Hassan Mahmoud, a Kurdish farmer, surveys his damaged crops in northern Iraq last month. (Photo by James Palmer)

QANDIL, Iraq — First, the neatly typed photocopies arrived, warning of the coming bombardment.

Then, as promised, volleys of rockets whistled over the jutting peaks of the surrounding mountain range, crashing into homes, livestock pens and grazing lands.

Women and children piled into four-wheel-drive trucks and fled with anything they could carry. Men followed on foot after securing their smoldering properties.

The Kurdish villagers who live in this remote valley — high up in the northeast corner of Iraq — said that for more than four weeks in August and September, Iranian forces across the border indiscriminately fired rockets at their small farming community, inflicting immense damage.

While the Iranian government publicly denied responsibility, villagers here this September displayed leaflets typed in Iranian-Kurdish. They said the leaflets were hand-delivered by passing travelers.

"I don't know why they're shelling us," said Hassan Mahmoud, a 50-year-old farmer, who lives in one of the Kurdish settlements along the Iranian border hit by artillery fire.

The attacks, villagers say, are indicative of Iran's growing dissatisfaction with Kurdistan's blossoming autonomy as the region steadily inches away from control of Baghdad's central government.

"Iran is an enemy of the Kurds," said 37-year-old school teacher Mohammed Kareem, whose village was shelled. "They don't want an independent Kurdistan."

Indeed, the Iranian shelling that comes from the east is just one problem for the villagers and people living in Kurdish cities throughout northern Iraq. To the north, Turkish officials have expressed concerns for some time that a sovereign Kurdish land in Iraq could provoke Turkish Kurds to rally for their own state.

Raising the stakes in the past few months, at least two Kurdish guerrilla groups are operating along the Turkish and Iranian borders. Turkish and Iranian officials allege the rebels have staged deadly incursions into their territories, killing and kidnapping their soldiers.

The politics and posturing have been especially damaging to the robust Kurdish farmers and herdsmen who live along Iraq's eastern frontier. Interviews with several families who were forced to scatter and are now returning to their homesteads to find crops destroyed or withering from neglect reveal people fearing a harsh winter with little to eat or sell.

The 85 families who live here in Qandil, a village named after the rugged mountains dividing Iraq and Iran, absorbed the bulk of the damage. The destruction was evident from the charred fields lining the valley floor to the scarred crests of the hilltops encircling the village.

Mahmoud, the farmer, surveyed his seven acres of land — once lush with grapevines, pomegranates, corn and tobacco leaves. He somberly gazed upon the scorched black ground and decomposing crops.

"I have no notion what I'll do," said Mahmoud, who supports a wife and eight children.

Mahmoud's neighbor, Mohammed Ali, 43, said his fields of fruits, vegetables and grain all were destroyed by the fires sparked by the exploding mortars. He also was left with next to nothing to provide for his wife and 10 children.

"We're in a bad situation," Ali said. "We have no food and no money. I don't know how we're going to eat."

In Qaladiza, an Iraqi town located six miles from the Iranian border, Mayor Hussain Ahmed said about 120,000 people were left homeless by the shelling.

Many families were forced to take shelter in tents with no water or sanitation, according to the town's police chief, Ibrahim Hamza Haziz.

Adversity is nothing new to many of the older residents in villages such as Qandil and Ganaw.

In 1978, a year before seizing power, Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of these Kurdish communities, along with dozens of others in the region. Then, throughout the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, the villages were shelled repeatedly.

In recent years, the Kurds in this part of the country have enjoyed a renaissance of liberty and growth due to a no-fly zone enforced by the U.S. military and later the toppling of Hussein and his Baath party regime.

As proof, villagers in Qandil and Ganaw said populations have nearly doubled since the rebuilding that took place over the past decade. Trade between Iran and Iraq also has developed and both nations have prospered — even if there's some question of who is prospering.

According to Iraqi border patrolmen, only about 100 people daily pass the crossing between the two nations during the hours of 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. Most of the goods, they concede, are transported by smugglers.

From a peak overlooking a no man's land of steep slopes dotted with pine trees and scrub bush, an Iraqi soldier on a recent day pointed out a group of guides. The men were leading a column of donkeys loaded with sacks along a narrow trail through a mountain pass.

The patrolmen have no reason to interfere, even if they and Kurdish villagers suspect the interlopers are up to no good.

"They'll steal everything," said Amed, the spry 70-year-old, referring to the smugglers. "How can I ever leave my home?"

TOMORROW: As Iraqis arrive in the north, so does a dreaded disease.

About the author.

(Many interviews for this report were conducted through a translator. James Palmer wrote this articles for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at j_palmer(at)stratosnet.com.)