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Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to Ekurd.net

The Mustashar and the Jash – A View from the Position of ‘Iraqi National Unity’ on the ‘Descendants of Treason’. 1

1987-1991

A top model 4WD Land Cruiser speeds down an unmade road past low-level, breeze block houses and crumbling baked clay hovels. It pulls up with a screech of brakes in front of a new house constructed of marble cladding. The house is set back from the street behind a pair of ornate metal gates. High walls branch off from each side of the gates and surround the three storey ‘palace’. Its balconies look out over the street and towards the distant Behkair mountain range. The dwelling with its ostentatious ornamentation is unlike anything in the neighbourhood. Another car pulls up sharply behind the first – a heavy-bodied old Mercedes with black tinted windows. Middle aged men with Kalashnikovs slung about them from long years of intimacy, gesture and laugh as they disembark for the lunch banquet being hosted by the head Mustashar, dressed in a costly Kurdish linen costume.2 Another of the company is dressed in the green military uniform and black beret of the Ba’ath Party elite, his belt bulging with a pistol.

This is the house of Ahmad Xan (alias), typical of its kind in most cities in northern Iraq and distinct from the impoverished houses around it. Everyone knows whose house it is as well as the identity of the Mustashar because he is one of the most powerful men in Kurdistan – a Kurdish tribal leader on the payroll of the Iraqi Ba’ath government and head of the National Defence Battalions (known in Arabic as the Fursan (Knights).

Some experts believe that the Kurdish National Defence Battalions or, in Kurdish rebel terms, the jash (Little donkeys doing the regime’s work) numbered as many as 250,000 men at the height of the regime’s power, divided into some 250 battalions,3 operating under the authority of the feared al-Amn (Directorate of Security) and of the Istikhbarat (military intelligence). They became complicit in the Anfal campaign to destroy the Kurdish resistance throughout Kurdistan during and after the end of the Iran-Iraq war through until regime change after the March 2003 US invasion.4

It was the Istikhbarat branch of Saddam’s security apparatus that organised the special Fursan patrols to participate in operations against the Kurdish rebel forces with the peshmerga. They were known in Arabic as al-Mafariz al-Khassa (Special Forces). The designation derives from the Surat al-Anfal – the 8th Sura of the Quran and refers to the first battle against the Unbelievers in AD 624, which also accorded the right to plunder the enemy’s life and property (a right claimed more recently by ISIS and other Salafist Wahhabist extremist groups).

Whilst in Dohuk, Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk, the jash forces were deployed under the intelligence services, the al-Amn operatives in Erbil came under the authority of Kirkuk.

Saddam exploits Kurdish divisions: some key developments

Said K. Aburish5, business man and author, of Palestinian Arab origin details in his in-depth account, Saddam Hussein, The Politics of Revenge6 how from the 1970s onwards when Saddam was still Deputy to President Abu Bakr on through his assuming the role of president (until the horrors of Halabja terminated his personal support), he had been proud to be involved in securing business and arms contracts for Saddam’s Iraq from Western and other foreign companies as an Arab nationalist eager to see an Arab state develop its potential and achieve status on the world stage.

Aburish also detailed the strategies by which Saddam Hussein successfully divided the Kurds since becoming President of Iraq, and particularly during the war with Iran, observing: “He established contact with Talabani…and offered him a deal which invested him with leadership of the Kurds. Talabani saw in this a way of superseding the Barzanis of the KDP and accepted, despite the fact that Saddam had killed two of his nieces. In December 1983, the two sides signed a truce and Talabani along with the Iraqi Communist Party, was invited to form a government of National Unity. Talabani should have known better but his wish to assume overall Kurdish leadership came ahead of other considerations. The death of his nieces at the hands of the jash in 1984, along with the murder of Barzani’s sons, Luqman and Obeidallah, made no difference to him. Talabani persisted even after Saddam not him not to ‘insist on Kirkuk being Kurdish.’7…Saddam also rejected demands for Sinjar, Mandali and Khanaqin to be included in the Kurdish autonomous area and accepted only Aqre and Kifri.8

The Iraqi leader then followed this action by consolidating his hold over certain other of the leading Kurdish tribes and provided financial support to the Zebari and Jaff clans, which were feuding with the Barzanis, labelled by Saddam as the ‘Descendants of Treason’.9 The jash militia numbered nearly fifty thousand at that time he believed.

One branch of the Jaff clan supported Saddam and enjoyed an affluent lifestyle as well as peaceful and prosperous conditions in Baghdad, while the other main branch backed the PUK and KDP and suffered the consequences of Ba’athist terror in Kurdistan.

One of the conditions that Jalal Talabani had discussed with Saddam was the removal of Hashim Aqrawi’s pro-government KDP and Abd al-Sattar Tahir Sahrif’s Kurdish Revolutionary Party. But by late 1984, Saddam had little if any immediate need of him having been assured of support for his war against Iran, and American arms by the US Middle East Special Envoy. France, the USSR, Thatcher’s Britain and other willing parties did likewise. Saddam did not find out till later that the US was also providing arms and intelligence to Iran, that became exposed in the course of the Iran-Contra scandal.

The West cynically justified its arms sales and technological assistance to Iraq in developing and enhancing its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons industries as necessary to the curtail the spread of Shi’a Islamic fundamentalism under Ayatollah Khomeini – and benefitted from the proceeds of its business with Iraq.

By January 1985, the PUK and Baghdad were once again at war. Saddam had further bolstered the jash forces such that by mid 1986 they were considered to number as many as 250,000 men – a force under arms that was three times as strong as the peshmerga, and which included the Mafariz khassa and the emergency forces (Quwat al-tawari).

The jash became fully operational in the Kurdish towns carrying out intelligence and counter insurgency by day and the Kurdish rebel forces gained sporadic control by night.10 The jash also manned the checkpoints and the road blocks, such as those along the Mosul-Dohuk and Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya highways. A minority risked working with the peshmerga secretly at the same time whereas those tribes that had grievances or historic enmities and feuds with the Barzanis or Talabani’s people preferred to stick close to Saddam. The government paid the Kurdish mustashars and jash leaders a wage for every fighter that they managed to recruit. It is said that some then inflated the numbers of men they said they had recruited and pocketed the difference – a practice that continues today in eroding public confidence in the leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government, mired in nepotism and corruption.

The Kurdish Sheikhs were also empowered by Saddam and were able to lead their own jash forces against the ‘infidel’ nationalists.11

Talabani and Barzani finally agreed a pact between them in Tehran in November 1986 while that country worked against wider Kurdish demands.

Talabani and Barzani announced their intention to form a Kurdistan National Front in February 1987, and following that move on to a wider Iraqi National Opposition Front. After the KDP helped Iran take control of Haj Umran near the border that same year, Saddam turned on the Barzanis and overran their seat in Qushtapa, Barzan, and elsewhere, deporting Barzani males and even many jash.

Before being put to death, the Descendants of Treason to Iraq’s national unity were paraded through the streets of Baghdad.

In March 1987, Saddam had appointed his paternal cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, governor of the Kurdish-dominated north, according him unlimited powers to deal with any signs of dissent as the main Kurdish forces, the PUK and KDP were conspiring against Baghdad with the Iranian foe.

Backed by Tehran, the KDP and PUK, got together and finally formed the Kurdistan National Front, and included the KPDP (Kurdistan Popular Democratic Party, formed by temporarily breakaway KDP official, Sami Abdul Rahman), the KSP under Mahmoud Othman, the Toilers Party, the Iraqi Communist Party, PASOK and the Assyrian Democratic Movement.

On 3 June 1987, Al-Majid pronounced the (now infamous) decree stipulating in article 5, that large areas of Kurdistan were to be considered a prohibited area: “Within their jurisdiction, the armed forces must kill any human being or animal present within these areas.”12 Forcible deportations, massacres and village destruction proceeded apace to prevent the villagers from supporting the peshmerga, (refereed to officially as saboteurs and traitors) – just as was happening in Turkey at the same period in response to the PKK. With Baghdad’s consensus, Turkey was also launching strikes inside Iraqi Kurdistan against the PKK, often hitting Iraqi Kurds in the process.

In response to Iran’s support of the PUK from 1987 onwards, the Iraqi regime then targeted Kurdish civilians to undermine support for the peshmerga, razing villages, carrying out mass murder and executions. Ali Hassan al-Majid had already bombed the PUK headquarters in the Balisan valley adjoining Iran with chemical weapons in April 1987 after the PUK forces had taken the heights in Dokan. Survivors of the chemical weapons attacks were executed if they fell into the hands of the Iraqi army.

Saddam sought to cut off all direct Iranian support for the Kurds and bolstered the jash forces with an additional 50,000 men while still intermittently trying to court the support of Talabani and variously of Barzani and the other Kurdish tribes.

Before long the Kurdish area of Haj Umran bordering Iran had become the focus of a new cordon sanitaire imposed by Saddam Hussein to try to prevent Iranian infiltration and Tehran’s support of the peshmerga. The area was sown with landmines and the razing of Kurdish villages proceeded in parallel – there was no progress with the so-called Iraqi government of National Unity. By November 1985, some two hundred Kurdish villages had been destroyed.13 This would become an estimated three thousand during the final phase of the Anfal campaign and forcible settlement of the Kurdish population of the destroyed villages in settlement villages, mujama’at.

As recalled by Joost Hiltermann, “Iraqi secret police and military intelligence documents show that Anfal was a large-scale and carefully coordinated military campaign, directed from up high, that involved a range of actors:

• The air force, whose planes carried out the chemical strikes that served to flush out the rural Kurds.

• The Kurdish Fursan/jahsh brigades headed by the Mustashars, who went into the countryside spreading news of false amnesties and seeking to persuade villagers (some of whom were their own relatives) to surrender to Iraqi forces, saying no harm would be done to them.

• The Iraqi army, guided by Military Intelligence (al-Istikhbarat al-‘Askariyeh), which pummelled the prohibited areas with mortar and artillery fire (including chemical shells), then rounded up the fleeing villagers and drove them to the transit camp at Topzawa. The regime deployed its First Corps (Kirkuk HQ) and Fifth Corps (Erbil HQ), as well as Republican Guard units (in Anfal I), the Kirkuk-based Oil Protection Forces (at least in Anfal III), and an assortment of Special Forces (Quwwat Khaaseh), commando units (Maghawir) and Emergency Forces (Quwwat Taware’).

•  The Public Security Directorate (Mudiriyat al-Amn al-‘Aameh), which supervised the detention process and made lists containing the detainees’ basic information: name, place and date of birth, place of residence, gender, military service (deserter, draft dodger), and whether the person had carried (and surrendered with) a gun.

At the head of it all stood Ali Hassan al-Majid, whose orders bearing his signature survive to detail his role, along with audio recordings of speeches to the party faithful…”14 

Jalal Talabani had been proving stronger in Kurdistan, routing his rivals in the ICP, KSP, and in the jash battalions, while maintaining ties with the KDP-Iran (KDPI) led by the late Abdurrahman Qassemlou. The PUK would frequently sell out the KDP-I in preference for good relations with Iran.

For their part, the Mustashar notables in urban and rural areas continued to recruit their own jash forces and receive salaries. By enrolling in the ‘jash’ their men had also been able to avoid conscription to fight against Iran. Deserters could also join the jash to benefit from an amnesty.

Chemical weapons no problem for the West – that helped furnish Saddam with them

The tide in the internal relations between Baghdad and Kurdistan ultimately turned against the Kurdish forces in 1988 in retaliation for their working with the enemy – Iran- helping Iranian forces cross into Iraq. In response, Ali Hassan al-Majid intensified the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish areas in the north.

The most notorious bombardment was that of 15 March 1988, after the PUK and Iranian forces took control of Halabja. The next day al-Majid ordered an attack from the air relying on a heavier use of chemical warheads along with the conventional shells.

When Saddam Hussein was being interrogated (‘de-briefed’ by the CIA’s John Nixon between December 2003-January 2004), Saddam frequently insisted that he had always liked the Kurds for their openness – but not their leaders: “He viewed both Massoud Barzani… and Jalal Talabani… liars and untrustworthy politicians who had poisoned the minds of their people against Saddam. ‘It is very hard to trust the word of Jalal Talabani. He knows because I told it to him face to face: ‘You take a stand at night and in the morning you take a different stance.’ “15

Saddam became livid when discussing Halabja; he insisted he had not given his permission to bomb Halabja with chemical weapons. He accused General Nizar al-Khazraji, as Chief of Staff, and swore blind he had found out about it only in the aftermath.

He was furious as he knew the Iranians would exploit the propaganda value from the atrocity to ‘focus international outrage on Baghdad’ and also because it had happened in an area of Iraq that had grown more sympathetic to the Iranian Islamic fundamentalist regime in Tehran.16 Nixon stated: “At the same time something nagged me about the exchange. I turned it over in my mind for months afterward. The more I thought about it the more my gut told me that there was some truth in what Saddam said. FOUR BLACKED OUT/REDACTED LINES, then, Apparently Saddam had ceded control of chemical weapons to his commanders. Saddam first heard about the attack from his brother-in-law, Minister of Defense, Adnan Khairallah…”17 (Iran has also been reported as having used chemical weapons and had defensive equipment.18

Saddam had rightly lectured the American agent ‘de-briefing’ him about the suffering imposed on Iraq’s people over long years by the sanctions and fiasco of the Oil-For-Food Programme, insisting that his military had long since destroyed its WMD capacity – as was later proven correct. The author was at the time, however, towing the US and UK official line while conducting his interviews after Saddam’s capture. These were also fairly heavily redacted by the CIA before publication in 2016, some 12 years later. The official line at the time was still that relying on the pretext of WMD as justification for war despite the West having largely provided Saddam with them.

As Saddam was put to death straight after the Dujail trial, before being called to give evidence in the Anfal trials, much vital testimony was prevented forever from reaching the public domain. Saddam went to his death without fear, but too quickly, in satisfaction of the Dawa Party’s immediate interests as they took power and Nuri al-Maliki permitted sect-based slaughter and gross human rights abuses of the Sunnis – in tandem with their American and British partners, as later witnessed at Abu Ghraib and during military raids on private Iraqi homes.19

End of Anfal

As Anfal II and Anfal III had gotten underway, Kurdistan’s villages were being routinely bombed with chemical weapons, the survivors rounded up, often by the jash. Whilst some were relocated to the new compound settlements (mujama’at) and forcibly migrated out of the region, thousands of others were summarily executed.

Anfal IV-VII ensued even as Iran accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598. The ceasefire between Iran and Iraq was implemented on 20 August 1988. Kurdistan remained a key target of the government’s revenge, along with the Shi’a rebels in the south and the Marsh Arabs. As the southern marshes bordered Iran they were easily penetrated by pro-Iran elements and Saddam hated religion being mixed with politics.

Anfal VIII began in Bahdinan’s villages along the Turkish border soon after peace was agreed with Iran. Villagers and rebels alike were mustered in the Topzawa military base southwest of Kirkuk; after being processed most males were loaded onto trucks and never seen again.20

The mass graves later unearthed at locations like al-Ramadi and Hatra provided grisly testimony to the executions. Living and slow death also awaited civilians that were deported en masse to Nugrat Salman Prison – a detention facility in the south west desert originally used to contain the Iraqi Communists. Other Kurdish families were transported to Dibis camp, between Kirkuk and Mosul, and to Samawa.

Hundreds of thousands more refugees, including the defeated peshmerga and their families, fled into Turkey and Iran while the Kurdish rebel forces were being defeated between August and September 1989.

In the three pitiful camps that were set up in Turkey in the Kurdish south east, on the threshold of the cities of Diyarbakir, Mu? and Mardin, state hostility towards the Kurdish movement resulted in ill-treatment and poisoning attempts of the Iraqi Kurdish families throughout the duration of their stay. Only the March 1991 uprising, encouraged by George Bush Senior, following the coalition’s massive onslaught against Iraq in Kuwait and Baghdad (see my paper, Kuwait and the first Gulf War – Slant drilling – Kuwait’s Theft of Iraq’s Oil and Calculated Overproduction) emboldened them to return after their nearly two years of hell at Turkish government hands.

The March 1991 Kurdish uprising

It is now widely accepted that the uprising in Kurdistan was not started by the peshmerga because the majority of their trained fighters were still in exile in Iran or living behind the barbed wire fences in the three refugee camp compounds in Turkey.21 Rather, the Intifada was spurred by the jash, as well as left-wing groups, students and the brutalised civilian population. Inspired by the stance shown in the Shi’a south when on 29 February 1991, a tank commander returning from Kuwait to Basra had fired a shell at a portrait of Saddam, credited with igniting the spark. But many of those that had joined in there had tied green Islamic banners around their foreheads and proclaimed their goal of a greater Islamic Republic, bearing the slogan “Neither the East nor the West, but the Islamic Republic.”22

On 29 January 1991, the Kurdistan Front had announced an amnesty towards the Mustashar. But on March 6, the Governor of Sulaimaniya had called upon the Mustashar to ready their forces against any signs of rebellion; heavy weapons and anti-aircraft launchers were dragged into position.

Just days’ later, on 4 March 1991, the crowds seized control of Ranya, not far from the border with Iran, said to have been led by Abbas Mamand of the Ako tribe. Anwar Betwata was also among the first to turn against his Baghdad masters. These Mustashar leaders went on to urge their friends in the Iraqi armed forces present in Kurdistan to join them, or offered them safe passage out of the area.

Ordinary Kurds joined in the rebellion, most of them taking advantage of unearthing old weapons caches long buried in the ground as well as fresh arms captured from the fleeing Iraqi forces. By 10 March 1991, Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniya had been ‘liberated’ with Zahko, Amadiya and the roads to the border with Turkey, and the river crossing into Syrian Kurdistan at Faysh Kabour, falling to the realigned jash and the newly arriving peshmerga. This was thanks to the Mustashar chief, Omar Sindi of Zakho, a publicly undisclosed Mustashar in Dohuk, and the Mustashar chief in Amadiya. These former Fursan leaders urged the local Iraqi commanders they already knew to desert. The Arab under their command could either join in the rebellion or abandon their weapons and flee while they still could. Many deserters were sent out by the truckload across the river border into Syria, along with wounded peshmerga fighters in need of medical treatment out of the range of fire.

Some jash forces continued to stay close to Saddam, like Kasim Agha of Koya, who is held responsible by the Kurdish leadership for many of their peshmerga having lost their lives. Instead of joining the rebellion, he had preferred to flee to Baghdad, placing his trust in Saddam rather than Barzani and Talabani.

For their part, although the Barzani Sheikhs had intermarried with Zebari tribe females, thereby securing inter-tribal ties, (as with the Sherwani)23, other Zebari tribe members, most importantly the father of Latto and Arshad Zebari, had been assassinated at Barzani’s hands. In revenge, they supported the Iraqi government in the destruction of Barzan village. A complex history therefore exists between these two tribes.24

The wealthy Herkis, Sindis and Surchis also had historic enmities with the Barzanis and preferred to stay on the payroll of Baghdad. A 2006 Wikileaks cable observed:

5. (C) Shaykh Surchi complained that corruption had increased in northern Iraq since Operation Iraqi Freedom. He said the KDP and PUK had misappropriated funds allocated to fight terrorism and that no mechanism was in place to counter those abuses. KDP and PUK leaders’ – and their cronies’ – priority access to fuel facilitated the region’s robust black market. Surchi described the KDP in particular as “like a god.” He argued that while the PUK was as nepotistic as the KDP, the PUK was more open and willing to listen to the people.

10. (SBU) Historically, the Surchi tribe had been divided into two branches, separated by geography and dialect. During the Kurdish civil war in the mid 1990s, the Surchi branch in Erbil – not Shaykh Mazhar Surchi’s branch – fought against the Barzanis. The KDP in 1996 attacked the Arbil branch of the Surchi tribe, killing its leader, Shaykh Husayn Agha Surchi. Husayn’s son Umar and top tribal leaders fled to As Sulaymaniyah and joined the PUK. Umar returned to Arbil following Operation Iraqi Freedom and reconciled with the KDP. As a result, the KDP returned to Umar his confiscated shops and allowed him to establish the Conservative Party. Husayn’s second son, Najim Surchi, remained in As Sulaymaniyah and became the Minister of Transportation in the PUK regional government. The KDP compensated Husayn’s third son, Johar Asha, with money and a house for his father’s death…25

The Doski tribe had already gone over to Barzani and the KDP in 1986 allowing the KDP to take control of Mangesh.

Karim Khan Bradost, who also had past grievances with Barzani, went over to the PUK boosting peshmerga numbers in his seat of Bradost, north east of Sulaimaniya. 26

Several jash tribal leaders formed their own political parties.

Tycoon, Hussein Surchi, based near Shaqlawa, emphasised the important role the tribes would play in the (economic) future of Kurdistan.27

Clan Rivalries, Expedient Alliances, Retribution, and the “Page of Treachery”

By 1 April 1991, KDP leader, Massoud Barzani’s appeal to the West to help the Kurds against the Iraqi forces gaining the upper hand in Kurdistan already came too late to save many thousands that had begun fleeing to the mountains, fearing renewed chemical attacks, even as icy conditions returned.

The peshmerga had been both disunited and very badly organised. Without foreign military support the uprising was doomed from the outset and largely served to further shore up Saddam in power. The Kurds viewed President George Bush’s exhortation to rise up against Saddam as betrayal after he allowed Saddam to use his helicopter gunships, sanctions and other UN resolutions having grounded the Iraqi air force. The West did not act until embarrassed to do so by the human catastrophe that ensued and popular efforts like the Simple Truth concert in London to try to generate funds for survivors – funds that were all consumed in the administrative costs of the Red Cross.

In addition, when they had fled from the advancing Iraqi forces, the peshmerga had taken no prisoners: they killed them first and then ran. Ba’ath party functionaries, intelligence operatives, ordinary soldiers and well known jash opponents were all killed in cold blood as the uprising collapsed and the prisons abandoned.

The Shi’a rebels acted similarly in the south, torturing, beheading and executing their foes.

Finally, after the collapse of both rebellions, the Sunnis united against both groups and accused them of having threatened the unity of the country, and of acting in their own respective interests – Shi’a fundamentalism and Kurdish independence.

Many Kurdish families that had been harmed by the Mustashars and jash forces over the previous decade took matters directly into the own hands and exacted revenge: scores of jash were hunted down and murdered both during the uprising and in the years thereafter. Some are still on the run, others integrated into the KDP-PUK power structures.

Secure in power, the Ba’ath regime condemned the Intifada as a dark stain on Iraq’s history. The events of March 1991 became referred to in official publications and records as ‘the page of treachery.’

By late April, all the leaders of the main parties that formed the Kurdistan Front – Jalal Talabani, followed by Massoud Barzani, Sami Abdul Rahman, Nawshirwan Mustafa and Rasoul Mamand, had travelled to Baghdad as the heads of a peace delegation. After five days of secret talks, a new autonomy agreement was signed and announced. The Kurdish leaders were broadcast across the world warmly kissing both cheeks of Saddam Hussein several times while holding his hands, one after the other, down the line, like school children before their headmaster. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and deputy commander of the Iraqi Armed Forces was also present.28

Ascribing the renewed autonomy initiative to Saddam, Talabani had announced: “Democracy will be the main guarantee for national Kurdish rights. We are for autonomy within the framework of Iraq.”29

In May, the month after the uprisings had been brutally crushed and hundreds executed by the Iraqi forces, Al Thawra, the Ba’ath party’s newspaper, published key pieces that ascribed the blame for this treachery to national unity to the foreign forces that had ‘mobilised its local agents to embark on dangerous conspiracies against the ‘nation’. In particular, it referred to the ‘sect under the influence of the Persians.’30

The ‘offspring of treason’, ‘saboteurs’, and ‘traitors’ – as the Ba’ath media and party organs referred to them – had been brought to heel but were also seen as having licked the hand of the orchestrator of Anfal.

Many Kurds called this act the greatest betrayal of all after their suffering and losses and those responsible lining up with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to be the greatest ‘jash’ of all – a charge that has remained increasingly apt since regime change in 2003 and their plundering of their own nation.

The numerous jash members that had not changed sides during the 1991 uprising and who did not desire to relocate to the Kurdistan Autonomous Area (KAA/KAZ, as Iraqi Kurdistan was then referred to by the Coalition forces following the Gulf War) continued to flourish under Saddam in Baghdad and within the territories bordering the ceasefire line – the UN designated Blue Line. For these Kurdish families, the Kurdish uprising had changed little, if anything at all.

Yet other Kurdish clans and their families still feared or resented the two main political groups in the Kurdistan Front – the KDP and the PUK.

Many of these men swiftly gathered their wives and children and fled into government-controlled territory, many to Kirkuk and Mosul. There they continued to ensure their Ba’ath Party membership remained valid, and served the Ba’ath government in exchange for remuneration as ordinary party people or as informants, checkpoint controllers, and spies against the ‘Descendants of Treason’. Their children were born outside the KAA and grew up under different conditions within the Ba’ath infrastructure. Many did well and had little if any desire to enter into relations with the semi-autonomous region.

The Kurds that had relocated to Kirkuk after 1991 – or that had remained there fighting against the advancing peshmerga forces – invariably continued to live as card-carrying Ba’ath Party members until Saddam was ousted. Those that acted as informants against their fellow Kurds inside Iraq government controlled areas like Kirkuk also did so in quest of security for their families, and to spare themselves the adverse attention of the regime and its intelligence services, that functioned with ruthless brutality, just as before ‘the page of treason’ was written.32

The duty of organizing the ongoing infiltration of the Kurdish opposition is said to have fallen to Directorate 24 of the Northern District, based in Mosul, with another office located in Kirkuk.33

As Aburish had observed: “The behaviour of the West at the end of the Gulf War sanctioned the survival of Saddam…Instead of prompting them to adopt coherent policies, the failure to support the Iraqi Intifada made the US and British governments behave more illogically. Despite the absence of change in the reasons which had stopped them from supporting the Intifada, the leaders of both countries elevated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to a national aim.”34

The Blue Line – Autonomy was not to be confused with independence

Throughout the period after the Autonomy agreement was ultimately signed in 1991, the Iraqi Army continued to exchange fire with the peshmerga across the ceasefire line until after regime change in March 2003 finally ousted Saddam and the Ba’ath Party.

Disputed areas south and west of Erbil like Makhmour, Gwer, Altun Kopru, and the internal boundary fronting Taq Taq, Chamchamal and Kirkuk remained tense throughout the period from 1991-2003 with frequent clashes between the peshmerga and Iraqi Army along with ceaseless surveillance by Baghdad of the Kurdish population. The Iraqi forces’ positions could clearly be seen from many Kurdish villages close to the ceasefire line, such as those near Erbil’s Kalak Bridge near Khazir, the new frontline since the ISIS invasion. The Iraqi Army had still be feared as posing the same threats as ever in the past.

Blood feuds and revenge killings continued to be carried out in Kurdistan and in the disputed territories.

Autonomy was not to be confused with independence.

The KDP and PUK had turned on each other anew, heavy fighting breaking out between them on May Day 1994.

As civil war spread across the KAA, Kurds were once again seen fighting one another – even torturing and executing their fellow Kurds.

1996 – the year of the new ‘jash’

In this same period, the former secular Shi’a Ba’athist, a disgraced banker, Ahmad Chalabi, was plotting with the CIA through the CIA’s front, the Iraqi National Congress, with the aim of ousting and replacing Saddam – including through planting false intelligence to eventually foment the US invasion of Iraq based on non existent weapons of mass destruction – such capacity having long since then been destroyed. 35

In 1996, Jalal Talabani tried to bring the PUK forces north of Erbil from where to launch operations aimed at wresting control of Kirkuk and then to roll on to try to take Mosul. Chalabi thought this would spur the US to take decisive action on behalf of the Iraqi opposition and finally trigger the fall of Saddam. The PUK launched it’s offensive early in August 1996.

Massoud Barzani still sought overall supremacy in the war against Talabani and on 22 August 1996 sent detailed intelligence to Saddam exposing the INC’s intentions and inviting Saddam to take control of Erbil. A section of his communiqué read:

“…We request and plead with Your Grace to command the Iraqi army to enter Hewlêr (Erbil) against the foreign powers who are causing threats and against the collaborating betrayal of Jalal Talabani…”.36

Massoud Barzani also accused Talabani of benefitting from Iranian support and of being allied with the exiled Dawa party, with al-Hakim’s SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and other pro-Tehran and Islamic groups. (US President Bill Clinton had put a temporary halt to the INC’s coup plan, afraid of the Iraqi opposition’s allegiance to Iran in the period when US Presidential elections approached).

On 31 August 1996, Barzani led the tanks of the Iraqi Army into Erbil against the PUK. The Iraqi forces took over the Kurdistan Parliament in Erbil as headquarters. Some 150 tanks and 30,000 Iraqi soldiers went in to the de facto capital of Kurdistan, Erbil.

PUK peshmerga that were captured by the KDP and Iraqi Army were killed, and vice versa. The PUK finally re-took control of Sulaimaniya from Iraq allied with the KDP in October 1996.37

Sixteen years after the toppling of the Ba’ath regime – and near total destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure – former Kurdish collaborators with Saddam continue to be exposed to risks of revenge killing. However, those Kurds who changed sides and went from serving Saddam to serving the KDP and PUK, were given positions and integrated into their party hierarchies. Critics ask why.

Spies and killers for hire

Former elite operatives in the Ba’ath party, including Kurdish collaborators, have also since been accused of supporting various post US invasion Sunni resistance groups.

Some of these, like the Islamist groups long operating in Kurdistan once backed Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), or the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order (JRTN) led by prominent former Ba’ath Party leader, Izzat Ibrahim al Douri still alive and well today and said to be sheltered by Kurdistan.

Those that continued on through the new dawn of the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS/IS) generally suffered a swift falling out with their new terror bosses. ISIS commanders turned on them once they had benefitted from their military expertise and intelligence assets.38

Additionally, after regime change in 2003 and the shifting of internal borders between the Kurdish-controlled region (now referred to as the KRG) and Iraqi government held positions, some of the recalcitrant jash forces were courted afresh by the Kurdish Regional Government’s main leaders, just as they had done in 1991, with the aim of incorporating their fighting forces, supporters – and territory known to contain vast deposits of oil and gas into the KRG.

Families that had been wronged by the jash – as also by the two leading Kurdish families and the parties they dominate – have continued to seek revenge in the absence of justice. Blood feuds and revenge killings have not relented.

Mass popular protests against corruption in the KRG also began to become a conspicuous feature of the Kurdish status quo before ISIS even entered the arena. The underdogs complained – and weakly agitated – against the nepotism and greed of the PUK and KDP elite. These latter forces were soon conducting intelligence operations, sweeps and raids in much the same manner as Saddam Hussein had done – against the same social group – ordinary Kurdish people.

The destruction wrought to Iraq’s education system through the killing of teachers, destruction of schools and corruption in the sector overall is lamentable since Iraq used to have one of the most developed education systems in the Middle East…

Concentrating the bulk of the wealth that has been generated from the profits from the natural resources in Kurdistan and inside the disputed territories the KDP and PUK have been able to assume control (and ownership) over most of the main business enterprises, phone networks, hotels, prison services and education institutions between them. The officials from these main parties and their families now almost entirely own and dominate the business sector. They exercise control over corporate undertakings, contracts, bidding, and the allocation of resources, security and personnel, in most fields of commercial enterprise including over the oil and gas sector, construction, security, new building projects and urban housing developments, maintenance, and control over institutions – even the education sector has fallen victim to the corruption of the officials, that are responsible for grade buying, false degrees, client appointments to university and teaching positions and control over budgets.39 Standards of education have deteriorated from Saddam Hussein having virtually wiped out illiteracy and encouraged females to attend university, to ranking 132nd for education under all the post 2003 regimes in Kurdistan and Baghdad. The destruction wrought to Iraq’s education system through the killing of teachers, destruction of schools and corruption in the sector overall is lamentable since Iraq used to have one of the most developed education systems in the Middle East…

The emphasis on Sharia law, and Islam as the religion of the state, ended secular government and reversed all the gains that Iraq’s women had made since the 1960s.

In Kurdistan, domestic violence and ‘honour killing increased along with the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation – some 47% of Kurdish women have been abused in service of this backward looking tradition that equates subservience and negation of sexual feeling with purity. Forced and arranged marriages proliferated afresh to cement male alliances and uphold the patriarchy.

Since the the failed 1991 uprising, human rights organisations have charted the abuses committed by the security services and peshmerga serving these parties.40 Such abuses have continued to be denied by them and the elite still enjoys impunity. On the other hand, any critic speaking too loudly risks being forcibly silenced, tortured into complicity, or even disappeared. 41

The new General Directorate of Security headquarters incorporating the Asayish Security Council and Intelligence Agency (Parastin) under the KDP in Erbil is a 60 m2 construction site on the Kirkuk road costing some US $88.6 million. The grey complex sends a daunting message about who is in control behind its windows. Dominating the landscape, partially blocked from street view by bomb blast walls, its logo is a watching eye that is reproduced at regular intervals Big Brother fashion – a new incarnation of the old Ba’ath ‘Am’n.42

Many discontented Kurds, including those from the tribes forced to align with either the KDP or PUK for their own survival also believe that the US continued US presence is vital to their future safety. Wikileaks interviewed four influential Kurdish tribes, the Harki, Baradustis, Surchis, and Zebaris on this issue. In the final interview with Ridha Zubayr Mahmud Zebari that took place on 12 March 2006, Shaykh Zebari likened the Iraqi Kurds to “birds in a cage – the cage being the Kurdistan region of Iraq – and said, if the U.S. were to leave Iraq, then predator states like Iran, Syria, and Turkey would rattle the cage. He said all Kurds worried the U.S. would pull out of Iraq someday. He added that the Kurds were concerned the Coalition might betray them as the Western powers had in the past, and cited the 1975 Algiers Accord, as an example. Wikileaks noted importantly:

“4. (C) Zebari said the Kurds saw three main problems where they faulted the United States. First, the Kurds believed the United States had sufficient military and technological power to control terrorism in Iraq, yet it allowed the Iraqi security situation to remain chaotic to advance U.S. economic interests. Second, when the Iraqi Army and police turned over killers and criminals to the Coalition, the Kurdish people believed the Coalition often freed them. And third, many Kurds believed that the U.S. easily could solve the fuel crisis if it consulted with the Turkish government to remove border checkpoints and other obstacles. Zebari added, however, that the Kurds’ deep gratitude to the U.S. for freeing them from a brutal regime overrode any of those accusations…43

The New Order – Corruption and Intimidation

By 2006 and the timing of the Wikileaks documents, the Kurdish Asayish 44 had long since earned itself a bad reputation from clamping down mercilessly on any open dissidents in Kurdistan. If necessary, their strategy relied on death threats, torture and could be followed through by disappearance or execution disguised as an accident and responsibility denied.

Trained in the mastery of such techniques under Saddam’s regime, the Kurdish administration increasingly adopted its methods. Today, they exert a form of fear similar to that of in the past – like him also, to remain in power and enjoy control over the resources in their grasp. The Kurdish people are still birds in the cage.

Life was better under Saddam.”

Fraudulent dealings with former and current figures in Western governments, their military officials, security operatives and mercenaries, and with leading figures in the oil, arms and security sectors, are now the order of the day. The two main Kurdish parties, but chiefly the KDP, have also been complicit with President Erdogan of Turkey, and his son-in-law, in trading ISIS oil.45 The PUK is close to Iran.

Israel has also benefitted from ISIS oil, along with the UK and USA. ISIS oil transited from the Maglub well compounds under the control of Hunt Oil (Bush ally) in Ain Sifni, just south of Dohuk, where the drilling rigs, holding tanks, mixing tanks and topping plants were located in an area once under Saddam’s control. Tankers took to the road from there to send the mix through the Kurdistan pipeline across Turkey, as well as in quantities by road, thence to channel it on to Europe via the refinery in Trieste, Italy. The Barzani owned refineries form part of an Israeli company with a Kurdish name, Bazan.46 47

In 2017 I noted that photographs of the mixing and topping plant opposite the Maglub well in the Ain Sifni block were being circulated. The operation constituted a well organised collaboration between the KDP, the IOCs that were involved in it, and Turkey. Erdogan and Barzani were sending this oil up to Turkey with Range Oil, active on the border with Iran, while ISIS was transporting it to the boundaries of Nineveh governorate. Oil was also coming in from Syria and was also being mixed in with Hunt Oil. With ISIS oil, it was easy to mix it with the other oil at places like Turkey’s Ceyhan Dörtyol – and there are several routes by which it was transported out from there.48

Kurdish control over Kirkuk and its oil was a relatively short-lived prize, forfeited on the excuse of the Kurdistan independence referendum of 25 September 2017, and seized by Iraq just over a fortnight later. The Iraqi Army backed by the Shi’a Hashd al-Shaabi militias took control of almost all the disputed territories49 at the same time as the black jewel in the crown.

Many younger Kurds that were not yet born at the time of the 1991 uprising have now attained a state of despair akin to what some of their parents felt during the Saddam era – mainly owing to the nepotism and lack of jobs available to them: unemployment in Kurdistan is estimated at 14% for those under 25s but “more than 20 percent of those between 18 and 34 are outside of the workforce and are often reported to have lost hope of finding gainful employment…”50 This is because to get a good job you have to be an active and loyal member of the KDP or PUK – and even, of former opposition party, Gorran, now partner to the KDP in ongoing rivalry with the PUK.

ISIS has succeeded in exploiting this situation, offering enticing payments to would-be recruits and regrouping in the security vacuum within the disputed territories since the 16 October 2017 internal boundary reversion to pre-2003 lines.

Many Kurds have willingly gone over to the Wahhabi Salafist terror group, disillusioned with the corruption and lack of opportunities at home – as well as in Iraq’s other main centres, including Baghdad and Basra. Some have been put to work as ISIS-paid taxi drivers and spies, providing information and locating targets for abductions and attacks, as well as sensitive daily data on sites in Kurdish cities.’51

No doubt, it is the high unemployment, nepotism, and unabashed greed of the elite that makes the disillusion of ordinary Iraqis the most bitter after the huge past sacrifices of the past.

Handing Iraq over to the control of Iran is the gravest of all treason.

The Kurdistan region of Iraq has come full circle. Many Kurds are now voicing the unthinkable and daring to say aloud, “Life was better under Saddam!”

The same refrain echoes across the country – but you can be imprisoned, or worse – for repeating it…

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