Mr Dan and the Dams of Kurdistan E-Book

Dan Coakley

• Herausgeber: Vertebrate Digital
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

For Dan Coakley, Iraq ticked all the boxes. It had a mad dictator, a secret police that left the Gestapo far behind in terms of brutality and sadism and a temperature range that varied from minus fifteen to plus fifty degrees Celsius. Dan was asked to be the Technical Manager of the electricity sector, the largest module of the largest aid programme in UN history, helping to repair the country after the first Gulf War. But when he arrived in Iraq he had no idea that he would be involved in conflict resolution between the warring Kurdish parties, or that some of Saddam's nuclear scientists would be on his Iraqi staff in Baghdad. Dan Coakley gives an honest and an unbiased description of the region and its history from the First World War to the turmoil of today. He discovers the archaeology of prehistory from Ur to Babylon to Nineveh. Working for the UN, he gives us a first-hand insider's view on the dynami of a region in turmoil. The book focuses on the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the lead up to and devastation of the second war and the utter despair he witnesses in Iraq today. Mr Dan and the Dams of Kurdistan is a travelogue of an ancient and haunting Iraq and Kurdistan, illustrated with cameos of its beautiful and long-suffering people. Saint Patrick when talking of the ancient Irish said 'he heard them calling to him in dreams'. Dan Coakley was drawn to Iraq and this excellent book is an honest and compelling read worthy of his experiences.

Leseprobe

Mr Dan and the Dams of Kurdistan

Mr Dan and the Dams of Kurdistan

A Cork Man in Saddam’s Iraq

Dan Coakley

.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Prologue History of Iraq from WW1 to Saddam – WMD – Sanctions

Chapter 2 – Amman to the Iraqi Border Amman – Eastern Desert – Bedouin – Desert Castle – Jordanian Air Bases – Lawrence’s Azraq Castle – Desert Towns – Iraqi Border Post

Chapter 3 – Iraqi Border to BaghdadBorder Post – Iranian Attack on Iraqi H3 Air Base – Al Walid Nerve Gas Agent – Scuds – DHL Plane Attack – Blackwater Bridge Fallujah – Abu Ghraib Prison – Baghdad

Chapter 4 – Journey to Work in BaghdadSecret Police – The Lion of Babylon – Generals Husayn and Saddam Kamil – Revolutionary Command Council Building – Toppling of Saddam’s statue at Firdos Square – Abu Nuwas (ancient Iraqi Oscar Wilde) – Scheherazade Sculpture Tableaux

Chapter 5– Journey from Work in BaghdadUN Saddoun Building – UN Residential Representative (Ambassador) – Death of Layla Attar – Iraqi Currency Iraqi co-workers – Sandstorms – Picasso painting – Imad Khadduri Iraqi Nuclear scientist – Abdul Muhsin Al Sadoun – Ali Baba statuary group

Chapter 6 – Hotel Babelal Dawrah Refinery – al Sujud Palace – Ba’ath Party HQ – Fred Flintstone Village and the al Rahman Mosque

Chapter 7– Republican Palaceal Salam Palace and Baghdad Bridges

Chapter 8 – Mini history of BaghdadSaddam’s yacht and his torture facilities

Chapter 9 – Martyrs’ Monument and the Canal Hotel

Chapter 10 – Freedom Friezeal Rasheed Hotel – The Swords of Qadisiyah – Monument to the Unknown Soldier – Baghdad Fish Restaurants

Chapter 11 – Baghdad to TajiIraqi Checkpoints – Transportation of Women Iraqi Style – Taji Military Base

Chapter 12– Taji to SammaraSaddam’s Mujahedin e Khalq – Mass Graves – Balad Air Base – Samarra

Chapter 13 – Tikrit to SulaymaniyahKirkuk – Oilfield – Crossing Saddam’s Ring of Steel around Kurdistan

Chapter 14 – Baji Oil ComplexNineveh – Mosul Palace and Dam – Dohuk

Chapter 15 – Formation of KurdistanLeaders – Wars – Halabja

Chapter 16 – Operations Northern Comfort and Northern WatchPeshmergas – PUK Leaders

Chapter 17– Erbil LeadersAzadi Kurds – Dohuk

Chapter 18 – Kurdish Factions conflicting electricity requirements

Chapter 19 – Baghdad Jesuit CollegeMulla Effendi of Erbil – Iraqi Christians – Assyrian Nuz Roz

Chapter 20 – Kurdish UN StaffAbilities of Kurdish Women – Espionage

Chapter 21 – Erbil CitadelAntique Karez water system

Chapter 22 – Social Life ErbilKurdistan Air Conditioning Systems – Reward on my Head – Alexander’s Battle of Guagamela

Chapter 23 – Escape of Saddam’s Nuclear ScientistErbil Picnic – Rowanduz - Kurdish Battle Area

Chapter 24 – The Hamilton RoadMurder of UN Staff Member in Ankawa – Our Lady’s House

Chapter 25 – Korek Astronomical Observatory

Chapter 26 – Report on Derbendikhan and Dokan Dams

Chapter 27– Repair of Derbendikhan and Dokan Dams

Chapter 28 – Bekhma DamMeeting with Saddam’s Bombmaker

Chapter 29 – Lost City of HatraMass Graves at Hatra – Land Mines

Chapter 30 – Erbil to Sulaymaniyah Back Road

Chapter 31 – SulaymaniyahThe Red Security Torture Facility

Chapter 32 – Dohuk City and LakeState of Electricity System

Chapter 33 – The Back Back Road From Dohuk to AmaydiaSaddam’s Mountain Palaces

Chapter 34 – Escape from Bombing of IraqVisits to New York

Chapter 35 – Mission to EgyptCairo – Pyramids at Giza – Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara

Chapter 36 – Mission to IndiaTaj Mahal – Gandhi – Tippu Sultan and the Mysore Wars

Chapter 37 – Mission to BosniaSarajevo Airport – Parliament Building – Twin Towers – Cathedral

Chapter 38 – End of my time in Saddam’s Iraq

Chapter 39 – Basra Army Base

Chapter 40 – Road and River Patrols from Basra

Chapter 41 – Aerial Patrols from BasraStormy Journey Home

Author’s Biography

Introduction

The Irish are great travellers and all through my life I lived with the urge to travel. I was no doubt influenced by my father who travelled to Canada in his youth. My brother Terence and I used to be enthralled by his fireside stories of the forest trails, the Rockies and their glaciers, the old Red Indian villages with their totem poles, the construction of roads across the face of towering cliffs and the primitive bridges constructed across raging mountain torrents. We used to marvel at his descriptions of the Aureole Borealis and were entranced by his photos of bears rummaging through the food cache outside his tent in search of molasses. He became expert at constructing log cabins and was responsible for a number of them on the Lisselane Estate near Clonakilty.

‘The Boss’ as we called him was unfortunate enough to strike Canada during the Great Depression and often went hungry. There is kindness in the most unlikely places as he claimed he owed his life to a Chinaman who gave him one meal a day during the cold winters when work ceased due to the ground permafrost that made excavation impossible. The temperature was so low that he wore a mask over his face and if he expectorated there would be a sharp explosion as the liquid turned solid before it hit the ground. Many of his co-workers were Remittance men and there was great excitement when one of them walked out of his tent one evening in the middle of nowhere to answer a call of nature and disappeared in the wilderness.

Life was very lonely for him out in the forests and he spoke of his loneliness when passing houses during Christmas and seeing the happy family celebrating inside. Once when he collected his post he received two letters from home, he opened the one with the earlier post mark and he learned that his twelve year old sister was ill in hospital. Without opening the second letter he knew what was in it and went out into the forest to cry his eyes out. Often when in search of work like O. Henry’s hobos he rode the rails. When a train slowed down at an incline or a water tower he would clamber into a wagon and take a free ride. Years later, in his forties, when he was going into hospital for tests associated with throat cancer, he gave my mother instructions, that in the event of his death, she would send some money to the Canadian Railways as a payment for the rides he had not paid for.

All these tales made an indelible impression on my young mind. They spoke of strange places and experiences but also of deprivation, sadness and loneliness. I resolved that given the opportunity I would throw myself into the unknown, test myself similarly and validate myself as a man.

When I qualified as an engineer I was offered a job on the construction of the American chain of Dew Line tracking stations along the Arctic Circle. These were to warn of a Soviet Missile attack. Now I had a chance to pit myself against the cold and the solitude. I also had a technical interest in the servomechanisms of Missile control systems and was offered a job on the Australian Woomera Test Range, home of the British Blue Streak Missile. My cup certainly runneth over. I was also offered a stab at an PhD on a Plasma Physics project at University College Cork. However all was set at nought when I was offered a place in the Irish Electricity Supply Board (ESB) in Dublin. This was a time when parents had a greater say in the affairs of their children and it was a given that I should take up the safe job in Dublin. Being the eldest son I accepted that I put my shoulder to the wheel and with Terence help with the education of my younger siblings.

For the next thirty years I learnt my profession in all aspects of Utility Engineering in the ESB. Every aspect of my work was done in-house so everything from the theory to design to construction and finally operation had to be mastered. I made sure I rotated through all of these disciplines and at all system voltages from 230 Volts to 220,000 Volts.

At this time I was married with six surviving children. These had to be educated so I entrusted the monies I had saved for this to a neighbour with financial acumen, or so I thought, who was to invest them for me. You guessed it, he embezzled the money and so I was back to square one. I realised at once that the only option available to me was to earn money on foreign consultancy. The first project I was asked to consider was to take a shipload of electrical components to Lesotho and install a Rural Electrification scheme there. A second project was to go to Mogadishu and identify and rectify the substantial system losses there. Consideration of these options awoke my earlier dreams of working in some of the remote areas of the world and I realised that the wheel had turned and I was finally on track to begin my dream adventure. Suddenly the wished-for project appeared on my screen and I grabbed it with both hands. The EC required someone to go to the Ukraine and instruct the Utility Engineers there on how to present their case for finance to the international funding agencies in order to refurbish their collapsing electricity networks. These had been severely depleted by lack of maintenance as the Soviet Union diverted all their funds to counter Ronald Regan’s star wars project. I jumped at the chance. The project had many of the ingredients I was looking for:

It enjoyed temperatures from 300C to -250C. It supplied in practice cultural isolation with its political isolation, strange language and Cyrillic alphabet. The country groaned under grinding poverty having descended to the barter system and workers were largely unpaid. Having lived through the collapse of a super-power I have no fears in coping with the possible collapse of any of the Western economies.

Towards the end of my time in the Ukraine I was asked to go to Zambia and redesign the network of the Copper-belt for the World Bank. Again this had most of the ingredients I was looking for. Extreme poverty where corpses wrapped in sacking were dug from their graves for the sacking. Aids was widespread as well as malaria that I contracted and of course a tropical climate with monsoon rains and very high temperatures. Adventure here derived from the civil war taking place in the Congo next door. The rebels there developed a taste for four-wheel drive vehicles and used cross the border into Zambia to capture some. At least once a week at least one 4x4 would disappear on the Kitwe to Chingola road that I travelled every few days. If the occupants were lucky they would escape with their literally naked bodies. Consequently my instructions were to drive at 100mph and not to stop for anything, not even after causing a fatality. I was advised to be especially wary of policemen and was not to stop for one. This was because the rebels often masqueraded as police and if one was unlucky one would be confronted by 20 of his comrades hiding in the tall grass. I found this instruction difficult to accept. The Police usually stationed themselves on the centre line of the dual-carriageway and as a back-up had some soldiers manning a machine from behind sandbags about 20 yards behind them. This was a Catch 22 to cap all Catch 22’s.

Finally Iraq beckoned, for me the crème de la crème. I was asked to be the Technical Manager of the Electricity sector, the largest module of the largest aid programme in UN history. For me Iraq ticked all the boxes. It had a mad dictator, a secret police that left the Gestapo far behind in terms of brutality and sadism and a temperature range that varied from -150C to 500C. As the icing on the cake it had for me the archaeology of prehistory from Ur to Babylon to Nineveh. I had a personal interest in prehistory and the origins of the world’s religions and looked forward to working in a country that was the setting of the first emergence of a civilized society from a mountainous hunter-gatherer tribe.

When I completed my assignment there and I returned home with all my stories and photos I was advised by all who listened to write a book on my experiences. This was easier said than done. My first draft incorporated the technical aspect, UN Politics, the wonderful people and the country itself, the cradle of civilisation. This first draft came to 1,500 pages. I returned to plan B. I decided that few lay people had much interest in HV lines and substations so I removed most of my technical work. As regards UN politics I decided that it is the main secular instrument for good in the world and at the cutting edge of its work are the most noble and self-effacing people one would wish to meet. I had no intention of hurting these wonderful people so I removed most references to the UN. Finally I deleted a large section dealing with the gifts the early people of Mesopotamia had conferred on the world.

I ran into further difficulties. Roughly 80% of the photos I took in Iraq and New York went missing when I worked abroad after my stint there so I had to replace them with equivalents from the internet. This took many years and I am indebted to the US government who make all images taken by their employees freely available to all. In Kurdistan up to recently attitudes to copyright law were, to put it mildly, very laid back so I had to pass up on some excellent photos. However individual Kurds were very forthcoming and made their cache of photos freely available as did former UN workers, members of the US forces, individual Iraqis and various travellers/adventurers. To all of these I wish to express my heartfelt thanks.

Names of places also posed a problem. I was advised, out of deference to Western readers, to use one spelling for each place through the book. They say that Shakespeare spelt his name in six different ways. So it is in the Middle East. The name of the capital of Kurdistan is typical. It can be Hawler or Hewler in Kurdish, Erbil or Irbil from the Akkadian (Arba-ilu), Arbil in Arabic and Arbela in Syraic-Aramaic.

Finally I ended up with the present work which is a travelogue of an ancient and haunting country together with cameos of its beautiful and long-suffering people. Like Saint Patrick when talking of the ancient Irish said he heard them calling to him in dreams. I too, long to return to Iraq and Kurdistan and wander their plains and mountains.

Chapter One

Prologue

In 1918 the Grand Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of the Hejaz (the Hejaz is an area in Saudi Arabia), leader of the Great Arab Revolt, with the help of Lawrence of Arabia launched his successful attack on Damascus then part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The fall of Damascus was the deathblow to the Empire. Hussein had acted on promises from Britain, in the person of Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, of independence for all the Arab nations of Asia after the war in return for their help in defeating the Turks. In the event, Britain reneged on the promises. In the San Remo Agreement, Mark Sykes and Charles Georges-Picot (for the British and French governments, respectively) secretly divided up the Middle East between France and Britain into zones of influence, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq fell under the British Mandate while Syria and Lebanon went to France. The victors generously ceded to themselves a 25% share of the proceeds of Iraqi oil.

Grand Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of the Hejaz

Churchill offered Transjordan to Abdullah second son of Hussein Ibn Ali and Iraq to Faisal his third son where he was made king of a constitutional monarchy. Faisal was by far the more experienced warrior of the two and was a friend of Lawrence of Arabia. It was said that their father was angry at his sons’ acceptance of these kingdoms as he was aiming to establish a great Arab Empire himself.

Emir (later King) Faisal’s delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-Said, Prince Faisal, Captain Pisani (behind Faisal), T.E. Lawrence, Faisal’s black slave (name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri.

The photo above is symbolic of the past and the future. It gives an indication of the past as it shows the slave-owning Faisal introducing a feudal medieval ethos to the new state. The future is underlined by his coterie of some British Army Officers that included Lawrence of Arabia and the sinister Nuri as-Said. He was the man who exerted a Rasputin like influence over Faisal and succeeding Iraqi monarchs on behalf of Britain until his death during the coup that overthrew the monarchy in July 1957.

Shortly after the coup the Ba’ath Party came to power and shortly after that Saddam Hussein was in de facto control. Iraq and Iran were never good neighbours from the time of the Persian Empire and when the Ayatollah Khomeni came to power in Iran Saddam went to war with him to counter Iran’s fundamentalist ambitions in the area.

From CIA Map of Iraq Oil Infrastructure 2003 showing the Oil fields on the Iraq-Kuwait border.

Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin.

By virtue of Saddam going to war against a perceived Fundamentalist threat in the area he was supported by the US. By the end of the war Iraq had incurred massive debts particularly to Kuwait and these would have to be paid out of Iraq’s oil revenues. In addition, the infrastructure of the country would have to be restored. However, in defiance of OPEC agreements to control the output of oil, Kuwait greatly exceeded its quota. Predictably the price of oil plummeted and Iraq was hard put to repay its debts. Iraq regarded the Kuwaiti action as economic warfare. With some justification Iraq also accused the Kuwaitis of slant drilling into the Iraqi portion of the Rumayiah South oil well straddling the border. On 2nd August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and the US and UK became alarmed and felt that this could be the first step in an Iraqi cascade type conquest of the oil-rich states of the Gulf and eventually Saudi Arabia. Four days after the invasion the UN was mobilised and the Security Council in Resolution 661 imposed sanctions and issued an ultimatum to Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. Saddam ignored the ultimatum and hostilities commenced. Following a five week aerial and missile bombardment of Iraq, Allied forces of the UN entered Kuwait on 22nd/23rd February 1991 and routed the Iraqi army from there with massive loss of Iraqi life and equipment and low casualties on the Allied side.

A ceasefire was declared on 28th February; the ground war had lasted 100 hours. Sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN were continued, to be lifted when Iraq complied with UN requests to disclose details of their Chemical, Biological and Nuclear programmes. They also had to account for all Weapons of Mass Destruction still in their arsenal and to destroy such weapons under UN supervision. A special UN force of Inspectors was despatched to Iraq to search for such weapons. Iraq refused to fully co-operate and sanctions were continued.

Acting on promises of assistance from President Bush Snr the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north rose in rebellion. The Americans, however, decided to disengage so the remnants of the Iraqi army put down uprisings with such savage ferocity that the UN imposed no-fly zones in the south and the north. In addition the Iraqis were ordered out of Kurdistan and the Kurds finally had a form of self-government. The sanctions caused severe hardship to the unfortunate Iraqi and Kurdish populations. It is estimated by reliable International Agencies that between 350,000 and 500,000 children died as a result of their imposition.These people had already endured almost 20 years of frightening oppression and the enforced carnage of the Iran/Iraq war and were now required to suffer again as the big powers danced out their minuet. Eventually the suffering became so indefensible that the UN passed Resolution 986 in 1996. This permitted Iraq to sell about $2 billion worth of oil over a six-month period. This was later increased to $5 billion every six months at the request of the UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq, Dennis Halliday.

Banque Nationale de Paris SA, agreed to open the escrow account provided for in Security Council Resolution 986 on behalf of the United Nations for the receipt of funds (from Iraqi Oil sales) and for the making of payments pursuant to that resolution.The money was to buy food, medicines and help restore electrical infrastructure. It was named ‘The Oil for Food Programme’ and had to be formally renewed every six months by UN resolution. The proceeds of the Oil Sales were shared out as follows:

OIL SALES AND UN ALLOCATION ACCOUNTS

Account Purpose

59% Humanitarian Goods/Services for Centre – South Iraq

25% Compensation Fund to Kuwait as a Result of Invasion by Iraqi Army

13% Humanitarian Goods/Services for Iraqi Kurdistan Region

2.2% Operational Costs for UN Humanitarian Agencies

0.8% Operational Costs for UN Weapons Inspectors

The share out between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq was supposed to reflect the population ratio between the two entities. The funds allocated to the UN agencies operating the Oil for Food Programme was 2.2% of $10 billion or $220 million per annum and a further $80million to the UN Weapons Inspectors. After Resolution 986 was ratified and implementation commenced, the member states of the UN competed for projects supporting the ‘The Oil for Food Programme’.

ESBI (Electricity Supply Board International) of Dublin, were asked to provide an International Co-ordinator for the Reconstruction of the Electrical Sector of Iraq and the autonomous area of Kurdistan in North Iraq. The Electricity System of Iraq was in a shambles after the devastating Allied bombing campaign and the long series of damaging conflicts that had engulfed the region. The position was offered to me in October 1997 and I accepted. A neighbour had misused the family education fund monies I had entrusted to him to invest on my behalf and I had to replace them urgently. Saddam or no Saddam I was on for Iraq. As all commercial flights to Baghdad were prohibited I had to fly to Amman in Jordan first and go to Baghdad from there by road.

Chapter Two

Amman to the Iraqi Border

Armed with a laptop and a world radio I arrived sans luggage in Queen Alia International Airport Amman late on the night of Tuesday January 6th 1998. When I accepted that my luggage had gone walkabout in Heathrow I hailed a taxi and headed for Amman. The sky was pitch black as we tunnelled our way into the heart of the city under an avenue of brilliant lights that bordered the magnificent roads. The houses that lined the route were large and well-designed, proclaiming their Middle Eastern architecture with pillars, domes and arches. Many were floodlit in multi-coloured hues and gave a Disney-like ambience to the scene as they proclaimed their owners and the city’s opulence. I arrived at the Al-Qasr (meaning Castle or Palace) Hotel in the Shmeisani District, woke up the porter and spent my first night in the Middle East.

As there was no air connection with Baghdad due to the no-fly restrictions enforced on Iraq at that time I decided that I would have to wait for the luggage before I could hazard the 1,100km road connection between Amman and Baghdad. I reported my predicament to the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Office in the Hibrawi Building on Obada Ibn Al-Samet near my hotel. I asked my contact there, Musa Bayer, to notify my position to the UNDP Office in Baghdad and agreed to keep in touch until my baggage was located. As it was Ramadan the food at the hotel wouldn’t satisfy a gnat so I dined at the Chinese Peking Restaurant across the road. Due to Ramadan, alcohol was not available in the hotel so when I dined at the Peking I imbibed my quota of wine and beer out of a dainty teacup supplied from a daintier china teapot.

Amman is almost 9,000 years old and derives its name from Ammon the son of Lot by one of his daughters as recounted in the Bible. It is also the city where King David of the Israelites sent Uriah, the husband of the beautiful Bathsheba, to be killed at the siege of that city. Afterwards David married Bathsheba who bore him a son known to history as Solomon who became the great king of Israel. When the Emirate of Transjordan was established by the British in 1921, Emir Abdullah chose Amman to be its capital. Since then the city has seen a remarkable growth in both wealth and size. In 1948 and 1967 floods of Palestinians, escaping from the upheavals caused by the newly established State of Israel, significantly increased the city’s population and swelled the city’s sprawling new suburbs. A fundamental shift in the city’s fortunes came with the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 when Amman supplanted Beirut as the financial, cultural and intellectual capital of the Middle East. This brought Amman into the Western orbit of influence and today there are parts of West Amman indistinguishable from up-market suburbs of American or European cities. King Hussein of Jordan, grandson of King Abdullah signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, and he carefully nurtured the international image of the city as the moderate and hospitable face of the modern Arab world. Amman today enjoys a greater influence in the region and the world than at any time since the Romans.

In fact, I visited the Roman area of the city and was most impressed by the Roman Theatre that had been buried under a rubbish-filled quarry until the early years of the last century. It was built between 138 and 161 AD by the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius. The largest theatre in Jordan, it could seat 6,000 spectators. Facing north to keep the sun off the audience, it was cut into the hill giving it a very steep incline. This cavea, though dangerous to traverse carelessly, gave great acoustics. The highest level in the theatre contains a shrine to the goddess Athena. Hence the highest level in modern theatres is still called ‘the gods’.

My wife Mary sitting on a rock in the Roman Citadel overlooking the Roman Theatre. In its heyday a deep tunnel linked them. The shrine to Athena is in the middle of the top row of the Theatre. The first few rows have been restored to seat 500 for present day concerts. The stand of green trees in front of the Theatre is the site of the Roman Forum.

Overlooking the Roman Theatre was the Jabal al-Qal’a, the Citadel of Amman, a site inhabited for 9,000 years. The ruins reflect its antiquity. It has a Roman temple of Hercules, a Byzantine Church and an Ummayyad Mosque.

As an engineer I had to visit the majestic bridge of the Hejaz Railway in the outskirts of the city. It was built by a German, Ing Meissner for the Ottomans before the First World War. This bridge was a replica of Valen’s Aqueduct in Istanbul. Meissner designed most of the railway system of Iraq and Jordan and the Ottoman Sultan bestowed the title ‘Pasha’ on him in recognition of his work. Later I passed under this bridge many times during my frequent visits to Amman and each time remembered Lawrence who with Grand Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of the Hejaz and his warriors was the scourge of the Hejaz Railway.

My luggage was eventually located in London and arrived at my hotel on Friday at 3.00pm I decided to travel straight away and risk the night journey across the desert so I phoned for a taxi using the number Musa, my UNDP contact gave me. When it arrived I was in for a shock. Instead of a sleek up-to-the minute GMC car I was expecting, a decrepit taxi arrived driven by an equally decrepit driver called Hassan. As a result I was considerably deflated as we set off. The first stop was at a pastry shop just outside the city where we filled up with what Hassan considered goodies for the journey. These consisted of various kinds of sticky sugary pastries that rapidly established themselves to me as food to avoid at all costs.

The forecourt was bustling with every kind of mechanized vehicle with robed Arabs packing in all sorts of rations. Their women folk sat demurely and patiently inside, watching the frenetic activity of their men folk. Large heavy bundles were packed one on top of the other on the roof racks. What impressed me most was the number of new tyres on top of some cars. I expected Harrison Ford to come around the corner any minute. This was real frontier stuff and I felt exhilarated.

We climbed the incline out of the city and were finally speeding down the Baghdad Highway. It was straight, straight, straight and to say it was monotonous was an understatement. Soon I was inured to the sight of burnt-out articulated trucks and cars whose drivers had fallen asleep at the wheel and paid the ultimate penalty. We passed burnt tyres and the remnants of rims every few hundred yards.

The Eastern Desert out of Amman was not your typical desert. This one was stone and gravel, miles and miles of blackish stones as far as the eye could see. In fact, it extended hundreds of kilometres almost to the Iraqi border. Imagine a stony beach polluted by black oil, extend this beach to the horizon in all directions and you have the Eastern Desert. This remarkable landscape was formed by lava flows from the volcanic region of the Jebel Druze in Southern Syria.

The road surface was oily black and shiny from the tyres of the huge oil tankers on the sanctions busting run from Kirkuk to Amman. Every so many kilometres we passed large lay-bys the size of football pitches. In each one a group of the large tankers would be lined up, their drivers eating, sleeping or kneeling, facing Mecca as they prayed on their little mats (sajjāda). In the distance we could see the black tents of the Bedouin with their camels grazing nearby. Scattered further afield were herds of sheep or goats. I could not for the life of me figure out what they were eating as I could not discern one blade of grass in the vast plain.

Bedouin camp in al-Anbar Province Iraq. Note sheep and the dearth of grass.

Photo: James Gordon.

Camels were more numerous in the south and I photographed some of them from my car a few years later as we were speeding along the Highway of Death (Kuwait to Basrah Highway) to the protection of a British Army escort waiting for me at the Kuwait-Iraq border. However, large numbers of camels exist in the northeast of Anbar Province near al Rawah on the banks of the Euphrates River and I still don’t know how they can exist there.

Later in Jordan while driving with my wife our driver took us off the main road and drove up a bone-rattling bohereen to a Bedouin tent. As is customary all the men bar one were at work. The one remaining male was left to guard about eight ladies. We had tea and my wife had an animated chat with the women but when I tried to photograph them the man objected. However, the male was very anxious to have his photo taken with my wife and she obliged him. There was a sick kid goat in the tent lying on an open crate of tomatoes which it had liberally moistened with its wee. When we saw this it prompted us to decline a later offer of a drink of yoghurt when it was hospitably proffered.

Meanwhile, as we raced along the Amman to Trebil highway my driver had the radio turned full-on and he was going into ecstasy listening to the Arabic music. To my untrained ear this consisted of interminable keening (From Irish ‘Caoine’ meaning Lament) of young women trying to sound like young girls. He had very little English but every half-hour he would take his hand off the steering wheel and query: “Mr Dan, am I not a very good driver?” I assure you that Mr Dan hastened to praise his driving prowess as we hurtled along at 90mph. We also had to be wary of police checkpoints and speed traps. As at home, all drivers tried to warn the others of the presence of checkpoints by flashing their lights. At each checkpoint we were flagged down and passports were inspected. I feel the checks lightened the boredom of the lonely outposts.

About 30 minutes from Amman the road widened and had runway markings on its surface. I learned later that this was designated as an emergency landing strip in case Queen Alia airport was out of action. This reflected the volatility of the region and I found it hard to conceive of similar planning practices in the West. An hour clear of Amman at a desert road intersection we passed a stone castle in the style of a ‘Beau Geste’ fort. This was Qasr Al-Kharaneh (or Qasr Hraneh). Its name comes from the stony ‘harra’ desert itself.

Qasr Al-Kharaneh.

Photo by kind permission of David S. Martin.

Old graffiti inside indicates that it was built before 710 AD in the time of the Umayyad Caliph al-Walid I as a small hunting lodge. It resembles one of the Roman castrums (or Castri), which were built to guard the frontiers of their Empire. It is thought to have been an assembly point for local Bedouin tribes to meet with each other and with their rulers of the time and was probably also a caravanserai or khan. I thought of the poem ‘Kincora’ that lamented the decline of the castle of the great Irish King Brian Boru who was killed at the moment of victory as he smashed the power of the Vikings in Ireland and indeed in Northern Europe at Clontarf in 1014 AD.

Ah, where, Kincora! is Brian the Great? and where is the beauty that once was thine? Oh, where are the princes and nobles that sate At the feasts in thy halls, and drank the red wine, Where, O Kincora.

It is many years since the last warriors rode out from Qasr Al-Kharaneh and it still stands foursquare and solid awaiting their return.

About an hour later we reached the area around Azraq. Just before we entered the town we passed the huge military Muwaffraq Salti airbase on our right, the focus of much aerial traffic as fighters and helicopters sped in and out. The Jordanian Air Force was updating its fighter force at the time and took delivery of a number of F16 aircraft. As we passed they were fine-tuning their mastery of the F16s as they continuously landed and immediately took off again in a screaming crescendo. The co-operation between the US Air Force and the Royal Jordanian Air Force is still maintained. Nowadays there is an annual Falcon Air Meet between the US Air Force, the Royal Jordanian Air Force and other countries whose air forces fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The goal of the meet is to foster strong relationship between the US and Middle Eastern countries and promote stability in the region.They compete for a ‘Top Gun’ type competition where they fly two sorties under simulated war conditions.

Azraq itself was a vital centre on the old Wadi Sirhan caravan route between Saudi Arabia and Syria. The Wadi Sirhan is at the bottom of Winston’s Nose, a triangular part of Saudi Arabia pushing into Iraq and pointing towards the Dead Sea. It is rumoured that Churchill was drawing the boundaries for the region after World War 1 and drew this area after a heavy liquid lunch. The Wadi was Lawrence of Arabia fighting country. The old desert caravan routes consisted of a series of oases situated a convenient distance apart that provided caravans with enough water that enabled them to travel between trading cities. Azraq sat on top of a water catchment and had been a very fertile oasis. Water is a strategic commodity in the Middle East. In modern times the rapid expansion of Amman and its escalating water requirements ensure that much of the water of Azraq is pumped there. As a consequence Azraq is reverting to the desert.

When we passed the airbase we came to a T-junction. The right fork signpost pointed to Saudi Arabia and the left one to Iraq. What a place I thought, no messing with signposting the next village; they go big here and signpost countries. It reminded me of Simperopol in the Crimea where the signpost pointed to Moscow, thousands of miles away. Nothing like pleasing the bully on the block I thought.

Map of Jordan with Wadi Sirhan along the bottom of ‘Winston’s nose’ marked in by author.

The map is the 2004 (Shaded Relief) CIA Map of Jordan by courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

We turned left and passed an old castle about a kilometre down the road. It was the famous Qasr Azraq that was first developed by the Romans in 200 BC and was further fortified to its present level by the Ayyubids under Emir Izz ad-Din Aybak in 1237 AD around the time of the crusades. Grand Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali and Lawrence of Arabia used it as their HQ in the winter of 1917/18 and the starting point of their attack on Damascus which broke the Ottoman hold on the area. It is now visited largely for this association. Lawrence gives a description of the place in Chapter 79 of his classic book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was captured by the Turks when on a reconnaissance from Azraq Castle and was tortured and abused by them.

Due to the absence of timber in the area the main gates are made of dressed basalt. They turned on pivots of themselves, socketed into the thresholds and lintels. Weighing one ton per leave and a foot thick these gates can be manually operated with the help of palm oil. The present basalt gates are due to a modern reconstruction as the photo of the castle Gertrude Bell took in 1914 shows the gateway closed up with stones.

From Azraq onwards I noticed a High Voltage Transmission line along the side of the road running parallel to an oil pipeline. Its function was to power the large pumps in the powerful pumping stations that had conveyed the oil from Kirkuk in Iraq to Haifa in Israel. These stations are designated by the letter ‘H’ followed by the number of each individual station. It was from one of these stations in Iraq that Saddam fired the Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. We passed through Safawi with its Prince Hassan airbase. Nowadays, it has the customary jet fighter as a gate guard. In this case it is an F-104 Starfighter also known as the Widow Maker. It is watched over by a picture of King Abdullah of Jordan. In Saddam’s Iraq the gate guard was usually a Mig 21 and as is the custom in Middle-Eastern countries an image of the national leader, in this case Saddam would not be far away.

Road from Amman to Trebil (Note the number of air bases along the road to welcome visitors.)

The map is the 2004 (Shaded Relief) CIA Map of Jordan by courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. The legends in italics are the authors own.

Safawi’s main street has many small cafes selling barbecued chicken and lamb, each as greasy as the other, and washed down with Pepsi. These cafes had dining areas for men as well as curtained-off areas for women and children called ‘the family room’. This was also the custom in Amman and when there I frequently saw old wizened Sheiks walk through the mens’ area of the restaurant to the family area followed by a platoon of young veiled ladies. We dined in Safawi where I noticed that food was getting progressively cheaper as we journeyed further from Amman. Next the challenge of a visit to the facilities had to be overcome. They were separated by a curtain from the dining area and just shaded Russian facilities in terms of odour and hygiene. One would not be inclined to linger. The malodorous condition seemed to contradict the Moslem requirement of purification by washing the hands, arms and face before prayers. It was possible to stretch one’s legs along the footpath in spite of the noise, vibration and stench of the lumbering juggernauts speeding through the town. In Safawi the driver also made some purchases in the dingy, cluttered shops. This was an accepted form of smuggling as he would offload his purchases in Baghdad and make a few dinars in the process. The shopkeeper offered some coffee to his customers from a tiny cup that was offered to all-comers without washing out. As it would be churlish to refuse I swallowed down the treacle-like fluid. Finally, Hassan came out with a large crate of Pepsi. “For the customs,” he said cheerfully as he loaded it into the car boot. Safawi has its own airbase located near the H5 pumping station. This one was called after Prince Hassan, the brother of King Hussein. Another air base was located at the H4 pumping station near Ruwayshid. Certainly Jordan was taking no chances with the neighbours and the US must be very Jordan positive arising from the lucrative arms contracts they signed with King Hussein. As I grew used to travelling on this road I was struck but the amount of the ongoing military activity in the desert as the Jordanian army continually honed its skills. This Army descends from The Arab Legion of Glubb Pasha and is still one of the elite Arab Armies.

About halfway between Safawi and Ruwayshid, our next town, the car came to a gentle halt in dense darkness. My sense of frontiersmanship took a nosedive as I realized that here I was, sitting in the dark, in a petrol-less car, in the middle of the Eastern desert. Hassan was cheerful about the predicament and finally flagged down a passing car. He siphoned out a small quantity of petrol and we were on our way again to the sounds of melodious Arabic blessings. Further on we reached Ruwayshid, a clone of Safawi. I apprehensively watched the signs giving the distance to the Iraqi border as the distance to it diminished. It was like approaching Dracula’s lair. Even now it has a similar effect on travellers and they are anxious to record their proximity to the border by posing in front of one of these signs.

The car was coughing and spluttering again as we entered Ruwayshid and nosed up to the petrol station. Again a very small amount of petrol found its way into the tank; the penny finally dropped. Hassan was out to make a few more dinars by buying as small an amount as possible in Jordan at 31 US cents a litre and was waiting to reach the frontier post so that he could purchase in Iraq at two US cents a litre.

Entering Iraq induced fear that the image of Saddam could only magnify.

Photo by kind permission: Bassam Haddad, Assistant Professor, Department of Public and International Affairs George Mason University Fairfax USA from the film About Baghdad by Incounter Productions.

Shortly after midnight, as we approached the border, we passed a two-kilometre long queue of long trucks and empty oil tankers, patiently waiting for customs inspection even at that late hour. Eventually we inched our way into the large border crossing complex at Karameh, which is 360km from Amman and went through the Jordanian formalities. After 30 minutes or so we crossed over into no-man’s land and made towards the Iraqi side along a well-screened road two kilometres long. We then passed through a series of military checkpoints, each one inducing an increasing feeling of dread and helplessness as the number of Kalashnikovs and sub-machine guns between us and the Jordanian border increased as we inched our way in. There was no turning back; we were now committed.

Chapter Three

Iraqi Border to Baghdad

We eventually reached the Iraqi border post of Trebil and entered the VIP lounge where we went through the formalities. It induced a tightening of the stomach muscles and an intense consciousness of increased awareness that remained both consciously and subconsciously while I stayed in Saddam’s territory. These people meant business as they examined my papers and interrogated me. I was very conscious of the heavies in their dark suits as they stood at each doorway with their hands clasped in front of them. Hassan nonchalantly passed the customs officer the crate of Pepsi. The customs officer put it to one side. It would eventually find its way back to the shopkeeper – for a price, where it would begin the cycle anew. My laptop was removed for examination, the luggage was minutely checked and all my papers were taken away.

I waited in the VIP lounge itself that made an uncompromising statement that the Iraqis did not bother to impress any visitor. There was an air of brooding menace about the place. For all the world it reminded me of the post-War films as escaped POWs waited on German railway station platforms as they tried to ignore the stares of nearby Gestapo operatives. Take us as you find us the place seemed to proclaim. I admired a large photo of Saddam that occupied one complete wall. In this one he was developing the beginning of a double chin. On a later trip I posed in front of it and asked a member of his secret police (the Mukhaberrak) to take my photo.

The sense of menace was especially acute when the handlers searched the luggage. The baggage handling was carried out just outside the room on the tarmac of the car park. This was a problem for the first few visits through the place. I was in the habit of bringing medicines for the Iraqi UN staff and small essential pieces of equipment for the electricity sector into Iraq. My stomach was knotted with tension as the searchers used to go through my baggage. However, this was before one knew who to bribe and with how much to make the operation easier. When money did not change hands the search was thorough. I had to surrender a Persian rug on an early trip but was able to reclaim it on a later trip to Baghdad and got it through later when I was in bribing mode. After an hour the papers were returned, stamped, and we were free to go. On one occasion the custom officials asked for baksheesh for opening my bags but Gaelic contrariness intervened and I told them to get lost. I refused to pay and departed amid some baleful stares. The crestfallen official immediately went to his boss and complained. As luck would have it I had given the boss a lift from Baghdad to the border. He looked over very annoyed but when he saw me gratitude struggled against venality and gratitude won. He signalled me through. I paid the few dinars without protest on my following trips.

In the post-Saddam era his portrait is replaced by the Lion of Babylon. The outline of Saddam’s image can just be discerned underneath.Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Photo: Staff Sgt. Bryant Maude, US Military.

A feature of the place was the group of old Arab gentlemen that congregated outside the base with their hooded hunting falcons on their wrists. They must have been wandering Bedouin and the border post was a traditional meeting place for them.

Trebil-Baghdad Road. (The map is from the 2003 Special Reference Graphic Map of Iraq by NIMA.)

Hassan stopped at a filling station within the complex and filled the tank to the gunwales. We then eased out and roared down the fine Iraqi three-lane Highway No.10 through Al Anbar province to Baghdad. Due to the darkness there was little to see. We passed through the H3 Complex based on the H3 oil pumping station. It consists of a number of air bases grouped around the pumping station. Saddam used the area as a base remote from Iran to protect his air force and massed his most valuable jets there during the Iran-Iraq war. He also favoured it because of its nearness to Israel and stored large quantities of nerve gas in its warehouses.. For the same reason he quartered his Scud batteries in the area from where they would be capable of hitting Israel.

The Iranians decided they had to destroy the planes Saddam had hidden in the complex and made a daring attack on the 4th April 1981. Their F-4 Phantom fighters could not risk a direct attack through the middle of Iraq so they made a long detour over Iraq’s weakly defended northern border. They were refuelled twice during the long approach, once by Boeing 707s diverted from an Istanbul-Teheran commercial route and the second refuelling from Boeing 747s from Damascus airport. Saddam seemed to have few friends in the Islamic world at that time. The raid was a stunning success with about 30 Iraqi planes destroyed.

CIA plan of the 1981 raid.

This complex was targeted during the Gulf War as American pilots in their A-10s (Warthogs) from the Al Jouf air base just across the border in Northern Saudi Arabia took out the strategically very important Scud Missile Batteries. These were targeting all of Israel from there. I believe that the US and British Special Forces also operating out of Al Joub paid a fairly rowdy visit to this place also. Scuds were found abandoned all over Iraq particularly in Al Anbar province after the 2003 war and had to be collected and destroyed by the allies.

A US soldier secures an Iraqi missile to a truck when removing it from the site where it was discovered outside of Fallujah.

U.S. Army photo by Spc. Derek Gaines 26 June 2003.

As I journeyed through the area what little of my courage that remained would have evaporated had I known that the Al Walid air base within the H3 complex stored a large proportion of Saddam’s cache of R400 binary type nerve gas munitions. Some bombs filled with this agent had been hastily buried with mechanical diggers and a few had been damaged in the process and one, in fact, had burst. There is no guarantee but that one or two are still undiscovered and are corroding away in the desert sand ready to make their lethal reappearance at any time.

CIA photo of UNSCOM inspectors at Al Walid air base with some excavated bombs filled with the R400 binary type nerve gas agent. One of the bomb casing has burst.

Shortly after leaving the H3 complex in pitch darkness we came on a pick-up that had broken down and of course Hassan had to stop to help. I was not happy as I felt we could be shortly saying “Hallo sir” to the local version of Dick Turpin. (I had just come from Zambia and I had to drive near the Congo border where a civil war was raging. The rebels used to cross over to the Zambian side with a shopping list of 4x4 vehicles and their contents. My instructions there were to drive at 100mph and not stop for anything and this included police or even after causing a fatality.) There followed a period of loud exchanges and the clatter of hammers. I sat with motionless dignity in our car, now cold with the freezing desert night air, while the work proceeded. After an hour the racket ceased and we were on our way again with the melodious blessings ringing in our ears. Our final stop was at a trading post near Ramadi (capital of An Bar Governorate) for a cup of coffee and the usual reluctant visit to the facilities. This one was guarded by a lone, elderly attendant, who sat on the ground outside his charge. The stench was overpowering and conditions were extreme. Yet this poor individual had to sit out all night in the cold desert air to earn his grudgingly given miserable pittance.

Later that year in December I was in an UN Land Cruiser leading a convoy of three busloads of UN staff out of Iraq as we were ordered to leave the country due to President Clinton’s bombing campaign. We passed along this road and encountered many pick-ups loaded with armed volunteers on their way to cross swords with any Allied Special Forces they encountered in the desert. I was sorry for them as they crossed the sand in the dark, lightly armed against potential foes with body armour, night vision, heavily armed and the capability to summon ferocious air strikes to their aid. They were buoyed up with inculcated patriotism as they rode out to stop the crusaders (Western Armies) invading their country. They were not going out to battle for Saddam but to defend their ancient homeland with the ghosts of the victorious hosts of Saladahin riding at their side; this Iraqi mindset was never understood by the Allies. This area later became a very fertile region for Sunni insurgent activity and was frequently used by the insurgents as a base from which to attack aircraft approaching and departing Baghdad Airport with surface to air missiles.

Damaged DHL Air 300 cargo plane veers off the runway at Baghdad International Airport on 22/09/2003 on landing after it was hit by man held SAM.

Photo source: US GOV – Military.

These insurgents and their activities were no idle threat. On 22nd September 2004, a DHL Airbus 300 took off from Baghdad International Airport. Shortly afterwards it was struck on the left wing by a surface to air missile (SAM) that destroyed all the hydraulic controls and punctured the fuel tank. Heroically, the pilot managed to get a form of control by using the throttles of both engines to steer the plane in the manner of driving a tank. When he got the plane down at Baghdad it veered off the runway and its engines choked on sand and security fencing before it came to a stop.

In the later analysis of the attack it was obvious that the slow gradual climb of the plane to reach its allocated flying altitude was responsible for keeping the plane within the SAM range for too long. This type of climb was used to conserve fuel consumption. Thereafter it was ordered that all planes were to corkscrew their way up to an altitude safe from hand-held SAMs within the perimeters of their air base and so make them vulnerable to SAMs for a much shorter time.

Meanwhile back on the road with Hassan we sped on to our next town, Fallujah, that was to become another bastion of the Sunni triangle. A road led from our motorway to the King Faisal Bridge in the city that was later christened Blackwater Bridge by the Americans because of the four armed American Blackwater contractors who were beaten and burned and their mutilated bodies hung from the bridge. The efforts by the Americans, and their depleted uranium munitions, to retake the city resulted in many casualties and an aftermath according to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, which shows the rates of cancer, infant mortality and leukaemia recorded in Fallujah exceed those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We then passed the prison of Abu Ghraib of torture and infamy on our left and finally reached Baghdad where we progressed through a number of military check-points on the deserted streets. There were no late-night revellers here and no fashionable shop windows brightened the still and dark streets. The final military checkpoint with its old fashioned brazier was left behind and we reached The Hotel Babylon. After some delay I got inside. It was four o’clock by my watch and the sky was still dark as I paid and bid a relieved farewell to Hassan. After reassuring him of his peerless driving prowess I went to my room on the 12th floor and tossed back a generous glass of Jack Daniels. I found it difficult to sleep from sheer exhaustion and lay back pondering on what on earth brought me to the most military saturated city on earth and placed myself at the mercy of a psychopathic dictator. I read later in one of the reputable travel books that the Baghdad Highway was the most dangerous in the world and warned travellers to be aware of the roving highwaymen.

Chapter Four

Journey to Work in Baghdad

The bedside phone shrilled at half six; it was the hotel reception to tell me that my driver was waiting for me. During a sleepy exchange I was told of the hour time differential between Amman and Baghdad, so my journey of the previous day across the desert had crossed a time zone. I instructed the driver to return in an hour and rolled out of bed. Then I went out to the balcony to see Baghdad in daylight and shivered in the invigorating pristine cold air. The sense of well-being was as pure as the May days I remembered as a child. The sky was cloudless as I looked around from my 12th storey eyrie.

I took the lift to the foyer where I saluted the Mukhabarat (Saddam’s secret police) man, whose job was to monitor all who entered and exited the hotel lifts. Like all his colleagues in the Hotel Babylon he was well-dressed and very courteous, though distant. He had none of the brooding menace of his equivalents (ex-KGB) in Kiev. While we were there, an informer in an Artioma Street apartment building we were visiting, contacted the immigration police and reported that foreigners were seen entering and leaving an apartment in the building. In Soviet times each apartment block had its own commissar whose duty it was to report suspicious or anti-state behaviour. So the former commissar in this apartment block was loath to give up his position of power and persisted in carrying out his policing duties right into the post Soviet era. In Artioma Street many of the apartment buildings had their doors in the back and had to be approached from a rear courtyard, via an arched carriage opening off the street. All house doors opening on to the courtyard were permanently open and the snow would form drifts in the hall in the night temperature of -20oC.