The Red Museum

January 31, 2009

The city of Sulaymaniyah is a bustling little ode to Kurdish progress in modern day Iraq. People live their lives here and struggle to do all the things we, as Americans, take for granted in our daily lives. They work, go to school, shop, socialize, and do their best to raise their families and live a normal life. But if you want to see what life was like here when Saddam Hussein was in power and his troops occupied forts and other military installations in the city, you can go downtown to the Red Museum and get a shocking and spooky glimpse of Kurdish past.

The compound, once called Red Security, was the northern headquarters for military intelligence under Saddam Hussein. The Kurds had always been a target of Saddam because of their desire for autonomy, but after they fought with Iran against Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war in the 80’s he sought to basically exterminate the Kurds in Iraq. There was a military operation called “Anfal”, after some verse in the Quran that calls for believers to attack infidels. Anfal was really an attempt at genocide…whole villages were bulldozed out of existence, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were tortured and killed, and it culminated with the chemical bombing of the Kurdish village of Halabja where about 5000 people were killed. So in 1991, during the first gulf war, the Kurds of Sulaymaniyah rose up and attacked the Red Security compound in an attempt to overthrow it. The battle lasted for 3 days and in the end every single Iraqi inside the compound was killed. The Kurds made sure that not one was left alive.

The place is now a museum that honors all those killed and tortured under Saddam’s regime. It’s called the Red Museum apparently because of the red buildings, as it was once called Red Security. The buildings in the compound stand today the same way they did all those years ago when the place was liberated. Bullet holes pock every building in the place and are an eerie reminder of the battle that once raged in this now quiet little neighborhood. They put some old rusted out tanks and artillery pieces in the courtyard for people to look at and take pictures with. They were kinda neat to see and think that this was the outdated stuff Saddam used against America’s military might in 1991. Like bringing a knife to a gun fight basically. But all the bullet holes and rusted armor are just filler. The tour really begins when you go into the jail cells and “interrogation rooms”. I have never been in the presence of real evil before. I mean, everyone knows what it feels like to be in the middle of something that you know is bad, or has come across a person who you know isn’t moral or just. But this was very different than that feeling. I walked inside the building and a chill came over my body like I’ve never felt before. Bad and truly sinful things happened here and I could feel it in my bones.

A few of us wanted to get out of the camp on a Saturday afternoon. So we decided to go to town and get some lunch and do some shopping in the markets. One of the guys had been to the Museum before and suggested we make a stop there on our way in. It’s really a no-frills affair. There’s no fee to pay, no parking permits required, and no gift shop to milk a few extra bucks from your pocket. It’s literally right in the middle of this little residential neighborhood. If we didn't have an interpreter with us we never would have known it was a museum or a place of any significance. I guess the tall buildings pocked with a million bullet holes should be some kind of indicator, but you really can’t see them over the perimeter wall unless you happen to be looking for them. Once inside there is a tour guide that walked us around from place to place. The first place we went to was this hall filled with over 100,000 little mirror fragments and 5000 little lights. It is a hall to honor all the Kurds Saddam tortured and killed. And the 5000 lights are specifically for the people killed by the gas attack at Halabja. Then he took us through the rusted out armor yard on the way to the cells, (more like dungeons.) The first one was like the “intake” building where people were brought for initial questioning. It was pretty nondescript, just a bunch of offices. But on the walls in every office they had pictures of things from the Kurdish plight, each room’s pictures depicting a different theme. Then we went to the real “interrogation” building. As we walked in the door we were met by the site of a man hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. He was hung by his bound hands behind his back. The intent was to pull the arms out of the sockets. The “man” was a plaster statue and we would see many more scenes like this throughout the rest of the tour. The man had alligator clips attached to his ears with wires running to a small generator on a desk. And as a spooky accent to this malevolent scene they had a real recording of an interrogation playing from a hidden speaker. You could hear the interrogator speaking Arabic and someone faintly replying. It was very effective. We walked into another room and there was another little plaster scene of a Kurdish man lying on the ground with his feet tied to a long wooden pole that was being held by 2 Iraqi men. They were holding the pole up so another Iraqi man could hit the bottom of the prisoners feet with what appeared to be a 4 foot piece of rubber hose, or maybe it was a piece of electrical cord. And then the room was only lit by a low red light. The red obscured the stark white plaster appearance of the statues and from a few feet away made it all look very real. They used this red light effect to perfection in many areas of the museum. Again, it was very spooky. In another room there was another prisoner handcuffed to a low ring on a wall. The intention was to leave the man in this position for days, hunched over like this in what could only have been excruciating pain. He was positioned at the entrance to a little cell block so all the other prisoners inside could see him and be reminded of what would happen to them if they did not cooperate. In another part of the building there was a man shackled to the railing of a stairwell. From there Iraqi’s passing by on the stairs could hit and kick him at will. Again, they would be left in these positions for days on end.

I couldn't get out of that building fast enough. We saw some other holding areas during the tour. There was a cell for women and children, a few small cells with statues in them of prisoners in positions depicting different states of imprisonment, etc. But the last place our tour guide took us was down in the basement of the largest building on the compound. It was lit only by red light and truly felt like a dungeon. There were no statues there…just large photographs on every wall of dead bodies. Bodies of men and children taken out into the country side and shot en mass, bodies of people who tried to escape Halabja in trucks but couldn't outrun the wind and the deadly gas it carried. They were spilled out onto the ground around the truck that they thought would carry them to safety. There was a woman and her baby lying dead on a street in Halabja, etc. It was a very stirring end to the tour. They want all who see these pictures to remember the evil that Saddam Hussein imposed on the Kurds. I’m sorry if the pictures I have included are shocking or upsetting. But I wanted to share the entire experience and maybe give all those who read this a glimpse into not just my state of mind after seeing it, but also into what the museum really stands for. And more than any of that, I hope all who read this understand just what America has done here in Iraq and how toppling Saddam Hussein was as necessary as anything America has ever done to help rid the world of terror and spread the hope of freedom and liberty. I left the museum feeling sick and shaken. But I also felt very proud because I know now what EVIL really is and what my moral duty is, not just an American, but as a responsible member of the human race. I hope God has forgiven those responsible for the wickedness that once lived here. And I feel blessed that he has chosen to watch out for me and mine. I won’t ever forget. I hope you won’t either.

-Jim Franks