Free Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs by Jim DeFelice, Johnny Walker

several good friends who are Kurds; I’ve known Kurds who were jerks. If I were to make a general statement, I would say that most Kurds are very hardworking and honest, but I could easily come up with exceptions.
    Following the first American Gulf War and Desert Storm in 1991, the United States and its allies tried to help the Kurds, including their territory in a northern no-fly zone and extending humanitarian aid. Saddam’s air force, already battered by the war, could not operate in that area, making it more difficult for him to oppress the Kurds. With encouragement from the United States, the government inside the Kurdish area of Iraq became more autonomous.
    At the same time, internal conflicts rose. Two different factions rose to prominence and then fought with each other. Iran encouraged both factions at different points and took a clandestine but active role encouraging the fighting and backing its own favored group. In 1996, after an Iranian assault into Iraqi territory ostensibly aimed at rebels planning an attack into Iran, Saddam Hussein sent forces north. The United States bombed Iraqi bases and tightened the no-fly zone, and in the end Iraq withdrew most of its troops from the region, but not before helping the Kurdish Democratic Party, its temporary ally against the Iranians, to win control of the region.
    Once the war with America started, the Kurdish factions worked in parallel to rid themselves of the dictator. Both cooperated with the United States, as did their militias. Their goal was to carve out a permanent Kurdish state, their longtime dream. And this was obvious in their actions both inside and outside Kurdistan.
    The first thing the Peshmerga and the Kurdish militia did when they arrived in Mosul was open the banks and take most of the money. They blew the safes and made off with the contents. Were they robbing it or, as was later claimed, securing it against Saddam’s forces?
    It certainly looked like robbery to me. Just enough was left for local people to help themselves and not feel left out.
    Then the Kurdish troops ransacked the army barracks at the airport, taking the weapons and other equipment for their own. They grabbed anything they could move, including artillery pieces and tanks. Large flatbeds came and hauled vehicles away for days.
    With the place ransacked, the Kurds left Mosul. By then, order in the city had broken down. The police seemed to be in hiding. People were looting government buildings, taking things they wanted or needed. The rest of us huddled in our houses, gathering to watch the news on our generator-powered TVs and discuss whatever rumors we’d heard.
    Every so often a small group would surge past the house, heading to loot one place or another. I remember a friend shouting to me to come downtown with him; he and the others were going to see if they could find any money left in one of the banks.
    “No way,” I told him. “I’m not a thief.”
    “Come on,” he insisted.
    “No.”
    “Fuck you, then.”
    “Fuck you.”
    My friends thought I was an idiot for not joining in.
    Al Jazeera, the Arabic news station, became something of an information lifeline for us in the early days of the war. Its reports helped us track what was going on. I spent hours and hours with my friends in small, cramped apartments, smoking cigarettes nonstop and listening to the news, trying to interpret each small tidbit, no matter how trivial.
    The British reached Basra, the major Iraqi city in the south, on March 22. U.S. Marines battled the Iraqi army near Nasiriya the next day. These early battles set what would be the pattern for the rest of the war: opposed first by the regular Iraqi army, the U.S.-led coalition forces quickly defeated their conventional enemies. But once the Iraqi army retreated or disintegrated, guerrilla fighters appeared. Some had been in the army, some were from the Fedayeen Sadaam, some were radical Islamists. The last group was less discriminating in its