Northern Iraq villagers tell of hard life under Muslim, Kurdish

KHAILYHAMEH, Iraq -- When the tall young men with long beards strode through this mud-brick village, people would shut their doors and windows. The women covered their faces and quickly gathered up their children.

"When they come, we can't leave the house," says Abdul Qader, 52, a shepherd in this northern hamlet caught between Kurdish forces and Islamic rebels. "We're afraid. We have no one to protect us."

The villagers of Khailyhameh say their lives have been destroyed by the cruel behavior of the Islamic rebels and their frequent gunbattles with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

In fighting this week that left dozens dead and wounded, the Patriotic Union, the de facto government in this part of Iraq, captured the village from Ansar al-Islam, a militant group with alleged ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.

Ansar's Kurdish, Afghan and Arab militiamen ruled the village for more than a year, meting out punishments for alleged violations of Islamic rules, extorting money, laying sinister booby traps and attacking isolated Patriotic Union checkpoints and bases, residents say.

Nearby Halabja, once a picturesque resort destination, became known for the chemical bombardment it suffered in 1988 at the hands of Saddam Hussein's troops in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq war. More than 5,000 people were killed.

Years of conflict

Life in the surrounding valley has been marked by chaos and lawlessness since the collapse of Iraqi government rule in 1991. People lived through the 1994-98 civil war between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, and the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party. Then came the rule of the fundamentalist Islamic Movement of Kurdistan from 1998 to 2000, when it was ousted by the PUK.

Ansar entered the scene around November last year, when it began clashing with PUK forces.

United Nations officials, who run development projects in much of northern Iraq with funds from the U.N. oil-for-food program, have abandoned reconstruction efforts around Halabja because of fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamic militants.

Residents don't have access to high-paying U.N. jobs that have given a boost to the economy elsewhere in northern Iraq, which was lopped off from the rest of the country after a 1991 insurrection led to the establishment of Kurdish-ruled zone protected by U.S. and British aircraft.

"The people here are penniless," said Ali Mohammad, a 65-year-old manning a shop with a shelves bare but for warm soft drinks. "Anyone with any money has already fled to Sulaymania," the provincial capital and Patriotic Union stronghold 60 miles away.

Ansar's base is the village of Biyare, up in the Suren Mountains within sight of Khailyhameh. The villagers here often suffered Ansar's cruelty when the fighters descended from the mountain.

Abbas Jabbar, a 27-year-old driver, said an Ansar militant once stopped his car and accused him of being a sympathizer with the Patriotic Union, known as the PUK, because he had hung in his windshield a green parchment -- green being the militia's color.

"I explained to him that it wasn't the green of the PUK but a flag to honor Imam Reza, the Shiite saint," he said. "He threw it on the ground and started stepping on it. He called me a kafir," or infidel.

Peywah, an 18-year-old in Khailyhameh said the Ansar militia seized his uncle three months ago, took him to Biyare and held him for $290 ransom, a half-year's salary for Kurds.

"We scrounged and borrowed from relatives and got the money, and they released him," he said. "Then we fled until we came back today."

Since the PUK captured the village Thursday, villagers said, three people have been killed by homemade booby traps left behind by Ansar. Ahmesh Abdullah, a 38-year-old shepherd, died when he stepped on one of the tripwires along a dirt path.

"I yelled at him to stop, but it was too late," said Salam Jafar Mohammad, a mine clearance specialist who defuses the booby traps.

The PUK says it hasn't captured any Ansar militants. One man they tried to seize blew himself up with dynamite. His mangled body was lying by a road, blighting the view of the lush valley where ducks, turkeys, cows and sheep wandered among crisscrossing streams.

"It looks like heaven," said Mohammad Amin, a 48-year-old Khailyhameh farmer. "To us it's hell."