TIME: Kurdistan: Death in
the Afternoon
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
By MICHAEL WARE / HALABJA
An unsuspecting taxi driver was both the vehicle and
a victim of a suicide bombing in Northern Iraq, today
โ an attack that served as a reminder that there are
no rules in the campaign by the Qaeda-linked Ansar
al-Islam against the local Kurdish authorities. The
fight for control of a tiny sliver of northern Iraq
pitches fighters loyal to the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, which rules the eastern part of the
territory liberated from Saddam Hussein in 1991,
against Ansar, a small cadre of homegrown Islamic
militants supported, trained and reinforced by Osama
bin Laden's organization. And today, as a Bush
administration envoy met Iraqi opposition leaders at
Erbil, some 150 miles north of Halabja, Ansar played
rough.
A suicide bomber used a Land Rover taxi that
regularly plies the route between Halabja and the
town of Sayyid Sadiq to help him cross from
Ansar-held territory into the zone controlled by
government forces. He detonated his charges when
confronted by government troops at a roadside
checkpoint, killing two soldiers, the taxi driver and
himself. The attack coincided with a conference of
Iraqi opposition organizations on a post-Saddam
political order, attended by Zalmay Khalilzad,
President Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi
opposition. Though believed to have been simply
coincidental, the timing was poignant: Khalizad had
come to address the first umbrella gathering of
mostly-exiled opposition groups to be held inside
Iraq.
The bomber, carrying a package of explosives and ball
bearings strapped to his chest, was the sole
passenger in the Land Rover taxi, sitting behind the
driver and passing through a number of checkpoints.
But when he neared Halabja, two wary soldiers had
asked the passenger to produce his ID. Although local
officials believe the bomber's intended target may
have been the nearby military headquarters, once
accosted by the government soldiers he knew he would
get no further. Opening the left rear door, he
stepped out with one hand in his pocket, a finger
poised on the trigger mechanism. TIME's correspondent
witnessed the explosion from a ridge-top bunker a
short distance away. A flash and thick curls of smoke
engulfed the road before the crack of the explosion
washed across farmers' fields. Moments later, a
Kurdish government mortar battery retorted, dropping
a round on the lip of an Ansar bunker within view of
the chaotic checkpoint scene.
It could have been worse. Four Kurdish soldiers,
known as peshmerga (those who face death) were saved
by their meal break. They'd been called for lunch at
their unit's small command post on the other side of
the road as the taxi approached. Another soldier,
sitting in his gun emplacement overlooking the site,
had watched his comrades cut down, unable to help. In
the confusion afterwards a dozen armed men wandered
among the wreckage, stepping gingerly through the
human remains littering the asphalt. "We're
distraught, this was a good man who died here, our
friend. We're sad, but we're angry," said one.
The powerful blast hurled the Land Rover almost 40
feet forward, the ball bearings peppering its metal
panels with tiny holes. Inside the vehicle's
blackened hulk, flesh and blood covered every
surface. The car radio sat on the passenger seat,
splattered red. On the steering column a small bulb
flashed white, pitifully redundant.
One of the soldiers died en route to the hospital,
the bodies of his comrade and the taxi driver were
quickly removed. But the remains of the bomber were
left, untouched in the myriad of places where they
fell โ a skull fragment with a dangling eye landed on
the sentry post roof, more scattered up to 100 feet
away. Most gruesome, yet most telling, were two large
sets of remains left scornfully among the wreckage.
"He'd shaved this morning and it looks like he'd
trimmed his hair, probably so he would look less
suspicious," said another peshmerga gazing down on
his subject.
The Kurdish trenches are hit by mortar and heavy
machinegun fire from the Ansar lines on a daily
basis. On Monday night, TIME's correspondent had
sheltered with a peshmerga frontline unit through a
four-hour barrage. But the resort to suicide tactics
shifts the boundaries. Some of the soldiers present
during the attack at the Zamaqi roadblock claim a
suicide bomber struck the Halabja bazaar last year.
However, a Kurdish political officer assigned to
oversee the Ansar front, Burhan Saeed Sofi from the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party (which controls
the Kurdish region's eastern half) says that attack
had involved a bomb planted in advance. "This is the
first time they have used a suicide bomber," he says
in the headquarters compound his intelligence chiefs
believe had been the attacker's ultimate target. For
six weeks the frontline command has been waiting for
such a strike, he says. "So I don't think it has a
relationship with the conference in Erbil because
they are always planning these suicide attacks. If
they wanted to hit the conference then they would go
there."
That assertion is unlikely to comfort the conference
delegates seeking to broker agreement on the future
of a post-Saddam Iraq. Ansar al-Islam has sent a
clear reminder they are willing, and able, to strike
anywhere. A month ago they assassinated a senior
party and military official in the midst of
negotiations with extremist elements. The Kurdish
fighters along this frontline are anxiously awaiting
the arrival on the battlefield of U.S. bombers and
ground troops โ to dispatch not only Saddam and
Ba'ath Party, but also Ansar and its al-Qaeda
backers.