Road less travel in Erbil, Iraq

I went to northern Iraq, Erbil to help out setting up IVF centre in one of the newly built hospital. I was specifically brought along to do lecture and advice on the layout , setting up, non-consumables, equipments,anesthesia IV, medias and so on for the Iraqis embryologists,clinicians and gynecologists and possibly to see some patients. If I had only been able to accomplish these two things during my 18 days in the country, I would have been happy, but it ended up being much, much more. The following is a report on some of the highlights of the trip and an attempt to get out on “paper” what I learned.

Preceding the Turkish Invasion?

There had been some serious escalation to the conflict between Turkey and the PKK on the Iraqi border in the weeks leading up to my trip. The PKK is a Kurdish group known as Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or Kurdistan Workers Party hiding out in the mountain caves of Iraq along the border and occasionally attacking Turkish military sites. The PKK wants to establish a greater Kurdish state, which would include a significant chunk of what is now Turkey, so obviously the Turks aren’t too keen on the idea. There is lots of information to be had on the conflicts, so I won’t go. I wanted to get out of the car and take a good picture of this watchtower along the Tigris, but apparently the driver thought that was an awful idea.into it, but suffice it to say that the two groups have been fighting on and off for the last 30 years, and during that time, Turkey has done 24 military operations into Iraq in an unsuccessful attempt to snuff them out. The PKK ambushed Turkish troops in late October, killing 12 and taking eight hostage, which caused Turkey to assemble an extra 100,000 troops on the border. So with Turkey threatening invasion, six other Americans and I came rolling through eastern Turkey. Honestly, I’m not sure why the group leader decided we should go through Turkey instead of flying directly into Iraq, but I was all for it, since it added to the adventure (and was a lot cheaper). For a hundred miles or so, our taxi drove us east along the Syrian border, with watch towers and barbed wired suggesting we shouldn’t take bathroom breaks in the bushes on that side of the road. We reached the Iraqi border without incident and started the process of explaining what the heck we were doing there trying to cross the border. The process only took about two hours, probably because we had the secretary general of the Department forgot to put in the part about it being a vacation paradise.of Health (DOH) on the other side of the border vouching for us. At one point, an Iraqi intelligence officer was trying to poke holes in our story until our group leader’s cell phone rang, and it was the secretary general himself. At that point, our story sounded pretty solid. So there we were in the vacation paradise known as the Republic of Iraq. Also of interest throughout the trip was how differently Kurds were reacting to the Turkish threat. It was split exactly along gender lines. The women told me that they were all concerned, and that they were all stocking up on provisions and praying that it wouldn’t really happen. All the men that I talked to about it said they were completely unafraid, because the Turks knew better than to risk coming up against the Peshmerga (the 400,000-strong Kurdish military). Obviously, there was a bit of posturing going on mountain .

This is the city of Duhok in the province of Duhok from a nearby mountain top.Checkpoint Fashion Shoot Obviously checkpoints are common all over Iraq, but with the driver assigned to us by the Department of Health, we didn’t usually have any problems. One of the craziest things that I experienced during my time in Iraq, though, happened at one of these checkpoints in the middle of nowhere up on a mountain between Duhok and Mosul. Our van pulled to a stop, and after the PDK soldiers looked in, they asked us all to get out. I was not real keen on this, considering there was absolutely no one within shouting distance, and they probably could have done absolutely anything they wanted to us without anyone finding out about it. Rather than look through all of our stuff, though, they got out their camera phones and asked if we could take some pictures together. I was seriously confused. The soldiers went from high-intensity, Kalashnikov-toting hard-asses to fun-loving photographers in about five seconds. They wanted to take pictures with us holding their weapons, then with us in their jail, and I simply couldn’t get over the fact that this was really happening. Am I really in Iraq taking pictures with an Iraqi militia? Total craziness.

Kurdistan: The Other Iraq

The tourism ministry in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq is trying really hard to distance itself from the part of Iraq that is currently engaged in an awfully-bloody conflict. Their slogan really is “The Other Iraq.” Check out their website if you don’t believe me: http://www.theotheriraq.com/. And while I don’t really think anyone is going to buy into it, things really are very different here. Some of their public services are much better than what we get in the Singapore. Granted, they make so much money from oil that the citizens don’t even have to pay any taxes, but some of this stuff is still amazing. We visited the men’s smoker corner.

“I am PKK”

One of the things I was trying to get a feel for was what mainstream Iraqi Kurds thought about the PKK, hiding out in the mountains and using violence against Turkey in an attempt to achieve independence. One of the Kurds that we met was very clear that it was important for all people in the Kurdish government to keep their distance from the PKK at the moment. They needed to take a hard stand in order to stay in favor with the EU, the US, etc., who have dubbed the PKK a terrorist organization. “We have to pretend we don’t like them, and we have to pretend that we don’t know where they are,” I was told. A government official, who will remain unnamed, asked us what we imagined a PKK soldier to look like. Someone in our group said he thought the PKK was made up mostly of average Kurds, who believed very strongly that they deserved a larger autonomous region. Apparently pleased with (or directly supports) the PKK. These guys are the local heroes and apparently adorn the walls of about every government office in Kurdistan.our answer, he later whispered directly to us instead of through a translator: “I am PKK.” So, while my discussions can’t be taken as a scientific survey, I think it’s safe to say that there is at least a significant percent of the Kurdish population that identifies with (or directly supports) the PKK. There may very well be more to come as I continue to process this and find out what all I'm allowed to talk about from the trip. So, stay tuned ...

Security Situation

Guns don't mean safety If guns translated into safety, Iraq would be the safest country of all time. Everybody's got a Kalashnikov, including the Iraqis guy who insists he's a pacifist and can join our peace team. That's right, he says this with a straight face with an AK-47 strapped over his shoulder. There are gunmen outside the shopping centers, outside every embassy, at every roundabout downtown, in every bank. The newest plan from the US military is to issue M-16s to the Iraq troops that they're training instead of AKs, so that they can actually track how many end up being used by the "bad guys." This is pretty smart, actually, because M16s use the 5.56 mm NATO rounds instead of the 7.62 mm rounds that go in the AK. Now the will have to insert the word of choice here: insurgents/Taliban/Al Qaeda/freedom fighters steal and stockpile two different kinds of cartridges. The point of this paragraph is just to say that if you go to Iraq, you'll be getting used to everyone having automatic weapons.