In the meantime, Shaw got on the radio and tried to arrange a medical evacuation — nearly impossible to do; night was falling.
And yet, somehow, help came.
Though he was extremely low on fuel, a British Chinook pilot heard the distress call and diverted to the camp. The girl and her mother were loaded aboard. Shaw watched the helicopter disappear into the darkness, wondering if it had enough fuel to make it through the mountains back to Turkey.
A week later, Shaw met the pilot when he returned to drop off supplies. He had made it home to his base, but it had been very close: The helicopter's engines had coughed dry as they touched down.
Had the girl lived?
The pilot didn't know. It seemed doubtful, given the extent of her injuries. And yet none of the men — the pilot, Shaw, Swenor — could have lived with himself if he hadn't done all he could to save her.
Just a few days earlier, Shaw had complained about the mission. It was a long way from what he'd trained for. But that afternoon, its meaning — and its frustrations — hit Shaw hard. It was exactly what he had trained for.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, generally referred to as UNHCR or simply the UN, gradually took a more active role running the camps. At times there was considerable friction between the UN, Turkey, the SF forces, and the Kurds. It often took several days to build a working relationship. In some cases, rapport came only in the face of danger. At one camp, female members of UNI ICR were attacked by Iraqi secret service agents; they retreated to their tent and were surrounded. SF personnel managed to get the women out to safety without firing a shot.
Iraqi secret agents were a problem throughout the region, but it was difficult for Americans to ferret them out and deal directly with the problem. At one point, Florer was presented with ID cards belonging to Iraqi secret service agents in Zakhu, a Kurdish stronghold. But the Americans were in no position to play detective, and Florer couldn't promise action.
"No problem," the Kurds assured the Americans — leaving what that meant to the imagination. The SF troops later learned that the guerrillas had attacked the secret police station with grenades, then gunned down the survivors.
PESH MERGA
American policy favored the Pesh Merga guerrillas for practical as well as political reasons. The resistance infrastructure represented the Kurd leadership, and like the Americans, they opposed Saddam Hussein. But having a common enemy did not ensure rapport; the American units had to sell themselves on the ground, day after day.
Soon after their arrival, Shaw and one of his men ventured from their camp to an area controlled by Pesh Merga guerrillas to meet other refugees. They were led by their guide about ten miles from the Turkish border, passing patrols of well-armed guerrillas, until they came to the camp in the ruins of an old village — destroyed during the 1980s in an attack that included both nerve gas and defoliants, which had wiped out the once-elaborate orchards.
About five to eight hundred people now lived there. The guerrillas used it as a supply and rest area for troops fighting farther south. "Things here were organized," Shaw recalls. "Family areas were separated. There was a community meeting area under a slot-ring parachute canopy and stacks of weapons and supplies everywhere."
The two Americans were greeted by heavily armed men and led to Rasheed Hadgi, the small, elderly man who headed the camp. Hadgi, a many-times-injured hero of the Kurdish uprising, offered them food and drink — damaged MREs and Kool-Aid, obviously made from the contaminated water.
Though Shaw and his sergeant didn't want to catch dysentery, they didn't want to insult the guerrillas either; they had no other choice but to accept their hospitality. "It was the right thing to do to build rapport, but later that night we both paid the price from both ends. At the time, I personally wished I had taken the bullet."
Kershner attended several meetings with the Pesh Merga leadership, generally by car supplied by the guerrillas. "No matter what kind of car we got in, we were always at 125 percent of capacity," Kershner remembers. "Everybody was jammed in together.
"I carried a pistol; everyone else in the car had an AK-47 or a machine gun; none of these weapons had been placed on safe within memory. I spent the entire, bumpy ride in these vehicles just watching for the muzzles of all these rifles to make sure I did not get shot by accident."
The guerrillas wanted more than just medical and food support from the Americans; they were looking for massive military assistance — which they couldn't have. "It was the usual ballet dance," Kershner continues. "Two boxers circling each other in the ring trying to figure out what they're going to give and what you're going to give."
The politics between different bands of guerrillas generally followed clan lines, and sorting it all out was often a nightmare for the Americans. The different groups rarely coordinated with each other; each had to be approached separately.
Since there were no Kurdish speakers among the SF units, first contacts were often creative. In one case, a group of SF soldiers came under sporadic fire as they approached a guerrilla position. Trying to reassure the Kurds that they meant no harm, they tried yelling that they were Americans. The gunfire continued. They yelled the name of the camp; that didn't work either. Finally, one of the soldiers yelled, "George Bush."
The entire guerrilla contingent jumped up from their positions and began chanting the name of the American president, who had become a hero because of the Gulf War victory. "George Bush! George Bush!" The troops were welcomed as brothers.
Small SF elements eventually set up camps within the guerrilla strongholds as part of the effort to maintain good relations. Since the rebels controlled much of the countryside, this greatly increased security as well as built rapport. In general, the U.S. attitude toward the Pcsh Merga was lenient and cooperative throughout the operation. But the British had different ideas. They set up checkpoints in their areas and often would not allow armed guerrillas to pass.
THE COMMUNICATIONS EFFORT
Reliable communications over such a far-flung operation were vital. There were no telephone lines in the mountains, and the terrain made communication by conventional radios difficult, but U.S. SF troops had brought SATCOM radios with them, so geography and terrain were no longer barriers.
Though SATCOMs accounted for as much as ninety-five percent of the communications, the devices were not without drawbacks — capacity was limited and communication had to be rationed, because there was only so much "space" on the satellite frequencies.
The relief effort also required a great deal of hands-on command attention. General Potter would "work the camps" every day — flying in and out to check with the commanders in the field. Planning sessions later in the day would allocate resources, trying to anticipate needs for the next days and weeks.
As conditions became more stable, the job of distributing supplies was gradually handed over to civilian agencies. A ration card system was instituted in many of the camps. Water-purification and — distribution systems were created. Dental clinics were established, with SF medies — and in some cases others; Bill Shaw got his first chance to practice basic dental skills he'd learned in training — pulling rotted teeth, supplying more basic care, or even acting as midwives.
"That made us nervous," Kershncr recalls. "We did not want to be in a position where we were responsible or could even be peripherally involved with a dead baby or something. Fortunately, every case we had like that turned out okay. But it made us extremely nervous.