Live updates: Follow the latest news on the US-Iran war
Celebrations for the Kurdish new year Newroz will not be the same for Tahir Abdullah’s family this year. In fact, there will be no celebrations at all.
Instead, he and his wife Chiman will be spending the occasion, normally a celebration of new life and the coming of spring, mourning their son. Nor will there be any celebrations of Eid Al Fitr to mark the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan, which this year coincides with Newroz.
Welat, 31, was killed in a drone attack over the city of Erbil in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region earlier this month. A member of the local security forces known as the Asayesh, Welat worked at the local civilian airport. He was killed when falling shrapnel from an air defence interception of one of the drones fell to the ground, local media reported at the time. “This year there is no Eid or Newroz for us,” Tahir Abdullah told The National in an interview at his family home in Erbil.
Welat used to like helping his mother grill meat over a celebratory picnic barbecue, a Newroz tradition. But instead of the traditional family gathering, Tahir and Chiman will stay at home and receive condolences.
“I am 56 years old and there has never been a year in my life when I didn’t go out for a family Newroz picnic,” Tahir said. “But this year is very special because Welat is not with us. All of us feel bad about going out – we are mourning.”
A keen weightlifter in his spare time, Welat left behind him two young children, five-year-old Ayman and six-month-old Mir, and a widow.
“We will do all it takes to look after them,” Chiman said. “They are pieces of him.”
Welat is one of the many victims in the Middle East affected by the widening US-Israel war with Iran. That conflict has caused widespread death and displacement across the region and rattled global markets, driving energy prices higher and contributing to volatility in stocks and commodities as strikes by Washington and Israel on Iranian targets continue and Tehran and its regional proxies retaliate.
Iraq is among the countries caught in the crossfire, in a complicated number of ways. Iran-backed militant groups in the country are launching near daily attacks on targets they perceive as linked to the US, west or Gulf. That includes embassies, hotels, energy infrastructure and Erbil airport, whose civilian ivilian terminal sits alongside a US military base. The US and Israel are in turn launching strikes on those militants, killing dozens so far.
The countrywide fallout has been significant: diplomats and Nato staff have been evacuated, oilfields have shut in, and the chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz has prevented crude oil exports, depriving the state of most of its revenue.
Tahir phoned his son at around 10pm on March 7. He and Chiman had been calling him frequently in the preceding days, worried about frequent attacks on the airport.
“He replied and said, ‘We’re all good.’ While I was talking to him, I heard an explosion,” Tahir recalled. “I asked him, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘It was a drone and it was intercepted by the air defences. It’s normal; this happens every day. Don’t worry.’”
An hour and a half later, Tahir phoned his son again. There was no reply. A friend of Welat’s then called Tahir to tell him that his son had been injured. He taken to hospital to the news that Welat was dead.
“It was a terrible feeling,” he said. “I anticipate my own death, but I didn’t anticipate Welat’s.”
Kurdish authorities in the north and Iraq’s central government say they want to keep the country out of the conflict.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani has also called for de-escalation; in a phone call with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte on Friday he urged a retreat from military escalation by all parties to the conflict.
But preventing the country from being drawn into the violence is proving tough. The militias launching attacks from within Iraq’s borders are deeply entrenched within the state but act outside of its authority and take orders from Tehran rather than Baghdad, analysts and Iraqi officials argue.
It is in great part because of Iraq’s painful long history of conflict that it is so keen to stay out of the current war.
“Our message is clear,” Darbaz Rasool, a senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two main political parties in the Kurdistan region’s government, told The National. “We are not part of this conflict. Leave us out of this conflict, because we've sacrificed a lot for our security and stability. During the Isis [insurgency], thousands of lives were lost just defending security and stability, not just in the Kurdistan Region, but in other parts of Iraq as well.”
At the same time, having lived through too many previous wars, some Iraqis are stoic about the current situation.
Jean Suleiman Hanna served for 13 years as a soldier in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and later fled to Erbil from his home in the city of Mosul when Isis temporarily took over in 2014. A hardware shop owner in his sixties, he heard a huge bang in the street outside when a drone damaged a church opposite his shop in Ainkawa district earlier this month.
Erbil resident
“We are used to it [war and violence], he said with a shrug.” The abnormality of the normalisation of conflict is not lost on him. “Well, we’re educated in it,” he added.
Mr Hanna described how he served along Iraq’s central front in Diyala province during the 1980s war with Iran, which pitted Saddam Hussein against Iran’s then supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini. It was one of the 20th century’s deadliest conflicts and was a defining era for both Saddam and the nascent Islamic Republic.
“That war lasted eight years and it ended eventually,” he said. “This war will end too.”
But it hasn’t yet. In Erbil, the atmosphere is subdued as attack drones fly over the city on a near daily basis. They are often intercepted by air defences but the city is left rattled and on edge. Like many millions of people across the region, residents are struggling with the absence of clarity over how much longer the conflict, and the disruption to their lives, will last.
“Every day seems worse than the previous one. It’s not stopping,” said Samer Khoshaba, 56, who was walking his dog Bella in the late afternoon sun. “It is scary, when the drones get blown up in the sky [in interceptions] and you don’t know where the pieces are going to land.”
A mathematics teacher, Mr Khoshaba has not been at work for three weeks as the conflict has prompted school closures.
“When will we be able to return to our normal lives?” he asked.
For Welat Tahir’s relatives, life may never be the same again. His cousin Ibrahim Zaher, 29, has fond memories of cruising round Erbil in his car with Welat, talking over their lives and “personal stuff”, he said.
His analysis of the war is perhaps more shrewd than many long time think tankers.
“Superpower countries keep creating war out of nothing, for no reason,” he said. “They create war and then force it on less powerful ones.”
Additional reporting by Stella Martany
