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CHAMCHAMAL, IRAQ
Northern Iraq is road for the smugglers
By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff, 3/16/2003
At this village where a checkpoint separates the Kurdish-controlled zone of Iraq from the rest of Hussein's Iraq, there is a brisk, black-market trade in high-octane gasoline. Destitute Kurdish villagers uprooted from their homes by Baghdad try to cross the checkpoint by paying a small bribe to the Iraqi border guards or by walking through the hills to bring the cheap, high-octane fuel into the autonomous Kurdish zone where the only gasoline available is a pricey, low-octane brand that clogs engines. Even the threat of war hasn't stopped these small-time smugglers, but the tensions along the borders has heightened the risks they face. Nazif Namik Tawfiq, a 39-year-old mother of eight children, tried to smuggle a plastic bag full of approximately $1.90 worth of high-octane gasoline. The Iraqi border guards who saw her walking through a field near a checkpoint stopped her, doused her in the gasoline and set her ablaze. She suffered third-degree burns over 25 percent of her body and is now in painful recovery in a hospital in Sulaymaniyah. ''The days I was lucky, we made it through and my family would eat that day. The unlucky days, they went hungry,'' said Tawfiz, whose husband is disabled and unable to work. ''Now there is no one to feed my children.'' The hospital staff said there was a man in the trauma unit who had been shot trying to smuggle the cheap gasoline. Trauma unit workers said that there has been a steadily increasing flow of these small-time smugglers suffering from burns and other injuries arriving at area hospitals. ''Do you think I wanted this life?'' added Tawfiz, whose arms and legs were covered with bandages soaked with blood. ''We only did it to feed the children.'' This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 3/16/2003.
he rugged mountains of northern Iraq are home to a dangerous business and a sometimes-lucrative art that has been woven into the fabric of life among the Kurdish minority -- smuggling. Throughout ages of turmoil, ancient paths that traverse modern boundaries are worn everyday by those trying to make a living in the illicit trading of goods. The list of smuggled items coming in from Iran, Turkey, Syria, and the Saddam Hussein-controlled side of Iraq includes everything from cheap gasoline carried in plastic bags to high-end computer systems carried on mules or the multimillion-dollar trade in oil that by-passes the UN embargo on Iraqi crude.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
