A friend of mine was reminiscing with me today and we got talking about our time in Kurdistan. We were both young Commandos back in the early 90s and we were sent straight to the mountains of this region hot on the heels of a previous deployment.
Looking back, it is clear to me that this deployment was formative in my development as a professional soldier. The physical challenges of working at altitude, the utter evil practices that the Iraqi forces carried out on the local population, and operating in such a unique environment made a big impact upon the young James E Mack. I remember sprinting off the tail ramp of a chinook helicopter with a backpack the size of a house, skis and snowshoes strapped under the top flap ready for immediate use once we hit the ground. Our Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre had been in the area for a week before, concealed in covert observation posts on the mountain sides, relaying back all pertinent information that could affect our insertion.
As I ran off the back of the chinook into blistering heat and the roasting downdraft of the rotors, I was a little surprised at the absolute dearth of snow. Once the choppers had departed and we had a moment to take in our bearings it was pretty apparent that we’d have been better served bringing sun-hats and jungle lightweight clothing. The temperature was easily 30 degrees celsius plus and I remember a surreal moment of looking at a line of sweating, red-faced Commandos carrying their Arctic deployment kit in a summer heatwave. To this day, nobody has ever really explained how the recce force managed to forget to inform the main body that it was a little cozy for skis and snowshoes…
Our main task was to patrol the mountains and link up with the Peshmerga; the resistance fighters from the mountains. These were hard men who lived and fought in a hard environment. Under Saddam Hussein’s regime the Kurds were heavily persecuted with utter prejudice. When we entered the large town of Zakho, we encountered bodies on the street that were mutilated and bore the ravages of state-sponsored torture. In the middle of the town was a barracks that housed the Iraqi Secret Police, the perpetrators of these crimes. Smug in the knowledge that a toothless UN would have no impact whatsoever upon their activities or status. Many of the locals had fled the town and taken refuge in the peaks around the city but would not come down until a safe haven could be provided. So we ‘encouraged’ the Secret Police to leave. And they did, in exactly the same way that the locals had left the city months earlier with their possessions balanced upon a mattress on their heads as they traipsed along the hot tar road out of town.
Little by little, people began to return. The Peshmerga reached out to us and we met. They were grateful for our help but needed more to guarantee the safety of their people. The Americans arrived and took over the security role in Zakho, freeing us up to return to the mountains with our new allies. It was this phase of our operation where I think my love for the people and the region really stemmed from. The mountains were stunning and wild, the odd village the only interruption to the green hillsides and mountain flanks. We’d find signs of bear, leopard, monkeys, snakes and other animals we couldn’t readily identify. We bathed and drank from mountain streams and waterfalls. Climbed ridges and escarpments, crossed decaying bridges that had existed as part of the silk route.
But it wasn’t all good. Some days we would reach a town or village and monitor it from a distance looking for signs of life. Seeing none, we would enter warily, booby traps and IEDs a given. It is hard to articulate the sensations you feel when going house to house in a decent sized town and seeing rooms that the occupants had clearly just dropped what they were doing and ran. Half-empty bowls of food, cups of chai, laundry in tubs of stagnant water. An urban Mary Celeste.
We would stay put in these locations for a day or two, usually enough time for the local Peshmerga and villagers to return. In one large village a woman returned and when asked why they had left informed us that Saddam’s men had arrived in the night and taken all the males over the age of fifteen. She put the number at somewhere between 120 – 150. We asked the obvious question; where did they take them. She gave a term that our interpreter struggled to understand but with a little more back and forth the explanation was clear: They had trucked the men out to a barren location and buried them alive. And by all accounts, this was pretty standard practice, a fact backed up by reports from other villages and towns we secured.
These people were fighters. Fighting for their lives, their land, their culture, their existence on the planet. And they started young; I have a photo of a very serious 14-year old boy who had already killed half a dozen Iraqis. It sounds barbarous to our cultured sensitivities but when the state routinely culls your male population at the age of 15, there’s very few options open to anyone looking to defend their people.
So we helped the Kurds. In any way we could. It was simple at first until politics entered the equation. Suddenly some Kurds were good and some were bad. We could help this lot but not that lot. Turkey says we cannot help these guys as they are designated as terrorists. Etc,etc,etc…And then we left. Abandoned these people that we’d encouraged to rise up against the regime, that we’d encouraged to return to their homes with the guarantee that it was now safe. The West was here to make sure everyone would be okay. But it wasn’t, because we just left them, after all their effort, to be punished for their transgressions by the full power of Saddam’s state. And if it was bad before, the gloves were truly off this time….
I have since been back to Kurdistan on several occasions and always feel a connection to the area and its people, despite how the political directives shaped our withdrawal all those years before. The Kurds have been probably the most important ally in arresting the progress of Daesh or ISIS throughout Iraq. Steadfast and unflinching in their support to the coalition effort despite their heavy losses and constant frontline exposure. And while they are doing so for their own safety and survival, they also want their semi-autonomous state to be granted recognition on the world stage. An independent Kurdistan, self-sustaining through its oil reserves and safe from the attentions of the nation states intent on seeing this aspiration fail.
The Kurds themselves have an expression that sums up their experience: ‘A Kurd’s only friend is the mountains’. Throughout their history, anyone who has ever interfered with an offer of help has always let them down. But the mountains, the Kurds’ home in both the physical and spiritual sense of the word, have always remained constant.
My operational experiences back in the 90s shaped a lot of the soldier and indeed the person I was to become. My love of mountains, my interest in foreign culture and wariness of political agendas were all formed in the wilds of Kurdistan with my Peshmerga friends and guides. My fondness for the land and its people give me the hope that they will be rewarded for their support to the west and their autonomy recognised.
My experiences however make me suspect that, when this conflict has faded from memory, once again the Kurds’ only friend will be the mountains.
