with great solemnity told me that if President Bush, their dear brother in Washington, needed a new heart, these two men were ready to travel to the United States to be heart donors. I thanked the elders, told them that our President had healed, and passed the message back to General Shalikashvili, who I am told passed it to the Chairman, who in turn informed the President.'
The loyalty and generosity went both ways. 'Big loyalties were created,' Kershner continues. 'If you could have told the SF guys, 'Well, we are going to leave you in place and you are just going to carve out the country, and we're going to call it Kurdistan and let all the Kurds live there,' they would have done it in a heartbeat.'
GOING HOME
As the situation was stabilizing in the camps, diplomatic and political progress was also being made elsewhere. The allied occupation of Kurdish cities attacked by the Iraqis helped stabilize the political situation, and a second round of negotiations began May 7 between Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdistan Front, led by Kurdish Democratic Party leader Barzani. By this time, roughly 16,000 allied troops were involved in the relief and security operations.
Several firefights between Iraqi and Kurd forces during the first weeks of May led to planning for an allied assault on Dahuk, one of the trouble spots. But the Iraqi-Kurd negotiations — and possibly a U.S. show of force as the Marines prepared to engage the Iraqis — led to a tentative agreement on May 18, and lessening hostilities.
Refugees began returning to their homes in the northern regions of Iraq.
'First, the Kurdish leadership had to be convinced that it was safe for them to go back home,' says Chris Krueger. Meetings with the various leaders and top American generals, including General Shalikashvili, laid the groundwork. Then came the job of getting the word from the leaders to the refugees, and especially to the Pesh Merga guerrillas guarding the roads and passes.
'Colonel Bill Tangney and I and the chief Kurd in the area got on an MH-60 helicopter and we started just outside of Silopi at the very first camp,' recalls Krueger. 'We put the Kurdish leader on a monkey strap and we would fly over the checkpoints, do a hard bank, and kind of hang him out the door, and he would wave at them and they would signal us to land.' On the ground, the leader would tell the guerrillas that it was now time to return home. The trio would then board the helicopter and travel to the next site. They spent the entire day and several hundred gallons of fuel visiting camps and checkpoints.
Within twenty-four hours, the Kurds were on the move. SF units had established about a half-dozen safe routes south and supplied easy-to-read maps showing checkpoints and highways. Among the most important messages on the maps: Don't leave the roadways, because of the mines. Thousands of maps were handed out and air-dropped in the camps.
Way stations on the southern routes home included hospitals, often staffed by Doctors Without Borders, as well as military personnel. The refugees would stay there perhaps overnight, then move on. Food and water, as well as medical supplies, were available at the checkpoints. 'Logistically, we didn't want another humanitarian disaster, a trail of tears, moving back to their homes and people dying en route,' says Florer.
The way stations helped maintain the Kurds as they returned.
Many simply walked back home. Americans moved many others south by truck on the treacherous mountain roads. Krueger remembers that among the refugees were Kurdish construction firms, whose heavy equipment was used to rebuild — and in some cases, create — roads. The rough roads were hell on the vehicles; U.S. deuce-and- a-half transports would quickly blow out their tires, running through their duals and spares as they navigated south. Tires were often more difficult to come by than fuel, and the troops had to borrow and occasionally beg for spares. A French offer of twenty-five tires was greeted with an offer of canonization by one grateful crew.
'As we went through towns somebody would beat on the roof of a truck and say, 'Hey, a bunch of us live here,'' Kershner remembers. 'And they'd stop and eight people would get out of the truck and then they'd drive on.
'We'd just truck the people back and drop them off wherever they said they needed to be dropped off.'
According to Kershner, as many as fifty-six Kurds could crowd into the back of a deuce-and-a-half — a space American troops would call crowded at twenty-five. Families tended to stay together when they moved, so fitting upward of fifty people in the back of a truck — or sometimes even more than a hundred in a Chinook — was a necessity.
'They packed everything very nicely and many of them hauled it on their backs,' says Florer. 'And just overnight we would look out across the camp and there'd be thousands less people.'
SF units from the camps escorted many of the refugees back into their hometowns, sometimes remaining for a few days. At times, disputes broke out with squatters who had moved into vacant homes; the Americans tended to stand back as the locals sorted out those problems. In the meantime, disputes between the Kurds and Iraqis continued.
As it became clear that the United States intended to pull most if not all its troops out of northern Iraq, Kurds protested. The Americans were their shield against Saddam. But by the end of June, SF units were pulling back to Incirlik, then restaging to their home bases. For many, Incirlik gave them their first opportunity for a shower in weeks.
BEYOND COMFORT
Ground operations connected with PROVIDE COMFORT were effectively concluded July 15, 1991, when the last Marine unit in northern Iraq hauled down its colors and prepared to pull out. Seventeen thousand tons of relief supplies had been delivered; at least half a million people had been helped.
Coalition air units continued to patrol the northern stretches of Iraq from Turkey, enforcing the cease-fire and UN agreements, and some ground units remained in the region to monitor events and deliver additional aid when necessary. Operating under the auspices of Operation COMFORT, over the next five years, allied units delivered another 58,000 tons of supplies to Kurds in their home villages.
On June 22, 1991, Barzani announced that he had agreed with Baghdad on a settlement that gave the Kurds military and political authority over the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Though other Kurdish leaders were divided over this agreement, an uneasy peace settled temporarily over the region.
Meanwhile, a simmering, low-key war continued between Turkey and Kurds within Turkish borders, but at times this flared into large-scale Turkish actions against the Kurdistan Workers' Party — the PKK. The Marxist Kurdish group had actively opposed the Turkish government since at least 1984 and continues to do so.
In Iran, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) vied for domination in the northern areas of Iraq. In a complicated three-way conflict with the PKK, the KDP eventually aligned itself with Saddam Husseins regime. In the summer of 1996, the KDP and Iraqi forces captured Irbil, a prominent Kurdish city in northern Iraq. The KDP and PUK, which has received support from Iran, still struggle for domination in the Iraqi Kurdish region.
A tragic coda to Operation PROVIDE COMFORT was written in 1994, when two American helicopters were accidentally shot down by American F-15s. The helicopters were ferrying a variety of officials involved in relief and peace work. Though humanitarian efforts continued, changes in the Turkish government eventually forced the United States to disband the relief effort on December 31, 1996.
Air interdiction of Iraqi flights continues under NORTHERN WATCH, paralleling efforts in the south under Operation SOUTHERN WATCH.
DEBRIEF
