Zahed Haftlang - I, Who Did Not Die

65 Bleecker Street

New York, NY 10012

Copyright 2017 by Zahed Haftlang and Najah Aboud

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Regan Arts Subsidiary Rights Department, 65 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012.

First Regan Arts hardcover edition, March 2017

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955005

ISBN 978-1-68245-011-6

ISBN 978-1-68245-012-3 (ebook)

Interior design by Nancy Singer

Cover design by Richard Ljoenes

Front jacket photographs; Iraqi troops in tanks by Stringer / AFP / Getty Images; all others courtesy of authors

Author photographs by Jimmy Jeong; (Meredith May) by Matthew May

For Alyaa, Amjad, Mina, Daryoosh, and all those who did not survive the Iran-Iraq War to tell their stories

Be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. Love embraces all.

Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me, a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

I was seven, I lay in the car watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

How do you know if you are going to die?

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence she answered,

When you can no longer make a fist.

Years later I smile to think of that journey, the borders we must cross separately, stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living, still lying in the backseat behind all my questions, clenching and opening one small hand.

Naomi Shihab Nye, Making a Fist, 1952

by Pierre Razoux

The Iran-Iraq War was the longest and most brutal conventional war of the twentieth century, yet remarkably, many American and European history classrooms are silent on the subject. Firsthand accounts and books about this pivotal war are few, yet this eight-year conflict is the matrix of the geopolitical situation that prevails in the Persian Gulf today.

Only now, with witness testimonies like that of Zahed Haftlang and Najah Aboud, are we beginning to get a glimpse of this forgotten war, and to start to understand what lies behind the current firefights ravaging Aleppo, Mosul, and Raqqa.

The Iran-Iraq War, from 19801988, relied on national and religious ideology to sway civilians and soldiers alike, and its military strategy condensed the most violent tactics of previous wars. Like World War I, it was marked by large-scale trench combat and bayonet charges, and extensive use of chemical weapons, such as mustard gas, against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians. It combined the massive use of armored vehicles and fighter jets common to World War II, and missiles and aerial duels over the desert like those of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Troops also fought in swampy marshes similar to what soldiers faced in Vietnam, and engaged in arid and snowy mountain battles in Kurdistan reminiscent of wars in Algeria and Afghanistan.

The death and destruction left in the wake of this ruthless war were colossal, with soldiers buried in mass battlefield graves and entire villages reduced to dust. No one was unscathed. Nearly 40 percent of the adult male population in the two countries was swept up in the fighting. Up to 700,000 lives were lost, among them 80,000 Iranian child soldiers who fought on the front lines. These boys were members of the volunteer Basij youth militia, which recruited from local mosques, schools, and workplaces. Most child soldiers joined the war at age twelve or thirteen, and some were used as human minesweepers to clear the fields in advance of the armed Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Another two million people were wounded or mutilated, and victims are still dying today from the long-term effects of poison gas attacks. Another one million were uprooted during the course of the bombings, which destroyed some 1,800 border villages and towns, most notably Khorramshahr and Adaban, where the worlds largest oil refinery was severely damaged. In Iraq, Basra was decimated.

The overall cost of the war is estimated at $1.1 trillion in 1988 dollars with Iran accounting for about 60 percent of the loss. Material damages added another combined $350 billion. Together, the belligerents lost 5,000 tanks and 500 combat aircraft. In the aftermath, the economies of both countries were plunged into multimillion dollar debt, economic development came to a standstill, and much of the oil industry throughout the region was decimated by air raids.

In the end, nothing changed. Both sides eventually wore down and agreed to a ceasefire that included no reparations or boundary changes. And, unlike any conflict before it, prisoners-of-war were held indefinitely by both sides; more than 115,000 broken and forgotten men slowly released over a ten-year period after the war.

But the permanent cost was a deepening of the complex power struggles, historical hatreds, and persistent fears that stem directly from this unforgiving war. These same complex forces persist today, fueling the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and animosities between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States.

The Iran-Iraq War ultimately was a battle of wills between Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the latest chapter in an ancient rivalry between neighboring countries that dates back to the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the Persian Empire of the 1500s. Then, as in the 1980s, the longtime enemies argued over religion, politics, and borders, in particular, a section of waterway where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join and flow into the Persian Gulf. Control of that section of waterway meant powerand control of the tanker ships that exported oil through the area.

But the Iran-Iraq War was not just about territoryit was a violent manifestation of two opposing worldviews. Hussein believed Arab nationalism tied all the different religious sects togetherSunni and Shia, Christian and Muslim, Kurd and Arab. He positioned himself as the undisputed leader of a secular, pan-Arab empire that would replace Iran as the most powerful Persian Gulf state.

This ran contradictory to the religious ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was swept into power during the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah. Backed by a large Shia following, Khomeini vowed to eradicate state nationalism, insisting there should be no division between religion and politics, because the highest unifying entity was Islam. He positioned himself as the leader of a borderless, Islamic empire that would encompass the entire Middle East.

Khomeini began radio broadcasts in Iraq aimed at the countrys long-suppressed Shia majority, encouraging the overthrow of Husseins regime and the takeover of Iraqs holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf.

Hussein, whose Baathist Party was comprised of minority Sunnis, feared the Islamic Revolution would spill over into Iraq and encourage widespread Shia riots, a revival of the armed Kurdish secessionist movement, and ultimately civil war. He abruptly deported thousands of Iraqi Shia citizens. Then he attacked the source of Shia inspirationthe Khomeini regime.

Iraqi troops invaded Iran in September 1980. Hussein anticipated a quick fight, assuming his armies would meet little resistance from a disbanded and disorganized Iranian army that Khomeini had yet to rebuild after the Islamic Revolution. And it appeared that way at the outset, as Iraq quickly captured several border cities, including Khorramshahr. But, although Iraq had more firepower, Iranian troops had more patriotic fervor. While Hussein was fighting for power, Khomeini positioned Iran as fighting for Allah, and a holy war easily coalesced around a common enemy. Young Iranian men and boys were told not to fear death because as martyrs they would join the prophets in heaven, and their families would be given compensation, food rations, and access to better schools and jobs.