While the chaos in the camps seemed to invite terrorists (and, of course, Iraqi secret agents bent on mischief), the vastly outnumbered Americans were actually relatively secure. According to SF security analysts, part of the reason had to do with the mission: The Kurds generally recognized that the Americans were there to help; they were grateful for it, and in many cases protective. Various other factors, including close ties with the civilian leadership and local guerrillas, the presence of Turkish military, and not least of all the SF’s own firepower, also helped prevent attack.
On another front: The SF units included a range of foreign-language experts, yet not one spoke Kurdish. The troops had to rely on Kurds who spoke English, sometimes surprisingly well, sometimes haltingly. Since the refugees included a number of doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, and other professionals, they often served as translators.
THE SUPPLY EFFORT
U.S. Air Force Hercules transports had been dropping supplies to the Kurds since April 7, at first aiming to provide the refugees with a thirty-day supply of food, water, and other necessities. But the difficult flying conditions and the unfamiliarity of the refugees with airdrop procedures had led to waste and tragedy. Harsh winds in the mountains and foothills blew ordinary parachutes off course; high-speed parachutes could defeat the winds, but often meant the pallets would smash on landing and ruin the contents.
The Kurds were so desperate to get the supplies, they would often run under the falling chute, not realizing that a pallet could crush them. An unknown number of civilians died this way. Other Kurds were killed when they tried to retrieve the supplies from minefields.
SF troops began organizing the supply effort from the camp site, clearing roads for trucks and establishing helicopter landing zones. The first few helicopters in were mobbed by anxious Kurds, creating unmanageable chaos. The SF troops ended that quickly.
“We figured out where the LZs were that we needed to create and then we barbwired them off,” Flofer remembers. “That was the way to start to bring order.” The Kurds’ leaders, meeting in camp councils with the SF commanders, helped allocate supplies, so resources could be distributed in a somewhat organized fashion.
Coordinating the supply pipeline was more difficult. As the relief operation got into high gear, supplies from thirty nations had to be processed and shipped to the front line. The Military Traffic Management Command off-loaded cargo at three Turkish ports, shipping cargo and pallets to a string of bases that supplied the camps. But even as a routine developed and more roads were opened, the sheer size of the operation and the involvement of nearly one hundred relief agencies with their own agendas complicated the effort. Getting any supplies to the camps in the first few days was difficult, but getting the right supplies to the right places was for a while nearly impossible, a classic case of catch-22s complicated by misinformation and a lack of resources.
Kershner’s SF unit took to setting up “air guards” to spot approaching helicopters. They’d contact the aircraft, find out what they were carrying, then direct them to the camp that needed that particular supply, often countermanding the pilot’s original orders. They also diverted the helicopters for medical transports. And they convinced civilian organizations to give supplies to those who needed them, rather than to the people originally intended.
“Somebody will show up representing some church organization with food or something, with instructions that it goes only to a specific group,” Carl Stiner recalls, “when you’re trying to treat everybody equally. Our troops had to try to redress the imbalance. The charitable groups all had the best of intentions, but preconceptions and conditions on aid added greatly to the chaos and delay.”
The first wave of food rations came from the military in the form of MREs. Though this prepackaged food had been designed for American palates, the Kurds were so hungry they ate it gratefully. As days went on, food began arriving from donor countries that seemed inappropriate at best and bizarre at worst. Large two-gallon-sized cans of corn were plentiful—but to Kurds, corn was animal food. They would open a can, discover what it was, and dump it. Chcesc balls were everywhere. And then there was the plum pudding—tons of the stuff were delivered by airplane, helicopter, and truck. Not even the Americans would eat that.
Packaging of the food presented another problem in the mountain wilderness. “Can openers were not supplied, so the Kurds used large rocks to open the cans,” Shaw reports. The smashed cans—and in many cases the ruined contents—littered campsites for weeks.
Lentils, rice, flour, and other staples were preferred by the refugees, who could turn them into foods with which they were familiar. As these arrived in bulk, diseases caused by malnourishment ebbed.
THE HEALTH EFFORT
Water and sanitation were no less concerns. When the troops arrived, most camps had no latrines. “Everyone had amoebic dysentery,” Shaw recalls, “and would go to the bathroom wherever they wanted. The river and creeks were used for a water source, bathing, dish-washing, cleansing the dead, and, worst of all, as a depository for dead animals. Our medics took water samples and found the microorganisms too numerous to count.”
“In late April,” Dick Potter recalls, “the press was hitting us hard about our inability up to then to stop what appeared to be cholera in Cukurca Camp. A lot of children were dying.
“We had sent samples to Louis Pasteur Hospital in Paris and to Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany, with the same findings: no cholera, but what I would call acute dehydration and diarrhea. I was reminded of the rice water diarrhea we had in Vietnam, and the resultant child mortality. I traveled to Cukurca Camp, and by this time the camp’s Is medical systems were organized: The Free Irish Hospital, Doctors Without Borders, Medicine Lamonde, German Red Cross, and Red Crescent Tent Hospitals were in the center of the camp. SF medics were in the surrounding hills and subcamps, tending to the sick; anyone requiring advanced treatment was sent to the center of the camp and one of the IO field hospitals.
“When I arrived, about six hundred infants had been triaged in three areas, and the doctors believed they could probably save two or three hundred of them.
“To Americans, leaving the others to die was completely unacceptable.
“Bill Tangney organized the response: He sent for six hundred cots, cut holes in the cots so the children could defecate through the hole without reinfecting themselves, brought in IV apparatus for all of the children, and convinced the elders to have the wives and mothers attend the children with Special Forces soldiers present.
“We called Landstuhl and had them send us powder to mix with water; it locked up the kids tighter than Dick’s hatband.
“Bill ordered the battalion commander to reinforce the troops on the ground. After receiving a quick refresher on the use of IV apparatus, a Special Forces soldier was assigned to about three sets of mothers and children.
“Bottom line, the powder worked, the IV worked, the cots worked, the constant attention to the children by the wives, mothers, and SF worked; and I believe only two infants were lost.”
Gradually, order was imposed. The security provided by the SF troops, as well as the Marines and other units closer to the Iraqis, allowed civilian relief agencies to set up makeshift hospitals. Latrines and trash piles were established; dead animals were removed from water sources. Clean water was air-dropped and trucked in. Hastily dug graves were moved from the main camp areas to better ground. New camps and hospital areas were established along roads where they could be better supplied and maintained.
Doctors Without Borders helped provide emergency medical care throughout the region; the doctors would simply show up at a camp and get to work.
There was occasional friction with (or among) the volunteer groups, or with Turkish officials, or the UN, but this tended to be generated by administrators. On a personal level in the camps, people tended to get along to get things done—though at times this came after initial distrust. “At first there was a great distance, particularl
y with Doctors Without Borders and some of these more liberal organizations,” Florer recalls. “But it only took a matter of days and the typical SF soldier, or the officers, or whatever, would schmooze their way into their hearts, because we were really making things happen.”
Now and again, working with civilians turned out to be pleasant from the start—especially when the civilians were female. One group of Irish nurses showed up in a camp just secured by SF personnel. “Fellows, could you give us a hand?” one of the women asked when their truck pulled up. Twenty men fell out, tents were up quickly, and generators were soon humming.
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 exactly what he had trained for.
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.
THE COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT
Reliable communications over such a far-flung operation were vital. There were no telephone lines in the mountains, and the terrain made communication by conventional radios difficult, but U.S. SF troops had brought SATCOM radios with them, so geography and terrain were no longer barriers.
Though SATCOMs accounted for as much as ninety-five percent of the communications, the devices were not without drawbacks—capacity was limited and communication had to be rationed, because there was only so much “space” on the satellite frequencies.
The relief effort also required a great deal of hands-on command attention. General Potter would “work the camps” every day—flying in and out to check with the commanders in the field. Planning sessions later in the day would allocate resources, trying to anticipate needs for the next days and weeks.
As conditions became more stable, the job of distributing supplies was gradually handed over to civilian agencies. A ration card system was instituted in many of the camps. Water-purification and -distribution systems were created. Dental clinics were established, with SF medies—and in some cases others; Bill Shaw got his first chance to practice basic dental skills he’d learned in training—pulling rotted teeth, supplying more basic care, or even acting as midwives.