Backstabbing for Beginners: Page 11

  We did have guys with guns—the United Nations Guards Contingent for Iraq (UNGCI)—driving around. But the UNGCI guards were mostly there to protect us, not them. With greater freedom in the Kurdish zones came greater insecurity for foreigners, and so as we traveled through the region, we were escorted by this contingent of blue guards, who were outfitted with handguns and walkie-talkies. Given that local farm boys walked around with AK-47s, the UNGCI looked about as fierce as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. But they offered valuable logistical support to the mission, and they were popular with the children.

  I quickly identified the Danes among them and took two of them aside. I explained the situation of our man in Baghdad, awaiting trial in an Iraqi court for an accident the Kurdish courts had already settled. They knew about him and had made plans to exfiltrate him, if need be. They had hoped another solution could be found, for if they were caught, all might face prison time in Iraq. I broke the bad news: the UN’s leaders were not going to move a finger to get our colleague out.

  “Fuck,” said the taller guard. And then the smaller guard said “fuck,” too. They would need to take the matter into their own hands.

  The key to exfiltrating the Danish guard was timing. The Iraqis probably suspected that his pals would try to get him out. In addition to deceiving the Iraqis, the guards knew they would have to hoodwink their own UN supervisors. If managers found out about their plans, they would throw a wrench in them. Disobeying the Iraqi government, even when it illegally threatened the life of a UN staff member, was not something the UN establishment had the guts for. The worst that could happen, if the exfiltration was successful, was that the Iraqi government would send a letter of complaint to the United Nations. Yet none of the UN’s managers were willing to do anything that risked provoking such a letter.

  “What are they so afraid of?” asked the taller guard. “The weapons inspectors never have to deal with this crap! The Iraqis would never dare hold one of their guys! It’s against international conventions! This man has a right to leave!”

  While always reluctant to play hardball with the Iraqi government, the UN’s leaders had no problems frustrating the Kurds. Pasha set the wrong tone for our relations with them right from the start with his “three northern governorates” nonsense. In his first interview on Kurdish TV, Pasha appeared to threaten the Kurds with being returned to Baghdad’s rule once the sanctions on Iraq were lifted. And his contempt for them came out clearly from his media statements. In May 2002, he would eventually be quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker as saying that he was “unmoved” by the demands of the Kurds.

  “If they had a theme song,” he added, “it would be ‘Give Me, Give Me, Give Me!’ I am getting fed up with their complaints. You can tell them that!” Pasha would come to regret those words after the war, when the Kurds took up leading positions in the first free Iraqi government and pushed to hire the consulting firm KPMG to investigate his actions as head of the UN Oil-for-Food program.

  The UN paid a severe price for underestimating the Kurds. They had wrestled with the greatest empires in history, survived genocide, and sprung back from the abyss. Without a country they could call their own, the Kurds were oppressed by the states that administered their lands throughout the twentieth century—Turkey and Iraq. During the cold war, the region was a hotbed of conflict, with frequent interventions by the KGB, the CIA, and the Mossad. While each of these entities pretended to support Kurdish national aspirations, they all had agendas of their own. The KGB supported the PKK, a Communist terrorist group that aimed to destabilize Turkey, a key member of the NATO alliance. The PKK would remain a thorn in the side of Iraqi Kurdistan for many years, leading to countless Turkish military incursions into Iraq both before and after the Iraq War. The Mossad helped the Kurds rise up against Baghdad way back in the 1950s, in return for assistance in exfiltrating Iraqi and Kurdish Jews from the country through the Turkish border. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the CIA established a presence that it used to foment, and then abort, a coup against Saddam Hussein. In his book See No Evil, Robert Baer, a former CIA agent posted to Kurdistan in 1995, recounts how, with the help of top Kurdish politician Jalal Talabani and notorious Iraqi Shiite exile Ahmad Chalabi, the Kurds had counted on U.S. support for an attack on Saddam’s forces stationed at the border of the Kurdish provinces.

  The Kurds had survived centuries of brutal repression. No diplomat was going to decide their future for them. Baghdad would never rule them again. If anything, they would help rule Baghdad.

  In any case, they turned out to be far smarter at the PR game than the UN was. The Kurds would make plays against the UN on Capitol Hill, inflicting severe damage to our already tarnished reputation there. They would be present in cyberspace, with websites dedicated to criticizing the UN; they had the most complete collection of critical articles on the Oil-for-Food program on the web, and when journalists started digging into the scandals that emerged after the war, they found this archive quite useful. Finally, they had an ace. They knew what was going on in Baghdad better than we did. They had communication lines that we were not aware of. One of the two factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), ruled over the zone that borders Turkey—an essential smuggling route for Saddam Hussein during the sanctions. We got to see the system they had established with our own eyes when we drove up to the Turkish border.

  “See those trucks over there?” said Stafford Clarry, pointing at one of three lines of trucks—two coming into Iraq, and one going out.

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re the trucks coming in under the Oil-for-Food program.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, snapping a picture. “So what’s the other line coming in?”

  “That’s all the trucks that are not part of Oil-for-Food,” said Stafford.

  “But I thought. . . . I mean, are they allowed to import stuff outside of the program? Aren’t they supposed to be under sanctions?”

  Stafford had this bright smile.

  “Well, yeah, but they import whatever people want to sell them. It’s up to other countries to decide if they want to enforce the sanctions. There’s no actual checks here at the border.”

  “Huh . . . but with what money do they buy all this stuff?” I asked.

  “Well, see the line of trucks driving out of Iraq?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re filled with fuel. They sell it in Turkey.”

  “So that’s why there’s no fuel in Iraq?”

  Stafford nodded. “And that’s not the worst part. Our program is part of the system.”

  “How is that?”

  “Well, forget the trucks coming in with illegal goods for a moment.”

  “OK. . . .”

  “The trucks that come in under the Oil-for-Food program—their transportation is paid for under the contracts we approve in New York, right?”

  “Aha. . . .”

  “So when these same trucks drive out again, they pick up the illegal fuel shipments. Thanks to the UN, their smuggling is essentially free of charge.”

  “But that’s . . . that’s sanctions-busting!” I said, then raised my camera to take some pictures, expecting these would be part of our report to the Security Council when we went back.

  “Sure is,” said Stafford. “But the Kurds take a cut, of course. A big cut, in fact. The trade can’t happen without them. And the Turkish military profits from it too. These are all U.S. allies. So everybody wins. I just thought I’d show it to you,” Stafford said to Pasha, “in case anybody cares back in New York.”

  Pasha stayed silent until we got back in the car.

  “This is not our responsibility,” Pasha concluded once we had left the area. “If members of the UN Security Council don’t care, why should we?”

  There was some logic in his statement. But it was not a legal logic; it was a political one. The violation was a clear breach of international law. As I was beginning to understand, the law concerned the UN’s top bra
ss only when it suited their bosses on the Security Council.

  The Security Council eventually pretended to care, once, when the United States and Britain forced a briefing on the issue, on March 24, 2000, inviting U.S. Vice Admiral Charles Moore to brief UN diplomats behind closed doors. He explained that, in addition to smuggling through the Turkish border, oil was being smuggled by pipeline to Syria, by trucks to Jordan, and by ships along the Iranian coastline. In all, Saddam Hussein made an estimated $13 billion from this smuggling. After hearing all the evidence, the UN Security Council decided to remain “seized” of the matter. And they looked very seized indeed at the end of that meeting, as they sat down for cappuccinos in the Delegates’ Lounge.

  Even on the eve of war, the Bush administration was still ignoring the phenomenon. E-mails from the Treasury department, disclosed by Senator Carl Levin in 2005, were very clear about that policy. No measures would be taken against U.S. allies (meaning Turkey and Jordan) that profited from Saddam’s sanctions-busting. In a March 2003 e-mail recovered from the (U.S.-based) broker that handled some shipping for the illicit trade between Iraq and Jordan, an employee who had specifically sought an opinion from the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control on whether they could go ahead with what, on paper, was an illegal sanctions-busting trade stated that he got a call back from a U.S. government employee who responded that “her office was ‘aware of the shipments and has determined not to take action.’” This was weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the United States seemed to be fine with illegal oil sales from Iraq to Jordan, an ally. The routes going through Syria and Iranian territorial waters were of greater concern. But ultimately, business was business, and some of that smuggled Iraqi oil even ended up as fuel in U.S. gas pumps, after it was resold on the international market to American oil companies.

  I was surprised that the Kurds, of all people, would be in business with Saddam, after everything he had done to them. But this smuggling route was their only major source of ready cash—except for the drug trade, specifically heroin, from Iran and Afghanistan, which also passed through Kurdish territory. The money made available under the Oil-for-Food program could only be spent by UN agencies, so the Kurds had to stand aside as foreigners made decisions about what kind of garbage trucks to buy, what types of construction materials they could build their houses with, and what sort of agricultural equipment they would use to cultivate their fields. This only added to their frustration with the UN and kept them dependent on Saddam’s smuggling for the cash they needed to run their autonomous government and arm their troops.

  We stopped to refuel. The gas pumps were open for business around here. Though the rebels participated in Saddam’s illicit fuel-smuggling operation, they never got as greedy as to deny their own people access to gas. The difference between the Kurdish rebels and the man we considered their sovereign leader could not have been made any clearer to us. But the mania of not calling things by their names would allow our top brass to ignore certain basic realities. And ultimately, it would allow them to make the wrong moral choice. Between the aspirations of a free people and those of an oppressive dictator, the UN would manage to find itself on the wrong side of the fence. At least that is how the Kurdish leaders would perceive it.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Rebels

  Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani were the two competing rebel leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan. Barzani wore a turban and traditional Kurdish baggy pants that became tight around the ankles. Talabani wore suits. Barzani’s guys had yellow flags, and Talabani’s guys had green flags. That’s how we knew which zone we were in.

  On our way up to visit Barzani, the tribal leader of western Iraqi Kurdistan, we were met by two 4x4 pickup trucks filled with peshmergas (“those who face death”) armed to the teeth. Their weapons included heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Much to Pasha’s displeasure, they escorted us up the mountain of Salahuddin, named after Saladin, the great warrior to whom Saddam Hussein often liked to compare himself despite the fact that the former was an ethnic Kurd. Saladin is probably the greatest hero of Sunni Islam. He expelled the crusaders from Jerusalem in 1187 and set up his own ruling dynasty in Egypt called the Ayyubids, who, through the centuries, worked to expand Sunni Islam in the Arab world at the expense of Shiite Islam.

  If Saddam’s forays into war and bloodshed seem senseless to many Western observers, it is probably because they don’t understand his wish to be recognized as a modern-day Saladin. The name of Saladin resonates as widely in the Middle East as that of King Arthur in the Western world. The difference, of course, is that if Tony Blair started comparing himself to King Arthur, everybody would laugh, which was not a luxury available to Iraqis living under Saddam.

  From the security of his fort perched atop the mountain of Salahuddin, Massoud Barzani received us with a suspicious smile on his face. Massoud is the son of the notorious Mustapha Barzani, who led the first organized rebellion against Baghdad. Massoud was born in 1946 on the day his father founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the first and most widely recognized political movement for Kurdish independence, and he eventually succeeded his father at the helm of the KDP. Mustapha was the military chief of the Soviet-backed, Kurdish-dominated Republic of Mahaban, in northern Iran. This attempt at an autonomous Kurdish state, erected after World War II as Stalin tried to retain control of Iraq, failed within a few months, and Mustapha had to flee. He took his young son and five hundred followers with him into refuge in the USSR. In 1958 the Barzanis were invited back to Iraq, but in 1961, when the Kurdish region suffered renewed repression, Mustapha took up arms and once again was condemned to the life of a guerrilla warrior. Massoud joined the fight at sixteen, often spending his time in exile. He survived an assassination attempt in 1978 as he was making his way back to Iraq once again. By the time Massoud succeeded his father at the head of the KDP, one of his father’s generals, Jalal Talabani, had founded a rival Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In the year before we arrived in the area, Barzani and Talabani had been fighting a bitter civil war for control of the region’s trade routes.

  There was construction going on at Barzani’s mountaintop headquarters, for it had recently been hit by a missile, courtesy of his archrival Talabani. Foremost on our agenda was the goal of consolidating the recent truce between the KDP and the PUK. The humanitarian program had been slow in getting up and running, and we didn’t want more skirmishes between the two sides to further impede our work or put our staff in danger. Even though we were in way over our heads trying to reconcile these old foes (something even the CIA had failed to do), we did have one advantage: we were in control of the money—more money than the region had ever seen.

  The interior of Barzani’s housing complex was lined with snowy white carpeting.

  Unfortunately, I had managed to muddy my shoes during an earlier visit to a sewage project. When positioning myself to take a photograph of Pasha greeting the mayor of the town, I had somehow managed to step into the actual sewer. So before stepping onto Barzani’s pristine carpet, I tried to wipe off my shoes. What I needed was a big roll of Bounty, but under the circumstances, I was lucky to get my hands on a Kleenex. Having managed to dirty my hands and sleeve with mud as well, I finally stepped in to catch up with Pasha and Barzani and a massive delegation of UN and Kurdish officials. The room where the meeting was to take place was also lined with white carpeting.

  I walked in, trying as best I could to keep a low profile as I strolled into the meeting room, leaving heavy tracks of mud in my wake. I sat down and surveyed the damage. Incriminating brown footprints led straight to where I was sitting. I looked guilty as a raccoon atop a trash can. Since I didn’t know what the repercussions could be for walking into a Kurdish rebel leader’s house and messing up his carpet, I decided to cover my tracks. In the commotion that preceded the meeting, I did something truly shameful. I stood up and got hold of Stafford Clarry, gave him some random document, and politely offered t
o let him sit in my place, saying he needed to be close to Pasha “just in case.”

  “In case what?” asked Stafford.

  I nodded at the document I had just given him as if it contained the answer. Stafford looked slightly confused but accepted my offer to sit. I tiptoed a few seats away and sat down, innocent as a firstborn. The room settled down and coffee was brought in. The protocol officer was now looking straight at Stafford, who was nervously checking the soles of his shoes. Thankfully, the cameras were invited in and everybody put on their best official smiles.

  The Kurds insisted on filming every meeting we attended. Their recently acquired autonomy was not quite the independent Kurdistan of their dreams, but in all aspects of protocol they behaved as if they were at the head of a little state. This irritated the Iraqis tremendously, of course, and I think that was partly the point. Showing their leaders holding bilateral talks with the United Nations strengthened their claim to independence. After the cameramen were whisked out, the meeting began in earnest.

  Barzani, speaking through an interpreter, thanked the UN for its work in Iraqi Kurdistan, then ran through a litany of complaints about the inefficiencies of the humanitarian program. Essentially, he wanted a larger share of the pie, direct control over funds, and greater autonomy from the Iraqi government, which, under the Oil-for-Food deal, remained responsible for purchasing food and medicine for the whole country. The Kurds were convinced the Iraqis were cheating them out of their share by dumping expired drugs on them. That might well have been so, but the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) was denying it, so all we could do was promise to monitor the situation more closely in the future. The head of the WHO in Iraq turned out to be a Saddam Hussein apologist who avoided setting foot in Iraqi Kurdistan so as not to upset the regime, despite the fact that his greatest managerial responsibilities were there, not in Baghdad. While our working-level staff seemed to get along just great with the local population, a majority of our leaders appeared bent on snubbing their Kurdish counterparts, creating an atmosphere of undue suspicion that permeated the entire mission and sabotaged the work of the midlevel managers.