Two days earlier, Ansar's afternoon mortars had come in as usual, except that the last one didn't detonate. It landed in the road outside the village of Kheli Hama, just below us. It hit softly and let out a dark cloud, and then everybody smelled something like rotting garlic.
"What does that mean?" I asked Dildar, who had been translating from Kurdish. It seemed to be just dawning on her, and she said, "Chemical?" and then her voice trailed off. Dildar, it transpired, had been with the pesh merga during the 1980s, and she knew the smell of mustard gas firsthand. Victims often say the poison first smells like garlic or rotting apples. She had seen many people die from it but never had more than that first whiff herself. I asked if we could go down to Kheli Hama.
The bumpy car ride down the hill lasted only a few minutes, but my mind raced the whole way. First I felt suspicious. Would the PUK set up a reporter to publicize that their enemy not only had ties to al-Qa'ida but also that Saddam was giving them weapons of mass destruction—just what Bush had laid out in his speech? PUK security officials had been briefing reporters on a suspected Ansar project to poison people by contaminating food and cigarettes, but they hadn't mentioned chemicals. We pulled into the village of Kheli Hama, now nothing more than barracks.
A soldier named Muhammad recounted how the mortar round had hit on Thursday evening and at first he thought it was white phosphorus, which lets out smoke. The smoke lingered in a dark cloud for about four hours though, and all the men in the barracks felt their eyes water. The wind had carried the fog away from Kheli Hama, but several of the men still felt nauseous. A lieutenant named Osman told the same story of burning eyes and runny noses; he said three of the men had gone to the hospital in Halabja with stomach cramps that night. Then they offered to show us the crater.
With characteristic nonchalance, eight pesh merga walked to the road and pointed out a small crater. One of the men brought a spade and turned over the soil where the shell had landed. He pushed aside a mix of dirt and a grimy golden dust, and then the spade hit metal. As air touched the shell fragments, they gave off a white smoke and made a small hissing noise. I caught a whiff of the sweet smell, but then moved upwind—if you can smell gas, it means you're inhaling it—and asked the men to please cover it back up again. The sun was sinking, and right on cue, the soldiers pointed to a white puff of smoke up the hill. A few seconds later we heard the sound follow. Ansar was lobbing its evening mortars, and it was time to go.
In Sulimaniya that evening Fuad Baban, the doctor from the Halabja postgraduate center, complained that he still couldn't drum up interest in studying the victims of Halabja. It seemed insane, he said, that no one was learning from Halabja's terrible experience, especially if U.S. troops really wanted to prepare for a possible chemical attack. He had already heard rumors about the mortar in Kheli Hama from the men coming to Halabja's hospital.
"It seems to me that it is some form of chemical agent, most probably a type of mustard," said Baban. But then he wondered about the fact that none of the men had developed blisters. If it really was a chemical, the wind must have blown it away from the soldiers before they got a real dose. Saddam had used mustard gas against Iran and the Kurds, and he mused about whether Ansar could have gotten its hands on some old munitions. 7 Despite the Kurds' history, Baban said, they still had little training for what to do under chemical attack, no protective equipment available, and no labs to test the soil.
I, on the other hand, had been carrying a full biohazard suit and mask, and sleeping with it next to my pillow. Most major news organizations had sent their teams to a course at Porton Down, the U.K.'s ninety-year-old chemical warfare institute near Stonehenge. We'd spent a few days learning how to put on a gas mask in a hurry and practiced pretending to jab ourselves in the leg with atropine, the supposed antidote to nerve agent. Most of us had a similar attitude to the chemical equipment as we did to the flak jackets and helmets that had become mandatory gear: they were heavy, they made interviewees nervous, and anywhere I needed them was a place I shouldn't be.
The next day I returned to Kheli Hama, put on the gas mask and over it a hooded polyurethane suit, boots, and gloves, and saw the pesh merga laughing their heads off. I borrowed their shovel and then had to ask them repeatedly to stay back or at least upwind as I unearthed the shell again. It started hissing and smoking once more, and I took out a chemical test strip and pored some of the soil over it. In contact with a chemical agent, the paper would turn dark. The test strip showed nothing.
My BBC colleague Dumeetha Luthra had come along with me and had managed to contact someone from Porton Down by satellite phone, who said that the description sounded like dusty mustard gas, where the gas has been bonded to a particle to make it more difficult to disperse. He said the Iraqi government had been known to possess it during the Iran-Iraq war, but the test strips I'd been using, he said, would only react with liquid and not the particles, if that's what it was. The right way to find out would be to send glass vials of the soil back to Porton Down for analysis. But all the soil around Halabja might well test positive, according to Baban. In the end I filed an inconclusive story about the incident, which was coupled to an interview' with Ansar al-Islam leader Mullah Krekar.
Another BBC bureau tracked down Krekar in Oslo, Norway, where he had held political refugee status since 1991. Krekar brought his entire family over to Oslo and somehow maintained his asylum status there despite his regular trips to Kurdistan, including the times he went home for combat against the PUK. Only days before Colin Powell's speech, Krekar tried to preempt all the accusations against his group, denying that Ansar al-Islam had any unconventional weapons.
"I wrote a letter to Hans Blix and the U.N.," Mullah Krekar said. "We can bring them to our area—stone by stone, village by village, they can watch everything."
Krekar also denied any connection with Saddam Hussein. He dismissed the link through Abu Wa'el, whom, he said, was not a Mukhabarat agent but a loyal Kurdish Islamist—besides, he said, Abu Wa'el was a white-haired old man.8 By 2003 Krekar also began to deny he had ever met Osama bin Laden, despite earlier interviews claiming that he had.* Mullah Krekar said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had never been with him and couldn't have possibly been in all the places the Americans claimed he was (especially with a missing leg from the Afghan war). He wasn't all denial—Krekar approved wholeheartedly of the video showing executed PUK pesh merga and endorsed suicide bombing as a glorious tactic.
On February 5, Colin Powell took the podium at the United Nations Security Council and made nothing any clearer.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," Powell said. He worked his way slowly through a detailed presentation but never seemed to shake a hint of reluctance—as if he didn't want to be there. Perhaps his lack of messianic fervor made him more convincing, because the following day many critics swung to his side. The Washington Post's editorial bore the title "Irrefutable."
The Kurds, who stayed up late into the night (local time) to watch, found the presentation underwhelming. On the question of illegal weapons, the Kurds didn't need any convincing, given the many survivors of Halabja living among them. But Powell's description of the terrorist connections started out on the wrong foot. Claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had set up a chemical weapons lab in northern Iraq, Powell turned to a satellite photo.9 The heading across the top read "Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory, Khurmal." Powell went on gravely:
The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch—imagine a pinch of salt—less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within seventy-two hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure.
A scary statement, but one most Kurds probably missed—distracted by the fact that Powell had named the wrong town! Ansar ran its headqua
rters and the suspected lab out of the tiny town of Sargat. Khurmal, a bustling market town at the base of the mountains, was the center of Ali Bapir's Komala Island party. Kurdish officials tried to explain the error, saying that Powell must have just been reading the larger town's name off the map, and still had the right coordinates. On the ground, people had to hope the Pentagon would read the map more carefully when they programmed the cruise missiles.
Powell focused on Zarqawi as the human link between bin Laden and Saddam, and described his lightning movement around the region—in Afghanistan during September 2001, to Baghdad in spring 2002 for medical treatment, training the Baghdad al-Qa'ida cell to use poison and chemicals, arranging the October 2002 murder of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan. Powell called the fighters in northern Iraq "Zarqawi lieutenants" and described the Jordanian militant as the leader of a network that reached to Spain, Britain, and Germany.
In retrospect Colin Powell would call his speech at the United Nations a blot on his record.* None of the claims he made about WMD facilities panned out. Powell later said that some in the intelligence community knew that his information didn't pass muster and had come from defectors, discounted by the CIA but reintroduced by Ahmed Chalabi's INC.
As for Zarqawi and Kurdistan, the presentation was wrong in both substance and implication. Zarqawi had been in Afghanistan around September 11, but was running his own training camp near Herat next to the Iranian border.10 He considered bin Laden something of a rival and had never met the Saudi. Zarqawi eventually swore fealty to bin Laden by letter long after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The claim that Zarqawi had spent time in Baghdad with Saddam's blessing also fell away later.11
"Secretary Powell did his best not to make a fool of himself," said Paul Pillar, a senior CIA official at the time of the speech. Pillar said he shook his head in frustration at several points in the speech, including the implication that Saddam was sheltering Ansar al-Islam. "It never was made clear that Ansar al-Islam's stronghold, and Zarqawi, was outside Saddam's control. It's rather an important point," said Pillar.
Pillar also disagreed with the Kurds' assertion that the Iraqi Mukhabarat had a role in commanding Ansar al-Islam. Abu Wa'el might have been gathering information for the Mukhabarat, Pillar said, but he wasn't controlling Ansar. Pillar didn't accuse the Kurds of sexing up the intelligence on Ansar—the Bush administration hardly needed a push, and was eager to believe it.
Jim Jones, Jalal Talabani, General Jay Garner, and Masoud Barzani enjoying glasses of milk and discussing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the north of Iraq in 1991.
Turkish border guard preventing Iraqi Kurds from crossing into Turkey in 1991.
Jalal and Hero Talabani in 1979.
Sheikh Mahmoud Barzinji (center).
Voting slip for the Kurdish parliamentary election of 1992.
From left to right:
Othman Abdulaziz, Masoud Barzani, Mahmoud Othman, Jalal Talabani.
Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani shaking hands during the 1991 uprising.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, "Chemical Ali."
Tragedy in Halabja: this image of a man trying to shield his child from the gas became iconic.
Breaking ground for the Halabja Memorial in April 2000.
The Halabja Memorial after it was ransacked in 2006, with debris still sitting in the yard.
A young Kurdish girl in Sulimaniya after Saddam Hussein's capture.
April 9, 2003, Erbil celebrates the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad.
Foothills of the Qandil Mountains.
Erosion marks the hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, which lost its forest cover through decades of war.
The hills above Koi Sanjaq.
Portraits of Mulla Mustafa Barzani can be found across the KDP section of Iraqi Kurdistan, like this one at Hawler University in Erbil.
Veiled Iraqi woman in front of a poster of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Refugees' tent in a camp near Sulimaniya after having been expelled from Kirkuk in March 2000.
Hoshyar Darbandi and his family at their home in Salahudin in 2006.
Zalmay Khalilzad greets Hoshyar Zebari, with Masoud Barzani in the foreground, outside Jalal Talabani's guesthouse at Lake Dukan, October 2006.
From left to right: Kosrat Rasul, Masoud Barzani, Zalmay Khalilzad, Jalal Talabani, Hoshyar Zebari, and Fuad Masum at Talabani's guesthouse at Lake Dukan, October 2006.
PUK officials disembark from a U.S. Air Force C-130 at Sulimaniya International Airport, October 2006.
Pesh merga leader Mam Rostam in Kirkuk before the January 2005 elections.
Masoud Barzani.
Nechirvan Barzani, first prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Hoshyar Zebari, KDP foreign envoy and Iraqi foreign minister.
Qubad Talabani, George W. Bush, and Jalal Talabani at the White House in 2005.
Bafel Talabani (center) and his pesh merga during the battle with Ansar in March 2003.
Paul Bremer and associates in their CPA trademark suits and boots.
From left to right: Nuri al-Maliki, Jalal Talabani, and Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker at a press conference in Washington, D.C., in 2007.
Ahmed Chalabi being fitted for a Khaffiyeh in Nasiria in 2003.
Islamist leader Ali Bapir
Ayad Allawi and Barham Sahib.
PKK press conference in front of a banner featuring Abdullah Öcalan's portrait.
PKK fighter in the mountains.
Abdullah Gül, current president of Turkey.
Turgut Özal, president of Turkey 1989-1993.
Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK.
The most immediate fallout of the speech hit the unlucky town of Khurmal. Assuming the Americans had them marked for bombardment, many families in the town of fifteen hundred began looking for relatives in Halabja to put them up. Ali Bapir's group maintained that no armed Ansar troops came through his town, but admitted that they sometimes passed through without their weapons. The next reaction came directly from the leaders of Ansar—they wanted to show the world they were clean. On February 8, using Bapir as a go-between and Khurmal as a way station, Ansar hosted about twenty Western journalists.12 Escorted by Ali Bapir's gunmen, the militants drove half an hour from Khurmal, up a mountain road to Sargat. There Ansar's fighters, including Ayub Khadir ("al Afghani"), who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, gave the reporters a rushed tour of the building pictured in Colin Powell's satellite image. The militants kept many rooms off-limits, and the ones they showed held nothing more harmful than small arms and some empty plastic fuel containers.
"This is an isolated place and we haven't even got lavatories," one of the fighters said in a room he claimed had been a radio station. "The people who were here were officers of media. They left here because they feared an American bomb. According to news there will be an [air] strike. We hope that will not happen, because it will be catastrophic."
Skull and crossbones insignias marked many of the fences around the village, but they were the same triangular land-mine warnings as all over Kurdistan. The press walk-through proved nothing about what had or hadn't been in that building when Powell made his speech, though it may have shown that Ansar had a bit more media savvy than previously thought. But not much more—toward the end of the visit Ayub Khadir demanded that several of the journalists make statements into his own videocamera about the camp being clean. And whatever meager help the tour did for the group's reputation was undone only hours later, by an act of cold-blooded treachery.
The PUK still sought to avoid a costly direct confrontation with Ansar al-Islam on the eve of a war with Saddam, and Talabani thought he had the problem solved. Fligh-ranking members of Ansar al-Islam had contacted the PUK and said they wanted to surrender; they were tired of the Taliban-like conditions that the group had imposed in Sargat, Biyara, and Taweela. They insisted on meeting with a major PUK figure who they coul
d be sure was speaking for Talabani, and requested his older son, Bafel. Instead, a founding member of the PUK, Shawkat Haji Mushir, agreed to sit down with the Islamists. They had two preliminary meetings, and the offer got sweet—the Islamists said they had more than one hundred members who wanted to surrender. But for the next meeting, on February 8, the would-be defectors said they needed a security guarantee and asked for three PUK hostages to hold during the meeting. Shawkat agreed.
No one in the tiny village of Gamesh Tepa knew they would be hosting the negotiations that Saturday evening, until the famous PUK commander showed up. "General Shawkat arrived without warning," said local resident Salih Hassan, who stepped out into his front yard to greet the delegation. "He asked me if he could please borrow a room in my house to hold an important meeting."13
Hassan agreed without question and let Shawkat in, moving his family into a separate room. Several strangers arrived at about eight thirty P.M. The newcomers carried Kalashnikov rifles, even though Shawkat wore only a sidearm.
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