Embedded Files
To expect total "neutrality" for westerns civil engineering companies who work for Saddam Hussein regime, was of course naive. French and Italians have worked intensively trying to help the government to build an atomic bomb under the condition that it was a civil nuclear facility. It placed in Osirak outside Baghdad. As the facility designed to fueled with high enrichment material, nobody with a clear brain believed it was for the civil purpose only.
As everybody wit, a commonsense has figured out; the Israeli slipped into action in June 1981 as they destroyed it all.
That was not what the Kurds have hope for from the policymakers in the west. They fought against the oppression from the regimens and hoped for support to establish an independent Kurdistan. I knew all that when I sign my contract home in Copenhagen.
In Erbil and Mosul, we were protected inside the Siloe areas, as the Iraqi military was present in both places. Imagine that the PPK should launch a command ray on the Silo area, with several dead and wounded, to take us to prison, will be to overplay our value for them with several lengths.
I was not afraid, and in the first two weeks, we all went shopping in the Bazar in downtown Erbil without problems.
But it was not all so peaceful as it looks likes on the surface. We have only been there in a few days as we began to hear the sound of automatic weapons that flutter the silence at night. It was always during the nights, and on the music, it was in some distance outside Erbil. Outside in rural area.
As we arrived in Erbil, I have noticed some "foxhole" in the roadside outside the Silo area. I dubbed them "foxhole" without knowing what it was. Then I discovered an early morning when I was up at sunrise, that there was an armed Iraqi soldier in each of "foxhole" along the roadside. They dug at a distance of approximately 150 m, and they have stayed there during the nights. They left the holes at dawn.
Then I understood, that the Iraqis do not have control at all. Only in central cities, and on the main roads, and just in daytime. The rural areas during the nights were in PKK control, and they attack the Iraqi army were ever they find out there.
A Kurdish boy on a bicycle:
I never find out have old he was, but at all boys at his age were ever the life, he was curious, open and not in an age were the prejudices of the strangers was present in him.
As I never sat behind closed doors when I was in my office, his curiosity overcame his caution, and after a week as he slowly learns to read me, he discovered, that it was ok to look into my office.
I showed him my advanced pocket calculator (Hewlett Packard) and tried to learn him make a simple calculation on it, while I try to communicate with him.
It was a hit.
Then I tried learning who he was. Where he lives and why he always circle in the silo area, everything by hand signal and single words on Kurdish and English. Among others, I also have some magazines about cars with I gave to him. Ind the end he becomes so confident with me, that I could find him sitting with my pocket calculator when I come down from the gallery. He had just walked in through my open office door in confidence.
That connection ends up to give us and PKK clearings. It is the only explanation of the outcome of what happens later.
Shooting pranks?
It was about 2 or 3 p.m. I have just lived the silo manager's office and turn right, back from the open space between the tall white building and the main road outside the open gate; as the silence brutely ripped by the sound of automatic weapons which were firing. As I turn around, I heard the vessel in the air few m in front of me, and so how some of the bullets hit the wall of the tall white building.
As I had taken the few steps up against our camp, I was free of the open space to the street and screened behind the silo managers hard office building. I was not in the shooting line at all, but the shooting line was only 2 to 3 short steps behind me.
It took less than a second.
The Pakistanis and Kurt were up in the Gallery and safety. I stay where I was until I so others began to move around in the open space, and then left my position and walked back to Silo Manager, in an attempt to get an explanation.
It was young Kurts in a PickUp with two or three guys on deck, who amused them self to speed up and passed the gate outside on the road, during the firing through it.
>>To wake up the guard in the tin box to the right of the gate<<, he explains to me with a calm smile. I bought that. It was not about us, and it was in bright daylight. If it was about us, it was only an attempt to scare us.
But I chose to be careful. And from that day off, it was only the Pakistanis there were allowed to leave the Silo area for shopping etc. Kurt, the crane driver and I restrict our self to state inside the Silo area around for rest of our time in Erbil, and my driving to Mosul was limit to an absolute minimum.
>>To wake up the guard in the tin box to the right of the gate<< he told me! But I noticed that he doubled the present of the armed guard who patrolled the silo area during the night.
Visitors:
The boy disappears. He merely did show up, and I soon learn that his father has forbidden him to interfere with us; me, Pakistanis and Kurt. Then! One day before dinner, I get uninvited visitors. They present themselves as the boys family. Four adults men in their forties. They not dressed in traditional Kurdish outfit but western closed, and they were not the boy's families, at least not all of them.
I can smell it; I can feel it when something is wrong before I knew that something is wrong.
After they have short introduction them self, I invited them on tea or coffee; I can not remember what it was. It comes for a day that the boy has made a hell of a noise at home than his father forbidden him to visit us, and they all had troops up with the purpose to help solve the conflict at home.
They wanted to get confirmed that I have allowed him to sit with my pocket calculator on my open office while I was up on the Gallery? I confirmed. They ask if he not disturbed my daily working routine? I just said No! While I notice that the magazines I have given to him earlier have they brought with them. Without waiting for nex questions I continued, and the car magazines I have given to him as a gift
I could see that it was a victory for him as they probably have accused him of "lending them". He got his magazines bag.
I looked at them and said, >>listen! He just a boy who meets strained and foreigners people in his sandbox and the curiosity drives him to try to get us to know, and we are all open people and as a curiosity, as he is. If he has told at home, that he is a friend of the stranger engineer at the Silo I can confirm that it through<<.
At that moment one of them closed the door to my office and the conversation swift dramatic. It becomes about Sadam Hussein's expression of the Kurds, how the west look at it? How difficult it was for them to get credible information through to Kurdistan and how I and the Dane in particular, look at it.
I knew it! They were not all the boys family as I have predicted, but a so clear intimation I have not expected eider. Was I setting there and talk to PKK ? If so, they must have run at calculate risk here in that fortress of a Silo area.
I gave him all the right answer I possibly could give him, and I gave him all the old economist magazines I have as I get new on in regular. They left with a smile, a handshake and in good spirit.
It was the most strange and surprising conversation, and I can not prove that it was PKK I was talking to, but who else? Get we PKK clearings here? I can not know for sure. But there was no more shooting through the gate in rest of our time, and there was never any attempt to pick me up on the road between Erbil and Mosul.
Another Danish engineer in the area was not so lucky.
A shaken Danish Engineer:
The silo manager call upon me! There was a visitor to me from Denmark in his office. I was one big question mark. It shows up to be a Danish Engineer who worked for another Danish company in Erbil. He was so shaken that he could not hold his coffee cup without spill over.
He was employed by a company who drills water wells in the rural area outside Erbil, and he has just arrived safely into the Silo area with his armed protection of two Iraqis soldier, after having been in gunfights with the Kurd.
His description of the event:
He had driven his pickup similar to mine, with his to armed guard as a Landrover full of armed Kurds outpaced them. Then, the Kurds turn around and try to stop them, and his guard exchange firing with them immediately as he, the engineer, turn the pickup around and fleet against Erbil. His guard new that they would be executed if they catch them.
The Kurts follow them over several km hanging out of the windows while they firing at them, and his guard shooting back, exactly as it appears in a gangster film from the 30th. The Kurts slip them at a proper distance from Erbil city limits.
Three days before this event, his Land Surveyor, who did not want armed protections, was disappeared and no one had heard from him since.
The memo I make to our branch manager are dated Erbil 17.november 1982.
>>Ok, Andersen, your two months old analyst was correct. Do not play tourist, not even on the main roads in daylight, and of course, do not move into rural areas and for God's sake, do not ask for armed protection when you have necessary to drive<<. I said to self.
I can not remember what I told him to help him to come down, but it was for sure not
-that I think his company misled him.
-that he and his Land Surveyor were utterly naive, and he should consider shown some minimum of interest for international politic next time he wants to walk international.
Maybe, I suggest him to quit the job immediately and go home for the real purpose to shave his own life; perhaps I praised him for great driving, as he just has saved two Iraqi soldiers from being executed.
I can not remember it, and today I do not know what happened to him, but I knew what happened to his Land Surveyor. That story later.
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