Six Days with the Kurds

By JAMES WILDE/ALTUN KUPRI

The preparations for the battle begin at 6 a.m. at the only gas station operating in Erbil. Hundreds of vehicles line up to be filled: trucks, jeeps, Hondas, Toyotas, school buses, ambulances, three-wheelers. The uprising is at risk. Saddam's best troops have launched a five-pronged offensive backed by a panoply of modern weapons and troops who never took part in the gulf war.

By evening the sun is boiling red, but the wind is cool. The men become silent. It is the moment of peace before the carnage, and the peshmerga savor these remaining minutes. In only a few hours, many of them will be dead or wounded. But they grin fiercely, and one fighter with mustaches that stretch inches from either side of his face barks, "I will use these to strangle Saddam!"

By nightfall the long file of vehicles, most plastered with mud as camouflage, departs with machine guns poking through the windshields and horns blaring. The men burst into song, raising their fists and waving their weapons, their faces beaming, their eyes aflame.

The motley convoy stops before the small town of Altun Kupri, 25 miles from Kirkuk, and everyone jumps out. A truck with a flat tire zooms by from the direction of the city carrying wounded. One can smell the odor of burned flesh as it passes. As the twilight gathers, Abdul Rahman Aju Ali, 54, a barrel- shaped man with fierce eyes, explains, "We will attack at night."

Suddenly the lookout on the hill yells, "Helicopters! Helicopters!" There are seven of them, all firing rockets. There is incoming artillery fire: Boom- whistle-bang-boom-whistle-bang-boom-whistle-bang. What follows is a mad melee of men scattering like quicksilver into gullies, ditches, crevices, behind hillocks, into hollows. The peshmerga are helpless before these gunships, but it is not for want of trying. They tear open with everything they have: antiaircraft guns, rockets, small arms, machine guns, even mortars. But their fire is confused and disorganized. The "damnation birds" keep wheeling around and coming back, untouchable.

The night mercifully hides the dusty smoke of artillery. Three 175-mm field guns are outlined against the full-moon sky with piles of shells beside them and peshmerga pulling the lanyards. The subsequent roar deafens the ears with the sound of a thousand church bells ringing. Then a moment of magic silence, and somewhere a night bird's lilting song brings out the stars. God knows why.

In Erbil one sees why everybody is fleeing. The giant mosaic portrait of Saddam on the outskirts of town is riddled with bullet holes. The Kurdish parliament building is also trashed and gaping with shell holes. No one knows what is going on, but everyone is catching fright, which soon sweeps the city as it is doing in all the other towns. On a street corner, Kurds have a snowball fight with snow out of a truck brought down from the mountains for drinking water. A young girl wandering in a yard hands the visitor a message. "For my brother in London, Ontario, Canada," she says. "Tell my brother Narwan we are very well."

There is only one road left going west on which to escape. Way up in the Korak mountains, the refugees are still far away from it. The full moon turns everything to silver. The stars are blue ice. Ali Hussein Haji's family lays out the best blankets, trimmed with gold and silver, on feather mattresses. They produce the remaining food in the tiny hamlet for the visitors to eat. "Don't worry, we will survive," says Haji. "We've been surviving for centuries." He uses the last of his gas to accompany us to the next bridge, and has to walk back 12 miles to his village.

Mohammed the driver chases all over Zakhu for gas to reach the Tigris crossing into Syria. Arriving near the river, everyone gets out and walks, then runs to avoid incoming shells that land every two minutes to interdict supplies crossing over the water from Syria, just a few thousand feet across the rushing brown flood. Piles of 220-lb. bags of flour are stacked on the bank.

Mohammed stands out in the river, braving the shelling and the mines to scream for the boats on the Syrian side to come over. They finally do so. He waves goodbye as the boat crosses to Syria and safety, with shells plopping in the water harmlessly behind it. They sink the next boat that tries to cross.

What will happen to Mohammed, his wives and children? What will be the fate of all those thousands of refugees? What will happen to the Kurds left behind? They are staying on to fight and to try to save those who can be saved. And to bury those who can't. Once again the Kurds are facing a tragedy and a betrayal. Another uprising has been crushed, and this time almost the entire Kurdish nation is on the run.