IN Qandil Kurdish mothers are afraid of the night. They go to sleep not knowing if their children are going to wake up alive.

The mountainous region that separates Iraq from Turkey is regularly bombed with drone attacks increasing in frequency according to locals, residents and municipal officials.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan describes Qandil as a “terrorist swamp” that needs to be drained and refuses to acknowledge the reality that the area is home to a civilian population.

Some 20,000 people live in the hundreds of villages in the rugged terrain which is part of the Zagros mountain range.

It has acted as a refuge and base for Kurdish fighters for decades, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) peshmerga forces during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the Iranian Komala militia and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has an estimated 3,000 guerilla fighters in its Qandil bases.

But the area is largely inhabited by agricultural workers, shopkeepers and lots of cattle including sheep, cows and goats that straddle the steep inclines.

“They bomb the villages every Thursday at least,” Fatma tells me. “It starts in the night and lasts until the early hours of the morning. They do it to stop people coming back to their villages for Friday prayers.”

Ominously this conversation happened on a Thursday night about an hour before we were due to leave Qandil. We had arrived earlier that morning, making our way by car from the nearby town of Ranya.

A series of checkpoints operated by PUK peshmerga line the route into Qandil. Most are fairly straightforward and wave our vehicle through without checking our ID.

But entry to Qandil is technically banned to non-Kurds, so I am told. Before we get to the final checkpoint we pull over and my guide and interpreter reaches for the boot of the car, handing me some clothing.

I had to disguise myself as a Kurdish farmer and walk half an hour across the mountains to smuggle myself in, avoiding the Peshmerga forces that would certainly have blocked my entry into the PKK-controlled territory.

We meandered slowly, stopping for the occasional photograph and to admire the view as we navigated the rocks, trying to find an easy path. At one point my fixer Salman stopped and changed direction. We sheltered briefly in a cave when I asked him why we had altered course.

He fumbled for the English saying: “There is a….what do you call it…ambush waiting for us over that hill,” pointing a a ridge no more than 50 metres away.
 

Salman explained that “friends” had sent him a message to warn that a group of Iranian militia was in the area close to where we were walking.

It was a sharp reminder that we were in a war zone and also of the myriad of forces working together in the region – along with the Iranians were Turkish and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) forces who have been encouraged by the US to collaborate in operations to “neutralise” the PKK.

I asked what would have happened had we been spotted. He replied casually: “They would have shot us,” as we carried on our mountainous trek.

On our arrival we were welcomed by friends who were happy to see us and in the Kurdish tradition fed us a hearty meal of chicken, meat, rice and vegetables along with the region’s famous “guerilla bread” made in one of the base camps.

I wanted to speak to local people, to find out about their everyday lives and how the constant bombardment and threat of war impacted them. I was given access to speak to whoever I wanted and people spoke freely and openly, inviting me into their homes for tea.

“The bombing started at about 4am, I was sleeping,” farmer Mohammed Darwesh tells me as he perches on the edge of a wooden chair. The sun is drawing in and we are losing light, but it is still warm as we sit in the shadow of the mountain.

“We were woken by a great blast. It felt like doomsday. When I got up I saw my mum was dead, split in half and covered in blood,” he says, visibly shaking as he recalls the horror.

“I felt like I was in a strange dream, like it wasn’t real. But the plane bombed us again. I went to rescue my father who was buried under a pile of rubble. I tried to help him but I couldn’t. I was injured and part of the bomb was lodged in my leg and I fainted.”

He pauses as his daughter brings us glasses of water as his wife and son look on. I glance through the window and can make out another woman praying.

“Five members of my family were killed that day,” he says. “When I woke up [from unconsciousness] fire was burning, flames were everywhere and I heard the screams of people, children. Everyone was running and I didn’t know where they were running to.

“Women were screaming ‘where are our children,’ ‘where is my husband.’”

“People made a grave to bury the dead. People made a grave for me, I thought I was going to die. I was in a coma for two months in hospital [in the regional capital Erbil]. They told me my son had died, martyred.

“Turkey usually says they are bombing the PKK. But there were no guerillas in the village, just civilians,” he says. “The Turkish state does not differentiate between Kurds and what it says are terrorists.

“We lost everything. My house, equipment, money…everything was ruined and burned. I lost my job, I couldn’t do anything for a year,” he said. “Now I am handicapped. I lost everything, my son martyred, my eldest son is injured. One of his arms doesn’t work, it’s paralysed,” he tells me tearfully.

“Turkey killed my son,” he continues angrily. “They killed my mother while she was praying, sliced her in half.

The scale of his loss and the devastation is unfathomable. It is difficult to know what to say to someone whose family has been wiped out by missiles most likely sold by your own government.

But his experience is not unique, as I was to discover.
As darkness fell we thought about making our way back and leaving Qandil. We could see spotlights on the mountain tops in the distance. “Iran,” our guide Hussein told us, “They are watching our every movement, tracking the vehicles.”

We stopped at a shop for some refreshments for the hour-long journey back to Ranya and Salman rushed back to the car, explaining that the shopkeeper’s family wanted to speak to me.

He led me down the steps and we took off our shoes before entering their home, sparse and simple with cushions to sit on. We sipped tea and Fatma began to tell her story.

“The day of raining flames,” as she described it, started at 4am, timed for morning prayers.

“I heard a blast. It shook the whole village. We were bombarded,” she said. “We believe that chemical weapons hit us. They bombed my uncle’s house. My father and other relatives went to rescue my aunt and uncle. But unfortunately they were spotted.

“Everything was on fire. The Turkish jets struck again and my father and other relatives were killed. All of my relatives were burning, my father’s body was totally burned. And we believe that there were chemical weapons used,” she explains, describing the size and intensity of the flames.

This is not the first time I have heard accusations of the use of chemical weapons by Turkey. Friends in Makhmour said exactly the same thing, but their appeals were ignored by the United Nations and other global bodies who refused to even investigate the claims.
She says something in Kurmanci Kurdish to her son, who leaves the room before returning with a large piece of metal. He passes it to me and I am surprised by its weight.

“This is part of the bomb that killed my family in August,” she tells me. “This is part of the bomb that was fired from two F16 jets during Operation Claw Eagle”—- referring to Turkey’s most recent military offensive against the people of Qandil between June and September 2020.

Ankara insisted it was targeting PKK forces, but everyone we spoke to during our time in the mountains was a civilian and insisted that there were no guerilla fighters among them.

We examine the bomb fragment and can see a serial number which she hopes makes it traceable. “This bomb was fired by Turkey, but it uses EU and Nato bombs. We hope you can find where it came from.”

Her life changed forever on the day of the bombings and she is traumatised by what she saw, describing in gruesome detail how they found body parts for weeks after the attack.

“We feel death. I feel it every day,” she says. “I am constantly reminded of the bombings. I think about it all of the time and can remember every detail.

“I have a strange story,” she tells me as her daughter brings us glasses of ice-cold water. “My brother was killed by Saddam’s bombs when I was eight. This is another tragedy for our family.

“But another family in the village, a woman’s husband was murdered by Saddam Hussein, her son was killed by the KDP and then she in turn was killed by Turkish jets,” she says.

Her “strange story” shows what the Kurdish people have endured for decades. I look at her children who are no older than 10 and 12 and have known nothing but war. It is easy to see why people take up arms.

“My father, and three relatives were martyred. I lost my aunt and uncle, the wife of my uncle also died, my cousin was also killed,” she explained tearfully.

She says that Turkey takes pleasure in killing Kurds, seeing them as “the enemy.” But she is angry that the international community has continued to supply the weapons that it uses as part of its genocidal attacks.

“We don't have any authority, but the world killed us. I don’t know why they did that, or why they want to kill us or why they bombed us. What do they get other than our blood? Nobody cares about us.

“We’re scared. Before we go to bed we pray to God ‘do not bomb us in our sleep.’ When we hear  the planes come people pray and shout and they are afraid,” she says.

I ask her why she thinks Turkey continues to bomb them, knowing that this is a civilian area with families and children simply trying to live their lives peacefully.

“Turkey wants to eradicate the Kurdish people,” she replies. “Turkey is finishing the job of Saddam. The PKK isn't here. This is a village, there isn't any justification to bomb us. But it’s no surprise people join the guerillas.”

She explains her dreams for the future, for her family, for Qandil and for the Kurdish people.

“We just want a free life, freedom, just to exist, and an end to oppression. Let us live independently.”

This article is the second in a three-part series. Read the last part in tomorrow’s paper.