The next day, the city was in an uproar. Where was the missing typewriter? The doorkeeper was questioned, but swore—honestly—that he’d never opened the office door. Nahida and her colleagues then made a wooden box with a handle in which to keep the machine, which they moved from house to house, to ensure its safety.
Imagine a typewriter having so much value, I thought as she spoke. Less than sixty years had elapsed since then, but even in “backward” Kurdistan, the typewriter was all but obsolete.
Nahida also spoke about the many times she had successfully deceived the Iraqi authorities, who, in the 1940s and 1950s, were representatives of the Hashemite monarchy or various military dictators, not the Baathists. Frequently, the police hauled her down to their stations for interrogation, and one time in the 1960s, the guards said they would release her if she gave up the names of two party members. You promise? she asked. Yes, they answered, and she gave them the names of Mulla Mustafa Barzani and Jalal Talabani, already known leaders. The guards kept their promise and let her go.
On another occasion, Nahida had delivered a high-ranking KDP official to an important meeting in a heavily guarded town by disguising him in old patched clothes, and traveling with him and two other women. Upon reaching the town, the foursome were stopped at a checkpoint and interrogated by an army commander. We are only three poor sisters who have come to see our family and this man is our village cousin, here to help us with our travels, Nahida said. The army commander, saying that he had six sisters himself, offered them a cup of tea, which Nahida asked the disguised KDP official to serve. Being unaccustomed to such tasks, he dropped the tray. You idiot! Nahida said, thinking quickly. I don’t know why we bothered bringing you along.
Listening to Nahida tell her stories, I was struck by their “big adventure” quality, which gave them an almost innocuous character. Had that been a less-dangerous time? I wondered for a moment, and then decided against it. Rather, it was the stories’ high-adrenaline quality that gave them their feel. I’d heard others tell of near escapes from the Baathists with similar glee. Something light to hang on to in all the darkness.
WHILE IN ERBIL, I often came home at the end of the day to visit with Nesreen. Sometimes, there was a certain stiffness between us, as she, in her official capacity as minister of Reconstruction and Development, wished to represent Kurdistan in its most positive light, and I, as a writer, instinctively wanted to see what lay in the shadows, good or bad. More often, we had an easy give and take as I tried to make sense of the world around me.
Nesreen and I usually caught up on our days over a simple dinner in the kitchen, shared with her father and brother, neither of whom spoke English. Both dressed traditionally, while Nesreen wore stylish Western clothes and spoke of how much she’d enjoyed shopping while in the United States. It was comments like these that reminded me that Nesreen’s life was not just like mine, a fact I sometimes forgot, as her English was excellent and she was well informed about many things American. She was also one of a growing number of Kurds with Internet access at home; her Internet provider was AOL.
Despite all that Nesreen had seen and the many humanitarian crises that she tackled daily, her outlook was overwhelmingly positive and optimistic in a way that also struck me as very American. She did not dwell on current problems as much as plot routes around them, seeing the possibility of wide-ranging improvements just ahead. And her outlook was not unrealistic. In the previous ten years, and especially in the last five, Kurdistan had successfully transformed itself from a war-ravaged region into a functioning quasi-modern society, with 65 percent of its countryside rebuilt.
One day I traveled with Nesreen, her guards, and staff on one of their weekly field trips to inspect newly reconstructed villages. In various stages of completion, the projects were overseen by serious-faced foremen and engineers in hard hats who rushed to greet us when we arrived. Watching the men as they consulted with Nesreen and her staff, and their wiry workers laboring hard, I was struck by everyone’s earnestness, energy, and drive—so different from the lethargy often found at U.S. construction sites. These people weren’t just doing a job, they were building the country they’d never before been allowed to have, while also providing for their dispossessed.
According to the United Nations, a total of about 140,000 displaced families, or 815,000 displaced people—the most anywhere in the Middle East—were living in northern Iraq at the time of my visit. And they came in many different types. The newer refugees had the most urgent needs, and they were given resettlement priority, which created some resentment, of course, as did the fact that the newer homes were of better quality than those built just after the uprising.
When the Ministry of Reconstruction and Development was first established in 1992, it had operated with limited funds provided by various relief organizations and the Kurdistan government. But, starting in early 1997, with the implementation of the United Nation’s oil-for-food program, money had been steadily flowing into the ministry’s account. Nasreen and her colleagues had an annual budget of $60 million to $70 million for project implementation—in stark contrast to most of Kurdistan’s ministries, which did not directly benefit from the U.N. resolution, as they were not involved with humanitarian issues and so were often barely scraping by.
Everywhere I went in Kurdistan, the oil-for-food program was a topic of much heated discussion. Despite all the humanitarian relief that the program was undeniably providing, it was fraught with problems. Some policies that had made sense when the program was first implemented had outlived their usefulness, while others needed drastic revision.
Security Council Resolution 986 was originally developed to help relieve some of the civilian suffering caused by the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War. The program allowed Iraq to export its state-owned oil and use much of the revenue earned, kept in a U.N. bank account, to buy food and other basic goods. As such, the program was not humanitarian aid, but rather, the directed use of Iraq’s own revenue toward humanitarian purposes. The program was organized in six-month phases, with the Baath government submitting a proposal for each new phase to the United Nations for its approval.
Under the resolution, 13 percent of the program’s resources had to go directly to the northern no-fly zone. Baghdad decided how goods should be distributed there, but the United Nations administered the program—a complex process with many sticking points. First and foremost, Baghdad effectively stonewalled many of Kurdistan’s most urgent requests, ranging from medicines to the visas required for foreign experts to enter the country. Second, the enormous program suffered from endless bureaucracy.
So much money was flowing into the United Nation’s Kurdistan coffers that it couldn’t be spent fast enough. As of January 10, 2003, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government, $4 billion of the Kurds’ share of oil-for-food funds was sitting unused in a French bank account, where it remained months after the war. The United Nations disputed the figure, saying that the unspent sum by May 22, 2003, when the United Nations ended sanctions on Iraq, was only $1.6 billion. Either way, the unspent sum was serious money.
Central to the oil-for-food program, and emblematic of its problems, was the monthly ten-item ration basket provided to all Iraqi residents over age one, no matter what their economic status; infants received a monthly four-item ration basket. Without these food rations, an estimated 60 percent of Kurdistan would be going hungry, and so, in one essential way, the program worked very well.
But in addition to wastefully supplying even the wealthy with rations, the food basket wreaked havoc with the local economy. Kurdistan is a fertile agricultural region. Before the Anfal, most Kurds were farmers. But with every adult receiving nine kilograms of wheat flour every month, along with other foodstuffs, those Kurds who were still farming were unable to sell their crops profitably. Others had no incentive to begin farming again.
By creating a lack of incentive to farm and a dependence on handouts, the oil-for-food progr
am was in effect continuing Saddam Hussein’s campaign to transform the Kurds from active producers into passive consumers. And there were other disturbing repercussions. As much as the refugees needed adequate housing, some now balked at moving back into the countryside out of fear that they would be unable to make a living.
“One of our biggest problems is sustainability,” Nesreen said on the day of our tour. “We build the villagers new homes, but then leave them there with no means of support. A few projects have even failed because of this— after all this investment.”
Nesreen’s ministry, along with the Ministry of Agriculture and various aid organizations, tried to tackle the problem by providing villages with supplies to create small businesses such as aviaries and poultry farms, but the real answer lay in convincing the United Nations to change its policies. During my visit, Kurdish officials were in constant discussion with the international organization, trying to effect such change, but little progress had been made. Central to the problem was the fact that Resolution 986 was conceived to deliver short-term humanitarian and reconstruction relief, not bring about long-term development. Thus, the United Nations saw the building of the Kurdish economy as falling outside its mandate. However, the organization also seemed to have little interest in reexamining that mandate, perhaps because it was collecting a 2.2 percent commission on all Iraqi oil sales for operational costs. Between 1997 and early 2003, the oil-for-food program had generated over $1 billion for the United Nations.
The Kurdish officials sometimes tried to get around the resolution’s limitations by claiming that a new project—such as a tomato paste factory or road—wasn’t really new, and thus “long-term development,” but rather an older project that needed rehabilitation. Sometimes the ploy worked, sometimes not. Either way, it was a ridiculous game to be forced to play in a land where aid was sorely needed—and theoretically available.
Another important piece of the Kurdish economic puzzle was its bloated civil servant population, numbering well over three hundred thousand. Like all civil servants in Iraq, these well-educated Kurds—most of whom had also served under the Baath regime—were accustomed to taking orders rather than initiative, and to their government providing them with everything from free health care to education. But be that as it may, the civil servants were also earning the ridiculously low salary of 500 dinars a month, about $30 at the time of my visit—as compared to $500 to $2,000 for Kurds employed by the United Nations. Yet to raise the civil servants’ salaries was apparently impossible. The Kurdish government did not have the money, and the oil-for-food funds could not be used to pay civil servant salaries or for any other aspect of the Kurdish government’s operating costs.
The more I learned about the oil-for-food program, the more it made my head spin and bile rise. Indeed, the program had done much good: no Kurds were going hungry, many worthwhile projects had been implemented, and much of the country had been rebuilt. But the Kurdistan of 2002 was not the Kurdistan of 1996. Much change had taken place, and the program was in dire need of aggressive reform. In addition to granting Saddam Hussein far too much decision-making power—a separate and noxious issue in itself—Resolution 986 was treating the Kurds like children. The oil-for-food money wasn’t charity; it was the Kurds’ share of their country’s income. Yet they had little say in how it was spent.
One year later, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, I would remember all this and wonder about what was to happen in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq when other perhaps well-meaning but nonetheless often bungling outsiders arrived. On November 21, 2003, the oil-for-food program was officially terminated; how to replace it and the previously fostered culture of dependency posed major challenges for the new country.
CHAPTER TEN
Invitations
IN THE CENTER OF ERBIL, RISING LIKE AN EERIE LUMP OUT OF the world’s collective subconscious, was the Citadel. At about seventy-five feet in height and one hundred thousand square yards in area, the massive brown mound was built on layers upon layers of consecutive ruins, with the bottommost ones dating back to the sixth century B.C., when the first village was built on the spot. Over the centuries, the Citadel has been ruled by some of history’s greatest civilizations: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Sassanians, and early Islamic dynasties. All undoubtedly left their marks somewhere deep within the Citadel’s mysterious layers, but no serious archaeological exploration of the mound has ever been conducted.
In the modern era, prior to the 1960s, the Citadel was home to many of Erbil’s oldest and wealthiest families, who lived in the five hundred or so houses on top, many of which still stand. The Citadel was also home to coffeehouses, government offices, mosques, religious schools, and a jail. Most of the Citadel’s residents were Muslim, but there was a Christian community and—before the establishment of Israel—a small Jewish one.
About forty years ago, however, the wealthy started moving out of the Citadel. Many of their houses were too old to be updated, and city services were poor. As the old families abandoned their homes, villagers escaping the destroyed countryside moved in. Five or six impoverished families crowded into homes that had formerly belonged to one, and the upkeep of the Citadel declined. Today, the site is a hodgepodge of divided old homes, dilapidated newer ones, and piles of rubble. Only a handful of well-preserved historic buildings still stand, one a romantic turn-of-the-twentieth-century home, now holding a folklore museum.
WHILE VISITING THE Citadel, I was introduced to Yassim Muhammad Wossou, the keeper of a small vegetable shop. A burly, one-eyed man in his thirties, Yassim lived with his eight children and wife in a single room bordering a grassy plot near the edge of the Citadel—twenty-five yards straight down from their home honked and flowed city traffic. Three other rooms also bordered the plot, and in each lived other members of Yassim’s family and their families: his brother and his wife and three children, his sister and her husband and seven children, his father and mother and four younger unmarried siblings.
The extended family numbered thirty in all, Yassim said, and on behalf of everyone, he would like to invite me to spend a night with them at their home. “Ser chaow,” he said, and touched his eye in a lovely gesture that literally means “on my eyes,” and figuratively means “I am at your service.” It was a gesture that traditional Kurds used often, along with the even lovelier one of placing the right hand over the heart, meaning either “I am honored,” or “I am honored, but no thank you,” depending on the situation.
I accepted the invitation. I felt eager to escape the privileged circles in which I’d been moving and had been told that spending the night at the Citadel presented no security risk.
Invitations such as Yassim’s greeted me everywhere I went in Kurdistan. Sometimes, they seemed pro forma, as it is the thing to do in Muslim society, but more often, they seemed genuine.
When I arrived at Yassim’s home a few afternoons later, I found him and his younger brother, both dressed in khak with cummerbunds, and many of their children waiting for me. “B’kher-hati, b’kher-hati, ” they cried. A Mr. Ibrahim, dressed in a jacket and yellow polo shirt, was also there. An educated man and friend of the family, he spoke some English and Persian, and had come to help with translation.
Yassim and Mr. Ibrahim gave me a tour through the four family rooms and up onto their rooftops. Two of the rooms were built of clay bricks perhaps eighty years old, another room was about twenty years old, and the fourth felt cool, dark, and ancient, with rounded corners, high ceilings, and uneven walls. All the rooms had the standard TV, clock, mirror, and framed photos that I’d come to expect in poorer Kurdish homes; one room was as brightly luxuriant as a sultana’s jewelry box, enveloped with multicolored wall coverings, rugs, and cushions. Birds had built nests in the rafters outside, and they swooped in and out of the rooms with equanimity.
Up on the roof, the sun was setting on one side and the moon rising on the other, while calls to prayer drifted up from the mosques belo
w. Minarets, domes, and rusting water tanks dotted the flat-as-a-pancake cityscape all the way to its abrupt edge at a brown plain.
Descending again, we entered the grassy plot and sat on cushions of bright orange, green, and purple. Other men, teenage boys, one elderly woman, and children of both sexes joined us, but all the other women and teenage girls remained standing in the doorways, watching. From somewhere rasped a sweeping broom, and a few honks rose from the traffic below.
“I am a poor man, but I have a rich heart,” Yassim said, and, indeed, it seemed to be so. His younger children lingered around him, waiting for him to grab them and smother them with kisses and tickles.
Yassim and his family had moved to the castle in 1979, after five years of exile in southern Iraq, he told me. They were of the Khoshnaw tribe, and they had originally lived in valleys to the north of Erbil. But they’d been forced to flee to Iran because of his father’s peshmerga activities, and when they’d returned, they had been captured, shipped south, and placed in a camp with about fifty other Kurdish families. Not until the Iran-Iraq War were the families allowed to return north.
“Tell me more about the Khoshnaw,” I said. “How are you different from other tribes?”
“The Khoshnaw know how to forgive,” Yassim said. “If someone kills a member of our family and comes to ask for forgiveness, we will say okay. We also give safe haven to others. Even if a Turk has killed another Turk, if he comes to us, we will support him until his problem is solved. And if we make a promise, we don’t break it—
“Before the Anfal, the Khoshnaw had more than three hundred villages, and we were famous for our tobacco and fruits, especially apples and nuts. In the past, in the springtime, all the girls and boys went to the mountains to bring back vegetables. They stayed two, three weeks, and when they came back, they told their families who they wanted to marry. The boys went to the girls’ families to ask for their hands, and in the autumn, they got married. We always got married in the autumn, because we sold our crops and had money. The wedding festival lasted three days. We had dancing and racing, and each village gave a gift to the bride. We don’t do that anymore. Now we get married in the cities, and the wedding is just one day.”
A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts Page 20