PB#6 The Notetaker

In early May, I attended a six-day conference in Sulaymaniyah, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan. The meeting was part of a series that brings together organizations involved in large-scale human rights documentation projects. Getting in and out was chaotic, but the meeting itself was great. The international contingent was together for two days and made a visit to two memorial sites in Kurdistan. For the following four days, dozens of Iraqi human rights activists and professionals joined the meeting. I learned a lot about the Iraqi situation and will take a lot of “lessons learned” back to the Thai-Burma border.

(L-R) Youk Chhang (Cambodia) * Khin Maung Shwe (Burma) * Hassan Mnemneih (Iraq) * Marijana Toma (Serbia/ICTJ) * Fredy Peccerelli (Guatemala) * Patrick Pierce (Burma) * Natasa Labmic (Serbia) * Louis Bickford (ICTJ) * Wynne Cougill (Cambodia)

The meeting took place in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region of Iraq, made up of the governorates of Erbil, Dahuk, and Sulaymaniyah. None of the international participants came through the Baghdad airport, and the Kurdish area is relatively safe so we had no security problems. The Iraqi participants traveled from all over the country, by land, to get there.

















Sulaymaniyah is in the southeast corner of the Kurdish area, near the border with Iran.

Iraqi Kurdistan gained autonomy in 1970, but endured years of civil war in the 1980s. From 1987 to 1989, the Saddam Hussein regime carried out what was called the Anfal campaign, a massive assault on the Kurds that resulted in almost 200,000 deaths and thousands of destroyed villages. After the 1991 uprising, which followed the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s troops withdrew from the region. Earlier this year, two Kurdish factions united to form the Kurdish Regional Government.





















Iraqi President Jalal Talibani is from Sulaymaniyah. His photos welcomed us to our hotel.

Getting to Sulaymaniyah was hectic.















Natasa, Wynne, Youk, and I met each other in Frankfurt, where we had to show up six hour before the flight and pay cash for our four tickets. We thought we had reservations, but the ticket agent didn’t check any lists and just wrote up our tickets when we got to the counter.It was a bit was a bit like catching the bus in New York’s Chinatown.

The plan was to fly to Erbil and then drive to Sulaymaniyah, about 2½ hours away. I also needed to buy the tickets for us to leave after the conference. In the airport, I got the run-around about buying the tickets, so I thought I’d better leave it to our Iraqi host to handle. So we walked outside to meet him … and … there was no one there to meet us. Through our keen sense of observation, we realized that everyone was getting into vans, presumably to be taken to the pick-up area. So in the van we got.

Out of the van piled three Whities and an Asian … a conspicuous grouping, and we waited about five minutes before I started to hit someone up for their cell phone. Finally, we were spotted by our welcoming committee of host, driver, …

… and 8-man armed Kurdish military escort (one jeep in front, one jeep in back).

The most dangerous thing we did was drive through Kirkuk (oil field pictured here), which we didn’t choose to do; the security detail made that decision. I wasn’t scared, though, because I didn’t realize that Kirkuk was a dangerous place. On the other hand, the scariest moment turned out to be not dangerous at all. About ½ hour before we arrived in Sulaymaniyah, the jeep in front of us, our jeep, and the jeep in back simultaneously pulled over to the side of the road and the military men all jumped out of their jeep. Three of them hopped down into the ditch at the side of the road. Bomb scare? Sniper? No … bathroom break. Whew!

I was surprised that the hotel was such a nice place and had 24-hour ADSL. And a well-stocked bar.

To understand what happened in Kurdistan during the Anfal campaign, we got out of Sulaymaniyah for a day. This is the former “Red Security” headquarters (the equivalent of the FBI) that has been turned into a museum to memorialize the victims.

We also made a visit to a site where in 1988 Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to wipe out an entire Kurdish area – 5,000 killed instantly. The town is still very poor, and a high-profile memorial was built to honor the victims. Its opening was attended by Collin Powel and Paul Bremmer. In March 2006, villagers from Halabja staged a protest in front of the memorial because of their continued poverty and lack of reparations, despite the high profile of the event and the international attention (and presumably the funds) that it has received but have not affected the lives of the survivors. It made for a very interesting case study on memorials.

Day 3 of the meeting brought in some big-wigs, including the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government

This is the first judge, now retired, who heard the case against Saddam Hussein. He stayed for the whole meeting and took diligent notes. In this photo, he’s admiring my superb note-taking skills.

At every break, we split time between grabbing coffee or diet coke and posing for photos. Here we’re with a former political prisoner in traditional Kurdish dress.

Marijana, a fabulous Serbian diva, gave presentations on Oral History and came dangerously close to ruining the reputation of a perfectly innocent Iraqi activist.

We took time out to celebrate my birthday with silly drunken games, including “Six Questions,” which led Fredy to never look at coffee, or his grandmother, the same again.

The agenda for the last couple of days of the conference was for the Iraqi participants to develop a network among themselves. The international participants were supposed to offer comments, but they spent most of their time harassing the notetaker.

We did some last-minute shopping back at the market. Marijana was in heaven because she’s a shoe-whore.

I was tempted to stay in Sulaymaniyah, mainly to improve my fashion sense. I almost didn’t have a choice in the matter.

On our departure day, we got to the airport five hours early and were told that the flight was full. And they only fly once a week. We sat in the manager’s office and dropped names to be assured we were top on the waiting list. Then 20 minutes before the flight, responding to a mystery signal, a dozen people rushed the ticket counter. Some “waiting list.” I pushed my way to the front and was able to get the tickets we needed to leave. This picture of Natasa captures how all of us felt at the end of that day.