Chris apol­o­gizes for the lack of updates over the past few days, but he’s been hav­ing some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties with the sat­phone he’s using. He is work­ing on fix­ing these prob­lems, but is hav­ing lit­tle luck so far. He is healthy and safe, though, and thanks you for your under­stand­ing.
On a lighter note I don’t guess he will give this model of sat­phone a very good review.
Michael

DIYARBAKIR — I’m read­ing reports that the U.S. assault is tak­ing a week’s pause to toughen up the sup­ply lines to the front units as they pre­pare to hit Bagh­dad. Also, every­thing is bogged down thanks to prob­lems with the Feday­een mili­tia and other harass­ing Iraqi units, that Iraqi resis­tance is tougher than Rums­feld & Co. expected. Maybe these reports are true, maybe they’re dis­in­for­ma­tion from the Amer­i­cans in prepa­ra­tion of a light­ning assault.
I do know this, how­ever. In Diyarbakir, the IV Press Corps has ground to a halt.
This place is crawl­ing with journos, all look­ing for the same thing: A way in. Until that can be pro­cured, Diyarbakir has turned into a press town in a wartime econ­omy. Tem­pers are flar­ing. An ital­ian camera-woman berated the poor desk clerk at my hotel yes­ter­day morn­ing because some­thing (I’m not sure what) wasn’t cleaned in the morn­ing.
“And I asked for it to be cleaned this morn­ing and it wasn’t!” she snapped, jab­bing her fin­ger at the clerk like it was a stiletto.
But luck­ily, J. and I caught up with Beth and Rita again, and this time, the con­ver­sa­tion was much more pleas­ant. I also dis­cov­ered that since it looks like we may be here for a few days, I need to get a Diyarbakir press cre­den­tial. I had to do this last year, but the region was still under spe­cial mil­i­tary rule. This time, I wasn’t plan­ning on stay­ing more than a day and I wasn’t going to be work­ing, so I didn’t feel there was a need. Au con­traire! If we want to travel around the region south of here, which, aside from the north­ern half of Kuwait, may be one of the most mil­i­ta­rized places on the planet, we need those cards. So now, I’m wait­ing on a let­ter to be faxed from a U.S. Embassy to my hotel so I can present it along with my other bona fides. Bother.
Thus, this will be but a short update. We’ll be wan­der­ing around the Old City today, although not tak­ing pic­tures. With­out the press cred, there’s a good chance a cop will see us and make trou­ble for us. While it may seem cow­ardly, I don’t want to risk that. It would be pretty stu­pid to have the Back to Iraq mis­sion end early for a rea­son like that. Once the cre­den­tials are secured, how­ever, we should be OK. Unfor­tu­nately, the wait­ing is the hard­est part.

DIYARBAKIR — Ah, Diyarbakir. This is an ancient city, almost 4,000 years old, one of the old­est on the planet. Last time I was here, the oppres­sion stuck to my skin like humid­ity in a rain for­est. Armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers roamed the streets and the cops beat the hell out of a crowd of Kurds when they came to a ceme­tery hop­ing to memo­ri­al­ize a democ­racy martyr’s death from the early 1990s.
This time, how­ever, the APCs were parked off the streets. There is a notable lack of gen­darmes, Turkey’s inter­nal secu­rity police and the pri­mary force respon­si­ble for keep­ing order in the south­east for the last 15 years. The side­walks are cracked but bustling. Mer­chan­dise — whole fish, shoes, scarves and fab­rics, toys and sweets — spill out onto the side­walks, forc­ing older women in head­scarves and tra­di­tional dress, men in kafiyehs and the Kurds’ trade­marked baggy trousers to com­pete for walk­ing space with teenagers in Nike sweat­shirts and young men in leather jack­ets try­ing to look tough. Or they could take their chances in the street with the taxis, zoom­ing madly, beep­ing their horns in stac­cato blips as warn­ings. The cacoph­ony is thrilling, exhil­a­rat­ing, and even now as I sit in my hotel room, I can hear the mer­chants in the bazaar call­ing out, the horns, the traf­fic, snip­pets of con­ver­sa­tion that echo up the alley walls and slip into my room.
Turkey lifted the emer­gency rule a few months ago and the dif­fer­ence, to me, is dra­matic. This is a city that feels newly alive.
But not so to some of the younger Kurds. Emre, a 17-year-old Eng­lish stu­dent, found me as I was try­ing to reach the KDP’s Dam­as­cus office. Slight, with del­i­cate fea­tures and a mus­tache that was shyly announc­ing itself, he was inter­ested in my satel­lite phone. As we struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, he took to a car­a­vansarai — a trad­ing post built 500 years ago by the Seljuk Turks — that now served as a tea gar­den. It also served as a mini-bazaar, with mer­chants in each cor­ner run­ning shops sell­ing car­pets, silver-work, scarves, kafiyehs and even old Iran­ian rials.
Sit­ting down among intri­cately knot­ted car­pets explod­ing with color — note to self: come back and ship one of these home when you come back through — that hung from the walls and ceil­ing sup­ports, Emre, J., myself and Emre’s friend, Necati, sat down to some of the ubiq­ui­tous tea.
He was against the war, of course — basi­cally every­one in Turkey, 94 per­cent, is against the war — but I asked him if things were bet­ter now that emer­gency rule had been lifted. He said it was only a lit­tle bet­ter. I asked him if the Turks were jus­ti­fied in wor­ry­ing about its own Kurds attempt­ing to break off and dash for inde­pen­dence if the Iraqi Kurds over the bor­der attained their own coun­try.
“Let me answer your ques­tion with a ques­tion,” he said. “In Amer­ica, there are, what, 50 states? Does the black man want his own nation? Does the brown man?“
I said no.
“And why is that?“
J. spoke up. “Because they don’t have to. They are happy being Amer­i­cans.“
Emre said that was his point. “If I can speak my own lan­guage, learn Kur­dish in school, lis­ten to Kur­dish music and have the same demo­c­ra­tic rights as the peo­ple in the west [of Turkey], why would I need my own coun­try? We want the same eco­nomic devel­op­ment as in the west, too, we want to be as rich as they are. If we had all this, why would Turkey’s Kurds need their own coun­try?
“But if we can’t have that,” he warned. “Yes, I want my own coun­try. Yes, I will want a mil­i­tary to pro­tect myself.“
*Tech­ni­cal notes*
I’ve since found out that some donors have been get­ting the B2I-Dispatch hours after it’s gone up on the Web site, which is exactly back­ward from the way it’s sup­posed to be. I’m truly sorry and I apol­o­gize. I will see what I can do about that. I’ve also dis­cov­ered that I grossly over­es­ti­mated the band­width avail­able on the sat-phone. Which means there may not be many pic­tures until I get back. I haven’t taken many, how­ever, since my focus has been on trav­el­ing, but per­haps Diyarbakir would be of inter­est to peo­ple.
Also, I read every com­ment that peo­ple make on this site, as well as all emails. How­ever, because of time, band­width and other con­sid­er­a­tions, I may not be able to respond to every­one. Please don’t take it per­son­ally. I really, really appre­ci­ate every­one tak­ing the time to write, and your notes of sup­port keep me excited about all of this.
As for dona­tions, I also don’t often have time to thank you all per­son­ally, but I have been for­ward­ing your email addresses (as per Pay­Pal) to Mike for adding to the list, which he is doing. So while you might not get a per­sonal thank-you note, you are being put on the list. And allow me now to thank you all very much for your con­tin­ued support.

ANKARA — Today started early: 5 a.m., when the call to prayer from the nearby mosque got cranked up. Just as well, as J. and I needed to get to the Syr­ian Embassy by 8:30 a.m.
After a quick break­fast, we headed over. A stop at the bank first, where I paid the $100 fee for the visa — and the teller creep­ily asked me if I was going to north­ern Iraq. Then we stood online out­side the Embassy with the many travel agents drop­ping off pack­ets of their clients’ pass­ports.
While wait­ing, we met Rita and Beth, two obvi­ously in-a-hurry jour­nal­ists. Beth is Amer­i­can and Rita is Cana­dian. She chat­ted us up while Beth fret­ted about get­ting the proper forms to fill out. They’re try­ing to get into north­ern Iraq, too.
“You guys jour­nal­ists?” asked Rita, sotto voce, as we waited in front of the Embassy and staffers paced back and forth nearby.
“What makes you say that?” I answered and glanced mean­ing­fully over my shoul­der.
“We’re on a tour,” J. added.
Rita got the hint and shut up.
At the win­dow, the woman tak­ing our forms quizzed me about my pro­fes­sion. I told her I was a teacher and a writer. (Both true.)
“What kind of writer?” she pressed. “Jour­nal­ist?“
Last time I went into Syria, I found it use­ful not to adver­tise my sta­tus as a jour­nal­ist, as that requires a press visa and takes much longer. I didn’t want to take any chances on delays.
“No, short sto­ries,” I fibbed. “Fic­tion.” (Also true, just noth­ing pub­lished, mainly because they suck.)
She nod­ded, obvi­ously not believ­ing me, but unwill­ing to make an issue of it. She told me to come back at 1:30.
Up the street, at the cor­ner, Beth joined us. She’s a reporter for U.S. News and World Report, while Rita is a free­lance pho­tog­ra­pher. Beth and I exchanged gos­sip, and I found out that Rita has a con­tact on the Syrian/Iraqi Kur­dis­tan bor­der who will take her party across for $1,000 per per­son. I won­dered aloud if J. and I could get in on that action. Beth didn’t know and wor­ried that Rita’s smug­gler wouldn’t like it if she showed up with two extra guys. I’m skep­ti­cal about this, since these guys are rarely in busi­ness to limit their income.
Beth asked me who I was with and I told her Back to Iraq​.com, that I was an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist, had been to Iraqi Kur­dis­tan last year and that I am one of the Web’s first war reporters. Her demeanor imme­di­ately changed and the patron­iz­ing began.
“Back to Iraq​.com!” she exclaimed in mock enthu­si­asm. “Neat!“
It’s an atti­tude I’m used to from “real” jour­nal­ists, one that I can usu­ally defuse by explain­ing my vision and my 13 years of expe­ri­ence and my stints at the Asso­ci­ated Press and the New York Daily News. But today I didn’t feel like swap­ping resumes. I just smiled and said, “Yeah, actu­ally. It is.“
After a quick spin back to the hotel and a stop to the Inter­net cafe down the street, we picked up my visa. No prob­lem, as they say here. We ran into Beth and her crew again. This time she was nicer and invited us to share the ride to Diyarbakir with them. Now there was a prob­lem. The car had to fit five peo­ple (and their gear) in a space the size of a Ford Fes­tiva. Also, we had to be ready in 10 min­utes, Beth said. That was impos­si­ble for us, so we told them we’d fly tomor­row and catch up with them in that ancient Kur­dish city.
We leave at 10 a.m. Sat­ur­day for Diyarbakir and then sprint for the bor­der at Nusaybin/Qamishli. Get­ting into Syria should be no prob­lem now that I have the visa, but the bor­der with Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is closed, a woman in the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party’s Ankara office told me. J. and I are hop­ing we can hook up with Beth and Rita’s friend who can get us across. Thank­fully, the KDP said we would be wel­come — if we can get across the bor­der. I have talked J. out of a commando-style raid across the Tigris in an inflat­able raft — mad­ness — and instead we’ll try throw­ing some Yan­kee green­backs around. That usu­ally helps solve prob­lems.
If things go very well, we could be in Duhok — or pos­si­bly even Erbil — by tomor­row night.
*Part­ing thought*
One of the prob­lems of this endeavor is that I’ve lost that bird’s-eye view of what’s going on. I watch BBC in my hotel room and check the Web at the Inter­net cafe, but with lim­ited access, I feel like I’m miss­ing some major con­text. Beth told me that a Yemeni arrested in Soma­lia was briefly thought to be Osama bin Laden, but that turned out to be false. (This was why she was now look­ing to get into north­ern Iraq; she needed a new story.) I’d heard noth­ing about this at all! Turns out this broke yes­ter­day, she said, while I was trav­el­ing. Very frus­trat­ing. My view has shrunk from a wide-angle lens to some­thing resem­bling look­ing through the wrong end of a telescope.

[Editor’s Note: When I post these dis­patches from Christo­pher I will cor­rect any obvi­ous spelling mis­takes, but I will not alter the con­tent in any way, nor change the gram­mar. I will keep my edits to a min­i­mum, and after this I will not be com­ment­ing.
Michael]
ANKARA — After almost 14 hours of trav­el­ing, I’ve landed in Ankara, ahead of sched­ule. It’s been a mad dash to Turkey’s cap­i­tal, sort of like what the 3^rd Infantry Divi­sion is try­ing to do regard­ing Bagh­dad, but with­out the bul­lets.
Fly­ing into Ankara is a weird expe­ri­ence. From the air, it looks a lit­tle like a poorly planned Sim­C­ity 3000 cre­ation, with great swaths of unde­vel­oped land, broad free­ways and masses of res­i­den­tial areas with iden­ti­cal apart­ment build­ings and similar-looking single-story houses. This
isn’t sur­pris­ing, really. Like Wash­ing­ton, D.C., it’s pretty much a made up city. When Ataturk chose Ankara as the cap­i­tal of the newly-born Turk­ish Repub­lic, the town was a sleepy, dusty vil­lage of about 20,000. He chose it because a) it was far away from the old cap­i­tal of Istan­bul and con­no­ta­tions of the old Ottoman Empire, and b) it couldn’t be eas­ily threat­ened by West­ern gun­boats as Istan­bul can be.
Ankara, in late March, is also cold. It’s still win­ter here, and I thought it would be spring weather. I didn’t pack for this, so I had to buy a new coat today. Luck­ily the Turk­ish Lira is weaker than the peso, so a very nice win­ter coat cost me the equiv­a­lent of $30.
My old friend Aykut is here, too, and the reunion has been good if a lit­tle bit­ter­sweet. Turkey’s tourism busi­ness has been bad — non-existent, prac­ti­cally — as shown by the fact that none of my flights have been any­where near full. He’s a pro­fes­sional tour guide and his wife is a school teacher, two posi­tions that don’t pay that well. Busi­ness has been off since last year when the war drums began tun­ing up, and his house­hold is in dire straits.
We went for cof­fee at a small cafe in the neigh­bor­hood where we met an old friend of his, a jour­nal­ist I’ll call Mehmet, as I don’t want to reveal his real name. He’s an old hand in Kur­dis­tan, hav­ing been there nine or 10 times, and he knows the for­mer Iran­ian ambas­sador to Ankara. He’s going to try to get us the process for a visa into Tehran stepped up, which would cut days off our trip into Kur­dis­tan. The alter­na­tive is to rely on the good nature of Turk­ish troops — usu­ally a los­ing propo­si­tion — around Silopi to let us through into Iraq, or go through Syria, which I’ve heard is also prob­lem­atic but doable with the proper incen­tives. (Draw your own con­clu­sions.) A trip to Dam­as­cus might be required.
Mehmet cov­ers the diplo­matic busi­ness of Ankara and the United States and Turkey are appar­ently in nego­ti­a­tions over the role of the Turk­ish mil­i­tary in north­ern Iraq. The Turks are try­ing to hold out for Turk­ish com­mand, while the Amer­i­cans are insist­ing on an allied com­mand struc­ture. How the nego­ti­a­tions go will deter­mine how the Turks enter Iraqi Kur­dis­tan — the hard way or the easy way. If it’s the hard way, with the Turks under their own com­mand, the KDP, based in Kur­dish nation­al­ism and no friend of the Turks, will resist with guns and guerilla tac­tics, spawn­ing a war within a war. If they go in under U.S. com­mand — the Turks will never accept a British com­man­der over their forces; too many bad mem­o­ries of Gal­lipoli and the Sykes-Picot Agree­ment – it will go eas­ier, and the Kurds will likely behave them­selves and not make a dash for Kirkuk or Mosul with their respec­tive oil fields.
Turkey’s top mil­i­tary man, Gen. Himli Ozkok, how­ever, said yes­ter­day that the Turks won’t go fur­ther into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan with­out a U.S. pres­ence, which is good news. And BBC is report­ing that 1,000 para­troop­ers of the 173^rd are drop­ping into the region, per­haps as a backup for the PUK’s push against Ansar al-Islam on the Iran­ian bor­der.
But the region is rife with con­spir­acy the­o­ries. Aykut said that if I went out and asked the peo­ple on the street, half would say the United States com­mit­ted 9/11 so it could go after Iraq. (Inter­est­ingly, almost half of Amer­i­cans — 45 per­cent — believe Sad­dam was per­son­ally behind 9/11.) Turkey is also rip­pling with an anti-Bush sen­ti­ment. Turks like Amer­i­cans and some­times, even Amer­ica. But more than 90 per­cent oppose this war and a sim­i­lar per­cent­age absolutely loathe George W. Bush. Aykut sheep­ishly admit­ted he hoped the war would go badly so Bush would lose in 2004. I made him feel bad when I reminded him that many Iraqis and Amer­i­cans would die if it went too badly.
Mehmet also said that the Turks, Ira­ni­ans and Syr­i­ans were com­ing to an “under­stand­ing” regard­ing Iraqi Kur­dis­tan. The upshot is that Iran and Syria would get Turkey’s back if it moved on the Kur­dish enclave in defi­ance of America’s wishes. Iran would even send in its own troops, he said, if the Turks invaded uni­lat­er­ally. I have no idea if this is true, but Strat­for had some­thing on this not too long ago claim­ing the exact same thing. Either con­spir­acy the­o­ries are con­ta­gious or per­haps there’s some­thing to this rumor. Time will tell.
Finally met J., my would-be trav­el­ing com­pan­ion on this adven­ture. He’s a for­mer marine from the first Gulf War, a pho­tog­ra­pher and a para­medic. All of which could come in quite handy. Plus, he has cool toys: night vision gog­gles. He has the open face of a Cal­i­for­nia guy, although he was born in New Jer­sey. He seems a level-headed chap, and promised he wouldn’t decide to ditch me if the Iraqis carted me away. He’s going to be the liai­son with any U.S. forces we come across and will be doing some pho­tog­ra­phy, once I show him how to work the dig­i­tal cam­era.
Tomor­row, the Syrians.