Transcription
I'm from Halabja, he mentioned. It's a small town. It's no longer small, but I'm used to saying small because that was small when I was born there.
Halabja has a very funny history with different interpretations as to where the name comes from. But the most popular interpretation is that it's made of two words, two Kurdish words. "Halah" means wrong, "means" place. So the name comes from the wrong place. And, uh, it's named, I think, by a group of nomadic families who once were on their way from one place to another in search of pastures for their animals. They stopped and they thought that's what they were looking for, and a week later they realized this is the wrong place, and they stayed.
So I come from there. It's a very beautiful place, surrounded by mountains on three sides and an open place, a plain, the most fertile plain, and a lake on one side. It's very close to the Iranian border.
Iraq is made of 18 provinces. Three of those provinces are Kurdish, where 6 million Kurds live. And the rest of Iraq is the rest of 15 provinces are part of the Baghdad Administration. Since 1991, in the past 20 years, the Kurdish part of Iraq has been autonomous, which means we are only officially part of Iraq. Otherwise, it is almost a country on its own, and we have our own Parliament, our own government, our own flag, and we run our own affairs. It's a very secure and safe place. It has a booming economy. One of the best airports in the Middle East is now in the Kurdish capital. And guess what? We have started, uh, drilling our own oil and gas, and everybody is coming to Kurdistan nowadays. Almost every day, some foreign country opens a consulate. Hotels are going up.
But you do not get to hear a lot about this place because most people look at Iraq as one place where a lot of bombing and fighting is happening. But thankfully, in the past 20 years, we have had no wars, no problems. And even the 2003 US invasion of Iraq did not affect our part of the country. And thanks to a no-fly zone that the Western allies imposed on Iraq in 1991 after the Kuwait War, that's how this came about.
But because I was born in the wrong place and I was an adventurous person and always had itchy feet, I did not stay in this beautiful place where there's there are mountains and lakes. I went to Baghdad to cover the war. When in 2003 the Americans invaded Iraq, I went along the war. Usually, when a war is happening, as a reporter, you decide to embed with one side of the warring parties. You go with the guerrillas or you go with the army. You stay with one side. So I was on the American side. And as they progressed further towards Baghdad from the northern front, I witnessed the fall of Iraqi cities one after another, Iraqi Army bunkers one after another, under the hands of the Americans and American bombing. It was not a safe, uh, job. And, uh, uh, I got caught many times in firefights between different, you know, ethnic groups fighting each other or different armies. And once there was a group of fighters, all Americans and Kurdish fighters, watching an Iraqi Army front line being bombed by the Americans. Suddenly, an American pilot dropped a bomb on them by mistake, killed a number of people. One of them was a Kurdish local journalist. And, but it was a lot of fun, I should say. Doesn't sound like fun to many people, but the fun, biggest fun to me is when bullets whiz over your head. And, uh, so I went all the way to Baghdad.
In the end, uh, when I travel from the north of Iraq to the center of Iraq, then to the South, I noticed one thing that I think is worth telling the outside world because people, all of you saw on TV all these bombings and problems and blaming Americans for invading Iraq, waging an illegal war, and all that. It's important to know what the Iraqi people thought about this invasion. The Kurdish, the Kurds of Northern Iraq were 99.9% happy about the Americans coming because they, we had been repressed and killed, imprisoned, tortured in our thousands by the Iraqi government. And we tried in the past many times to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but he was brutal, and his retaliation was very dangerous. So people were very happy that a powerful country like America came to get rid of that man. And we were, we were not naive to know that America comes to bring freedom and democracy to us and these great values we kept hearing that. But we said, yeah, yeah, that's great, but come, still get rid of this guy.
In the center of Iraq, where the majority of people are Sunnis, Islam has two main sects, Sunnis and Shia. Sometimes to make it easy, you say Sushi, that's simpler. So the Sunnis of central Iraq, where I cannot say all of them, but many of them that I saw with my own eyes and talked to, were not happy about this war. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and he came from a city called Tikrit in the center of Iraq, and he ruled Iraq for 30 years. He has the most notorious security, secret police, uh, and army. He waged an 8-year war against Iran where a million people were killed, then war against Kuwait. That guy could not sit down for one day without waging a war against someone, at the same time killing his own people. So people in the center of Iraq were not happy about the Americans coming, uh, some for religious reasons, some for national, nationalist reasons, and different kinds of reasons. They said, "This is our land, and an occupier should not come here."
I went to all of Saddam's palaces. I went into his homes, and it was, for me, it was unbelievable. I was absolutely scared when I was walking through Saddam's bedroom and his washroom and everywhere. I thought because as a kid growing up with Saddam Hussein, placed fear in the heart of every Iraqi man or a woman. Then I said, "Here I am." At some point, I thought maybe he will walk out. I was walking through his bedroom, and he would walk out of the washroom and say, "What are you doing here?" and would kill me. But he was gone.
So, and a funny thing happened. And this man, in his hometown, he had built 25 palaces, and I walked through them. So huge palaces, expensive marble, big curtains, all kinds of household utensils, man-made lake, all kinds of flowers and gardens. In one of his living rooms, I picked up two of his ashtrays, and in one of his showers, I picked up a towel as a souvenir. So I, I walked out of the palace, and then between the palace and the gate, there was a big yard, and there was an American young American soldier standing at the gate. He said, "Sir, you cannot walk out with those items." And I said, "But look, people are, you know, looting the entire palace, taking washing machines, fridges, big carpets." He said, "They are walking behind me. You could go over there, but just don't walk out in front of me." I said, "Fine." So, uh, and he showed me a little passage, and I walked out with my souvenirs. That was fine.
So that was the story of the center of Iraq. And in the north, when the Americans came, people were celebrating. They waved pictures of George W. Bush, of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister at the time, American flag. "Thank you for coming to get rid of this man." In the center, people were really sad, and they were, you know, clustering on street corners or in front of their homes. All shops were closed, and they were very quiet. They kind of mourned this big change that happened.
And then I went to the South of Iraq. In the South of Iraq, a different group of people live. They are all Arabs, but their faith is Shia Islam. And Shia, Iran is the biggest Shia country, and Iraq has also a big population. These people were also very happy because Saddam Hussein had killed tens of thousands of them as well. He just did not like them. And they had many opposition parties, militia groups that were based in different places outside Iraq trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Many of them were killed, especially in 1991.
In 1991, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the entire world came together, and the American leadership, George Bush, W. Bush's father, and they drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. They said, "This is a sovereign little country. How can you occupy it?" Out. When they did that, George Bush encouraged the Iraqi people. He said, "Please rise, and this is your time. This is your chance to get rid of this brutal man." So people listened to him and they said, "The Iraqi Army is weak. It has been defeated by the Americans, and this is our chance to get rid of him." So they rose, and they cleared 14 provinces out of the 18 from the Iraqi government, very happy. And suddenly, the international community turned their back on the Iraqi people. They said, "Oh, sorry, now we got Iraqis out of Kuwait. It's your domestic issue. We have nothing to do with that." Saddam Hussein used the remainder of his army and Republican guards to suppress this revolt, and as a result, killed tens of thousands of people. Why people were happy in 2003 when I went, because finally they got rid of Saddam Hussein. And I went there and witnessed with my own eyes the digging up of the old mass graves. They brought out tens of thousands of remnants of people, and I was looking at the bones, bones of children, university students, soldiers, men, women, all kinds of ages. And I happen to know one of the soldiers who participated in the genocide. I trust him not to have blood on his hands fully, but he told me his stories. And then I saw what happened when people dug out those bodies.
So three different views that people in the outside world may not know. So if you put together the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shia in the South, we come to a conclusion, which means the majority of Iraqi people were happy about the war in 2003.
In 2005, 6, and 7, Iraq went into a bloody, went through a very bloody stage, which was all civil war, sectarian violence, people killing each other. We used to hear of car bombs in the news every day. And, uh, so Americans were being blamed. Why did they do this? They do not have enough soldiers, or maybe they have no postwar plan. And recently, I thought about something. I said, "Not only they came and got rid of this brutal man." I think we, that was going to happen. I can tell the anger of two different groups in Iraq was simmering under the surface, from boiling for many years, and it was only a dictator with an iron fist like Saddam Hussein that kept the lid on it. It did not mean there was tolerance in Iraq. People used to say, "Oh, during Saddam Hussein, we all used to live quietly and happily together." Then if that was the case, why did you go about killing each other when he was gone? It means it was for fear of him that you stayed quiet. Real tolerance shows when you have no fear of no one, and you still love your neighbor.
So many people were killed. Why were, who were these people who were killed, and who were the killers? Saddam Hussein, when he ruled for 30 years, his security executed many people. He was so brutal. They would take away your son, they would kill him, and you had to pay for the bullets that kill your child. They say, "If you want to take the body, you should pay us for the bullets that kill your executed your son." When the regime was gone, many people in Iraq who had lost sons and daughters to the regime, and they were some militia groups who went after old army officers, pilots, or university professors, whoever they had some grudge against, they went after him and killed him in his house. And then the other side started their own, uh, militia groups and retaliated. In the beginning, some of the people in the center of Iraq supported these militia groups. They said, "Oh, you are fighting the Americans. That's great. We will turn a blind eye. We will not report you to the police or anyone." But they really, that's why the situation in Iraq is now very quiet. You don't hear about Iraq anymore in the news. It's not like a few years ago. And that's because people, that in the, the tribal areas, realized these, these are criminals. They are not real freedom fighters. They would fire one bullet at the American, at an American army convoy, but they blow up a car in the middle of the market and kill 120 people. They realized these are criminals, and their only hobby is to kill. They turned their backs on them. They went to the government, they said, "Give us guns, give us some salary for our people, we will watch our own neighborhoods and kick out these people." And Iraq became rather quiet and safe to some degree. It still has many more years to go to be satisfactory fully, but it is safe now. People go to universities, people go to school, and women go out any time of the day, any time of the night, men as well. You could travel anywhere in the country without the fear of being kidnapped or killed or something. Uh, because after a while, you get exhausted. So much killing and killing and killing and grudge, then you reach a point where you, you know, you have fatigue. You cannot fight anymore. Any place would reach that point.
And now, a few days ago, President Barack Obama decided to pull out every American troop, uh, from Iraq by the end of this year. In 2008, they signed an agreement that they will leave all troops by the end of 2011. In the past several months, the Americans have been waiting for the Iraqi leaders to make up their minds. "Do you want us to stay, or do you want us to go?" At the end of this year, but the Iraqi Parliament and government is so divided across sectarian lines, with lines with so much history of, you know, tensions, uh, they could not, you know, come up with a decision. And finally, the Americans said, "Bye-bye, we are going to leave." And so that's going to be the end of the Iraq story. They came and they got rid of one man.
What did we learn here is that some other countries have learned a lesson from Iraq. In the past several months, there is something going on called the Arab Spring. People in Tunisia got rid of their president, Zain Al Abidin, without any outside help. Bye-bye, thank you. They got him out. People in Libya did the same, but they did not want any foreign troops on the ground because people in the Middle East, in the Muslim world, are very sensitive to having non-Muslim troops in their countries. They are very territorial. They don't want anybody to come to their area. So when American troops came to Iraq, that's one, it gave an excuse to many foreign fighters to travel as far away as Morocco or to from other places. They came to Iraq to fight the Americans. And the Americans did not understand why do these people come here to fight us? They are not Iraqis. But they think from a religious point of view, it's my duty to go and, you know, drive out this non-Muslim force. So this, the Iraq gave the lesson to these other countries. Saying Libya said to Europe and America, "Help us with airstrikes, please don't send any soldiers." That's one other good thing that came out of Iraq. Many people do not think about in Egypt the same way.
So in the future, other countries, I think it's very important. People in Canada should not blame their government, or in America, blame their government for going overseas to do something. It's not always bad. I'm telling you, the majority of Iraqi people are happy. So when your country goes to Afghanistan or somewhere to remove a bad regime, it's not always bad. People in that country need that help. But you have to know how you do it. Now, in Libya, they did it. They provided air support, and people on the ground got rid of their own regime. So you have to think and consult with the locals. The American problem was that they did not, not consult. They just went in. If they had sat down and taken into consideration the sensitivities of these people, they would have come up with a better plan.
And finally, I'm working as editor-in-chief of an online newspaper called Ruda, which is a Kurdish word for news or accident or incident or happening, and it's focused on Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey mainly, and then world issues and Europe as well. And so Turkey has its own problem, and recently it was struck by a devastating earthquake in the East. Iran, the same way, some little problems, but a lot of change is happening in the Middle East. It's unheard of in its history, and the younger generation have awakened, and they do not like to be ruled by repressive regimes anymore. Syria is the one that we all expect the big change, and he still holding on to power. Bashar Assad is the president of Syria, and recently he met with the members of the Arab League. They said, "Do not use force against your people." And he said, "Okay." He signed this deal. And I heard this morning on the BBC Radio a doctor saying, "In the past 48 hours, they have received 100 bodies, people killed by the army." And he still signed this treaty. So I hope that guy goes, and there will be peace in Syria as well.
I guess I will end my speech here, but if you have any questions about anything that I have said or anything I have forgotten to say, I will be happy to answer.