Guilty Until Proven Innocent: How I Gained the Trust of the Kurdish Military by Proving to Them That I Wasn’t a Spy
This is when we finally entered from Silopi, Turkey, on April 19, 2024. I got away with it before they told me to put my phone down.
By: Daniel Miller
“You can’t just show up like this,” said a Peshmerga General as he was interrogating me in his office. “Why did you come here?”
“I sent two emails and received no response,” I told him, for the second time, “so I decided to come by instead.”
I was asked the same questions several times that day by the same humorless top Kurdish brass about why I decided to show up to the military headquarters unannounced to ask if I could follow a few soldiers around and see how they managed to contain the ISIS threat.
“How did you find the place?” The information is on the government website. “What is your occupation?” I’m a journalist. “Do you have proof? Who do you work for?” I have a website and a picture of my diploma, and I am completely independent. I don’t work for anybody.
All of this started when I had one of the many cab drivers in the Kurdish capital city of Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, drop me off directly in front of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs on a Monday, just two days after I arrived. The name Peshmerga translates in Kurdish to “Those who face death,” which is an appropriate moniker given all the conflicts and persecution the world’s largest stateless ethnic group has endured over the past 100 years. I had apparently picked one of the worst times and dates to show up unannounced since most visitors who have permission pay their visits in the morning hours. I showed up at 1:00 pm on the day that Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdoğan, a man who outright denies the Kurdish identity in his own country and has banned the Kurdish flag entirely, was scheduled to appear in Erbil after a short meeting in Baghdad. Despite that, he has been allied with the Peshmerga forces in their fight against Turkish Kurds in northern Kurdistan over territorial disputes. To call the situation complicated would be quite an understatement. Because of this event, tensions and paranoia were elevated at the Ministry, so any unusual activity was viewed as highly suspicious.
With my passport in hand, a smile on my face, and confidence in my voice, I approached a soldier, at the entrance, who was on his way out. He didn’t speak English, but the word “American” elicited a smile, as I knew it would. I was confident because the United States is the main protectorate of this autonomous region in northern Iraq that ostensibly prides itself on democratic values. I familiarized myself with the Kurdistan constitution – particularly the part about press freedoms – before arriving and was prepared to hold them to it if I had to.
The guards in the entrance booth gave me a wave and a smile, as did the soldiers who were loitering in the main office building. But that soon changed once I met the first General who greatly resembled a Middle Eastern version of Richie Vento from the movie Harlem Nights. I don’t remember any of their names because they were all new to me, and I was not in a position to take any notes, so I will refer to him as General One.
General One kept me in his small office and proceeded to grill me about my reason for being there. He spoke English, as did several other high-ranking officers I met that day. He asked the same questions I mentioned above: how I got there, why I was there, and so forth. He then took me to an adjacent office that was twice the size as his, where the same General from the beginning of this story, to whom I shall now refer as General Two, was sitting. General Two seemed like he had forgotten how to smile, and acted like he didn’t want to like me no matter the answers I gave him. General One was standing next to the desk and at one point accused me of contradicting myself when I mentioned I had sent two emails. “No, I didn’t contradict myself. I’ve been consistent this entire time,” I resolutely stated. Both of them cut me off at times, as I was answering their repeated questions. I knew they were trying to intimidate me and find contradictions in my answers, which was fine, but I wasn’t going to let them get away with false accusations of any kind.
He appeared to have changed his mood a little after I provided him with the link to my website (I need all the pageviews I can get), but he was doing his best not to display it. He didn’t want to like me, I could tell, but I never gave him a reason not to, so onto the next phase I went. I was told to stand outside in the hallway and wait for a few minutes, where I noticed a reassuring American flag resting on a pole against the wall, among several others. I was then escorted by two short, portly men in business casual clothing to another building and into the office of a nice man in a suit who didn’t speak English, but he at least provided me with hot tea and an occasional reassuring smile.
He had to leave the office for a brief period, so he called in a nearby soldier to stay in the room with me. He understood a bit of English, but not much, so I asked how long he had been a soldier. I forget the exact number of years he told me, but it was obvious he wanted to say more than he knew how which I appreciated. I was then escorted back to General One’s office. In an attempt to get him to open up, I asked him the same question.
“A long time,” he laconically responded. If he could have answered with fewer words, he would have done so. “Ah, cool,” I replied, leaving it at that. Thankfully, it was the last conversation I would have with him. I was then escorted by the same portly men, back to the previous office of the nice man in the suit, where I watched Kurdish television while he filled out paperwork. I kept wondering if this was the final stage in the process, until the portly men arrived yet again, this time escorting me outside and into the backseat of a tiny pickup truck. I was forced to sit in the middle next to a soldier who had a firm grip on the barrel of his submachine gun. I was sandwiched between him on my left and the widest of the portly brothers on my right, and off we went to another location in the city.
We pulled into a clandestine area somewhere in the southeastern part of Erbil. I was then escorted into a small office with four soldiers chainsmoking cigarettes, none of whom spoke any English. The slimmer one of the portly men motioned for me to stand against the wall so he could take my picture, and sat back down once it was over. As I sat on the couch with my phone in hand, resting downward on my lap, he walked back in and grabbed it from me. This was a bit concerning, but I acted like it was no big deal because I didn’t have anything incriminating on it anyway.
The same guy then asked another soldier to accompany us in his personal vehicle. He drove me to yet another location, this time on the southwest side of the city, where I was introduced to the final boss. This was evident from his enormous office and personal assistants, as well as his frequent use of a buzzer on his desk to summon them. A couple of times, he was on one of his two cell phones and a landline simultaneously. Again, I was asked the same questions while he wrote three pages of notes.
“Why do you want to follow the Peshmerga? You’re not a journalist.”
Yes, I am a journalist.
“But why Kurdistan? What do you like about it so much?”
Because I support the Kurdish people and what they stand for.
“And what is that?”
Democracy and multiculturalism.
I made it impossible for him to refute or question that answer, especially since those ideals are the essence of the Kurdish constitution, and every Kurdish person I met in both Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan has expressed that same mentality. As I was being escorted out of his office by a slender man in a suit, I turned and said “Spas,” which means “thanks” in Kurdish. He nodded his head as he struggled to hold back a smile and continued to look down at his paperwork.
The slender man in the suit was kind to me. He understood more English than he could speak, but he tried, and at one point told me that his daughter was a teacher in Detroit, Michigan. I was soon given back my passport and cell phone. I was then handed another phone that was on an active call with someone important who only referred to himself as Mike when I asked his name. He told me that everything came back clean on my end and that they were waiting on confirmation from the US Consulate before releasing me. He then told me that no charges would be brought against me. Those words are always reassuring no matter the situation, but it caught me off guard because I didn’t think that was even a possibility.
He hung up before I could fully process the part about the charges, so a few minutes later I asked if I could speak with him again so I could get an answer as to why I went there in the first place, which was to gain access to the Peshmerga. He told me to contact the US Consulate, and make an appointment through them, so I went by there the next day. While I was waiting to be released, they asked if I could call one of the two friends I knew in Erbil so they could translate and convey a message to me, which was that they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t anxious or nervous and that I was comfortable. Not long after, I was escorted out of the premises and back to civilian life.
The security protocols at the US Consulate weren’t nearly as rigorous. After running all of my information, I was eventually given the number to Major General Osman Risha, the only General in the Peshmerga who I think is capable of smiling and possessing a sense of humor. Mr. Osman is the head of the Peshmerga Ministry's Directorate of Media and National Awareness, a good contact to have, in my opinion. I found out he didn’t speak English once I called, so I used translated text messaging to set up an appointment for the next day, which was a Wednesday.
The meeting with Mr. Osman was the most relaxed one I had all week. He provided me with a translator because the people I knew were unable to take time off from work to fulfill that role. I was eventually granted permission to interview members of the Peshmerga and access to go out in the field with them to certain locations. He also provided me with the number of Muhammad Jambaz, a veteran journalist with a long list of accomplishments, including three Emmy awards, whom I met later that night and was provided with some valuable insight about the region.
It seems that a lot of this mess could have been avoided if I had simply checked with the US Consulate at the beginning, something that never even crossed my mind. In early 2022, I was in Sarajevo, Bosnia, after Russia invaded Ukraine. There were concerns that the semi-autonomous Republika Srpska and Serbia would attempt to “finish the job,” as many Serbian nationalists put it, that was started three decades ago, and I was in Kyiv, Ukraine, for a few weeks at the end of 2023, where I experienced a drone attack right before dawn. I thought that if I truly felt the need, I would go to the US Embassy, but never once did I reach out to let them know that I was in the country because I didn’t think that contacting them would do much good in preventing any sort of attack. I’m completely self-guided in this journey and have made a lot of mistakes along the way, so I consider this to be just another learning experience.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting me on Patreon. I am completely independent and my journalism is often inhibited simply by a lack of funding. A little bit really does go a long way. Thank you!
