The telephone call that changed my life – two and a half years in Iraqi Kurdistan

By Barry Moolman

Laurette and I were just back from our Summer holiday at Little Brak River when the phone rang on 1 January 1999. It was Hans von Sponeck who told me that me that he had been appointed as Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and whether I would be interested to join him in Iraq coordinating the UN activities in the Kurdish enclave in Northern Iraq. I had known Hans from my time in India, where he was the UN Resident Representative.

The next morning, at the office, I discussed Hans’ call with Chief Director Malcolm Ferguson and prepared a submission to Jackie Selebi, the DG. Tutu Mazibuko, who was the DDG for Asia and the Middle East added her positive recommendation and two days later the DG called me to the Union Buildings. After I explained the background he added his comment on the submission – “approved for full secondment”

This United Nations operation, UNOCHI, commonly known as the Oil for Food Programme was designed to exchange Iraqi oil for essential goods and services in Iraq. In the heartland of Iraq the UN monitored the distribution and in the Kurdish north the UN implemented everything “on behalf of the Government of Iraq.”

Shortly afterwards I travelled to New York for interviews and briefings and returned to Pretoria two days later armed with a blue UN Passport.

Early in April I flew to Amman in Jordan and from there travelled by road to Baghdad where I spent the first two weeks at the UNOCHI Headquarters in the Canal Hotel to meet all the Heads of the UN Agencies and other senior UN Officials.

Then we drove to another world – to Iraqi Kurdistan. After passing Kirkuk we went through the Iraqi control post, traversed a no man’s land stretch and then the Kurdish control post. The currency changed from New Iraqi Dinars to “Swiss Dinars”, the original Iraqi denomination. Satellite dishes could be seen on rooftops. 

The people were different and spoke Kurdish and despised the Arabs. Late that afternoon I was introduced to the PUK Prime Minister, Kosrat Ali. A lavish reception in a lush garden was laid on for Hans and myself. The Prime Minister, who spoke only Kurdish sat at the head of a long table laden with food and drinks. I sat to his left and he ordered a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, poured each of us a water glass full and started to talk.

Ebrahim, my excellent translator skipped between Kurdish and English and some hours later (and an empty bottle) the PM and I really got to know each other. Kosrat Ali was an imposing figure, big, burly and with only one working eye. The other one, lost during the Kurdish civil war was replaced by a glass object staring straight ahead while the working one skimmed from left to right.

In Suleimania, the next day, I also met the President of the PUK, Jalal Talabani. Mam Jalal, as he was commonly known took me to his study where he showed me two books. President Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and the FW De Klerk biography. He had studied both and expressed a high regard for what we have achieved in South Africa.

By the end of that week I finally arrived in Erbil, the capital of the KDP controlled part of Kurdistan. My predecessor, Maxwell Gailard, on Thursday, took me along to a field demonstration by UNOPS where a week’s loot of unearthed land mines were to be destroyed. That is where I met, for the first and last time a young New Zealander, Nick Speigh.

Weekends are Fridays and Saturdays and after the demonstration Max and I went to a small town, Diana, high up in the mountains where we were to spend the weekend. We had scarcely arrived when a radio message came through that we were to return to Erbil immediately. Nick had been assassinated!

The Erbil Airport is a few kilometres out of town. Being in the no-fly zone, it was unused but a lovely spot to watch the setting sun from one of a number of pyramid shaped mounds. That is where Nick and Irene Plugge, a Dutch girl working in the UNOCHI Office went for an impromptu picnic. A dilapidated yellow and black taxi came to a standstill on the runway, the bonnet was opened and the driver came up to Nick and Irene to ask for some water for his overheated car engine.

This was gladly given and some time later the driver came back with the empty bottle, which he handed to Nick. As Nick took the bottle the man opened fire with a handgun and shot him in the chest several times, killing him on the spot. Irene, some 20 meters away screamed and some shots were fired in her direction. She fell over and feigned death till she heard the taxi speeding off. As we always carried two-way radios she raised the alarm and that led to our sudden recall from Diana.

An incident such as this inevitably led to a number of consequences. Security was stepped up, a curfew imposed and a ban on any night travelling imposed

After this rather dramatic start of my tenure I quickly met the KDP Leadership who all came to pay their condolences.

The UN operation in the North consisted of field offices in Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimania. There were about 10 different UN Agencies dealing with the full  spectrum of administration of, amongst others Health, Education, Agriculture,  Demining, Housing and last but not least Food Distribution. We were about 100 foreign UN Staff members and some 700 locally recruited staff members.

My daily routine included co-chairing weekly meetings between the agency heads and the local ministers. As the interface between the UN and the Local Authorities I was very often called upon to mediate between both. Once, UNOPS announced that it had successfully demined a village and that the population could return. The traumatised villagers were sceptical that every single land mine had been cleared. In the end I suggested that I would lead a UNOPS Team who would take on the villagers for a soccer match on the former mine field. That convinced the meeting, no match was played and the village could be re-inhabited.

The world learnt of the horrors of chemical exterminations when the city of Halabja was attacked by Sadam’s air force. This was merely the tip of the iceberg. Many villages, such as one I visited on the banks of the Little Zab River went through this horror when small aircraft appeared and drums of chemicals were dropped up-wind. With the gas drifting over the villages few were spared and ended up as corpses on the bank of the river. Wells were then poisoned and mines planted, making the villages uninhabitable.

On another occasion I had to hand over “graduation certificates” to newly trained dog handlers who controlled the sniffer dogs searching for unexploded landmines. We previously ran into difficulties with the government in Baghdad who could not comprehend why the dog food for the South African dogs we used was more expensive than the rations given to the human population. The explanation that dogs should not be seen as such but rather as highly sophisticated biological mine detecting devices only partly convinced the government. It was then decided to start the NIPS Programme. NIPS stands for National Indigenous Puppy Sniffers. 

Local mongrel dogs, used to the extreme heat were trained along with their Kurdish handlers. Waiting under an awning we saw the dogs with their baggy pant wearing Peshmerga handlers approaching. Then I heard Afrikaans orders, “Sit, Staan Loop, Ruik.” And so forth.  The newly trained handlers used to their South African experts doubted whether dogs could be ordered to detect mines when given commands in Kurdish. Hence the sticking to Afrikaans.

The UN Mandate for Iraq, ran on six monthly cycles. Our contracts as well. At the end of each period an estimate was made of how much income was expected from strictly controlled Iraqi oil sales. The Kurdish area was run on the 13% account. That translated into millions of Dollars that had to be allocated to the various sectors in a six monthly budget. The final budget had to be approved by the UN Security Council.

Towards the end of the Millennium tension between the Iraqi Government and the Security Council was at a height resulting in the programme’s extension for mere weeks instead of the normal six months. Everyone wanted to be with their families all over the world to see in the 2000’s.

I ended up in Baghdad as Acting Humanitarian Coordinator when a final breakthrough came and the Budget had to be submitted and approved in the week between Christmas and New Year. Sitting in the office, which was later blown up with a massive truck bomb, I watched on television the new millennium in New Zealand breaking and slowly moving round the world until 24 hours later when the budget was finally ready for transmission to New York.

My term was extended five times until 2001 when I finally returned home to my family.Meeting up with Tutu Mazibuko after this time, she asked me why I did not stay on in the UN. My answer was that I owed it to the Department that approved my secondment to return home and continue to loyally serve my country.