, we were joined by Dr. Mah-
moud Osman, a little man with a
Charlie Chaplin mustache who is a
legendary figure in Kurdistan.
In the Kurdish wars of the 1960s,
Mahmoud, a member of the KDP
politburo, was the only physician
the rebels had (now they have near-
ly 100). He operated on casualties
by day and ran the civilian adminis-
tration by night.
Mahmoud enjoys immense pres-
tige and not a little power by virtue
of his ?role as Barzani's personal
physician, political. advisor, English
interpreter and constant companion
("Find Dr. Mahmoud," I had been
told, "and you will find Barzani.").
He could well emerge ? if Idriss
does not ? as the dominant force in,,
-the collective leadership that al-
most certainly will take over the
Kurdish movement when Barzani
dies or is killed.
The four of us had barely -seated
ourselves in aluminum-and-plastic
lawn chairs when Barzani appear-
ed. His two sons departed, leaving
me alone with the general and Dr..
Mahmoud.
The General wore a faded red-
and-white Barzani turban, some-
what carelessly tied, the brown
jacket without insignia and baggy
trousers gathered at the ankle that
are the uniform of the Kurdish
rebels, and unlaced black shoes. In
his intricately knotted blue waist
sash nestled a foot-long curved dag-
ger with a wooden handle.
BARZANI IS tall for a Kurd ? he
is about 5-foot-8, has piercing brown
SlanKuy ycLLuw, and a pwud-
nent nose. He walks a little stiffly,
but has a firm handshake.
Although he is less well known,
Barzani must rank with Mao Tse-
tung, Tito and General Giap as one
of the world's foremost guerrilla
leaders. He was first imprisoned at
the age of one (with his mother)
when his elder brother-was hanged
by the Turks for nationalist activi-
ty. His rebellions against the British
and the Iraqis were annual rites of
spring in the 1930s and 1940s. ?
In 1946, Barzani crossed into Iran
with 2,000 followers to fight for the
Soviet-sponsored Kurdish Mahabad
republic. When the Russians with- &
drew, the republic collapsed and its
leaders were executed by the Ira-
nians. Pursued by Iranian, Iraqi, ,
British and Turkish troops, Barzani
sent his women and children into
the mountains and began an epic 52-
day march with 500 picked follow-
ers. The march ended with the
swimming of the Araxes River and
an 11-year exile in the Soviet Union
for Barzani and his men.
When the British-sponsored Iraqi
monarchy was overthrown in 1958,
Barzani and his followers were
, invited to return by the new govern-
ment in Baghdad. Remarkably ?
given the fact that their long stay in
the Soviet Union had made the
Kurds vehemently ant-Communist
? the Russians agreed.
Three years later, in 1961, the
.first of the five recent wars for
Kurdish autonomy broke out., And
Barzani has been almost constantly
in the field since that date.
Although Mulla Mustapha Barza-
ni's family for generations has been
the religious and political ruler of
Barzan, membership in such fami-
lies, because they are so large, is no
guarantee of prominence. As a hot-
'headed, teen-aged third son, Barza-
? ni began his career with no more
than 20 rifles at his command.
'Through strength of character, mill- .
? tary ability and political skill, he is
now president of the 50,000-member
Kurdish Democratic Party and
'commander of 100,000 armed men.
BARZANI BEGAN our two-hour
talk by emphasizing that his quarrel
was not with the Iraqi Arabs but
with the Baathist government in
Baghdad.
"Our struggle," he said, "is not
for Kurds alone but for all the peo-
ple of Iraq. We seek only an autono-
mous Kurdistan within a democrat-
ic-Iraq."
The Baathists, who are allied both
with the Soviet Union and with the
Iraqi Communist party, he de-
scribed as "scorpions, serpents,
wolves" who have executed and tor-
tured to death more than 10,000
? Iraqis In the six years since they
? seized power in Baghdad.
No negotiated peace was possible
with such a regime, he sai , if only
because the Baathists time and
again had demonstrated
faith, "Either we will hay
and the government in Bag
fall, or they will destroy
said, puffing vigorously on
carved briar pipe (on D
moud's orders, he has give
hand-rolled cigarettes of 11
ish tobacco that everyone
here).
Barzani mentioned Israe
Jordan, Kuwait and Saud
as Middle Eastern states n
unsympathetic to the aspir
the Kurds. But he said that
"practical help" he was r
was from Iran, which has a
quarrel with Iraq.
eir bad
victory
dad will
us," he.
a hand-
. Mah-
up the
t Kurd-
smokes
.
Egypt,
Arabia
t totally
tions of
he only
ceiving
running
- "IF THE United State would
only hint to its Middle astern
friends that you would like o see us
helped, perhaps they coul get up
their courage to do it," he a ded.
"I simply cannot believe, 'Barza-
ni said, "that the. America people
will sit by while a vicious, worthy
regime such as the Baathi ts, fully
supported by the Russians, ages a
war of genocide against small
people that wants only to be your
-friend. Give us anti-tank ns and
ground-to-air-missiles and we will
overthrow the Baathists a d expel
the Russians from the he dwaters
of the Persian Gulf. This i in our
interest. But is also in the interest
of Iran and the United Sat tes. So
why not do it?"
Barzani, with a note of sa ness in
his gruff old voice, conce ed th'at
independence for Iraqi Kur istan ?
let alone for a Greater K rdistan
uniting the 9 million Kurds of Iraq,
Turkey, Iran, Syria and th Soviet
Union ? was out of the ques ion.
As we sipped strong, s eet tea
from tiny glasses and nibbl d at an
enormous tray of fresh fruit Barza-
ni emphasized that his a bitions
were restricted to Iraq and that he
was prepared to enter int formal
commitments with Turkey, ran and ?
the United States to that effe t.
"But the gates of your e bassies
are closed to us," Barza i said,
"When I send envoys to ashing-
ton, they are received by friends
such as Senator Jackson. B t Kiss-
inger will not see them, Si co will
not see them, Atherton will not see
them. Kissinger spends day travel-
ing between Damascus and Jerusa-
lem to stop the fighting etween
'Syria and Israel, but he ill not
spend five minutes in his o office
to talk about the war here. e could
understand being low down on the
'list. But fear we are not Oren on
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Approved For Release 1999/09/02 : CIA-RDP79-01194A000100540001-6
CPYRGHT
Kissinger's list."
I MENTIONED that America is
concerned about the flow of Arab
oil, of which Iraq produces about $9
billion worth annually.
"'Is it really in your interest,"
Barzani snorted, "to have this 'oil
controlled by an anti-American re-
gime tied so closely to Moscow?
They sell oil to you today, but will
they do so tomorrow? Would it not
be well to have a non-Arab source of
oil controlled by your friends?"
Barzani agreed that some of the
reluctance of foreign nations to
recognize the existence of the Kurd- -
ish problem might be related to his
age and the uncertainty of the na-
ture of the leadership that might
succeed him. But he pointed out
that the Kurdish revolution had be-
come institutionalized through the
KDP, from which he has purged the
Communists.
"But if. America acts now," he
said, "she can deal with one
grumpy old rilian. We do not need
troops or advisors. We are not as
well-armed as Israelis, but there
are more of us and we are just as
good fighters. With a few anti-tank
guns and anti-aircraft missiles, you
can do a big thing here, one that
will reduce Russian influence in the
Gulf and contribute to the stability
of the Middle East. At least, for
God's sake, come and talk to us
about it, or let us come to you."
IT WAS past midnight and Barza-
ni, who for security reasons never
sleeps in the same place two nights
in a row, looked tired. Before me
lay an all-night drive over dirt
roads to the Iranian city of Tabriz
and the different world beyond
' Kurdistan. We exchanged presents
a battery calculator for Barzarn,,
. a riding crop for Idriss, a knife for
Mas'oud, a curved dagger for me ?
and said goodbye by the light of the
full moon.
"They say," Barzani remarked,
"that the Kurds have no friends. If
this is so, we will all die here. Do
not let America wait too long to dis-
cover that people who want to be
her friends, who seek nothing that is
? not theirs, are dying for their free-
dom."
"Inshallah (if God wills it),
General," I replied. ,
"Inshallah," he repeated, with a'
note of resignation in his voice. We
saluted each other and I drove off
down the winding mountain road to
Tabriz, leaving Mulla Mustapha
Barzani standing in the moonlight,
an erect, lonely but somehow in-
domitable figure.
The Kurds believe that each man
has his own star in the firmament,
and that he will not die until it falls.
As we pulled out onto the Tabriz
road, a shooting star streaked
across the night sky and, away
the west, like the grumbling of sum-
mer thunder, I could hear the thud
of Iraqi bombs falling onKurdistan.
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