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From the Northern Front, Diary from Erbil
Journalistic interaction with our boys in camouflage is limited
and not very informative. Beyond the, "Hey, where y'all from?"
line of questioning you won't get very much serious data. But I
wouldn't be writing about this unless I had a scoop. I have interacted
with soldiers away from base!!!!
Here's the story.
The weather here has dramatically improved and we have begun to
see daylight bombing of Iraqi positions on the long ridge which
separates the Kurdish autonomous region from Kirkuk and Mosul over
in Iraqi government territory. Saturday afternoon I was in a refugee
camp outside Erbil talking to some people who had escaped from Kirkuk
just before the war when we heard a series of explosions from the
direction of the ridge. So I put my notebook away and with my driver
and translator headed for the column of smoke on the horizon. By
the time I got to Kalak, where we were told the strike had taken
place, the smoke had dissipated and all we could see was a single
bomb crater. We turned back to Erbil.
As we were zooming along, my driver in his broken English said,
"American soldiers." I hadn't seen them so I told him
to stop and turn around. The road to Kalak is one of the few four-lane
highways in Kurdistan so you can imagine what this U-turn entailed.
Anyway, we pull up beside a Toyota Land Cruiser. The Land Cruiser
is how small Special Forces teams are transported around the area,
presumably because of its reliability. Not in this case, however.
The hood was up and the soldiers and their driver were doing what
men all over the world do when their car breaks down: staring at
the engine as if just looking at it would somehow bring it back
to life.
There were two American soldiers. One tall and red-headed, the
other short and dark-haired. Anyway, as we slowed up by the Land
Cruiser, a Kurdish officer raised his rifle, American issue not
a Kalashnikov, and growled at us to get away. I yelled out the window
in my broadest American accent, "Hey guys, you need any help?"
One of the Special Forces guys brushed past the Kurdish officer,
came around to the window and said no, the car was just overheated
and they would wait it out. I offered them a lift. "No, we're
o.k." You sure? "No, we're good." Then I offered
him a Pepsi and that seemed to break the ice. My driver got out
to give a hand.
Now my driver Sammy has some experience with vehicles in wartime.
He drove an armored personnel carrier in Iran-Iraq war. He was wounded
twice. He joined the team staring at the engine then reached in
and checked some wires and so on. He got into the car and tried
to start it. The Land Cruiser was not overheated. The starter was
messed up. While the Special Forces guys and their Kurdish escort
looked on bemused Sammy took over the situation. He got a tow rope
out of the back and began to hitch their car to ours, (an Isuzu
trooper, if you want to know). Even if the Special Forces guys wanted
to maintain operational security by staying away from us they couldn't
do it now. We asked them where they wanted to go and they told us.
A base on the other side of Erbil about twenty minutes away. So
they got into their car and yoked together by a frayed yellow rope
we set off.
I asked Sammy if he thought the rope would hold and he said it
would. He had bought it while working in Holland several years ago
and had used it to tow another car back all the way from there.
Anyway, I guess you can say the yellow rope is the Dutch contribution
to the Coalition of the willing.
On the ride over there we tried to figure out where the pair were
from. Their uniforms had no unit insignia but my guess is they were
Green Berets. The car was mud-splattered and so were their uniforms.
They had probably been at a place called Dolaman, a hamlet of mud-huts
accessible only by driving down an unpaved dirt-track for about
five kilometers. I had visited the place a couple of days ago in
a driving rainstorm. Just past the hamlet's fields is a little nub
of a hill. We were told by the Peshmerga fighters based there that
Special Forces were set up on that little hill. It seemed likely.
That nub offered an excellent view of Iraqi troops and they could
provide the info necessary for accurate airstrikes against them.
We tried to walk out there but never made it - the mud was too thick.
Anyway, we figured that was where they were coming from.
We went slowly through the potholed streets of Erbil without raising
a glance from the local population. We got the soldiers to their
base without incident and I figured having done a solid turn for
them I might get some exclusive information. Before I could get
started our Isuzu was surrounded by half a dozen very angry Kurdish
soldiers and we were cordially told to get out. While Sammy was
unhitching the Land Cruiser I got my exclusive interview. Here is
a full transcription (there are no names because no names were supplied):
Tall Red-Head: Hey, thanks. Where you from?
Me: WBUR, the NPR station in Boston.
Tall Red-Head: Cool, I'll watch for you.
Me: (thinking to myself) Watch me? Don't you mean, listen?
Me (seeking operational info, speaking out loud): It must
be pretty muddy in Dolaman?
Tall Red-Head stares through his sunglasses for a long beat then
extends hand for a bone-crunching hand shake.
T R-H: You be careful out there.
Me: No, you be careful.
The smaller guy then came around.
Me: Stay safe,.
Small guy: We're good (his voice inflected to imply, "We
know what we're doing) You stay safe. (his voice inflected to imply,
"You don't.")
» Read Michael Goldfarb's last
journal entry from Erbil
»
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FIELD REPORTS
;)
