For any visitor to Kurdistan, Korek spelled an enormous headache, a screaming symptom of the third world monopoly mind-set. Before the U.S. invasion, the KDP and PUK each ran competing cell phone networks—Korek in the northwest and Asiacell in the southeast. Each denied the other roaming rights and forced foreigners and Kurds alike to buy two phones and switch back and forth when crossing between cities. At the time it didn't seem much of a hardship—in 2002 using any kind of cell phone in Kurdistan felt like a miracle, and visiting businesspeople and journalists would gladly pay a few hundred dollars for a local phone line, knowing that a large portion of the money kicked straight back to the KDP and PUK. After the invasion, Paul Bremer's CPA bid out licenses to set up Iraq's new cell phone networks. Three companies won contracts dividing the country into south, middle, and north—where Asiacell got the contract.*
But Korek's CEO, Sirwan Barzani, was a nephew of Masoud. As Asia-cell expanded into Kirkuk, and even into Mosul, Korek let it be known that no rival cell phone towers would last overnight in KDP territory—a threat that Asiacell crews took seriously, given the family name.25 Even officials coming up from Baghdad couldn't use their Iraqi cell phones in the provinces of Erbil or Dohuk. Preferring to be an incommunicative island and taking their citizens with them, the Barzani family clung to the monopoly, and many others. Kurdish businesses who refused to offer KDP party members a percentage of their profits were not only prevented from working; some were thrown in jail. Korek was probably not the dirtiest deal in Kurdistan, just the most obvious. For its part, the PUK also was milking the corruption in Baghdad and Erbil, but with more than one family name in the party, it looked less obvious. The telecom scam seemed to further divide Kurdistan into two halves, but both had a common interest in keeping the graft flowing steadily, and family connections trumped technical ability.
"The two parties are dangerously united in the protection of incompetence," said one longtime Kurdish insider, adding that no single Kurdish official was untouched by some degree of corruption.
Sitting in his new house on the hill, Darbandi said he enjoyed his work and that it was allowing him to get reacquainted with his home country. His wife had taken a job in the same office, and their children were fitfully adjusting to the Kurdish schools. Despite the Kurdish leaders' continued divisions, Darbandi had come to admire them in their new roles—Talabani for his image as an international statesman, and Barzani for his strident Kurdish nationalism, especially in standing up to Turkey.
"Honestly, I never liked the Kurdish leaders before, but they've been courageous—especially in saying that Kirkuk is Kurdish," Darbandi said. Asked if he was afraid of Turkish or Arab interference in Kurdistan, he quickly said no—there was only one thing that scared him.
"Henry Kissinger! We are thinking about it every minute." Without needing to explain that he meant the American betrayal of the Kurds in 1975, he added, "It's promises from the U.S. that scare me."
Darbandi quickly added that he meant no offense to his American houseguest, and that he was forever grateful for what the United States had done by removing Saddam Hussein. "If I have another son, I swear to you I'll name him Bush," said Darbandi, without a trace of irony.
As his son slowly fell asleep at the table amid a late night of grown-up talk, Darbandi returned to his main fear, that the American commitment to the Kurdish experiment would waiver. Turkey would invade or Iran would infiltrate, or Arab Iraq would smash Kurdistan again—without American pressure and protection, Kurdistan wouldn't stand a chance.
"As long as I see Americans, I'm staying in Kurdistan," he said, looking down at his son. "I'm leaving with the last American."
* Ali Hassan al-Majid was sentenced to death on June 24, 2007, in Baghdad, but never brought to Halabja. Many Kurds complained that Saddam Hussein never directly faced justice for Halabja, since he was executed soon after his conviction for a much smaller massacre in the Shi'ite Arab town of Dujail.
* The students whom I interviewed on September 29, 2006, withheld their names to avoid retribution for continuing to speak out.
* When Human Rights Watch reported in July 2007 on widespread torture and mistreatment in Kurdish prisons, the group made a note that the KRG had been very cooperative, much more so than the Iraqi government or the U.S. government regarding detainees in Iraq. Nechirvan himself endorsed the conclusions of the report and pledged to send copies to the Kurdish security forces—whether this was sincere or not, it played very well in the media.
* Embedding with the U.S. military is a trade-off for a journalist. The military doesn't practice overt censorship of anything but operational and technical details, but it's near impossible not to become biased while under military protection, and a Humvee window is a narrow lens through which to see Iraq. Unfortunately, after 2004 this became the only prudent way for a foreign journalist to travel in Iraq, outside the Kurdish area.
* A nom de guerre.
* He gave a pseudonym for fear of problems upon his return to Iran. The PKK has reorganized and changed its name a half dozen times since 1984, including one with the unfortunate acronym "KKK" (Democratic Confederation of Kurdistan) in 2005, and then changing to KCK by 2007. The name changes are irrelevant to anyone but the poor PKK spokesmen who have to learn the new organizational chart and try to explain it to outsiders. The sympathetic political party in Turkey, currently the Democratic Society Party (DTP), changes its name about as frequently, six times since 1991, but with a better reason—the Turkish government keeps encumbering the organization with lawsuits, and it has to fold and re-form.
* At this writing, PJAK is not on the blacklist, though the State Department assures that the group is being studiously evaluated. On a visit to PKK officials in late October 2007, I was taken to a PJAK safe house near the Qandil Mountains for a meeting—the two groups seem to share everything and even answer the same mobile phone.
* The State Department's top Iraq advisor, Ambassador David Satterfield, couldn't manage the word at a briefing with a few journalists at the Istanbul meeting on November 3, 2007. When asked directly why he was calling the KRG the "Kurdish Regional Government" without the "stan," he replied only that action was more important than words.
* Omar Abdul Qadir, another brilliant young Kurdish journalist, had introduced me to Darbandi in 2005. George Packer wrote about Omar in the Kirkuk chapter of The Assassins' Gate.
* Massif means "resort" in Kurdish, and that is what most Kurds call the hilltop of Salahudin.
* The bidding process was roundly criticized as closed and nontransparent. For example, Mudir Shawkat, a prominent member of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, was a major shareholder in one of the three companies, Atheer. There's no reason to suppose that Asiacell didn't cheat to get the contract, but it's hard to imagine how they outcheated Korek—maybe it was fair after all? I did not discuss Korek or any other KDP businesses with Darbandi.
CONCLUSION
Visible Nation
BEHIND THE BLAST WALLS AND WIRE of the armed camp that is Baghdad, Mam Jalal Talabani smiled with pure joy as he welcomed his cabinet to the palace in October 2006. If he felt any disbelief at his great reversal of fortune, he didn't betray it. A full sixty years after joining the hapless Kurdish resistance, he now presided over Iraq's government. The men he greeted in front of the massive columns of the entryway had stories nearly as long as his own, each one a survivor of the same wars. The palace itself once belonged to Saddam Hussein's wife; now after looting and refurbishment, it hosted a continuous emergency meeting to discuss Iraq's worsening violence. Upon winning his second term as president, this time a four-year position, Talabani had insisted on more than just symbolic duties; he now presided over national security meetings twice a week, which became the most important regular convocation of Iraq's new leaders.
Mam Jalal sat on an ornate chair in the central hall of the palace, at the top of a long red carpet that stretched forty feet across the floor, under an impossibly heavy chandelier, then
out the door and down the steps. Depending on the age, stature, and standing of each arrival, Talabani hefted himself out of his seat and simply rose, walked halfway down the carpet, or even trundled all the way out the door to greet his guest. Now seventy-three years old, Talabani walked with a bit of labored breath, the consequence of a well-known love for feasting that numerous dieting attempts couldn't overcome. He greeted each visitor warmly, kissing cheeks and exchanging a quick joke before dropping himself back in the chair. The parking lot jammed up with SUVs, and each arrival added a dozen rough-looking men in suits milling about the antechamber.
In the pantheon of Iraq's former resistance, the least recognizable man at the meeting was a balding, bespectacled Shi'ite Arab with his mouth curved in a perpetual hint of self-doubt. That was Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, who arrived among the last. Maliki was a compromise candidate and everyone knew it. After months of deadlock over Ibrahim al-Ja'fari's campaign to stay in office, the factions settled for Malaki, another Da'wa party member. Like Ja'fari before him, Malaki owed his position to support from Moqtada al-Sadr, who still managed to cross back and forth from insurgent to parliamentarian. The Kurds and the dominant Shi'ite party, as well as the small secular parties, would have preferred SCIRI's Adel Abdul-Mahdi, but at least Maliki was easy to push around. After an hour discussing the endless violence afflicting Baghdad, the ministers and party leaders adjourned chatting jovially, just as they had at countless opposition meetings over the years. They had managed to get rid of Saddam Hussein after all, and no challenge could be more daunting than that. From the outside, however, making peace in Iraq looked as though it might be.
IN FEBRUARY 2006 a bomb, probably planted by the Sunni group al Qa'ida in Mesopotamia, had taken down the stunning gold dome of the Shi'ite Askaria mosque in the city of Samarra (more bombs took down the minarets eighteen months later). For Shi'ites the attack compared to blowing up St. Peter's Basilica—even for Grand Ayatollah Sistani, restraint was no longer an option. The Bush administration would point to the Askaria bomb as the one trigger that somehow undid all the alleged progress being made in Iraq. In fact it was more a symptom of how bad things had become.
No longer could anyone claim that the war in Iraq had to do with defeating remnants of Ba'athism or terrorist dead-enders, or even that it was a nationalist struggle that would cease with the end of American occupation. While roadside bombs still took the lives of American soldiers, Iraqis began to slaughter one another by the thousands. Sectarian cleansing washed through Iraq's mixed cities and Baghdad's sprawling neighborhoods. When Saddam Hussein was finally executed in December 2006, there was no sense of triumph or closure for Iraqis.1 His trial for the relatively small mass execution of Shi'ites in Dujail had resulted in a death sentence, which was carried out before the other trials—including a charge of genocide for the Anfal campaign and the mass murder of the Shi'ites in 1991—could be completed. The Kurds had the satisfaction of seeing some survivors of Anfal confront Saddam in court, but Iraq was so dangerous that few witnesses chose to show their faces. They would never see him convicted of genocide or of gassing Halabja, because halfway through the Anfal trial, the Shi'ite-led government rushed Saddam to the gallows, in the middle of the night on a Sunni Muslim holiday. The crudity of the affair lent the Butcher of Baghdad a dignity in death that he had never achieved in life. In Saddam's final moments, masked policemen nearby chanted the name Moqtada, who was considered the leader of many of the Shi'ite death squads terrorizing Sunnis in Baghdad. A tawdry cell phone video soon appeared on the Internet.
The mockery of Saddam by the security forces hanging him woke American soldiers to the fact that their allies in the police and army might be moonlighting as death squads—except the Kurds, who began all the more to distinguish themselves. Most of them fought around the edges of their own territory, which remained remarkably safe, benefiting from the most decisive factor in counterinsurgency: a civilian population completely aligned with the government against suicidal car bombers and mass murderers.
TOWARD MIDNIGHT IRAQ'S democratic leaders left Talabani's presidential palace—the meeting had started a few hours after Ramadan's sunset fast-breaking, and now the men were anxious to get home for Suhur—the supper many Muslims eat late to give them sustenance through the next day's fast. Inside the hall, among the empty teacups and fruit plates, two men stayed behind: Talabani and Prime Minister Maliki. In the public eye Talabani deferred carefully to Maliki and seemed to genuinely want him to succeed. In this private setting it was different: Talabani stood with a Dominican cigar smoldering in his hand; Maliki sat at his side jotting down notes as Talabani spoke.
Talabani had now spent three years in the post-Saddam government and had seen three different prime ministers in Baghdad, each one less convincing than the last. Talabani had pledged to make Maliki into a strong leader, but the man was almost impossible not to upstage. Talabani charged forward, visiting coalition allies as well as France, Iran, and even China, constantly cultivating his mandate as president. Maliki, on the other hand, couldn't resist looking down the chasm, wondering if the Shi'ite factions he straddled would widen their differences. When President Bush called from the White House, Maliki made no demands other than to ask if it was true that Washington had decided to replace him. Talabani made the best of an impossible paradox. He possessed the famous ability to multitask contradictory policies, to charm and outwit his enemies and his allies, and to always be forgiven. But the more visible Talabani made himself, the weaker Maliki appeared, treading water at the head of a sinking parliament.
The two men finished speaking and walked out together like a student and professor finishing up a lesson. Maliki bid the president good night. His security men swept him back to the Green Zone.
Unusually, Talabani was fasting this Ramadan. It was the subject of great mirth in his entourage of Kurds, who now had to sneak their secular snacks while Talabani became grumpier as the day wore on, but failed to lose weight. After Maliki left, the president sat down to a mouthwatering spread of fruit and sweets, which Talabani tucked into, making sure that all his guests did the same. The president's aides stepped up close to his ear; as often as not, Talabani might perceive that one of the leaders at the meeting might have left feeling slighted, and after any heated argument the president's aides took orders to send over baskets of fruit, Kurdish honey, and yogurt, as well as other trinkets, to patch things up. The president was famous for his gifts, and his personal assistant always kept count of what was in the larder to send out. Tonight's meeting had gone well and no amends needed to be made ("Even Ja'fari behaved himself," remarked one of the aides, long accustomed to the two men locking horns, even now that Ja'fari was just a party official). Talabani's habit this month had been to stay up late with his old guerrilla cronies playing high-stakes poker, but most of them had already gone north to get ready for the end of the Ramadan holiday, so he lingered a while longer with his staff.
The palace entourage included many familiar faces from the Kurdish diaspora, including a few prominent journalists who had come on board to manage his media relations. Seemingly all the best-known independent Kurdish academics had also decided it was finally time to pitch in and try to make Iraq, or at least Kurdistan, succeed. A number of Arabs also worked for the president, including Wafiq al-Samarra'i, the Iraqi army general who had plotted the coup with Talabani back in 1995. After a brief foray into politics, Samarra'i had joined Talabani's staff as his security advisor, and he now lived in a riverside villa close by Mam Jalal's residence.* The house and palace sat only a hundred yards apart along the Tigris riverbank, but the president still rode home in his black bulletproof BMW with several white Land Cruisers escorting.
As they saw the American-administered Green Zone grow enormous and cumbersome, the Kurds had concluded they would rather take care of their own security; they kept to their own enclaves in Baghdad and many of the functions of government stayed with them. Talabani's PUK had seized a strip of land alon
g the Tigris in 2003, and with his inauguration it became the presidential compound. More often than he drove across the river to see the U.S. ambassador or the prime minister, they came to see Talabani. The KDP's Hoshyar Zebari felt the same way. Though his foreign ministry sat just outside the gates of the Green Zone, Zebari kept it apart from the American canton, now a pretzel of annoying security layers. Sometimes not even high-security credentials plus a flawless command of English, Arabic, and Kurdish sufficed to easily get through the checkpoints, which were often manned by coalition soldiers from the Ukraine or Peru. Some of the problems were more conceptual than linguistic. One day, late to a meeting, Zebari had erupted after being refused entry by American soldiers at a checkpoint.
"I am the foreign minister of Iraq!" Zebari yelled at the clueless GI. "Where is your passport?! Do you have a visa to be in my country?"
Zebari made his own secure enclave in the neighborhood behind the foreign ministry, where he and his staff lived quite comfortably in some of the mansions there, built in nouveau riche glory by black marketers during the years of sanctions. Once out of the American zone, Zebari felt comfortable to move his wife, children, and even grandchildren down to Baghdad with him—protected fastidiously by platoons of loyal pesh merga. As lifelong rebels, the Kurds in Baghdad perhaps felt nothing strange about the fact that every time they wanted to go five hundred yards up the road, they needed to cordon off the street, search for roadside bombs, stop traffic, post a soldier on every corner, and perhaps ask for American air cover.
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