Special Forces units became an unofficial supply conduit for volunteer organizations. 'They'd come to us and say, 'We need more fuel. Do you have more batteries? Do you have this? Do you have that?' ' Florer remembers. 'And of course we took care of all that stuff for them. And what we didn't have, they'd call back (to the bases in Turkey) and say, 'Hey, sir, our credibility's at stake here. You've got to get us this thing.' ' SF supply sergeants practiced their time-honored tradition of begging and borrowing to supply the front lines, which in this case were refugee camps. 'It was schmooze your way to victory,' Florer adds.
One group that proved fairly resistant to schmoozing was the Turkish military. Threatened with its own Kurdish minority, the Turkish government did not want Iraqi Kurds within its borders. The government and military at times looked on the relief operation with suspicion, and there were a number of clashes between the Turks and refugees throughout the operation — though most occurred in the early days. In one case, a driver for the Turkish Red Crescent pulled a handgun and shot at refugees trying to overrun his bread truck. The local Turkish military unit moved in with weapons blazing to control the crowd. American SF troops responded in a helicopter to calm the scene, and came back with a half-dozen refugees the Turkish army had shot. One victim was a child.
'There were a lot of incidents,' recalls Lieutenant Colonel Chris Krueger, who helped coordinate operations for the 10th Special Forces. 'There just wasn't any love between the Turks and the Kurds.'
As one might expect, emergencies were almost normal.
Bill Shaw and Green Beret medic Doug Swenor were in a guerrilla camp late one afternoon when a four- year-old got too close to a campfire, which set her nylon dress in flames. In seconds, she sustained third-degree burns over most of her body. Swenor emptied his medic's bag trying to clean and dress her wounds, and gave her morphine to ease her pain, but there was little else he could do.
In the meantime, Shaw got on the radio and tried to arrange a medical evacuation — nearly impossible to do; night was falling.
And yet, somehow, help came.
Though he was extremely low on fuel, a British Chinook pilot heard the distress call and diverted to the camp. The girl and her mother were loaded aboard. Shaw watched the helicopter disappear into the darkness, wondering if it had enough fuel to make it through the mountains back to Turkey.
A week later, Shaw met the pilot when he returned to drop off supplies. He had made it home to his base, but it had been very close: The helicopter's engines had coughed dry as they touched down.
Had the girl lived?
The pilot didn't know. It seemed doubtful, given the extent of her injuries. And yet none of the men — the pilot, Shaw, Swenor — could have lived with himself if he hadn't done all he could to save her.
Just a few days earlier, Shaw had complained about the mission. It was a long way from what he'd trained for. But that afternoon, its meaning — and its frustrations — hit Shaw hard. It was
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, generally referred to as UNHCR or simply the UN, gradually took a more active role running the camps. At times there was considerable friction between the UN, Turkey, the SF forces, and the Kurds. It often took several days to build a working relationship. In some cases, rapport came only in the face of danger. At one camp, female members of UNI ICR were attacked by Iraqi secret service agents; they retreated to their tent and were surrounded. SF personnel managed to get the women out to safety without firing a shot.
Iraqi secret agents were a problem throughout the region, but it was difficult for Americans to ferret them out and deal directly with the problem. At one point, Florer was presented with ID cards belonging to Iraqi secret service agents in Zakhu, a Kurdish stronghold. But the Americans were in no position to play detective, and Florer couldn't promise action.
'No problem,' the Kurds assured the Americans — leaving what that meant to the imagination. The SF troops later learned that the guerrillas had attacked the secret police station with grenades, then gunned down the survivors.
PESH MERGA
American policy favored the Pesh Merga guerrillas for practical as well as political reasons. The resistance infrastructure represented the Kurd leadership, and like the Americans, they opposed Saddam Hussein. But having a common enemy did not ensure rapport; the American units had to sell themselves on the ground, day after day.
Soon after their arrival, Shaw and one of his men ventured from their camp to an area controlled by Pesh Merga guerrillas to meet other refugees. They were led by their guide about ten miles from the Turkish border, passing patrols of well-armed guerrillas, until they came to the camp in the ruins of an old village — destroyed during the 1980s in an attack that included both nerve gas and defoliants, which had wiped out the once-elaborate orchards.
About five to eight hundred people now lived there. The guerrillas used it as a supply and rest area for troops fighting farther south. 'Things here were organized,' Shaw recalls. 'Family areas were separated. There was a community meeting area under a slot-ring parachute canopy and stacks of weapons and supplies everywhere.'
The two Americans were greeted by heavily armed men and led to Rasheed Hadgi, the small, elderly man who headed the camp. Hadgi, a many-times-injured hero of the Kurdish uprising, offered them food and drink — damaged MREs and Kool-Aid, obviously made from the contaminated water.
Though Shaw and his sergeant didn't want to catch dysentery, they didn't want to insult the guerrillas either; they had no other choice but to accept their hospitality. 'It was the right thing to do to build rapport, but later that night we both paid the price from both ends. At the time, I personally wished I had taken the bullet.'
Kershner attended several meetings with the Pesh Merga leadership, generally by car supplied by the guerrillas. 'No matter what kind of car we got in, we were always at 125 percent of capacity,' Kershner remembers. 'Everybody was jammed in together.
'I carried a pistol; everyone else in the car had an AK-47 or a machine gun; none of these weapons had been placed on safe within memory. I spent the entire, bumpy ride in these vehicles just watching for the muzzles of all these rifles to make sure I did not get shot by accident.'
The guerrillas wanted more than just medical and food support from the Americans; they were looking for massive military assistance — which they couldn't have. 'It was the usual ballet dance,' Kershner continues. 'Two boxers circling each other in the ring trying to figure out what they're going to give and what you're going to give.'
The politics between different bands of guerrillas generally followed clan lines, and sorting it all out was often a nightmare for the Americans. The different groups rarely coordinated with each other; each had to be approached separately.
Since there were no Kurdish speakers among the SF units, first contacts were often creative. In one case, a group of SF soldiers came under sporadic fire as they approached a guerrilla position. Trying to reassure the Kurds that they meant no harm, they tried yelling that they were Americans. The gunfire continued. They yelled the name of the camp; that didn't work either. Finally, one of the soldiers yelled, 'George Bush.'
The entire guerrilla contingent jumped up from their positions and began chanting the name of the American president, who had become a hero because of the Gulf War victory. 'George Bush! George Bush!' The troops were welcomed as brothers.
Small SF elements eventually set up camps within the guerrilla strongholds as part of the effort to maintain good relations. Since the rebels controlled much of the countryside, this greatly increased security as well as built rapport. In general, the U.S. attitude toward the Pcsh Merga was lenient and cooperative throughout the operation. But the British had different ideas. They set up checkpoints in their areas and often would not allow armed guerrillas to pass.
