SOMALIA: SIAD BARRE’S ANIMALS: The Serval “Spitfire”

  After a period working with FAO with the Somali nomads I moved on and in 1990 began working in Mogadishu with the EU funded, rinderpest (cattle plague) campaign. Our family home was a rented villa in K4, Mogadishu. The villa was in front of the Ministry of Agriculture and had a good sized garden where my children Dana and Sarah would be playing when I returned home each afternoon.

One day as I drove in through the villa gates my children came running to the car to tell me that a man had come from the zoo and left a sick baby cheetah for me to treat.  As I followed them into the shade of the neem trees I felt my temper rising as I realised what had happened. President Siad Barre had a pet cheetah that, some time ago had needed its claws trimmed, but this could not be done so he gave it to an Italian company. I was told that soldiers from the president’s tribe, who lived near the Kenyan border, hoping to win favours from the president, had recently killed a female cheetah and taken her cubs to give to him. Unfortunately only one cub had survived and, as no Somali vet wanted to take the risk of failing in its care, I realised that the animal had been sent to the ‘Foreign UN Vet’ who could be blamed if it died. Sure enough there in a small, metal cage was a bedraggled, half starved young cat with dirty, black spotted fur. President Barre’s new cheetah!

As I bent down to take a closer look at the poor animal my wife Dianne came down the villa,  in fact it was a small house, steps to tell me that the man from the zoo had claimed that I had arranged for him to deliver the animal to my home. Appalled at its condition Dianne had removed a piece of rotting lung and an evil smelling cloth from the bottom of the cage before giving the cub fresh water and a little chopped raw meat. I told her that it was a ‘gift’ for the President to replace his old pet cheetah whereupon she said, “Well, not only have they cruelly killed wild animals in the hope of pleasing their president, they don’t know their wildcats! This is not a cheetah cub, it’s a serval!” Sure enough there in the cage was a small serval kitten. My wife went on to tell me that having removed the dirty cloth from the cage she had asked our villa guards to put the cage down on the clean sand in the shade of the trees while she went to get food and water for the animal. When she returned to the cage she was shocked to see three large, white maggots, falling out of the animal’s flesh and begin to burrow into the sand.

As a parasitologist she realised that these maggots were the larvae of the tumbu fly, (Cordylobia anthropophagia) and the kitten had been infected through contact with faecal contaminated soil. The larvae need to burrow into sandy soil to continue its life cycle and become an adult fly. The dirty rug under the poor animal had stopped the larvae from reaching the soil but when it had been removed they had started to emerge from within the cat’s flesh.

That afternoon some 15 to 18 larvae emerged from the poor animal’s flesh leaving large gaping holes in its skin with flesh and bone clearly visible. Imagine the pain that the poor, starving animal suffered. The only treatment I had was a nearly empty can of antibiotic spray and I knew very well that there were no veterinary drugs available in the government warehouse. We used all that was in the can trying to cover the open wounds that covered the legs and abdomen of the kitten. I would have to try to find other medication the following day as we had nothing in our medical supplies in the villa except Dettol and antiseptic cream!  

The next day I tried all my contacts in the veterinary service in the hope that I could get some treatment for the Serval but to no avail. As I was putting down the phone after another fruitless call a colleague and good friend, Pasquale, came into the office and said that he had heard that I needed antibiotics to save a wild animal. In his hand he had 12 capsules of terramycin that he had been given, before he left Italy, for his own use in an emergency.  Without hesitation he handed over the medication to me and said that he would come to visit my family and see the animal later that week.

When I got home that evening I gave the capsules to Dianne and we decided to give the cat one capsule a day in order to stop infection of the open wounds. Each capsule contained 250mg of antibiotic and we needed to spread out the dose over the 24 hour period so we decided to open the capsule and divide up the dose. So, every day, Dianne took a teaspoon of flour and placed it on an old wooden meat board, she then opened a capsule of terramycin onto the flour and then used a knife to mix the drug into the flour by repeatedly turning and dividing the mix with the knife. When she was satisfied that the antibiotic was mixed throughout the flour she divided the mixture into 4 equal sized portions and wrapped each ‘dose’ in foil. Every 6 hours she fed the cat raw meat that she had rubbed into the flour/antibiotic dose and so we were able to treat her for infection and slowly she began to recover.

At that time in Somalia the cost of meat was high and many Somalis that I worked with could not afford to buy meat for their families. I discovered that even in this situation Somali people would not consider eating the heart of a cow whereas I think that most other people would do so in the circumstances. Cow’s hearts were therefore very cheap and I brought home a constant supply for the young cat that began to thrive as the treatment succeeded. We put a soft collar on her and during the day we kept her tethered in the shade of the neem trees and at night we released her and our Somali guard dog, Seema, and she would hunt for insects and lizards. She was soon given the name of Spitfire by my wife as when Dianne approached her with food Spitfire would leap at her, spitting and snarling, as she grabbed the meat. However the rest of the time she was very docile and, like a domestic cat, would purr when stroked. She joined Seema as a household pet and became a favourite with all our friends.

The serval is a medium sized wild cat weighing between 7 to 12 Kg and has the longest legs of any of the cats. They stand at 54 -66cm at the shoulder and the body is 60-92 cm long. The species is nocturnal and preys on rodents, insects, reptiles, birds as well as fish and frogs. It is believed that the serval and the cheetah have a common ancestry.

As the weeks passed and Spitfire changed from a scrawny, maggot ridden kitten into a graceful, healthy young cat we began to make contacts with zoos and wildlife organisations outside the country in the hope of finding her a safe home. We certainly did not want her to go back to the President’s zoo and concerned as to how we could safely release her into the bush where she could again fall prey to human predators. To make matters worse the civil unrest in the country was increasing and we knew that at any time we could be forced to leave.

Then, one evening as we were leaving the villa to go to visit some friends, Spitfire bounded across the garden straight into the front wheel of our Landrover.  I had only just started to reverse the car and she had run into the side of the front wheel but she had broken her left shoulder. As I gently carried Spitfire onto the veranda my heart sank as I knew that the chances of getting the leg to heal were remote. There was little we could do that night but tether her under the trees, with water and food and hold on to the glimmer of hope in the fact that she was able to stand and move on her three good legs. If we could somehow restrict her movement of the foreleg and give the fracture a chance to heal then there was a chance that, as a young cat, she would recover.  Three of my colleagues, including my friend Dr Rautbauar, tried to help but we could not find anything to treat her as the government stores were empty as usual. There was no anaesthetic, splints, bandages or drugs and this situation was not for lack of drugs and veterinary supplies being sent into the country from the EU and elsewhere but because virtually everything was misappropriated, stolen or never even reached the stores because of the high level of corruption that pervaded the system. Surprisingly, nature and resilience of the animal took over and as the weeks passed Spitfire was walking quite normally on all four legs.

We were heading toward the end of 1990 and security in Mogadishu was deteriorating very fast and robbery was common. Travelling in the city was restricted for my expatriate colleagues and their children and a visit to see Spitfire, the cat that had already used ‘two of her nine lives’ became their entertainment. While our children played we adults would be discussing the preparations we had made to safeguard our families if full blown civil war started and we were evacuated.

 As the situation deteriorated I was given home leave and the opportunity to take the family home to the UK for Christmas. As we left for the airport Spitfire was in her usual place under the trees and Seema was in the shade of the garden wall as the villa maids and guards waved goodbye.  I did not anticipate returning to Somalia with my family but while in the UK we were in contact with a number of zoos who were interested in taking Spitfire if I could arrange to get her into Kenya. As the New Year began the news came through that Mogadishu had been ransacked by Barre’s soldiers then again by rebel forces.

 I went back to Somalia later in the spring to take care of the FAO Relief and Emergency, firstly in Hargeisa then in Mogadishu. There I had a heavily guarded office not far away from K4 and one day my old guard from the villa turned up, emaciated, at the office and told me what had happened to our home. He told me how they stood no chance as the rebels had forced their way in and ransacked the house, looting furniture and our belongings before setting fire to the building. Seema and Spitfire were chained at the time and both were brutally hacked by the mob.

 That was twenty years ago and the situation in Mogadishu and Somalia has deteriorated even more since then.  

CROCODILES IN IRAQ

 

I was flabbergasted to see an article in the front page of Aharqalawsat   the most popular newspaper in the Middle East on Tuesday 12^th, of July 2011. It seems the story was so great that it was repeated in the back page of the same journal.

 Duhok zoo acquired two young crocodiles each was 125 cm long from Africa paying sixteen hundred US Dollars for the couple. It seems one died immediately on arrival and the other disappeared a week ago. The zoo management fails to report the disappearance of the second crocodile. The poor creature ended up in a building site in the center of the city and was killed immediately by a laborer. He told the reporter that he was about to be swallowed by the wild crocodile he had to fight and kill him. He thought he will be a celebrity in a country full of celebrities. The director of the Zoo was crossed because he has no more crocodiles in his miserable zoo.

 This poor young croc was killed savagely by an ignorant man after disappeared from a zoo which obviously very badly managed. A young crocodile imported from a far away land to Kurdistan was brutally killed for no reason

On August 15^th 2011 the Azzaman Daily reported that crocodiles in the Euphrates are feeding on dead human bodies. It appears that the Ministry of Environment in Baghdad had sent a mission led by Ali Allami to Diwaniah in order to investigate about this phenomenon as crocodiles have never been recorded in the Iraqi river yet last Tuesday police killed a crocodile in a stretch of the river near Diwaniah. No details of the condition of the animal were given and the media reported that a recreation park in Diwaniah had imported some young crocodiles from Egypt without licenses and these had escaped into the river. Again, as in the case in Duhock, the park authorities did not inform the authorities. The presence of the animals in this region of the Euphrates was discovered when police were searching for the bodies of people killed by kidnappers or terrorists, Although the criminals had confessed and given the police details of the location where they had thrown the bodies of their victims into the river all searches by the police for the victims had proved fruitless. Local people began to talk about crocodiles taking the bodies of the victims but idea was dismissed until the police killed the first crocodile in the Euphrates last Tuesday.

It is obvious that we need to stringently enforce laws on importation of live animals into the country, whether wild or domestic species, to safeguard the environment. However in Iraq we already have very large ‘crocodiles’ (Homo sapiens ‘crocodilius’) and no one dares to approach these!

SOMALIA: SIAD BARRE’S ANIMALS: The Cheetah

SOMALIA: SIAD BARRE’S ANIMALS: The Cheetah

 I remember reading an article in the Guardian, sometime in the late eighties, about Siad Barre, and that the journalist who wrote it said he had kept his eye on a cheetah that was present in the room with them. Two or three years later, to be precise it was in late 1988, I was in Somalia as a project manager for Primary Animal Health Care with FAO and organizing the training of nomads in basic veterinary skills.

It took me few weeks to establish myself in the very friendly, but somewhat suspicious community in Mogadishu. More than two decades of Siad Barre’s regime’s propaganda had made the people suspicious of all foreigners. I was based in the Ministry of Livestock and Range which was located in Km7, not far from the American Embassy and the National University of Somalia. I managed to get a flat in the centre of the city close to the British Embassy and it soon became a place visited by professional Somalis, mainly veterinarians.

 Somalia had over 40 million head of ruminants,mainly camals, cattle ,sheep and goats, and most of its hard currency was generated by the export of livestock. I was told that some towns and large villages used to have a veterinary clinic before they had a medical clinic or school as livestock was so important to them. The Somali Veterinary Service of Somaliland, in the north, had been established in the 1940s by the British, I still have one of the original metal emblems of the service in my house in Wales.

Very early one morning someone was ringing the bell at the gate to the compound leading to my flat.  I went down to find Hamoud, a very quite veterinarian who worked in Villa Somalia, the presidential palace. Hamoud’s ancestors were originally from Yemen; he was a thin, short guy and on his nose were balanced the thickest pair of spectacles I had seen. He was married with a dozen children and a monthly salary equivalent to 30 US$. The population of Mogadishu before the mass migration of the pastoralists and farmers to the city following the country’s independence from Italy in the early 1960s, were either of Arab origins or descended from the Portuguese colonialists who had preceded the Italians centuries ago. The newcomers to Mogadishu used to refer to the old residents of Mogadishu as Portuguese, the father of my landlord, Sheikhdeeni, was the Mufti of Mogadishu but time and again I heard the locals call him the Portuguese sheikh.

 That early morning Hamoud was upset and, in rapid broken Arabic spoke with a Yemeni accent, he kept referring to a very big problem in the Villa Somalia. I thought he must have done some mischief there and had come to me for help. However he said he needed help as he had been asked by the president to cut the claws of his cheetah because it was ruining the furniture in the presidential palace! Immediately I remembered the Guardian article, and thought that at last I was going to see the famous cheetah of the Villa Somalia. Yes I was a qualified veterinarian with a Ph.D but my experience was in academic life and the care of farm animals, and to be asked to look at the President’s cheetah was another issue. I think Hamoud had made exaggerations in describing me as the super UN veterinary doctor with a Ph.D. from the UK who would know what to do. Without stopping for my breakfast, a very unusual thing in itself, I rushed to the Villa Somalia in my Toyota Hilux with an anxious Hamoud sitting next to me. I was rather excited as I had not seen a cheetah before in my life and how I was going to handle it. I knew that the claws of a cheetah were not retractable as they gave extra grip on the ground to help the animal run at fast speed so it was possible that they could be trimmed, as the President wished, but this job was not described in my terms of reference!  Meanwhile, in the Villa Somalia, everyone would expect the best from the UN’s veterinarian so as I drove the bumpy pickup I told Hamoud that we could not touch the animal’s claws, Hamoud looked at me aghast and, almost crying, said that we must fulfill the wish of the President.

There were many times during my service in Africa  and places such as Afghanistan and Libya, when I found myself in difficult situations and I would repeat to myself the famous phrase ’Oh sh….t, what I am doing here”. I was repeating that phrase over and over as we approached Villa Somalia!.

Arriving at Villa Somalia, which became very famous in the later years of civil strife and famine, as it was a military camp and head quarter of the notorious Republican Guards, I was taken immediately to a rather small house were the president lived and straight to the kitchen, where the cook offered the great UN veterinarian a cup of Nescafe.  I was now sweating in anticipation as I was told that the vicious animal was somewhere in the house. My sweating increased further as Hamoud now started to whistle and call the animal. When no animal put in an appearance I relaxed somewhat, and became even more relaxed when the cook assured that His Excellency the Presidential Cheetah has gone for his early morning roam around the Villa Somalia! Hamoud and I left the house and started to walk across the compound as Hamoud was whistled and called for the animal. There were many tall trees throughout the compound and every so often a solider or two would come out from their positions to tell us that the cheetah had headed towards the soldiers’ mess on the other side of the villa. At last we reached the mess where soldiers could sit at the scattered tables and get tea and sandwiches. There in the middle of the mess was the presidential cheetah, lying on the top of a round table, while a few soldiers were offering him tidbits from their food. As soon as he saw us he jumped down from the table and straight for  us, I nearly soiled my trousers from fear as the animal moved so fast.  Ignoring me the animal went to Hamoud and rearing up, grabbed him, and started to try to copulate! Poor little Hamoud was shaking and embarrassed in the clasp of the cheetah and the soldiers started clapping and enchanting something in Somali. Poor Hamoud, his dignity was less than zero. Now after all these years I see the comic side of the scene but at the time my feelings were a mix of fear, and anger, mixed  with sympathy for poor Dr Hamoud who used to receive 30 US$ a month and who had to face a frustrated presidential cheetah.

The animal suddenly lost interest in Hamoud and the soldiers dispersed. Hamoud looked at me sadly and said that he and his family are always hungry while he had to tolerate the indignity of the actions of the President’s cheetah.

After all this, I never did get to look at the cheetah’s claws but Hamoud had another task for me as he was sure that I was not likely to go to that evil villa again. He took me to the large iron cage that formed the lion’s enclosure where there were three, miserable lions that were so emaciated that one could count their ribs. Hamoud told me that there had been four lions but one of them had died few days before and that they, (the regime), wanted me to treat the lions. I told him you did not need a veterinary degree to know what was wrong with the animals, they were hungry, and they just needed food.

Returning home with Hamoud, he started to whisper about the lions, saying that money had been allocated to feed the lions but the gamekeeper who was a Marehan from the President’s tribe was pocketing the money provided for the animals’ feed. Again corruption was showing its ugly face in all forms and it drastically affected those poor hungry creatures, confined in a dirty, iron cage. Corruption, everywhere, lead that beautiful country to what it is now.

 I always think about Hamoud and many others good people who I lived with for eight sad years. (1988-1996).

الجامعة الملكية البريطانية للعلوم والتكنولوجيا أربيل - أقليم كوردستان - العراق

للوهلة الاولى يستد ل من اسم الجامعة على انها جامعة بريطانية ،والتعليم فيها بمستوى الجامعات الموجودة في بريطانيا . مع الاسف، أن هذا ليس هو الواقع. ان ذكر أسم" الملكية Royal " يعني أن المؤسسة أو الهيئة او الصناعة قد حصلت على  الختم الملكي من الملكة.  يحق لاي جهة او شخص او مؤسسة استعمال ما تشاء من الكلمات والعبارات مثل" البريطانية " أو "الملكية" او حتى اسم الملكة  خارج الجزر البريطانية من دون الحصول على موافقة السلطات البريطانية ،وهذا هو الحال في كافة الديمقراطيا ت الاوربية . وبالمقابل فانا شخصياً يمكنني تسمية بيتي الشخصي في بريطانيا كسفارة لجزر الواق واق  من دون اي مسائلة قانونية. لذا من حق BRU استعمال اي اسم تشاء، وبإمكانها تسمية جامعتها بجامعة الملكة اليزابيت. ان هذه الاسماء واستعمالاتها لاتعني لبريطانيا اي شيء اذا استعملت خارج أراضيها.

أما شهادة حقوق "الطبع والنشر" ، فهي الاخرى لاتعني شيئاً في بريطانيا ،وبإمكان اي شخص او مؤسسة الاحتفاظ بالإسم الذي يختاره شرط عدم استخدامه ،بالتزامن ،من قبل جهة اخرى فتسجيل كلمة BRU في دوائر التسجيل العمومية وبيت الشركات لاتعني بأنها بريطانية وكل ماتعنيه ان إسم BRU يستعمل من قبل الجامعة الملكية البريطانية ،وبالتالي بإمكان أي شخص في بريطانيا تسجيل  الإسم الذي يشاء ،طبعاً،مقابل رسم مالي معين.

لقد ربطت BRU إسم جامعتها في أربيل باسم جامعة BRADFORD في بريطانيا بناء على مذكرة أولية للتفاهم بين نائب رئيس جامعة برادفوردMark Cleary  مع عبدالسلام الحيالي من جامعة BRU .ان المذكرة واضحة ومكتوبة بلغة انكليزية يذكر فيها clearly  عن احتمال التعاون بين جامعة برادفورد وBRU مستقبلا. والمذكرة ،هي مذكرة روتينية تكتب بين رؤساء الجامعات مع الضيوف .وانا متأكد بأن: Cleary  لو عرف بأن المذكرة ستستعمل لجلب الطلبة الى جامعة محلية على اعتبار انها بريطانية لما وقـّعها مع الحيالي.وقد كتبنا الى:Cleary لتوضيح الامر ولم يصلنا ردّ منه الى هذه الساعة.

ان إختيار ووضع إسم الجامعة الملكية البريطانية BRUعلى نشراتها فعل  مضلل وكاذب، واعتقد بأن هناك تبعيات قانونية على ذلك في كوردستان والعراق..أو أي بلد من بلدان العالم. أن المطبوعات والنشرات التي قـُدِّمت الى الطلبة وذويهم مضللة وغير صحيحة.. لقد صرف اولياء الطلبة الكثير على تسجيل اولادهم فيBRU وبإمكان الطلبة وذويهم الحصول على تعويضات كجزاء لتقديم معلومات غير حقيقية لهم ولذويهم قبل تسجيلهم في ال BRU .

ولو سمح بإستمرار وتكرار لهكذا حالة فانها ستؤثر سلباً على سمعة الجامعات الاخرى في أقليم كوردستان . لذا نوصى بعدم قبول الطلبة للسنة الاكاديمية القادمة في هذه الجامعة(لقد تم ذالك)، وتشكيل لجنة تحقيقية لمعاينة مصداقية هذه الادعاءات واتخاذ الاجراءا ت اللازمة بما ينصف الطلبة ويصون حقوقهم.

IRAQ -1970: Militatry boots (Poostals)

My arrival, at the second transport company (Sareyah Jablee'ah) in Gazlani camp Mousel, resulted in irregularities in military discipline and regulations. The Iraqi army inherited regulations from the Turkish and British armies and conscript soldiers had no rights whatsoever and were mainly poor people who had no formal education. One knew that the soldiers came from poor families because a soldier could buy their release from army service ‘badel’ for 100 Iraqi Dinars. At one time a graduate and a qualified veterinarian would be given the rank of captain on joining the army, at a later date this was reduced to the rank of second lieutenant. In 1969, we graduates, the non Baathists, irrespective of our qualifications were all common soldiers and, in addition, we were not allowed to pay the badel and gain our freedom.

This situation led to confusion in the camp as to how I should be treated treated me and where did I fit in. Should I be regarded as an officer with all the benefits of that rank or as a common soldier and quartered in tents next to the mules’ stables? As I mentioned before I was given a bed in the room next to what had been the veterinary clinic, a palatial residence with walls of sundried mud bricks, an earthen floor and a corrugated iron ceiling. This room, and three others, opened on to a large dirt yard which separated them from the stables while to the left were the yards with the long drinking troughs where the animals were watered twice a day. The large dirt yard was always covered with flies and the dust that rose from it was a mixture of mule dung and dirt. The insects in the ever present dung attracted a lot of wild birds especially starlings "Zerzoor” to the open yards.

My first privilege, in the room that I shared with three major sergeants, a situation unheard of before, was the provision of a ceiling fan. One hot afternoon, after my customary light lunch of a bowl of onion soup and the army’s hard dark bread, I went to my room for a short nap. I awoke to find a corporal, with two stripes on his shirt sleeve, sitting on the floor and obviously enjoying the luxury of the cool air from the ceiling fan. When I asked what he was doing in my room he told me that the company’s warrant officer had ordered him to be my batman, ”Murasel”! This was another breaking of army rules as only a commissioned officer had a batman. Without waiting for my approval my batman stood up, dusted down his trousers and opened the old traveling bag I had with me. He took out the few dirty clothes that were in my bag and headed off to the mule water troughs to wash them. I do not think he used any soap and he spread them out to dry on a concrete platform next to the trough which was used to dry the soaked and salty barley feed for the animals.

That evening my batman Sae’ed came back with two spits “sheesh” on which were two suspicious looking, shrunken brown items. It was late in the evening and the light of the single electric bulb in the room was dim and on seeing these odd looking kebabs I immediately thought that he had grilled some of the testicles from the mules that we had castrated earlier in the day. I shouted and wanted to know what the hell he was carrying. Quietly he told me that he had captured two starlings in the yard, plucked and grilled the birds behind the stables and they were for my supper. I was relieved and took the two sheeshs from him but said there was little meat on them, to which he replied that the trick was to crunch the bone and meat together when eating this dish.

Now, two important necessities had been sorted out, namely my laundry and my protein requirement, I had no reason to complain further.

 The most difficult task we had to do was castrate mules. No anesthesia was available and we have to depend on two dozen soldiers being able to restrain the animals. The procedure was primitive and inhuman to say the least. I had to cut the scrotum open, pull the testicle out, tie  a string around the testicular cord  and then use a tool to crush the cord and cut it. The moment I squeeze the crusher a mule would left itself, and all the soldiers on top of it, off the ground. The strength in the animal was remarkable, when the mule was under control again I had to pack the scrotum with sulpha powder and then repeat the procedure on the other testicle.

Marking the animal by tattooing a number on its upper gum was easier. The number was for life, as is the number I was given when I joined the UN. If an animal disappeared from the camp the sergeant major would look up the animal’s record to discover in which village it had been purchased. Without fail they would find the animal had returned to its village, even if the village was over 100Km away.

I mentioned that we had to brush and polish our boots “ Poostals ” every day, well the army used to issue two kinds of boots, one for the commissioned officers and the other to all the lower ranks. The latter were heavy boots, made of thick grained leather and difficult to polish and shine. I complained to Sae’ed about mine and one day he took my boots to the city and I had to stay in my room as that was my only pair of boots. He took the boots to a cobbler to be completely restructured by removing a lot of leather from the sole and ironing flat the leather of the uppers.

Next day I went out to the morning parade with a pair of boots like the sergeant majors and not like the soldiers. Everybody in the company liked the few treats I had had with the exception of the commander’s assistant. He was a bad man and I discovered that he was behind the bad treatment of the Kurdish soldiers in our company.

Well, my light boots were a luxury.

ARAB SACRED BORDERS

The recognition of the world’s newest country, South Sudan, seems to have been greeted with dismay by many in the Arab speaking world. Yet the recognition of South Sudan is the result of some 60 years of conflict and the loss of countless lives and great suffering. Surely that is more than welcome news. I was a regular visitor to Sudan and I am more than aware of the suffering of the people of south Sudan.

Sudan, like many other countries in Africa and the Middle East, was demarcated by lines drawn on a map by colonial powers a century or more ago. British and other European army surveyors and politicians decided where borders should go and in many cases a straight line was drawn between two points on a map to the satisfaction of those in power and with little thought to the indigenous people and ethnic groups who lived there. The borders of the countries in the region that we know today are not necessarily the borders that existed in ancient times and all too often these straight line demarcations have caused friction between neighbouring states and even within towns and villages.

I was in Hargeisa some twenty years ago when the people of northern Somalia declared themselves as being Somaliland but the UN and Arab League has never recognised Somaliland although Somalia was recognised. Somalia joined the Arab League during the oil boom of 1974 although like Somaliland it does not have an ethnic arab population. Somaliland (British Somaliland) was independent in 1960 and they chose to join with the south (Italian Somalia) voluntarily and now they wish to separate again from the south however the Arabs and the UN do not agree with or recognise this although they, the Arab nations, have little to do with that part of Africa.

It is perhaps time for the region to do as other parts of the world have done and recognise that errors have been made in the past and that the straight lines on the map are not necessarily sacrosanct. The Soviet Union determined its borders which have now been replaced by others as the onetime soviet states gained their independence.

Yet pause for a minute to reflect on the Kurdish people who found their homelands divided by the stroke of a pen between three nations, namely the Arabs, Turks and Persians, each of which had their own strong nationalistic views. The Kurdish population in Syria must, more or less, be equal in numbers to the Alawites who fully dominate the government. I worked in Libya throughout the mid 1970s and mid 1980s and I had many good friends and colleagues who were Libyan Berbers (Amazigh) yet Gaddafi’s regime did not recognise the existence of the Berbers, yet now there are many gaining prominence as Gaddafi’s regime is coming to its end.

IRAQ 1970- GAZLANI MILITARY CAMP MOSEL

I arrived at the Al Gazlani military camp towards the end of February 1970 with my bed roll on my shoulder. My friend and I were left by our minder, the Kurdish sergeant, at the gate of the camp which was the HQ of the First Iraqi Army Division. There were three logistic companies at the camp that were responsible for the provision of mules and the companies had some two thousand mules in total. The camp was basically a place where the animals were rested and allowed to recuperate(R&R) as, before the days of gunship helicopters, the army used mules to transport guns, supplies and ammunition to the inaccessible mountain areas. At the time the army was constructing small forts on the tops of the mountains and hills in Kurdistan that were to be used by soldiers to control the surrounding area and to watch the movement of the Peshmerga These forts were called ‘rabeia’, meaning high plateau in Arabic, and were simply observation posts for the bigger military camps situated in the valleys or lowlands. The mules were used to take supplies up the mountains to the rabeia from the main camps and the poor creatures were given a month of recuperation after two to three months on active duty in hard conditions.

Some of the animals never returned from active duty as they had been killed during fighting or blown up by mines so the soldiers used to bring back the halters and chains used to tether each animal to record each mule killed on active duty. It was our job to tend to the wounded mules that were returned to the camp. In the month that the mules stayed in camp they were fed well with ample rations of good quality crushed wheat straw and each animal was given a kilo of slightly salted, soaked barley every day. Their feet were checked and each animal was re-shoed by the Farrier (blacksmith) before leaving the camp on its next tour of duty.

We had the task of replacing the mules that had been killed and a purchasing committee used to buy mules from Kurdish villages and bring the animals back to the camp. We then had the job of tattooing its army number onto the upper gum of each mule and to castrate the male mules. The male mules had to be castrated as the intact animal could be very difficult to control, particularly when so many mules were congregated in one place. The number, colour and place of purchase of each animal were well documented in a ledger books, including the mule’s service record, and these records were checked regularly by the Major our company commander. I often thought that they did not keep such accurate records for the soldiers in the company.

The way in which the animals were castrated is something I will write about later and some people may question why it was done. As a short explanation I should mention that a mule is the result of a male donkey or jack ass mating with a female horse or mare while the reverse mating results in a smaller animal, the hinny. However a donkey has 62 chromosomes and a horse has 64 chromosomes and as the offspring receives half of its chromosomes from each parent then a mule has 63 chromosomes. This means that the majority of mules are sterile and it is only in rare cases that a mule has produced offspring. However the mule does produce sex hormones and the female goes into oestrus, (i.e. goes ‘on heat’) and the intact males will endeavour to mate with any female in heat. I seem to remember that there was a mule foetus that was a few months old as a preserved specimen in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Baghdad

Our company was at the far end of the camp, senior officers of the HQ of the First Division of the Iraqi Army did not want to have a company of mules near them because of flies and the smells from the animals. In addition a great deal of dust was created twice a day when the animals were taken to the water troughs to drink. The mules were also taken every morning for two hours exercise when most of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers would quite literally ‘go along for the ride’. Naturally the best mules were always reserved as mounts for the officers

Mules are always described as stubborn animals but I do not agree. During their morning exercise, or the short trips these animals had from the stables to the water trough, they were chained together in parallel sequence to form groups of six animals. Each group followed the group in front in a long, well organized column. The order taken for watering was organized according to the platoon, each platoon had a large stable block and the storage facility for animal feed and tack. When the mules went out for their morning exercise the soldiers and non-commissioned officers used to ride the first animal on the left in each group.

The stables were built from mud and straw and were maintained by using the same material, well mixed by soldiers, naked to the waist, treading the thick sticky mud and straw and then using it to repair the muddy stables. It was ever continuous, hard work for this group of soldiers and initially I thought that these half naked mud workers were prisoners being punished by the company for some wrong doing. Then one day as I passed by them to enter one of stables I heard them speaking Kurdish and it was later that day, when finding the opportunity to speak to them, I discovered that they had done no wrong and had to do the work simply because they were Kurds. I still remember their faces and how happy they were to discover the new veterinary doctor was like them a Kurd, even he was a simple soldier and not a lieutenant as was the other veterinary doctor who had been with the company for the last two years and was always addressed as ‘Sir.’ They told me that most of the soldiers and the saddler, the latter were given the rank of sergeant, were all Kurds as in Iraq it was mainly the Kurdish villagers who kept mules. Most of the Kurdish conscripts were taken to the mule companies as muleteers. I noticed that they spoke Arabic with me in front of the Arabs as they did not want the others to know that I was a Kurd. We Faili Kurds were brought up in Baghdad and it was difficult for an Arab to recognize us Kurds because of the pure Baghdadi arabic accent we used when speaking.

I was supposed to be the company veterinarian responsible for treating the mules. There was another qualified veterinary officer in the company, with the rank of lieutenant, and over a dozen auxiliaries who were non-commissioned officers. After the morning exercise all the veterinary corps attended surgery in order to treat injured animals, carry out castrations and tattoo numbers on the new animal ‘recruits’. The lieutenant would attend for a few minutes and then hand over the responsibilities to me as a qualified vet. That was the dilemma that Saddam Hussein had created, I held no rank that allowed me to issue orders to a dozen non-commissioned officers, the lowest rank among them was a sergeant. Readers of this note may not fully understand the difficulty I was in unless they too have served in a third world army. I was a soldier; quite simply I could not tell the non-commissioned officer what to do because I was a much lower rank, on the other hand as a qualified veterinarian I had to supervise their work. Simply that was against all rules and discipline even by the standards of ancient armies. This is what Saddam Hussein was doing.

 The clinic was a simple small room with an earthen floor and a roof of corrugated iron covered with a layer of mud and straw that had been built by the company’s ‘mud boys’. The equipment consisted of a few pairs of forceps, some large needles for suturing wounds, one large tool for castrating the mules, a tin dish, a spirit lamp, a tooth rasp, mercurochrome for disinfection and plenty of sulpha powders.  It could hardly be said that the clinic was furnished with all the modern facilities of the day. The clinic faced the stables and was adjacent to two larger rooms of the same construction that were used to accommodate the veterinary auxiliaries. My arrival caused the immediate dilemma of whether I should be billeted with soldiers in tents or with the non-commissioned officers who were the veterinary auxiliaries.  It was after much deliberation that it was decided to put me in with the latter.

My daily duty was to look after the welfare of the mules. As the word went around among the Kurdish soldiers my clinic room also became a first aid center for the soldiers who suffered cuts and bruises from working with and riding the mules. The veterinary auxiliaries turned a blind eye to what was going on, simply because an injured soldier was never given permission to see a doctor in the Division’s headquarters. In addition the Division HQ was too far away and you could not expect arrangements to be made to transport a Kurdish soldier to the clinic in HQ, could you? As time went on I treated a variety of health problems in those soldiers with the resources supplied for treating mules, I even had to give what help I could to soldiers who were infected with tuberculosis or gonorrhoea.

On 11^th, March 1970 a peace agreement was struck between the late Mulla Mustaffa Barzani and Saddam Hussein. I thought that the mud boys would be released from their daily toil. Instead the only change for them was to be allowed to sleep in tents, as did the other soldiers, instead of sleeping in the lice infested cells of the company’s jail. Unfortunately the mud boys were still hard at work when I left the camp in October 1970 after paying 100 Iraqi Dinar to be released from service. That was a lot of money at the time; at least it was for my family. I bought two months of freedom for a hundred Iraqi Dinars.

In March 1970 I left the camp without permission and eventually I reached the HQ of the Peshmerga in Galalah, where I met my brother Adel. I stayed in Galalah for two weeks and one of the humorous moments I had there was an encounter with Shakeeb, who had a closely shaved head forty years before the style became fashionable.  Shakeeb was  in charge of intelligence in Kurdistan and we had a talk about the army’s mules. I understood then the damage the mule was doing to the Kurdish resistance in those days. After two weeks in Galalah I returned to the camp to find no one was bothered about my absence! The army really was in chaos.

Exchanging notes with other university graduate soldiers who I used to meet in the city of Mosel on our Friday afternoon break, I noticed that our company was more organised than other troops stationed at the big camp. The mule company was copycat of the British muleteer (mule men) army units dating back to before 1916 and in 1921 the British army had 15,000 muleteers who were mainly Cypriots. Two years later I arrived at Liverpool University in Britain to study for a Ph.D.  I still treasure the day when I met Dr Frank Jordan, the eminent poultry disease specialist and the Head of the Poultry Department in Liverpool’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He was a Welshman who had been a military veterinarian in the war against the communists in Malaya. He told me how he had to cut the vocal cords of the mules in order to keep them quiet when moving the animals through the jungle. Exchanging notes with this pleasant man I realized that two decades later I had been doing more or less what he had done in Malaya, but my main surgical procedure was castration.

BAN KI MOON SECOND AND LAST TERM...FAO (DG)..??

Within the next few days the post of the 8^th, DG for FAO (UN) will be put to the vote in by more than 180 countries. Since the establishment of FAO in October 1945, the years that the recumbent DG remained in office changed and in the last three decades it reached two digit figures. We are all hoping that the new DG will stick to the rules ,as the SE of the UN did, and stay in office for less than 10 years

Past DGs (FAO) and Length of Service

1.     Sir Jon Boyd Orr         (UK)                 1945-1948       3years

2.     Norris Dodd               (USA)                1948-1953       6years

3.     Philip .V. Cardon        (USA)                1954-1956       2years

4.     B.R.Sen                      (INDIA)            1956-1957       1year

5.     A.H.Boerma               (NETH.ND)    1968-1975        8years

6.     Edouard Saouma  (LEBANON)  1975-1993   18years (Two digits)

7.   Jacques Diouf         (SINEGAL)    1993-2011   18years (Two digits)