Chapter 33 29 Going to the North—Kurdish Refugees Escape

For an ounce of success, there is a gallon of blood. —George Barton On April 1, at 4:00 in the morning, Baghdad chief Lao Zhu woke me up. There was no electricity. We wiped our faces with cold water in the dark, and then picked up a shovel to defecate. Due to the lack of water and electricity, the flush toilet in the building It doesn't work at all.The night was as dark as ink, and we selected the ground carefully with flashlights, because we had "pulled all over" the surrounding area. At 5 o'clock sharp, we arrived at the Rashid Hotel.Reporters are standing downstairs, waiting for officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Information to arrive.Except for the Jordanian reporter who drove a "Nissan Patrol", all Western journalists were rich and powerful, spending dozens of dollars to hire a car from the Iraqi Ministry of Information.According to the regulations in wartime Iraq, all foreign journalists must take the car of the Ministry of Information when they go out, and they are not allowed to hire a car by themselves. Even the crazy CNN has to obey.We were given preferential treatment and were allowed to drive our own Mercedes-Benz-260, but we had to be "accompanied" by a press officer and obey all his orders.The "full companion" assigned to us today is Muhammad. He accompanied me to take pictures of the bombed children's milk powder factory last week.Mohammad checked our 150 liters of spare petrol in the trunk and ordered the car to stand by.

It was not until 6 o'clock that we received the order to start.All cars are fully numbered and must drive in sequence without overtaking.The Jordanian reporter was ahead of us, and the bearded photographer waved his oversized pipe at me: "I hope nothing happens on the road." Since the No. 2 road to Kirkuk was carrying troops, we had to take another low-grade road to the right. Passing the Little Zab River Bridge, there are dozens of burnt IFA military trucks in the jungle on the left.Burnt buildings began to appear along the roadside.The Patriotic Civil Defense Corps armed with AK-M rifles stood in the middle of the road and kept checking the IDs of passing vehicles.

The weather is still very gloomy, like Zhangjiajie in western Hunan after the rain, with fog and mist, which makes people nostalgic, sad and sad.On both sides of the road, IFA military vehicles were destroyed by fire. Bunkers were built at the commanding heights along the road, and red, green, white, and black Iraqi flags were planted on them.The sunny hillside is full of double tents and squad tents, and there are T-62 tanks and French GCTI 20mm self-propelled howitzers in the depressions.All the portraits of Saddam on the side of the road were destroyed, and they were covered with 7.62mm bullet holes from AK rifles.The sound of gunfire rang out as our convoy snaked through military vehicles.

At noon, the Crown car following us flashed its headlights to signal to stop.It turned out that the right rear wheel of our sluggish Mercedes-Benz was pierced by shrapnel and was running out of breath.Taking advantage of Lao Zhu's opportunity to change the spare tire, I added another 60 liters of oil to our "Big Ben". After more than six hours of flying, we arrived in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, 400 kilometers north of Baghdad.This was just recovered the day before yesterday.The dead bodies of Kurds can be seen on the streets from time to time.The yellow and thin Kurdish peasants in ragged clothes ran around in fear and panic like rabbits that had been frightened by a gun.As the weather got warmer, some corpses had already begun to decompose, causing clumps of flies to dance around. Purple blood was cracked on the asphalt road, and the stench was overwhelming.

The Kurdish issue, which has always been regarded as the root cause of the unrest in Iraq, has once again attracted international attention.Many Middle East experts believe that the Kurdish issue is not only related to the survival of Saddam Hussein's regime, but also is becoming a regional thorny problem related to the relations between Iran and Turkey, Iran and Syria. The Kurds are one of the oldest ethnic groups living in the Kurdistan region of Southwest Asia.The Kurdistan region includes southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, northeastern Syria, western Iran, and Soviet Armenia.Kurdish belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.The vast majority of Kurds are Sunnis of Islam.

Historically, the Kurds lived mainly as nomads. Due to the influence of political, economic, and cultural factors in the country or place of residence, the economy and culture of the various tribes and branches of the Kurds showed an unbalanced development trend, and the means of livelihood also changed significantly. The change.Mountain residents usually graze or continue nomadic herding, and plain residents are engaged in agriculture, while Kurds living in the Kirkuk oilfield area of ​​Iraq are mostly oil workers. At present, there are about 25 million Kurds in the world. Their general distribution is: about 12 million in Turkey, about 5.5 million in Iran, about 5 million in Iraq, about 500,000 in Syria, and the rest are distributed in the Soviet Union, Lebanon, Jordan, Afghanistan and other countries.The countries where the Kurds live have conflicts between the main ethnic group and the Kurds to varying degrees, so this is a regional issue.The various factors left over from the colonial rule in history make this contradiction manifest most strongly in Iraq.

According to the accompanying Western journalists, most of the Iraqi Kurds live in the northern provinces of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil, while the rest live in the three provinces of Kirkuk, Mosul and Diyala.During World War I and World War II, the Kurds with strong xenophobic sentiments had armed conflicts with the British occupying forces. Although many anti-British uprisings of various scales were repeatedly suppressed, Barzani, a Kurdish national hero, was born.After World War II, from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, Barzani led his followers to repeatedly ask the Iraqi government for regional ethnic autonomy. After being rejected, they rose up several times and signed ceasefire peace agreements several times.During the Iran-Iraq War, various factions of Kurdish anti-government forces launched an independence movement again.Regardless of the tense battle situation, Saddam took the risk of mobilizing heavy troops from the front line to expel the Kurds on a large scale. From 1983 to 1988, about 25 Kurdish towns and 4,000 villages were destroyed, 500,000 Kurds were deported, and 1.5 million Kurds were expelled. People live a nomadic life.In the face of Kurdish resistance, the Iraqi government forces even did not hesitate to use chemical weapons.The Gulf War severely weakened Saddam's war potential and military machinery. Taking advantage of the relocation of the Republican Guard and the main force of the Iraqi army to the east, the Kurds in the northern provinces of Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk and Erbil once again An armed uprising took place, captured the provincial capitals of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil, and surrounded the Kirkuk oil field. The Iraqi government was forced to urgently call in elite troops to quell the riots.

Among the reporters, a foreigner with three Nikon F4s and one Leica M6 on his back is particularly eye-catching. He has "AFP" embroidered on his chest. We looked at each other's signs and stretched out our right hands. "Hello Xinhua", "Hello Faxin". Erbil, with a population of 800,000, has almost become a ghost city.Soldiers stopped the fleeing vehicle for inspection, and found six children in the suitcase of a Toyota.People seemed to pass by in a hurry, with expressionless faces, and soldiers with guns were everywhere. The paratroopers guarding the intersection wore huge white-frame goggles, and the identification symbols on the military vehicles behind them were covered with yellow mud.There are double 23mm anti-aircraft guns placed horizontally at the main intersections in the city, which are used as anti-war weapons. There are warheads and ammunition clips everywhere, shoes and feet, and there is no place to stand.

No shops were open, and several government soldiers posted portraits of Saddam in the windows.The doors and windows of the houses are closed, and there is no life.The eyes of the huge statue of Saddam Hussein in front of the Erbil shopping center were gouged out, and the shops were robbed and burned. The "full escort" forbade us to take photos of the destroyed Saddam Hussein. The local police chief, Mohammad Norey, told us about the crimes of the rioters: "On March 11, the rioters occupied the police station and burned the documents." Adair, director of the management department of Salah Al-Din University, said: "Erbil has returned to the government. In your hands, the fighting will stop and everything will end." He claimed that at least 100,000 Iranian gangsters have crossed the border to Iraq to do evil.

Standing at the gate of the police station and looking around, the yellow dust from the bombs rose from the ground, and the guns were rumbling, and the tanks and cannon positions in the suburbs could be seen clearly with the naked eye.The tanks rushed towards the Kurdish positions dragging soaring yellow smoke. On the cross street to the left of the city hall, five Kurds in black were lying on the ground, bleeding from the bullet holes on their backs.Journalists from all over the world swarmed and were immediately stopped by press officials.Mr. Sadong, an official from the Information Department of the Iraqi government who led the team, yelled that when he counted to "five", all journalists must get back to the car, and then began to count.When journalists from various countries heard the word "three", they ran back to their cars one after another.Because I was a little slow, I was warned again: "Xinhua! This is the third time!"

April 5.We headed toward Sulaymaniyah in northeastern Iraq against the rising sun amidst the gray mist.Kirkuk's blue sky, green grass, and small river passed by us.There are some English-style cottages where oil workers live, with a single door and a garden inside, which is warm and peaceful.Abundant oil resources, the Tigris River and the Euphrates River cross this fertile land in the desert, giving birth to the long-standing Babylonian civilization. Entering the mountain with the convoy, the scenery here is similar to that of Baghdad's old enemy Israel, Nalu Salem.The roadside shift tents are continuous, the high-voltage wires parallel to the road are all blown up, the road is full of military vehicles, and the pedestrians are all soldiers.A convoy of at least 50 military vehicles is resting by the side of the road.The military emblem on the car door was covered by yellow mud, and occasionally peeled off, revealing the yellow parachute logo on the red triangle. This unit wearing a red beret is obviously a paratrooper division of the Republican Guard. Soldiers along the way were moving forward in various means of transportation. Hundreds of soldiers were crowded on the 40-ton container trailer, poking their heads out from the shoulder-high side of the trailer, like a flock of geese in bamboo baskets transported to the Lai market.The soldiers also wore olive-green winter coats, large goggles and woolen hoods, reminiscent of Rommel of Alamein.Soldiers without goggles wrapped their heads in large Arab scarves, with only their eyes exposed, and their bodies were covered in loess.There are many white plastic buckets tied to the car body, which contain spare gasoline and water.Some soldiers huddled on the roof of the military vehicle tied themselves to the roof of the vehicle with tent ropes to prevent them from falling off during a nap. A small convoy of more than 20 military vehicles can be seen everywhere. The Land Rover jeep is equipped with a 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun on a flat mount. The soldiers on the vehicle carry rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders and wear Soviet-style steel helmets.On the sunny hillside by the roadside, army blankets were drying on the smoothbore turrets of T-72 tanks, and soldiers were dozing on the grass-green canvas gun jackets.Next to the howitzer position is a Soviet-made 40-tube vehicle-mounted rocket launcher.There are four Mi-24 Hind armed helicopters flying in formation in the air, roaring along the road.On the right is an improvised airstrip, where a French-made SA-3 Gazelle helicopter is landing, blowing yellow sand to block out the sun, like the Vietnam War on a VCD. When I arrived at Adenas Square in Sulaymaniyah, the "full escort" ordered all reporters to get out of the car and take pictures. I was ecstatic.The military vehicles here were crowded with the refugees in such a mess that I couldn't even open the door.My 80mm-200mm lens stopped working again, and the aperture ring couldn't be turned. From here, dozens of kilometers to the mountain pass were crowded by military vehicles and refugees.Buffaloes, Arabian horses, and donkeys drag wooden carts loaded with bedding, sewing machines, and alarm clocks, moving slowly through the military workshop.Evil breaths filled the nostrils, and the sound of crying and shouting shook the sky.The refugees who escaped from the mountains were dull-eyed and exhausted, carrying all kinds of tattered luggage on their shoulders, and an innocent and lovely child with snot and tears on his face unexpectedly embraced a dead eagle.Suddenly several shots rang out beside him, but there were crowds of people, but no one fell down.Jim from the BBC and I put our hands together and climbed up a low wall. At this time, the gunshots continued and the crowd was chaotic, but we just couldn't understand.I didn't know until I got back to Beijing that the "News Network" also broadcast a scene of me standing on a military vehicle. Because my mother didn't see it clearly, she waited until the "Evening News" to watch it again. Under the destroyed statue of Saddam in Adenas Square, a colonel of the Republican Guard at least 1.90 meters high directed the soldiers to move forward with a cane.Next to him was a little girl with a baby in her arms, not as tall as my legs, shivering.I gave her everything I could eat in my photography vest. Under the overpass leading to Choarta, T-72 main battle tanks and armored vehicles blocked the bridge deck, and the fleeing people were like a tide, and the army was like a breakwater.The soldiers carefully checked everyone's ID card before allowing them to pass.The SA-3 Gazelle helicopter in the sky shouted in Kurdish: "Everything is safe, go back to your home immediately." Jim, a BBC cameraman, and I climbed to the top of the overpass, overlooking the advancing army and fleeing refugees from here, like a colony of ants, the only difference is that the soldier ants are different from the worker ants.I can't help but think of a passage in the book: "The corpses of soldiers and citizens lie side by side, because they belong to the people." Next to me is a T-72 tank, with a huge smoothbore gun pointed directly at the intersection into the mountain.The "People's China Xinhua News Agency" on my body aroused the curiosity of the soldiers. I simply took off the Nikon camera that broke yesterday and handed it to them. Take the T-72 tank.But as soon as I pressed two cards, a second lieutenant ran over and ordered me to come down loudly, gesturing to put on handcuffs with both hands.I dilly-dally climbed down: "Yahe (brother), Xinixiabi (People's China)." I was taken to a captain, handed over my camera, and let him punish me. The captain looked me up and down for a long time and smiled. "Don't you know it's a military secret?" "I don't know. I want to take a photo with the 'Yahee' on it." "Is it People's China?" "Two hundred percent of the People's China." As I said that, I turned around to let him see the words on my chest and back. "Don't climb up next time." "Understood. You didn't listen to the news yesterday. The People's Republic of China is proposing to lift sanctions and aid the Iraqi people with medicine and food." The captain nodded again and again: "I know, I know." I really don't know what he knows, because I just heard about this news from BBC Jim and added it to the story. I took the opportunity to put away the camera and waved it at him three times." V" gesture, like I did when I photographed the anti-American parade.