00.00

Kurdish Mountain village

In the beautiful and bloodied mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan rumour is rife – the Americans are coming for Saddam. Now Kurds are asking whether they will be asked to fight?

Preamble interviews

00.23

Barham Salah

PM of the PUK

We believe the solution does not lie in replacing one dictatorship with another. The solution lies through forging a new political contract with the various communities of Iraq.

00.39

Jalal Talabani

PUK President

Without the support of Iraqi people foreign attacks will not lead to any kind of success.

00.48

Barham Salah

PM of the PUK

What we are fighting for is we are fighting for our own people, for our own interests. We fought the government of Iraq at the time when the United States was in alliance with the government of Iraq.

01.03

Masood Barzani greets guests

At the Kurdish Democratic Party Headquarters Masood Barzani, ex Peshmerger and mountain guerrilla, greets the great and good of his Kurdish fiefdom.

01.16

Barzani Painting

Barzarni led the Kurdish fighters during a decade of war against Saddam Hussein.

01.24

Snow ball fight

Kurdish Iraq is thriving. If this is one of the most war torn parts of the world everyone seems to have forgotten.

01.35

Town

Peace has brought with it comforts never before seen. But it’s all thanks to the Western no fly zone, which keeps Saddam Hussein out.

01.45

Mercedes & hypermarket

And with peace has come commerce. From satellite communications to hypermarkets. It’s a remarkable transformation of what was a just 10 years ago, a backward and war destroyed region.

02.02

Jalal Talabani

PUK leader

Now we have a guarantee. America gave the guarantee to protect the area. They guarantee they will protect the Kurds from any attack from Iraq. We have a written letter from Mr Colin Powell. That is a guarantee.

02.16

Petrol tankers

If Kurds have found peace with Western protection, many have also found great wealth. Every truck passing through the Ibrahim Kalil border crossing to Turkey pays high customs levies, earning around $75 million a year for the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan has become a conduit for Saddam’s oil & vast smuggling operations also funnel goods to Iran, Syria and Iraq.

02.49

Soldiers play music

(02.56) It’s all helped to dampen the Kurds traditional love of things military. For many the days of the mountain guerilla, or Peshmerger, are long over.

03.07

Parliament

It’s rather a case of the long march from the bullet to the ballet box. After decades at war and of being used in other people’s battles, Kurds know they’ve now got it better than ever before.

03.23

Jalal Talabani

The status quo, yes it’s good for us. It is better than the past, too much. For the first time in history Kurdish people ruling themselves in an important part of Kurdistan.

Fade down/up

03.42

Erbil uprising

Kurds remember 1991. At the end of the Gulf War the CIA broadcast a speech by Bush Senior calling for Kurds to rise up. Within a month, 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were in revolt.

04.05

Injured children

But Saddam attacked and as the wounded came in Kurds realised George Bush would do nothing to stop Saddam punishing them for their rebellion.

04.15

Kurdish refugee & helis

In a biblical exodus Kurds fled to the mountains.

04.19

Sami Abdul-Rahman

Deputy PM - KDP

Well certainly the American government was encouraging the Kurds and the Shiites and all the Iraqi people to rise up. For a whole year before the war they were encouraging us.

04.31

Helicopters

Saddam’s helicopters were allowed in. The US had decided a divided Iraq would be a more unstable place.

04.41

Man on mountain

My father is here. You see all the children, women. George Bush why don’t you interfere in this. God help us!

04.59

Sami Abdul Rahman

Dep PM KDP

Of course the Americans called on the Iraqi people including the Kurds to rise up so that made an obligation on the United States government to protect the people who rose up.

05.13

Refugees in mountains

The Kurdish Refugee crisis became an international tragedy. In response, the west established the safe haven, and after weeks in the mountains the Kurds were finally persuaded to go home. It was a fiasco the Kurds still keenly remember.

05.37

James Baker

Former US Secretary of State

We did make two mistakes… one, not requiring him to come to Safwan and sign the surrender documents – it would have been better to do that… and secondly, letting him use his helicopters in the immediate aftermath of the war, which enabled him to reposition his forces, and put down uprisings by Kurds in the north, and Shiites in the south.

05.59

Check point

Guard talking to taxi driver and taxi driving off

If the Kurds are to help the US get Saddam they will have to overcome the squabbling which has historically divided them. Checkpoints still separate the West controlled by the KDP from the Iranian leaning East, controlled by the PUK.

06.20

Open air class room

Both factions still operate separate armies. In this camp it’s soldiers from the KDP, traditionally the dominant of the two parties. Feudal in structure, and conservative in politics, the mid 90s they even called on Saddam’s troops to help them against their opposition, the PUK.

06.42

Mock attack

After decades at war Kurds do have the experience, and around 70 000 troops who could take on Saddam. But it’s an army where hardware is at a minimum.

06.56

Bunker attack

Pause

07.00

Kurd Soldiers return from the field

They’ve got this far through sheer enthusiasm. But they do represent Iraq’s only real fighting opposition.

07.07

Jalal Talabani

President PUK

…the Kurds were always the main Iraqi opposition forces and the Kurds are the democratic force for democratic change in Iraq and they are most important because they are on the land and they have tens of thousands of Peshmerger - armed people. And they are deeply rooted in the society.

07.36

Soldiers shooting

Soldiers CU

But Kurdish leaders are also keen to stress they will only fight on their own terms.

07.44

Interview with PM Barham Salah – PUK

We are not mercenaries to rise up at the instigation of foreign powers. We are Kurds, inhabitants of this land. We are Iraqis. We are fighting for our own people. We are struggling for our own people.

07.55

Anfal bombing

pause

08.05

Before the Gulf War and the creation of the Kurdish enclave Kurds suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein.

pause

08.15

Halabja footage

In 1988 an Iraqi gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja killed 5000.

After using gas in his war against Iran Saddam had turned this evil weapon on his own people. It’s his ability to resort to such weapons that draws Iraq into the War Against Terror.

Halabja was just one of 4500 Kurdish villages destroyed in the late 80s. As an Iraqi ally at the time, the West stood by.

08.52

FX for CIA op

The West’s credibility with the Kurds suffered further blows in 1995 and 96. Then the CIA encouraged and supported Kurds to mount attacks on the Iraqi regime.

Pause for shooting

09.05

FX for CIA op

The operations cost 100 million dollars and resulted in many Kurdish deaths.

09.10

Interview with Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani - KDP

There was a team of CIA here in Iraqi Kurdistan. One was called Bob. He was famous and everybody knew him. The plan was for the Iraqi opposition to work with US support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

09.41

Saddam

On one major operation against Saddam the US pulled it’s support the evening before Kurdish forces were due to attack.

09.50

Kurdish fighters

Undeterred The PUK Kurdish forces went ahead with the plan whilst Barzarni’ s KDP backed out.

10.00

President Talabani PUK

Well America told us frankly before the beginning of activities that they are not responsible. It is up to us to decide to go on or to stop it… We decided to go on and to continue our struggle.

10.27

Archive fighting

Despite initial successes the attack ended in disaster. The Iraqi army quickly pushed the opposition back.

10.43

Nomads

Pause for music

10.52

Nomads

Throughout history the nomadic Kurds have experienced betrayal from within their own ranks and from their friends internationally. Sharing borders with Turkey, Syria and Iran – all of which have their own restive Kurdish populations, Kurds here are loved by none.

11.08

Internet shop

Kurds are no longer impoverished. They have security and growing wealth. Once the Kurdish dream was an independent state but as they join the new world Kurds realise independence is on nobody’s agenda.

11.30

Interview with Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani - KDP

I Sometimes say I should take a Bible and the Koran to negotiations to swear that we will not work for partition of Iraq. We cannot change our neighbours or boundaries – we have to deal with them.

11.53

Mobile phone shops

12.00

Sami Abdul Rahman

KDP Deputy PM

We are responsible for the lives, security and well being of 3.6 million people. So any steps we take we have to look at the interests of these people.

12.16

Iraqi troops on frontline

Iraqi troop positions overlook the Kurdish enclave. They’re a constant reminder of the horrors Kurds suffered.

12.23

o/pics

Iraq attack

Interview with Prime Minister Barham Salah – PUK

(Intercut with Iraqi troops see above)

I have to be careful. It was only ten years ago that my homes were raided, my people were taken away – possibly as many as 180.000 people – never to be heard from again

12.39

Iraqi troops on frontline

And today, as Saddam’s troops change the guard Kurds know that his military remains massively more powerful than theirs.

12.47

Interview with Deputy Prime Minister Sami Abdul-Rahman

Any responsible leadership in any eventuality would look for the fate of its own people and also make sure there would be some guarantees. Remember after the Gulf war…

13.12

Murals on wall

Kurds are clearly sick of being someone else’s pawns. Too often they feel the allies have betrayed them. This time they’re determined to learn from their mistakes.