I was working my way through college selling cars in El Cajon when we had a huge influx of Hungarian refugees. I had not realized the Kurds had followed.
California Kurds training to accompany GIs to Iraq
Volunteers from San Diego area want revenge again
El Cajon, San Diego County -- This suburb 20 minutes east of downtown San Diego is a place of high desert hills and valleys polka-dotted with houses. The 6,000 Kurdish immigrants who call El Cajon home say the landscape drew them here because it bears a remarkable resemblance to their homeland in northern Iraq.
Many came to America after the failed Iraqi Kurdish uprising in 1975. Many more have immigrated since the Gulf War, making the San Diego area the home of the largest Kurdish community in the United States except for Nashville.
Some of the El Cajon Kurds may be going back soon if war breaks out with Iraq. In December, Congress approved $92 million to train 3,000 exiled Iraqis in the United States and Europe to accompany U.S. forces.
Of all the ethnic groups in Iraq, the Kurds have suffered the most under Saddam Hussein's regime. One hundred thousand were killed in Hussein's brutal 1988 Operation Anfal, which included the use of chemical weapons and resulted in the destruction of 2,000 villages and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.
And when the Kurds answered the first President Bush's call to rise up in 1991, the Iraqi army attacked with full fury, driving over a million Kurds into the snowy mountains. Images of those refugees, beamed across the world, prompted Bush to create the no-fly zone that allows the Iraqi Kurds to live in autonomy today.
The recruitment program for Iraqi exiles has been kept relatively quiet, and the Pentagon has not released information about who has been accepted. But in El Cajon, interest is high, and more than 100 locals have applied for 20- odd spots in the program.
The recruitment effort is organized by Kurdish Human Rights Watch (KHRW), a San Diego nonprofit funded by the federal government, whose mission is to provide services for refugees.
On a recent afternoon, a family sat watching Kurdish satellite television as a young man named Fares arrived at KHRW's center to volunteer.
While his application was being printed, the cosmetology student shook his keys nervously and explained why he wanted to enter Iraq with American troops.
"Nobody likes Saddam Hussein," he said.
Fares was living in Baghdad in 1991 when he says the first Bush administration made a strategic blunder all Iraqis have paid for: "Life was going to be beautiful. They were supposed to continue until Baghdad, to kick him out. They made a mistake. Ever since, the people have suffered."
He dismisses the dire predictions of a bloodbath in the streets of Baghdad if U.S. troops invade.
"Nobody is going to fight," he said. "(The Iraqi soldiers) are waiting for this moment. When they hear America is going to bomb, they are going to throw their weapons away.
"I speak English and Arabic and Kurdish. I want to help."
The first batch of volunteers has already begun training with U.S. Army instructors at the Taszar air base in Hungary, where they will learn basic military skills as well as how to interpret and provide rear area security. The volunteers are being paid about $1,000 a month.
Pentagon spokesman Daniel Hetlage says candidates for the program are subjected to a thorough check of their background and political allegiances: "We want to make sure there isn't anybody trying to infiltrate or get in who would not be of honest motives."
Hetlage says there has been little publicity about the volunteers for safety reasons -- "We don't want to put faces on them and put their families (in Iraq) in danger."
One El Cajon volunteer who has been accepted is Tariq, a former high- ranking officer in the Iraqi army who defected in 1991 and joined the Kurdish uprising. His son, a keyboardist in a local band, is already training in Hungary, where Tariq will soon join him.
On this day, Tariq, who brags about his barbecuing skill, has brought a meal to his friends at the center. A tray laden with a large grilled fish, Kurdish flat bread, radishes, tomatoes and onions is passed around, to be washed down with cola instead of the yogurt drinks that would be consumed in Kurdish lands.
He says the local volunteers are needed "to be a bridge between the Iraqi people and the U.S. Army. I don't think the army needs us to fight."
Like many exiles, Tariq often speaks to friends back home and has sensed a mood shift there.
"I have friends from Baghdad frankly talking about the collapse of Saddam Hussein," he said. "It means he has lost control. This is the first time I've heard people talking freely on the phone."
Ever the military strategist, Tariq draws a map of Iraq and says that U.S. planes must drop messages on Iraqi cities making clear that the Americans are coming as liberators, not attackers.
"Bush needs to get rid of Saddam Hussein as soon as possible," he said. "If he takes too much time, the anti-war movement in the United States and Europe will probably halt everything."
Dara Miran, a businessman, said it was hard for Americans to understand what it means to live under a dictator. Among the Kurds, he added, "There is no family who has not lost someone."
Miran said that his niece's husband had been executed in Baghdad only a week ago, with no reason given to the family. When the young man's father came from the countryside two weeks earlier to inquire about why his son had been arrested, he was run over by a car and killed. The family believes it was the work of Hussein's secret police.
Americans, he says, "haven't suffered pain like we have."
But the Kurds here also feel anxiety about the looming conflict. "Most are afraid of Saddam using chemical weapons and setting the oil fields on fire," said Alan Zangana, project director of Kurdish Human Rights Watch.
And some Kurds say privately that they are not volunteering because they are afraid of a repeat of the events of 1991 -- broken U.S. promises to effect regime change, followed by Hussein's brutal revenge.
Although almost everyone in this community wants Hussein removed, not all believe that war is the answer.
Kandan Baban, a young Kurdish woman who arrived in the United States less than six years ago, has just finished her degree in microbiology at UC San Diego.
"It's not the right time to get rid of him," Baban said. "All the other Arab nations were against Saddam during the Gulf War, but after Sept. 11, things are different. Now, if the United States makes war on Iraq, we'll develop more enemies."
She feels America's unfinished business is not with Iraq. She asked, "What about Osama?"
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