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Friendly Fire, Sporadic Fighting on the Northern
Front
You can't fast forward reality.
The war has finally come to Northern Iraq, albeit sporadically.
Sunday it arrived with finality for 18 Kurds who were killed in
a hideous friendly fire incident.
Word of the tragedy spread via Thuraya satphone from journalist
to journalist. I was on the worst road yet in Kurdistan. Going to
a village I haven't been to, desperately looking for some new view
on the fighting. It took 45 minutes to go no more than three miles
from the main road. I found nothing there but warnings and good
wishes from the local Peshmerga fighters. Having convinced myself
that there was nothing to see I returned down the rock-strewn track
and found two brand new Land Cruisers pulled over by the side. It
was a CNN crew doing exactly what I was doing, looking desperately
for something new on this front where very little happens. One of
them was talking on a Thuraya and we got the news: many dead, the
BBC's John Simpson wounded. There was a quick conversation about
how to get there. My driver, Sami having spent four years of the
Iran-Iraq war driving Armored Personnel Carriers for the Iraqi Army
knows every road in the area so CNN followed us and we all raced
off to the incident.
This is how we cover our sector of the war where there is no clearly
defined front. Strewn over a large geographical area we stay in
contact and hopefully don't find ourselves in the wrong place at
the wrong time as the people who were killed did.
I was going to start this diary by telling about the cheerful mood
in Erbil since the American military seized Baghdad Airport and
initiated what must be the endgame of this conflict. People here
can smell the end of the regime and there has been an extraordinary
cheerfulness in the streets. Many people who fled to the mountain
villages when the war started have returned. The price of gas masks
in the Bazaar has dropped from around 180 dollars to 35 bucks on
Saturday. But as we swung through Erbil on the way to the site of
the incident the mood was entirely different. Knots of grim-faced
and women, twenty here, fifty there, lined the road looking for
something. In the miles we travelled there were probably thousands
looking for something. After about fifteen minutes we saw what they
were looking for coming towards us: Red Crescent ambulances
Discipline at the Peshmerga checkpoints had pretty much disappeared
as the fighters who were supposed to check people heading for the
front joined their comrades to get a glimpse of the ambulances or
to swarm around one of the eyewitnesses and pump them for information.
We got close to the Debaga Crossroad, where the incident took place,
and a battle was going on. We heard the fight before we could see
it. Fighter jets roaring through the thick cloud above, the low
rumble of their bombs striking on the plains beyond. Bursts of machine
gun fire and the occasional anti-tank missile striking its target.
I walked to the accident site and looked only briefly. What happened
was abundantly clear. The cars were still smoldering. The bodies
had already been removed. I walked a further two-hundred yards to
where American Special Forces were carrying on the battle. They
seemed utterly oblivious to what was just behind them. They were
focused entirely on what was in front. One soldier said, "
We were torching tanks out there, then heard this bang behind us.
We sent our medics over. That was all we could do." Another
soldier walked by and grunted, "This is war. Stuff happens."
I asked another soldier who started the fight. "We did,"
he said with a satisfied smile. Up 'til now U.S. troops and the
Peshmerga have been under orders simply to take ground the Iraqis
abandon, not to seize any. So this little battle represents a new
wrinkle in the fighting in the North.
I walked back to the wreckage and examined it more thoroughly.
How anyone survived seemed a miracle. By now the Thuraya-age bush
telegraph had delivered a flock of journalists to the site along
with a KDP spokesman. They were so intent on determining what kind
of jet had dropped which kind of bomb that they didn't even hear
an Iraqi mortar round land about 50 yards away. I did. A few minutes
a later an Iraqi 105 millimeter round landed in front of the U.S.
position. It seemed a good idea to pull back.
Sami's wife had made a picnic lunch for us and so we squatted on
the road (going off the road, even on to the shoulder seemed a bad
idea. This area had not been checked for mines.) So we ate baked
chicken and watched the jets break out of the thick cloud cover.
It is easier to see the planes against this background then when
they streak out of the sun. You could clearly see the bombs being
released and see smoke rise from where they hit their targets. The
sound of the explosion came several seconds later.
A few days ago my translator, Ahmed, had asked what the English
name "Moorhouse" meant. Without going into a lengthy discourse
about Heathcliff, Cathy and Wuthering Heights I had given him an
explanation of what a "moor" is. Standing a few hundred
yards from the smoldering cars, the thick gray cloud above us and
the hilly open countryside around us reminded me of English moorland.
I tried to explain to Ahmed that this landscape is what an English
moor looks like. "Do moors make people sad?" he asked.
"They are places people go for solitude," I answered.
Ahmad and Sami wanted to go back to the American position and watch
the fight. They are thrilled to have a close view of the dismantling
of the regime, which ruined their lives. But I had had enough for
the day. So we left.
» Erbil Diary Part I
» Erbil Diary Part II
»
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FIELD REPORTS
;)
