Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
In sight of the Suren Mountains in Iran, Kurdish border guards patrol near Zower Chum, just inside Iraq.
Posted on 03/26/2005 9:34:22 PM PST by neverdem
ZOWER CHUM, on the Iran-Iraq Border - With a Kalashnikov rifle slung over one shoulder, Kadhum Mahmoud took a few brisk steps on the snow-packed earth and crossed from Iraq into Iran.
The mountain trail snaked through clusters of denuded pomegranate trees and fields of land mines to a hamlet of mud homes clinging to a hillside. The Iranian guards had left their concrete watchtower for lunch. Mr. Mahmoud, a wiry Kurdish border guard dressed in American desert fatigues, said it was near this valley that he recently arrested a man headed into Iran with 60 pieces of antiquities - masks, plates and stone or clay busts of women, among other things.
"The local newspapers all wrote about it," he said, with more than a hint of pride.
So goes life these days along the 2,268 miles of border that separate Iraq from its six neighbors. Newly minted guards are arresting smugglers with camels, cows, cars, computers, cartons of cigarettes, even boats along the southern waterways. In 2004, the border police seized 13,039 sheep, most of them being taken illegally across the western desert to Syria, where Iraqi sheep are reputed to be "the tastiest in the region," said Maj. Gen. Hussein Mustafa Abdul-Kareem, the head of Iraq's border police.
The interim Iraqi government is struggling to deal with this sharp rise in smuggling two years after the American-led invasion left the borders wide open, even as it grapples with the border's more heralded problem: the movement of money and fighters that is helping to sustain the guerrilla war. The list of items seized by the border police last year reads like a catalog of the riches of the region - 3,350 pieces of antiquities, 2,200 tons of oil and fuel products and 23 tons of minerals, not to mention 112 cows and buffalo.
But the back-and-forth flow along the forgotten margins of Iraq also reflects a sense of renewed life in the post-Saddam Hussein era. There have been days, for example, when thousands of Shiite pilgrims - some from as far away as the arid highlands of Afghanistan - have streamed in from Iran to worship at the holy shrines of the south, forbidden under the old government.
"Some come with their children, with their families," General Abdul-Kareem said. "Some even come here looking for work."
Here in the jagged Suren Mountains of the north, Kurdish militiamen like Mr. Mahmoud, who fought for 15 years against Mr. Hussein's forces, are being employed to hunt down smugglers and infiltrators. Mr. Mahmoud commands 34 men in the village of Tuwella. Working in two shifts of five days each, they sleep in bunk beds in a cramped room with a single television set.
"The Kurds in these villages go back and forth across the border all the time to do business," said Mr. Mahmoud, 33. "We look for people trying to smuggle weapons or hashish. Three times we've caught people with antiquities."
To the west, along the flat, barren expanse of the 376-mile Syrian border, the Interior Ministry has deployed an Iraqi battalion called the Desert Wolves to help keep watch. The security situation "with the neighboring countries and on the borders is more or less at a standstill right now, and we have to work on that as soon as possible," Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite candidate for prime minister, said in an interview. "The majority of the issues affecting us comes from the borders."
The border police force has grown to 22,000 members since the invasion, but the numbers are still far short of what they should be to provide effective security, General Abdul-Kareem said. Ninety border police stations are open, with another 59 being built. Ideally, the country would have many more than that, with at least 180 posts just along the 905-mile Iranian border, by far the country's longest, he said.
To track infiltrators and smugglers, each station needs to be outfitted with vehicles, communications devices and night-vision equipment, the general added.
Kurdish and American officials are especially wary of jihadists crossing from Iran into this verdant valley, because this area was once the base for Ansar al-Islam, a militant group of mostly Kurdish guerrillas that was routed during the invasion. Ansar cells have sought refuge in Iranian towns right across the border, and Kurdish soldiers detained an Ansar fighter just a few months ago on the road to the nearby provincial capital of Sulaimaniya, said Anwar Hajji Osman, the regional security director.
"The truth is they're dangerous," he said, "but we have good people, we have smart people, and we take our job at the border very seriously."
Mr. Mahmoud said he and his fellow Kurdish guards recently caught a thick-bearded Pakistani man trying to cross into Iraq carrying nothing but a Koran and a white funeral shroud.
"That showed he was ready to die," Mr. Mahmoud said. "We sent him to our security office, then they brought him back here, and we sent him back to Iran."
The three major American detention centers in Iraq are holding a total of 325 foreign prisoners, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the detention system. The number has steadily risen since September, when the system had 133. Colonel Johnson said the prisoners were from 16 countries, but he declined to specify which ones.
The flood of Shiite pilgrims into Iraq has made it much harder to figure out who is coming into the country, General Abdul-Kareem said. In February, the time of the Shiite holy festival of Ashura, the Iraqi border forces caught 1,541 people entering the country illegally, mostly from across the Iranian border. That was the most of any month since the invasion, the general said.
Outside of foreign fighters, the surge in drug trafficking has Iraqi officials most concerned. Last year, government statistics show, the border police seized 323 pounds of drugs, mostly hashish and opium coming from Iran. Drug trafficking was rarely a problem under Mr. Hussein because the government executed smugglers.
The drugs are generally being carried by traffickers from Iran to other Arab countries, General Abdul-Kareem said. But as with any country that serves as a conduit for drugs, he said, there is a growing concern that addiction will soon take root in Iraq.
From the border post in Tuwella, Mr. Mahmoud can watch every vehicle that rumbles past on a twisting dirt road running up to the official crossing with Iran. There, Iranian soldiers in green uniforms stand guard by a wide gate flanked by concertina wire. Mr. Mahmoud said he and his men made a thorough search of every truck coming and going, and wrote down information on everyone who crossed the border. American soldiers occasionally stop in at the Tuwella post for several days at a time.
Mr. Mahmoud invited a reporter and photographer along on a patrol. A half-dozen Kurdish border guards in a red pickup truck and sport utility vehicle drove up a narrow muddy track above Tuwella, then trudged for 20 minutes to the invisible boundary with Iran at Zower. Fresh snow and a deep silence draped the valley and surrounding peaks; a man chopped up a tree for firewood next to a rushing stream.
"These Iranian Kurds sometimes come over for work," Mr. Mahmoud said. "Their villages are like relatives of Tuwella."
The scene is far different in the wastelands of western Iraq, where American marines regularly patrol the border with Syria. Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the top Marine commander in Iraq, said the Interior Ministry had in recent weeks assigned 450 Iraqi soldiers from the Desert Wolves, a Jordanian-trained unit, to help with patrols. American and Iraqi forces have tightened up on border security, he said, but some arms and foreign fighters are still making their way from Syria, and smuggling operations along old trading routes continue.
"I'd have to be Pollyannaish to say it's stopped altogether, but we've made it extremely hard and risky for them," General Sattler said.
General Abdul-Kareem, the head of border security, said that in February his forces seized five cars full of insurgents who had laid siege for an hour to a police station in the west. The leader of the group, a Syrian, was killed in the battle. Several Saudis were among the attackers, the general said.
"During Saddam's time, the borders were very tightly controlled," he said. "But we have a history of thousands of years of law, dating back to Hammurabi's Code, and we will establish order again."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
In sight of the Suren Mountains in Iran, Kurdish border guards patrol near Zower Chum, just inside Iraq.
23 tons of 'minerals?'
That's a lot of minerals! :-)
Thanks; and BTW, Happy Easter!
23 tons of smuggled "minerals?"
.
Those are great confiscation numbers. Notice that the border guards are actually venturing away from their border posts on actual *patrols*!
Large scale confiscations. Numerous arrests. Actual patrols. Guards wearing uniforms and actually knowing their jobs.
That's a functioning government in action.
Kudos to the U.S. Administration for what's been accomplished in Iraq so soon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.