“Bad example for whom?” I inquired.
Chapter Thirty-five
****** Israeli Minister Chaim Naumenko
Israel was still mourning our dead as we filed into a cabinet meeting to consider the American Secretary of State’s request that we not annex and fence off some of the unoccupied desert in the Jordan Valley and the land between the Golan and Damascus. I’m in no mood to agree with the meddling American; my brother’s body still hasn’t been found and no one saw his plane go down.
The resulting discussion was heated, but not in the direction the Secretary Billaud would appreciate. To the contrary, we’re coming to the conclusion that setting up buffer states and taking over a few acres of Syrian land is not enough, not nearly enough, to compensate us for our losses and permanently end the question of Israel’s borders.
“How far do you think we should go in terms of establishing the permanent border?” That’s the question the Army Chief of Staff asked the Prime Minister. For a change, the old man gave an answer I liked.
“In the north. Right up to the edge of Damascus.”
Then he gave a bitter smile and added something that had me nodding in enthusiastic agreement.
“The population up there is quite small and most of the people ran to Damascus when the fighting started. Let them stay there. It will remind the Syrians the folly of fucking with us.”
“Why just demilitarize it?” Someone else asked with anger in his voice. “We should annex it permanently and forever.”
I can’t contain myself so I broke into the conversation.
“I’m in total agreement with what the Prime Minister said. Countries who attack their neighbors in an effort to take their lands traditionally lose their own lands if their neighbors fight back and win. Just ask the Germans—they’ve been starting wars and losing territory for centuries. We should annex it all.”
“Yes, by God,” said Ari. “We should call it ’partial compensation’ and keep it forever.”
“Even better,” said Ravi Moran who was sitting next to me, “let’s call it the Billaud Solution and settle matters once and for all by letting the Arabs have their own state where they are concentrated in Ramallah and Jericho and annex everything else. Now’s the perfect time to do it. It would give us everything on this side of the river except Ramallah and Jericho and a narrow corridor connecting them to Jordan.”
And after a lot of discussion that was exactly what we decided to do; the vote was unanimous. And at the next cabinet meeting I’m going to propose everyone including every Arab and Haredi man and women be required to either begin the same three years of service we do or spend it in prison. Hopefully, most of the Arabs will emigrate rather than let their women serve; maybe we can get Jordan or the Saudis to set up a new city for them on the other side of the Jordan.
“I’m going to really enjoy talking to that asshole Billaud the next time he calls,” was the Prime Minister’s only comment after the vote. "I hope he has a heart attack when he learns we’re going to expand our borders and give him credit for the idea."
****** Lieutenant Colonel Dick Evans
We picked up our weapons in the twilight and smiled farewell to the Kurds as we shook their hands and profusely thanked them for their hospitality. Hozan and one of the Kurds from the PUK roadblock led the way as we moved north into the hills.
Anil was temporarily in the lead and we were spread out and walking single file in the warm darkness along a dirt track when we came out of trees. I was walking right behind Anil. It was about twenty minutes before dawn and the very first early light of the new day was just beginning as we walked right into the middle of a group of dozens of armed men, perhaps as many as a hundred.
Most of the men we stumbled upon were sprawled out on the ground sleeping quietly around a dozen or more pickup trucks and armored personnel carriers parked on both sides of the track we’d been walking. But not all of them.
Anil saw them first and began backing up. Too late—an alert guard raised his weapon and shouted a warning; we raised our hands.
“Probably Iraqi Army,” Anil hissed over his shoulder to me. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Then he said something in Arabic to the rapidly gathering crowd and gestured over his shoulder at us.
“I just told them we are a group of United Nations observers on a reconnaissance patrol trying to find out what the hell is going on in Iraq and who is in charge.” That’s the lie we decided to tell if we got caught.
There was a lot of shouting and all around us men were pulling on their boots and pointing weapons at us. We just stood there in the middle of a rapidly gathering crowd with our hands up.
A few moments later a disheveled man, apparently an officer who had been sleeping, rushed up with a pistol in his hand and began shouting. Anil answered by pointing over his shoulder at me and the men behind me. “United Nations,” he said. "United Nations."
Anil’s answer seemed to astound the man.
“United Nations?” he said twice with a lot of additional words in what sounded like Arabic. He clearly doesn’t believe us. “United Nations?”
Anil several times nodded and answered with what was obviously an emphatic "yes" until the man finally finished. Then Anil turned to me and said “he doesn’t believe us and wants to know who we are.”
“Tell him there has been a war between Iraq and Israel and that President Majid has asked the United Nations to investigate what has happened in Iraq and order the Israelis to leave.”
Maybe we can buy ourselves some time and decent treatment if we stick to that story. It’s what we decided to claim if the Iraqis caught us—which they sure as hell have.
Then I looked back and my spirits rose a little. Hozan and Solly were not with us. Neither is the non-descript Kurd who had accompanied Hozan. They’d been bringing up the rear of our little troop and must have faded back into the darkness when they heard us being challenged.
******
“Everyone’s a UN observer so stay loose,” I said as the four of us were disarmed and hustled into the back of an Iraqi army truck. Half a dozen Iraqi soldiers climbed in the back with us.
“They’re not regular army,” Anil observed as the truck lurched forward and started bouncing down the dirt track. “They must be border guards.”
It was a jarring trip but at least our hands weren’t tied so we could brace ourselves. After about forty minutes of bouncing along on rutted dirt roads, right after sunrise at about five o’clock, we bounced our way into a small village. In response to various shouted orders and gestures from our guards and the officer who had been following the truck in an old Russian jeep, the five of us and our eight guards jumped down from the back of the truck in front of a dirty two story concrete building covered with graffiti.
The building was at one end of a little village square and faced a row of shop fronts across the square. There was a faded sign in Arabic over the door and the windows were covered by rusty iron bars. The street in front of the building was paved and the store fronts across from it had their metal security awnings down and their doors shut. The merchants probably live above their stores.
No one was about except for a couple of veiled women who deliberately didn’t look at us as they hurried past the deserted shops on the other side of the street.
We couldn’t see much but somehow we instinctively knew it was a small village with maybe a hundred houses scattered around the cement building and the row of storefronts. Four or five isolated farmhouses were visible beyond the village to the east where the sun was rising.
******
We arrived at a concrete building with the wooden shutters and graffiti on its walls. It was obviously some sort of headquarters for the border guard. There was an old-fashioned wooden desk in the room we entered with a couple of sleepy border guards sitting at it and a big picture of President Majid on the wall behind it. The two guards in the room we entered had almost certainly been sleeping with their heads on t
he desk until our noisy arrival woke them up.
A portly Iraqi officer with a big mustache bustled in through a door behind the desk as we entered. He wore the insignia of a captain and he was still tucking in his shirt when he barked something to the officer who had been riding in the pickup truck behind us. There was quite an exchange and then the mustache said something in a threatening tone to Anil who responded in an irate tone and gestured to us.
“He doesn’t believe we are UN because we don’t have blue berets.”
“Tell him that our unit was quickly thrown together and we’ve been traveling all night because President Majid told the UN he wanted us here as soon as possible.”
After a few minutes of chatter Anil turned to me and explained. “Now he says we are spies and will be shot.”
“Tell him that is foolish because spies don’t wear uniforms and don’t walk all night to get around Kurdish roadblocks in order to reach the Iraqi army and see if there are Israelis in Iraq.”
Then I pointed at the picture of Iraq’s president on the wall and Anil translated as I said rather menacingly, “We’ve had a tiring trip at President Majid’s request and we’re hungry. He isn’t going to be happy unless we are immediately given something to eat and treated with the courtesy appropriate for invited guests.” Well hell we have to try.
****** Major Anil Hassan
A few minutes later the two Americans and Simon and I are sitting in some kind of mess hall drinking tea and eating bread and olives with a number of armed guards in attendance. The border guard captain with the big mustache was missing. He’d obviously gone off to call his headquarters for instructions.
Captain mustache came back about an hour later with another officer, this one a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi Army. The new guy had the passports the border guards took from us.
The lieutenant colonel didn’t introduce himself.
“I’ve have your papers,” he said in Arabic as he repeatedly slapped our passports against his hand as I translated what he was saying into English for the benefit of my three companions.
“You are American officers?” he asks the two Americans with a question in his voice. “And you are an Australian,” he asks Si. We all nod.
Then he turned to me. “If you are a Turkish officer, why are you with these men?”
“Because I am a Turkish officer, a major as you can see, and Turkey is a member of the United Nations. And because I can speak Arabic and English in addition to Turkish. As you might imagine, Colonel, there aren’t many Turkish officers who can also speak both Arabic and English. It’s probably why they were willing to send me to the officer’s course when I graduated.” Actually, that’s true. Of course it didn’t hurt that my father was a general.
“So what were you doing hiding in the woods at night?”
“We weren’t hiding. We were trying to by-pass a Peshmerga checkpoint – and we obviously succeeded.”
“Why were you doing that?” Why were we trying to avoid the PUK? That’s a good question.
“Are you fucking crazy? The Kurds are dangerous. How do you think they would respond to UN observers entering Iraq at the request of your president?”
Mentioning Iraq’s president seemed to have an effect. The colonel looked again at each of us and then again at our passport photos. Then he left the room without saying another word.
****** Lieutenant Colonel Dick Evans
Four hours later the Iraqi colonel returned with a worried look on his face and a squad of men. He barked something at Anil who promptly shook his head and snapped back something in disagreement before he translated for us.
“The colonel says we are here without permission. Baghdad apparently told him we are spies.”
Five minutes later, with our hands tied behind our backs, we were led out the door and helped almost courteously into the back of one of the trucks parked in front of the building. We’re tied up but we’re not being treated roughly. I wonder why?
About a dusty hour later it was already getting quite warm when the truck stopped at the outskirts of a little village and we were allowed to jump down. Then our hands were untied and we were allowed to take a piss. The Iraqi colonel came to the back of the truck as we started to climb back in and said something to Anil. Anil seemed surprised and they started arguing back and forth with a lot of hand waving and shouting.
Some of the troops gathered around and listened. After a while one of the men listening in the crowd said something to the colonel with a sharp edge to his voice. The colonel started to answer, but then closed his mouth and nodded in agreement. There was a lot of tension in the air.
Anil explained after we climbed back in the truck.
“Things are not as I thought. The colonel lied when he said he contacted Bagdad. The guys that took us away from the border guards are MEKs. He’s a colonel in the Iraqi army assigned to help train them. He wants to take us to Baghdad. The MEKs just said no; they want us to go with them to their camp.”
“MEKs? Who are the MEKs? I never heard of them.”
“They’re Iranians – what’s left of the left wing students who led the takeover of your Embassy. They fell out with the Ayatollah and had to flee because they wanted a Marxist state and the Ayatollah wanted an Islamic one. Many of the MEKs were executed but some of them escaped to Iraq and formed a military force to try to retake Iran by force. Until the recent peace treaty that formed the Islamic Coalition they’ve always fought on Iraq’s side against the Ayatollah’s army.”
“What does that have to do with us?” I asked Anil.
“The end of the war between Iran and Iraq means the MEK are stuck with no place to go. Going back to Iran means almost certain death for them. They’re probably afraid that part of the deal between the coalition countries and the religious leaders to end the war and attack Israel is for them to be returned to Iran.”
“They don’t know what’s in store for them so it looks like they’re going to hold us as hostages until they find out. The Iraqi colonel doesn’t like the idea but he agreed to go along with it. I don’t think he had much choice.”
******
“Any idea where they are taking us?” I asked as the truck starts moving again. From out of the back of the truck we can see a long line of pickup trucks following us.
Before Anil can answer one of the soldiers riding in the back with us shouts some kind of command at me and swung his rifle butt towards my face in a butt stroke that missed by inches. I don’t speak the language but I sure got the message. Must be one of the colonel’s Iraqis. No one said another word.
About an hour later we passed through a gate and into some kind of military compound with lots of tents and huts in orderly rows. I could see the guards standing at the guard shack and a red and white striped barrier pole coming down behind us after we went through. I could also see some women and children.
“Okay, I heard the Iraqi guards talking and I think I understand what’s happening,” Anil said as we climbed down to stand in the middle of a rapidly gathering group of uniformed men. The gathering crowd was stony faced but not hostile; more curious than anything else. There were uniformed women among them carrying weapons.
“The people who’ve got us are MEKs from across the border in Iran. This is one of their camps. The guards in the truck are some of the colonel’s Iraqis. The guards are worried. They don’t know whether the colonel will stay with the MEKs as their liaison officer or go back to Bagdad and abandon both the MEKs and them. They don’t trust him or the MEKs.”
******
The room where the MEKs stuck us was a flimsy plywood barracks-like cabin with one door, one window, and three canvas folding cots. A musty and partially open old sleeping bag seemed to airing out on one of the cots. Harry found an old Economist magazine on the floor under one of the cots and promptly sat down on one of the cots and began reading it. There was a battered old suitcase with a broken handle against the wall next to the door and a couple of dirty coffee cups o
n the window sill. And no damn toilet.
“I don’t know about you guys but I gotta go.”
I tried the door a couple of minutes after it closed behind us. It opened; it doesn’t even have a lock. The man sitting on the door step smoking a cigarette with some kind of weapon in his lap looked up when he heard the door open. He appeared to be in his early twenties and a skinny 130 pounds or so. The thick glasses he was wearing and his protruding hair gave him an almost owlish look. A highly trained sentry this guy is not.
“Latrine? Toilet?
The owl looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. Then he rattled off something I couldn’t understand and carefully pinched his cigarette out as he stood up and turned to look at me. I shrugged and shook my head to indicate I can’t understand him.
“He asked ’What it is you want?’” Anil explained from behind me. Then Anil rattled off something to the guard. The guard looked past me toward Anil and shook his head. He didn’t understand. Anil tries again in what is obviously a different language. And again the guard doesn’t understand.
Finally the guard carefully placed the remains of his cigarette in his shirt pocket and shouted something to a couple of men talking in the street a couple of huts down. One of them waved in acknowledgement and said something to the guy with him and he started walking towards one of the other huts. Our guard reached over and shut the door in my face.
A couple of minutes later our door opened and a swarthy almost oriental looking young man walked in. He was unarmed and needed a shave. He eyed us warily.
“Hello. I am Muhammad. I am English speaker. What you want?” He did not offer to shake hands and he didn’t smile. We’re not among friends
“We need to use the latrine. Toilet?”
“Oh. Of course. Wait here.” Of course I’ll wait; I wouldn’t dream of leaving.
Five minutes later I was squatting precariously over an open trench. Muhammad averted his eyes as I shuffled a half step forward and reached for the rusty can full of water.
******
Muhammad and three older men came to visit us after we finish shuttling to the latrine. They somehow seem both suspicious and encouraged at the same time. Muhammad translated but I’m pretty sure at least one of the men, and maybe two, speaks English. The man who appears to be the leader obviously did not.
Israel's Next War Page 33
