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Iraqi Kurds and their guns are reluctantly parted Crackdown has sent a shock through a land of open arms
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
BY BORZOU DARAGAHI
For the Star-Ledger
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq -- Though a bent old man, Haji Ahmad Abdul Qader considers himself an able gunslinger. Standing in a shadowy corner of the Sulaymaniyah bazaar in the autonomous Kurdish north of Iraq, he whips out a handgun.
It's not a stickup. It's a deal. For just $35, Qader will sell his finely crafted Canadian revolver.
The end of Saddam Hussein, the presence of nervous United States forces and a crackdown in Sulaymaniyah on weapons has taken a toll on the Kurds' gun culture.
It has introduced a new concept to a people long used to casually slinging assault rifles over their shoulders: gun control.
"Now that the war is over, we don't need weapons anymore," says Raza Hamid Qarib, a 34-year-old trying to sell a Chinese-made Kalashnikov he said he took from Iraqi troops during the 1991 uprising against Saddam.
"We need freedom instead."
Just days after the April 10 collapse of Baghdad authority in northern Iraq, the Sulaymaniyah-based Kurdish government declared all buying and selling of weapons in the city illegal.
The breakdown of Saddam's regime and the collapse of his army had brought an influx of weapons and sketchy characters into the bazaar, concerning residents.
"We'd received so many complaints that we shut the gun market down," said Sarkawt Kuba, a high-level police official. "We'll let them sell guns somewhere else, outside of the city."
Licensed dealers have had their permits rescinded. Gun dealers in the dodgy, informal gun bazaar within the labyrinths of the main Sulaymaniyah bazaar said that several days ago police arrested some gun dealers, confiscated their weapons and ordered them to appear for trial.
"You're supposed to hand your weapons in to the government," said Qarib.
The ever-growing presence of American troops here has put another clamp on the gun culture. U.S. forces patrolling northern Iraqi cities have set up checkpoints on key roadways to look for guns. Young, fresh-faced American soldiers of the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade stop vehicles and inquire about weapons at a checkpoint on the road between Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk.
Still, old habits die hard in Iraq, which has a tribally based gun culture and an obsession with weaponry that rivals that of Americans. Random gunfire still punctures the night in Mosul and Kirkuk. Checkpoints around cities has not halted gunplay between Arab tribesmen and Kurdish bandits on the long roads through the desolate countryside.
The U.S. presence and the Kurdish crackdown at least have persuaded marginally law-abiding citizens such as Qarib to pare down their weapons. "Guns have become a hassle," he said.
A precipitous drop in gun prices offers some evidence of success in reducing the local taste for weapons. Before the war, standard-issue Kalashnikovs sold for $400 apiece and were scarcely available in the gun bazaar, which was established in 1991 at the birth of the Kurdish autonomous government in the north of Iraq. Last week, the assault rifles were selling for a little over $100, and there were no buyers.
Qader, wearing the traditional baggy pants and colorful cummerbund of the Kurdish peshmerga warrior, complained he couldn't sell his Canadian revolver despite the low asking price. "It's old-quality, an original," he said, pleadingly.
Ahmad Mohammad was trying to sell a near-new Iraqi Tariq 7.65mm pistol. "The prices are collapsing," he said. "The day before yesterday, a Tariq went for $250. Today it's selling for $175."
The crackdown on the gun trade has made many dealers nervous and suspicious of strangers, though it hasn't stopped them from stealthily carrying on their business.
And though many Kurds say the coming of peace and the end of Saddam means they don't need guns anymore, it will be hard to change a culture steeped in the myths of war and martyrdom. Qarib, the young man selling the Kalashnikov, admitted he keeps another one at home. "That one's not for sale," he said.
Copyright 2003 The Star-Ledger.
