دياره زوانى كوردي قه ده غه يه له ريستورانته كانى هه ولير

I live in an apartment in one of the government buildings in Al Zakaria. This is supposed to be a high security area yet every morning I find advertising leaflets have been left outside my door. This makes me wonder about the building’s security!

This morning (29.9.2011) there were two leaflets on the doormat, both for Turkish restaurants in Erbil and as I looked at these brightly coloured leaflets (hereunder) I realised that Turkish, English and Arabic were used to describe each restaurant and their menus but not a single Kurdish phrase was used! Just what is going on here? These are restaurants in Erbil the Capital of Kurdistan. Surely there should be legislation for the Kurdish language to be used in Kurdistan and if there is no legislation then steps should be taken to remedy the situation.

What these restaurants are doing is targeting the people who speak these foreign languages. Taking a closer look at the leaflets I saw that on one was the phrase “We serve the elite.”لعشاق الفخامه واللتميز "Does that mean the elite speak Turkish, English or Arabic but not Kurdish?

When I return to my family in Wales, UK every road sign, official paperwork, job advertisement etc. is in Welsh and English with many shops, restaurants etc using both languages when Wales is part of a country whose official language is English.

GAINING A PhD AND A JOB (1971-1975)

 In 1971, like many of my colleagues on the staff of Sulymania University- Iraq, I was awarded a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Liverpool University, U.K. The funding was only for 2 years but in order to obtain a Ph.D. in Veterinary Physiology a postgraduate student would need to spend at least 3 years studying and carrying out research. In order to obtain the extra money I needed to enable me to complete the requisite 3 years of study and pay for my accommodation in the university hostel I therefore had to work as a demonstrator in the university.

By the end of 1974 I had completed my research for the Ph.D. and I had submitted four abstract papers to the Physiological Society and these were accepted for publication. The preparation of these papers helped me tremendously in preparing the thesis and the viva I had with Prof. Robin Day of the Rowett Institute, Aberdeen was the shortest that recorded in the faculty. I regret that I did not attend my graduation day but frankly I could not afford the hire costs of the graduation gown that I was required to wear for the occasion.

When I was in Liverpool my father was killed by Saddam’s regime in a hit and run method of killing as he was walking to the mosque for early morning prayers on January 1^st 1974.That was a bloody message from Saddam for my brother Adel who was head of the Kurdistan Student Union, but I was not made aware of my father's death until I graduated in March 1975.

I had learned from friends that in early April 1974 my family, including my mother and sister, dressed in their nightclothes, had been taken by Saddam’s security forces in the middle of the night from our home in Baghdad. Then a few days later the security forces looted the house taking anything of value and auctioning the rest. I later learned that it took my mother and sister, in the company of some twenty families of Baghdad Kurds, eight days to reach the northern border into Iran. On the eight days trip from Baghdad to the border they were twice threatened with death and another occasion only luck saved them in an attack by aircraft.

In Liverpool in April 1974 all I knew was that my family had been taken from our home in the middle of the night but I did not know where they were. Dianne and I kept in contact with the International Red Cross who tried to trace my family. I still have all the letters we received from the I.R.C. Then in June 1974 I received a letter from my sister explaining of what had happened and telling me that my family were safe in a refugee camp in Iran. My parents were illiterate and so my sister would write on their behalf and she wrote that she conveyed my father’s love to me. I was therefore not aware that he had been killed 6 months earlier. Apparently my mother and sister had decided to hide this from me on the understanding that receiving this devastating news would have a drastic effect on my studies, especially when I was financially distressed.  It took me years to forgive them for what they done. Now my son, Dana, is writing his Ph.D. thesis and I do not want him to be disturbed and this has finally made me fully accept the decision that my family took 36 years ago.

I had been encouraged by the Head of the Department to apply for a three years post-doctoral grant from the British Agriculture Research Council (ARC). In 1974 the increase of the price of the petrol by OPEC was reflected in all aspect of life in the world, including the budget of the ARC, and my application for the grant was turned down.

However I was given a small grant and laboratory access to do some post doctoral research and I obtained some minor work in the university that allowed me to earn my living. Most of my fellow Iraqi students in Liverpool were ready to return to Iraq and to take advantage from Saddam Hussein’s decree that allowed graduates a tax deduction on everything they took with them into Iraq. This was particularly advantageous with regard to expensive cars as some makes could carry import duties of over 100%. Whenever I had a bit of time to visit the student union in the university I used to see the Iraqi students with their Mercedes catalogues calculating and deducting their ‘earnings’ from Saddam’s handout. I was told that one particularly clever graduate took a large truck and a trailer full of furniture to the border where he was allowed to cross into Iraq. Why not? It was Saddam’s order that was being followed. That is how, Saddam started to buy the educated Iraqis as he filled their pockets and stimulated their greed.  I had nothing to do with that hullabaloo as I did not have any family in Iraq to return to and I could not afford to buy even a bicycle.

My finances went from worse to worse and I started to receive regular visits from an officer from Neston police station to remind me that my student visa was expired and I was not welcome in the U.K. anymore. The funny side of it was that the police man was always dressed in a tracksuit as apparently he used to jog and as he ran down the country lanes by the veterinary field station, he remembered poor Talib and dropped in to give him another warning. Now I compare when I was stuck with nowhere to go, receiving regular visits from a policeman dressed in a tracksuit, to the treatment meted out to others today by a U.K. with very relaxed immigration laws.

There is a silver lining for every cloud and one day in June or July the head of the Department of Clinical Studies, Prof. Fitzpatrick, asked to see me. He had just returned from a vacation during which he had attended the First World Veterinary Congress in Greece.  At this congress he had met Dr. Sagher, the non-veterinarian who had been appointed as dean of the newly established veterinary faculty in Tripoli University, Libya. Fitzpatrick suggested that I could work with Dr. Sagher  to establish this new faculty and I went to London to meet  Dr. Sagher who was visiting the U.K. He was pleased to see me, apparently he had had a glowing report about me from Fitzpatrick, and I became the first lecturer appointed to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Tripoli University.

Around the same time the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, was created under the leadership of Jalal Talabani in Damascus, so I decided to spend my few remaining pounds and go to Libya by way of Damascus.

ميونخ والكاظم



ميخ 12 : ميونخ والكاظم

أبو دارا
موسوعة صوت العراق، 12/1/2003

كان أبي رحمه الله عطار الطرف (صاحب دكان بالمحلة) وكان حينا الكبير مركزاً للكرد الفيلية القادمين من خارج العاصمة والقرى البعيدة من شرق نهر دجلة وحتى جبال بشتيكو بإيران، يذهبون ويجيئون أكثر من مرة إلى الحي الذي نقطن فيه، أكراد فيلية قادمون من بدرة وجصان وكوت ومندلي والصويرة وعلي الشرقي وزرباطية والعمارة، كنت منبهراً في صغري بهذا الجو الحافل بالقادمين من كل صوب وحدب، وكانت أرى الرجال يرتدون الملابس العربية المميزة بالعقال والكوفية والعباءة ومع ذلك أسمعهم يتحدثون بلهجتنا نحن الكرد الفيلية مخلوطة بلهجة عربية جنوبية، لم يكن الاهتمام بالشكل الخارجي محل اهتمامنا فقد كنا نعي وقتها أننا أكرادا وكفى.

ذات يوم وصل إلى منطقتنا أقارب لنا لا أتذكر إن كانوا من علي شرقي أم من علي غربي، ولظروفهم المادية المتعثرة ـ كحالنا جميعاً بالعراق ـ نزلوا في إحدى الغرف التي تؤجر للغرباء (نزل) وصارت صداقة لي مع ابنهم الأصغر الذي كان دائم الشكوى من عدم وجود نخيل في حوش المنزل الذي يقطنون إحدى حجراته، أما أخيه الأكبر فقد حصل على فرصة عمل في ألمانيا وتحديداً في ميونخ، وبما أن والدي وقتها كان المستشار الأول والأخير لهذه العائلة فقد جاءت قريبتنا والدة الشاب المسافر إلى ميونخ تسأله (عيوني  أبو راض( الله يخلي لك خالد ..، بالله عليك : ميونخ هاي وين صايرة .... جاي من الكاظم ؟ ولا غادي من الكاظم ؟)

هكذا كان تفكيرها تلك المرأة البسيطة حيث يعد مرقد الإمام موسى الكاظم الذي يقع على مسافة 20 كم شمال بغداد هو نهاية الدنيا بالنسبة لها، وكانت تريد أن تعرف هل سيتغرب ابنها عن هذه النقطة ؟

الآن ومع مرور السنين تغربنا كلنا بعيداً عن مرقد الكاظم بأميال عديدة وحتى أبعد من ميونخ ! وصار طشارنا ماله والي، حطت بنا الطرق إلى دول وبلدان لم نكن حتى نسمع عنها، تشتت العراقيون الملتصقون دوما بأرضهم حتى وصل تعدادهم في الشتات إلى ما يقرب من أربعة ملايين نسمة بسبب سياسات القمع والتهجير والتعريب والتعذيب التي قامت بها حكومات البعث المتوالية منذ أربعين عاماً، وكلنا أمل أن تجعل الحكومة الجديدة بالعمل بجد وعدل حتى تدفع كل أبناء العراق يعودون إليه ويصبحون كلهم " جاي من الكاظم ".

فيا أبا الجوادين، ارجع للأمهات أولادها، وللأخوان أخوانهم، و للزوجات أزواجها، ولمسلوبي الحقوق حقوقهم، وخلصنا من المتكبرين، واجعل هذه السنة أربعينية للظالمين اللهم آمين، يارب العا لمين.

(ابو دارا = طالب مراد)

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.