8. Interview with Ali Bapir, October 2006, in Sulimaniya.
9. Interview with Harry Schute, September 15, 2006, in Erbil. I also relied on Linda Robinson's biography of the Special Forces, Masters of Chaos, chapter 13, "Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby)."
10. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, p. 240.
11. The PUK eventually got so frustrated with CIA promises that they went ahead and purchased a cargo convoy full of weapons from Iran, which they unloaded conspicuously in plain view of the CIA station in Qalaat Chowlan, according to George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, p. 391.
12. The details of the assault on Ansar al-Islam are reconstructed from interviews with Bafel Talabani and Lahor Talabani, October 21 and 22, 2006, in Sulimaniya; Kurdish translators who requested anonymity; American and Kurdish soldiers interviewed at Girda Drozna the day of the battle, March 28, 2003; and a press conference with Special Forces officers and pesh merga leadership the day after. I also consulted Robinson's Masters of Chaos.
13. Robinson, p. 307.
14. Ibid., p. 312.
15. Steve Vogel, "Troops Parachute in to Open a New Front," Washington Post, March 27, 2003.
I6. Glass, Northern Front, p. 223.
17. Gordon and Trainor, p. 317.
9: Deeds to the Promised Land
1. Interview with Ramadan Rashid, October 3, 2006, in Kirkuk.
2. Robinson, Masters of Chaos, p. 328.
3. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, p. 347.
4. Frank Antenori, a retired Special Forces sergeant, wrote an account of the battle with Hans Halberstadt, Roughneck Nine-One, p. 173. BBC cameraman Fred Scott kept his camera rolling, and John Simpson reported on the incident immediately, despite both of them suffering minor wounds in the blast.
5. Ibid., p. 390.
6. Ibid., p. 411.
7. Ibid., p. 448.
8. Interview with Saadi Ahmad Pira, September 18, 2006, in Erbil.
9. Talabany, Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, p. 45.
10. A source who attended the meeting, and Robinson, p. 332.
11. Information about Mosul is from interviews with Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers in the city on May 28, 2003, including Captain Trey Kate, a public affairs officer with the 101st Airborne; interview with Mishan al-Jabouri, May 28, 2003, in Mosul; interview with General David Petraeus, December 16, 2006, by phone from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; as well as Gordon and Trainor, and Robinson's accounts of Waltemeyer's entrance to the city. Waltemeyer declined several e-mail requests to be interviewed.
12. Interview with KDP general Jemi 1 Mahmoud Suleiyman Besefky, by Mike Tucker, in Hell Is Over, p. 23.
13. The Iraqi army wasn't alone. Mushir told me the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), a group of secular Iranian militants, helped put down the uprising, cementing a reputation for brutality among Kurds. The organization began as part of the 1979 Iranian revolution but split away as clerics consolidated control. Thousands of members of the group, along with their weapons and artillery, took shelter in Iraq. The asylum came with a price—one they didn't mind at first. Saddam Hussein required the MKO members to fight against their countrymen during the Iran-Iraq war. But after the war, Saddam began using the group against his internal enemies. The fighters had little choice—except for Saddam, the world considered the MKO to be made up of terrorists. In their isolation they became more cultlike, keeping to themselves in the town of Khanakeen, one of the Arabized villages just south of the Kurdish safe zone. But the story has more twists. The MKO took advantage of America's twenty-year feud with Tehran, and its political wing in the United States managed to generate support in Washington. In 2002 this political wing convinced 150 members of Congress to sign a petition supporting the MKO as freedom fighters, the congresspeople not realizing that the State Department considered the MKO terrorists for their bombings against civilians in Iran. According to Linda Robinson, U.S. Special Forces signed a treaty with the MKO in spring of 2003 to keep them out of the fight. They were later cantoned and protected by U.S. troops, and some of the more extreme Ira-nophobes in the U.S. government favor using them as agents against Tehran.
10: The Believers
1. Interview with Barham Salih, May 27, 2003, in Baghdad.
2. Interview with Jay Garner, September 6, 2006, in Crystal City, Virginia.
3. Brian Knowleton, "US Administrator in Iraq Pledges a 'Mosaic' Government," International Herald Tribune, April 22, 2003.
4. Interviews with Jay Garner by phone and in Crystal City, Virginia, September 6, 2006; Dick Naab, July 21 and December 1, 2006, in Crystal City, Virginia; Gordon Rudd, July 19, 2006, in Virginia; and many conversations with Paul Hughes between 2003 and 2006.1 also referred to Iraq and Back by Kim Olson, who was Garner's executive officer at ORHA, as well as Bob Woodward's State of Denial and Peter Galbraith's The End of Iraq.
5. Woodward, State of Denial, p. 170.
6. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, p. 475; and Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 11. Khalilzad took up the job of U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in November 2003 and would return to head the embassy in Baghdad two years later after a generally well-reviewed tenure in Kabul.
7. Interview with General David Petraeus, December 16, 2006, by telephone from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
8. U.S. Army Pfc. James Matise, "Mosul Delegates Hold Iraq's First Election," 101st Airborne Division Web site.
9. Interview with Kosrat Rasul, September 18, 2006, in Erbil. General Petraeus had no recollection of Ramadan's capture when I interviewed him in 2006.
10. L. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 43.
11. Interview with Nechirvan Barzani, September 21, 2006, in Erbil.
12. This was related to me by two people who were standing within earshot. The question astounded not only the Kurds in attendance but also Bremer's staff and the U.S. military personnel standing nearby.
13. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, then working with Patrick Tyler of the New York Times, and myself were the three.
14. Human Rights Watch, Claims in Co?iflict: Reversing Ethnic Cleansing in Norther?! Iraq, August 2004, p. 28.
15. Interview with Colonel William Mayville, May 30, 2003, in Kirkuk.
16. Interview with Harry Schute, September 15, 2006, in Erbil.
17. Interviews with two Bush administration officials involved in the case; interview with Faruk Lo?o?lu, September 11, 2006, in Ankara; Michael Rubin, "A Comedy of Errors: American Turkish Relations and the Iraq War," Turkish Policy Quarterly, Spring 2005.
18. Interview with Robert Deutsch, July 26, 2006, in Washington, D.C.
19. Interview with Hussein Sinjari, October 2, 2006, in Sulimaniya.
20. Interview with Muhammad Ihsan, November 16, 2006, by phone from Baghdad; interview with Hania Mufti, January 10, 2007, by phone from New York City; as well as Gwynne Roberts's documentary about Ihsan's journey, "Saddam's Road to Hell," which aired on Frontline, January 24, 2006.
11: The Feast of the Sacrifice
1. Interview with CPA staffer, 2006.
2. Interview with Stafford Clarry, October 24, 2006, in Erbil. By that time Clarry was a consultant for the KRG.
3. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 258.
4. Interview on October 24, 2006, in Dukan.
5. Details of the TAL negotiations come from numerous interviews with principals, cross-checked against Bremer, My Year in Iraq; Galbraith, End of Iraq; and Diamond, Squandered Victory.
6. Bremer, p. 356.
7. Interview with Barham Salih, October 6, 2006, in Baghdad.
8. Interview with Nawshirwan Mustafa, September 23, 2006, in Sulimaniya.
12: Securing the Realm
1. I spent the days around the election with Rostam as well as several other journalists for security and camaraderie: Ayub Nuri, Nir Rosen, and Lynsey Ad-dario. Nir wrote about Rostam in his book, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006).
2. James Fallows, "Why Iraq Has No Army," Atlantic Monthly, Decem
ber 2005.
3. Interview with former embassy official, July 2006.
4. Thanassis Cambanis, "In Mosul, Kurdish Militia Helps Keep Order," Boston Globe, November 18, 2004; Dexter Filkins and Robert F. Worth, "U.S. Troops Set for Final Attack on Fallujah Force," New York Times, November 13, 2004.
5. In addition to the census, this was the impression of former U.S. ambassador to Iraq William Eagle ton, interviewed August 15, 2006, by phone from Marrakech.
6. Woodward, State of Denial, pp. 375, 391.
7. Interview with Zalmay Khalilzad, October 25, 2006, in Dukan, and a press briefing July 13, 2005, in Washington, D.C.
8. SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim suggested the three regions as early as December 2003, in a PBS Frontline interview.
9. "Talabani and Ja'fari Have Dispute over Palace in the Green Zone," Al Sharq al-Awsat, November 7, 2005; "Mr. Big," by Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, February 5, 2007. Talabani later made the building available to Ja'fari's successor, another Da'wa party prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, making it clear that his tiff with Ja'fari was almost purely personal.
10. Interview with Hania Mufti, January 10, 2007, by phone from New York City; Steven Fainaru and Anthony Shadid, "Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk," Washington Post, June 15, 2005; Human Rights Watch, Caught in the Whirlwind, July 2007.
11. Diamond, Squandered Victory, p. 343.
12. Michael Howard, "Iraqi Constitution in Trouble as Sunnis Walk Out," Guardian, July 21, 2005.
13. Interview with Peter Galbraith, August 30, 2005, by telephone from Erbil.
14. Interview August 30, 2005, by telephone from Erbil.
15. AFP, November 18, 2005, quoting Turkey's NTV.
13: Something That Does Not Love a Wall
1. Robert F.Worth, "Kurds Turn Violent in Protest Against Their Leaders," New York Times, March 16, 2006; AFP reporting the same day.
2. Amanj Khalil, "Halabja Protesters May Face Death Penalty," IWPR, March 23, 2006.
3. Farman Abdul Rahman and Zanko Ahmed, " More Alleged Kurdish Spies Revealed," IWPR, ICR no. 221, May 11, 2007.
4. Michael Rubin, "Dissident Watch," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006; Amnesty International 2006 Annual Report; AFP reporting based in Vienna.
5. By 2007 both American and Kurdish authorities put the number of Kurds who had fled Mosul at around seventy thousand; Edward Wong, "In North Sunni Arabs Drive Out Kurds," New York Times, May 30, 2007.
6. I watched on a video link from the press gallery in the Green Zone.
7. I watched but mostly listened, flat on the floor of the nearby BBC office, after our windows shattered in the first explosion. The cement truck stuck in the rubble was caught on security camera from the top of the hotel.
8. Noah Feldman, "Agreeing to Disagree in Iraq," New York Times op-ed, August 30, 2005.
9. Unbroadcast portion of interview by Jim Muir in February 2005; also author interviews with high-ranking members of the PUK who requested anonymity.
10. Jonathan Finer, "For Kurds, a Surge of Violence in Campaign," Washington Post, December 14, 2005; Kathleen Ridolfo, "RFE/RL Newsline," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 9, 2005.
11. "Added Grievances Underlying Kurdish Unrest," Human Rights Watch, March 19, 2004; Gary C. Gambill, "The Kurdish Reawakening in Syria," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, April 2004; and wire reports.
12. "Hoshyar Zebari Denies Involvement in Syria Unrest," AFP, March 22, 2004.
13. Nicholas Blanford, "A Murder Stirs Kurds in Syria," Christian Science Monitor, June 15, 2005.
14. Interviews with several Kurdish students; interview with Roya Toloui, June 2, 2006, in Washington, D.C; purported pictures of "Shwana" before and after his murder at pak-us.com/English/Aug172005-RUK-Shwane.pdf. Further details provided by Roya Boroumand, of the Abdurrahman Boroumand Foundation (abfiran.org), which interviewed Shwana's brother after his murder.
15. Matthew McAllester, "A Renewed Threat," Newsday, June 25, 2006.
16. Interviews with Murat Karayilan and Adam Uzun (European spokesman for the PKK), September 30, 2006, in an undisclosed location near the Qandil Mountains.
17. Interview with Mesut Hakki Casm, February 10, 2005, in Istanbul.
18. Associated Press, April 7, 2007, though Barzani's remarks had been made in an interview with Al-Arrabiyah Television months earlier.
19. Ian Traynor, "Turkey Raises Hopes of Peace with Kurds," Guardian, July 24, 2007.
20. Henri Barkey, "A Missed Moment in Iraq," Washington Post, October 27, 2007.
21. Interview with Bozan Teken and Mizgin Amed, members of the management council of the PKK (now calling itself the KCK), on October 25, 2007, at a location near the Qandil Mountains.
22. Interview with "Yezdin Sher," a PKK guerrilla, on October 26, 2007, near the Iraqi town of Kashani, along the Turkish border.
23. Interview with Masrour Barzani, October 24, 2007, in Salahudin.
24. Patrick Cockburn wrote about Hasafa's case for the Independent on Sunday, "US Frees Iraqi Kidnappers So They Can Spy on Insurgents," March 20, 2005.1 met Hasafa in September 2006, in Erbil, and again in October 2007.
25. Nicholas Birch, "Political Rivalries Divide Kurdistan Mobile Networks," Daily Star (Beirut), June 7, 2004; Glenn Zorpette, "Iraq Goes Wireless," Spectrum On Line, 2006.
Conclusion: Visible Nation
1. John Simpson, "Saddam Hanging Taunts Evoke Ugly Past," BBC News, December 31, 2006.
2. Miller, Blood Money, p. 192; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "Kurds Cultivating Their Own Ties with US," Washington Post, April 23, 2007.
3. Interview with Ashti Hawrami, October 30, 2007, in Salahudin. Also many posts by UPI International Energy Resources desk editor Ben Lando at http://iraqoilreport.com.
4. Ben Lando, "U.S. OK's Saddam Law Oil Deals," UPI, October 31, 2007.
5. John F. Burns, "David Petraeus, a General Who Won't Sugarcoat," International Herald Tribune, August 13, 2007.
Selected Bibliography
Aburish, Said K. Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge. New York: Bloomsbury, 2000.
Anderson, Liam, and Gareth Stansfield. The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Antenori, Frank, and Hans Halberstadt. Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.
Baer, Robert. See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIAs War on Terrorism. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002.
Baker, James A. III. The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989-1992. New York: Putnam, 1995.
Barzani, Masoud. Mustafa Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Behhà ed-Dîn. The Life of Saladin. Elibron Classics (reprint 1897 Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, London). Adamont Media, 2005.
Bremer, L. Paul. My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Burke, Jason. Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003.
Bulloch, John, and Harvey Morris. No Friends but the Mountains: The Tragic History of the Kurds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Chaliand, Gerard, ed. A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. Translated by Michael Pallis. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993.
Clancy, Tom, with General Carl Stiner and Tony Koltz. Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces. New York: Berkley Books, 2003.
Clancy, Tom, with General Tony Zinni and Tony Koltz. Battle Ready. New York: Berkley Books, 2004.
Cockburn, Andrew, and Patrick Cockburn. Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession. London: Verso, 2002.
Cuny, Frederick C., with Richard B. Hill. Famine, Conflict and Response: A Basic Guide. West Hartford, CT: Kumjarian Press, 1999.
Diamond, Larry. Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq. New York: Owl, 2005.
Fromkin, David. A Peace
to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914-1922. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989.
Galbraith, Peter W. The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Glass, Charles. The Northern Front. London: Saqi, 2006.
Gordon, Michael R., and Bernard E. Trainor. Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. New York: Pantheon, 2006.
Graham-Brown, Sarah. Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq. London: I. B. Tauris, 1999.
Gunter, Michael M. The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Hamilton, A. M. Road Through Kurdistan: Travels in Northern Iraq. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Hazelton, Fran, ed. Iraq Since the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy. London: Zed Books, 1994.
Hiltermann, Joost R. A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Isikoff, Michael, and David Corn. Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown, 2006.
Izady, Mehrdad. The Kurds: A Concise Handbook. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 1992.
Jabar, Faleh A., and Hosham Dawod, eds. The Kurds: Nationalism and Politics. London: Saqi, 2006.
Jwaideh, Wadie. The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006.
Kissinger, Henry. Years of Renewal. New York: Touchstone, 1999.
Lennox, Gina, ed. Fire, Snow and Honey: Voices from Kurdistan. Melbourne: Halstead Press, 2001.
Makiya, Kanan. Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Invisible Nation Page 45