Associated Press

March 14, 2003, Friday, BC cycle

HEADLINE: Short of supplies and medicine, Kurds prepare for war in their homeland

BYLINE: By BORZOU DARAGAHI, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq

BODY:
The people of Chamchamal in the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq live little more than a mile from Iraqi forces and what is likely to be a front line in any U.S.-led invasion.

They do their best to prepare for the upheaval and violence, but do not have such basic things as gas masks. Kurdish officials and energetic volunteers say morale is high but they have almost no equipment to treat war victims.

The Kurds, a minority oppressed by Saddam Hussein's regime, established this enclave after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and live under the protection of U.S.-British air patrols.

Kurds have been victims of warfare repeatedly in the last three decades, including 1988 chemical bombardments by Iraqi forces that left thousands dead. The Kurds know they may be caught in the crossfire of any war between the United States and Saddam's forces.

If there is a new war, fighting is expected to move quickly to oil-rich northern Iraq, around the government-held cities Mosul and Kirkuk, 30 miles from Chamchamal, a city of 58,000.

The Kurds are not completely unprepared for the dangers that could lie ahead or the treatment of possible war victims and refugees fleeing battles just across the front between Kurdish forces and those of Baghdad .

They have organized seminars for health workers all around the Kurdish autonomous zone. Subjects include treating victims of chemical attacks. They have produced television and radio programs and published pamphlets and given talks in radio.

"We have to be careful not to frighten people and not to provoke panic," said Fouad Baban, a famous physician who treated victims of the 1988 chemical attacks on the town of Halabja , where thousands of Kurds were killed.

Kurdish Minister of Health Mohammad Khochnaw said his Sulaymaniyah-based government in the eastern sector of the enclave has been training doctors to treat war wounds for three months. The government sent 11 doctors abroad for training, and received a delegation of French doctors. "They gave us lectures," he said.

Chamchamal's mayor, Tariq Raishid Ali, has described evacuation plans and routes. Authorities have pinpointed caves where displaced people could stop off while make their way to camps.

"The main roads are too dangerous," said the mayor. "People should use rural mountain routes."

In a classroom lent by the local agricultural school for two weeks of two-hour public safety training sessions, students and teachers said they worried about having no gas masks, chemical suits or mannequins to practice CPR.

"There are great numbers of people who live in peril in this area," said Jassem Mohammad Ahmad, a firefighter giving talks to the students. "We have a lot of theory but no equipment for training. The little equipment we have we desperately need for emergencies."

Ordinary families, many of whom have experienced life as refugees or had relatives killed in one of Iraq 's wars, have begun preparing for war using basic household supplies. The price of plastic sheeting used to seal doors and windows to protect them from chemical attack, has quadrupled in recent months, said Azad Hassan, a teacher and father of three.

Hassan pulled reams of it out of a box and said he would put it over his door. "It's the only way to protect us," he said.

The lack of professional safety equipment has become a serious issue. Most medical personnel don't have gas masks, officials say, despite Kurdish entreaties to the outside world. "It is a shame," says Baban. They had asked international organizations and European governments "but there has been no response," he said.

In the classroom at the agricultural school, Ismail Assad, a physician's assistant at the local hospital described to the volunteers how to clear mud out of the mouths of gasping soldiers and elderly refugees.

"Some victims have no chance to live very long," Assad said somberly to the wide-eyed students taking notes in the classroom. "There are others with golden chances for survival."

He spent several minutes describing to students how to use a fire extinguisher before conceding that the fire extinguishers imported from Iran probably wouldn't work, anyway.

Many students or employees of local nonprofit organizations, complain they have no gear, such as bandages ands oxygen cylinders, to test the skills they learned in the classroom. Delyar Ali says he became angry after viewing satellite television news footage of Kuwaiti residents lying on the ground posing as war victims while practicing complex evacuation and first-aid procedures.

The Persian Gulf emirate of Kuwait , bordering Iraq , is host to tens of thousands of U.S. troops preparing for the threatened war.

"We would love to be just as well-prepared as they are," he said.