Shadow on the Mountain by Shaker Jeffrey

Author:Shaker Jeffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

LONG DESTINATIONLESS RECONNAISSANCE drives around the province in my dirt-covered white car revealed little more than business as usual. At checkpoints, I watched as officers in loose fatigues strutted down the line of vehicles, new boots sending up puffs of dirt, sunburned lips sucking on cigarettes and sipping sodas from well-stocked coolers. More than a few had hard liquor on their breath, I was sure of it.

Lately, I’d heard stories about hardcore drugs infiltrating the ranks. Heroin. Pharmaceuticals. Hashish from Iran. Those were often the fat-cat divisions, full of well-fed officers earning a good salary, while lazing in the sun counting up cars and sweaty rolls of cash, and taking their sweet time searching trunks. They roughed up suspects, hauled a few in for beatings; weapons were discharged, bones broken, but incidents of unwarranted violence and outright fraud were rarely investigated. For the lower-ranking soldiers, drugs were often the only available antidote to the unrelenting stress of living in a perpetual state of warfare. Meanwhile, the new battlefront churned bare miles away, closing in like a slow-moving hurricane.

Division commanders at the army bases had little time for me other than small talk. Hard to tell if they were even conducting regular training exercises anymore. Still, their good-natured apathy was infectious, and I believed wholeheartedly that the conscience of the world would not neglect us. We fired up hookahs in the yard and talked about the good old days of buffet lines, burgers, and barbecues. We exchanged email addresses, cell phone numbers, and even connected on Facebook.

“Keep in touch, Shaker, and remember that you have the Kurdish armies to protect you.”

And I did—they were all I had between faith and outright panic.

Iraqi Kurdistan, also known as the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), an autonomous region of disgruntled Kurds seeking independence from the rest of Iraq, straddled the eastern rim of Nineveh. It maintained its own government under a Kurdish president, Masoud Barzani, and was home to a legendary force of lethal fighters that had whipped whole empires, starting with the Persians and ending with the British. Just the name of their indomitable unit dripped fear into the veins of seasoned soldiers: Peshmerga—Those Who Confront Death.

During the invasion of 2003, the Peshmerga had been instrumental in finding and capturing Saddam Hussein, and later pinpointed the messenger who led to the detection and killing of Osama bin Laden. The Kurdish warrior tradition of brutal fearlessness ran like venom through their ice-cold DNA. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to secure victory—and under Article 114 of the Iraqi Constitution, they were lawfully bound to protect the Yazidi.

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