Michael Totten’s dispatches from northern Iraq demand your attention. Read this one, scroll down.
BIARA, IRAQ – The PUK’s Minister of the Interior ordered 20 heavily armed Peshmerga soldiers to go with me to the borderland mountain village of Biara. For years the village was occupied by Ansar Al Islam, the Kurdish-Arab-Persian branch of Al Qaeda in Northern Iraq. Biara wasn’t the only village seized by the Taliban of Mesopotamia, but it was perhaps the most important. It is there that the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had his last stand in Iraqi Kurdistan before the 2003 US-led invasion forced him out.
My Peshmerga weren’t really necessary. I told my translator Alan that I was embarrassed so many military resources were being spent on my account. I probably didn’t need any.
[...]
Their disposition had drastically changed since morning. At first they were all business. We will protect you said the look on their no-nonsense faces. Now they looked like boys. Cool! Field trip!
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