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Part III: War Comes North -- Across Iraq Saddam's
Regime Crumbles
 Mosul
was the only real military objective in Ahmad's war. But a low,
wide ridge, an 80 kilometer long speed bump, separated his life
as an exile in Erbil from a return home to Mosul. And all along
the ridge were units of the Iraqi army. By the end of the second
week of the war they had begun to fall back. They disappeared in
the night and we would go out to look at the territory they had
given up the next day.
Then one night they disappeared from the area where the main road
from Erbil to Mosul crossed the ridge. The Iraqi army established
itself on the far side of a bridge in the village of Khazer. Along
with half the press corps in Northern Iraq we raced out to the Khazer
bridge to see what had happened. Ahmad was getting giddy. He could
practically smell his hometown from Khazer. Then a different reality
hit him. The war might be over soon. He needed the money he was
earning as my translator to pay off a long-standing debt. His family
had ransomed him from prison in 1997. If the war ended too quickly
he would not be able to make a big dent in paying it back. It seemed
an odd thing to bring up at the time. But just because there is
a war on in your country doesn't mean the mundane worry of how you
are going to feed your family and pay your debts goes away.
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| U.S. Special Forces carry
on their battle despite the carnage on the road just 200
yards behind them. (Photo: M. Goldfarb) |
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Special Forces - Green Berets
History
and Information
(Private Site)
Special
Operations (Military Site) |
On the other side of the road we saw some U.S. Special Forces troops
talking to a couple of reporters. We walked over and one of them
recognized us.
The previous week we had come across a couple of Special Forces
soldiers, Green Berets as it turned out, whose car had broken down
by the side of the road. We towed them 20 miles back to their base.
These were the same fellows. They offered to let us interview them
after they called in air strikes on an Iraqi artillery position
that had had them under fire all night and into this day. While
they were calling in the air strikes, the artillery piece opened
up not once, but twice. The shells were landing within 50 yards
of where we were standing. So we piled into their flatbed Land Rovers
and fell back about 200 yards. Within minutes the Iraqi 105 mm gun
had found the range to that position. So we pulled back even further.
We raced over the fields and finally pulled up in a little fold
of pasture where the Green Berets and their Peshmerga comrades had
set up a command post.
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| The friendly fire incident.
18 Kurds were killed, including the BBC's local translator.
John Simpson the BBC's lead foreign Correspondent was
injured. (Photo: M. Goldfarb) |
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Click Below for coverage from the BBC's John Simpson.
Photo
Gallery
Video
from the Scene
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Even here there were rules of hospitality to be observed. The Peshmerga
offered refreshments: a good sweet chai -- tea: Ahmad said it was
normal to have good tea at the front. He was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq
War. While we were under fire, he had seemed very distant. I asked
him what he was thinking about. His friends who had died at the
front, he answered.
The Green Berets called in more air strikes and with the skies
above filled with the baritone drone of war planes they told us
about their operations in the area.
"A radio, gun and an attitude" was all the Green Berets
claimed to need in this sector of the war. Their task was to keep
the units of the Iraqi army around Mosul sufficiently occupied so
they couldn't be withdrawn south to defend Baghdad. The numbers
they had for this task were minuscule on the ground: 10 green berets
plus 99 Peshmerga. Their advantage was in the air. They called in
all the firepower the U.S. could muster: B-52's, B-1's and F-15's
and F-18's.
But miscommunication between Special Forces on the ground and American
jets in the air caused a terrible event several days later. An American
jet bombed a group of Peshmerga and journalists. Eighteen Kurds
were killed in the worst friendly fire incident of the war.
News of the bombing spread by osmosis and we raced to see what
had happened. It was a grey, blustery day, better suited to England
than the Middle East. The incident had happened south of Erbil on
the road to Mahmour. Green Berets and Peshmerga were taking on a
squadron of Iraqi tanks.
By the time we arrived, around an hour later, a pair of F-18's
were swarming the sky. One dropped out of the cloud cover lifted
its left wing, dipped to the right and released two precision guided
bombs. We saw the puffs of smoke out on the plain where they landed,
about three seconds before we heard the explosions. There was the
occasional sound of anti-aircraft fire forlornly trying to track
the jets.
The Peshmerga were no longer singing or offering cups of tea. They
were grim. Ahmad wondered what their problem was. "In every
war we have to understand and accept these accidents," he said
as we rolled up to the site of the accident. We walked through the
smoking, still hot wreckage. It was clear what had happened. By
a crossroads, in a ditch, was an abandoned Iraqi tank, and the convoy
must have stopped to take a look. The pilot, involved in the assault
on Iraqi tank positions had seen the vehicle and armed men swarming
around it and dropped the bomb.
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| Wreckage on the road. (Photo:
M. Goldfarb) |
One of the trucks apparently was carrying munitions and this added
to the carnage. Seventeen of the dead were Peshmerga. One was the
BBC's local translator. The bodies were removed quickly, but the
roadside an hour later was still covered with splotches of blood
and charred bits of flesh.
About 200 yards further down the road Special Forces had set up
operations in an abandoned Iraqi position looking out over the plain.
The soldiers were focused entirely on the battle in front of them,
not the carnage just behind. They had no idea what happened. One
of them told us, "You know the old expression? Shit happens."
Page 3 of 6
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;)
Click
here for a map of northern Iraq,