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had full access to TRIANGLE, enabling them to read all Abwehr and SS
(RSHA VI) signals traffic from 1941 onwards, it is unlikely that any opera-
tions escaped their notice. What follows is a series of operational summaries
identified by agency of origin (Abwehr, Seekriegsleitung (Maritime Warfare
Command [SKL]), KONO, AB, or the Turkish intelligence services [TIS])
and (code) name. Noticeably absent is the SS foreign intelligence service
(RSHA VI), which undertook no initiatives targeting Iraq.
(Narrative 1 [Abwehr]) Operation RUVANDIZ-SCHLUCHT. This
operation is said to have been a detailed scheme originally submitted in
1941 to Hans-Otto Wagner of Abw II by Paul Leverkuehn of KONO for
a 2–3-man parachute team to carry out the demolition of bridges on the
185-km-long, strategic asphalt road, known even today as the Hamilton
Road, constructed by the British in northeastern Kurdistan between Erbil
and the Persian frontier in 1927–1932. Berlin’s intention to cripple such
vital infrastructure seems to have been a strangely counterproductive plan.
In 1941, one would have thought that the Germans would have sought to
protect the Rowanduz gorge bridges rather than destroy them, for they
would have been essential to any Wehrmacht troop movements to and
from northeastern Iraq and northwestern Persia over the Gardaneh-ye-
Shinak Pass (1785 m). Surely the Germans should have sought to capital-
ize on the extraordinary engineering achievements of the British instead of
nullifying them. Perhaps this is why the plan was abandoned.^15
(Narrative 2 [Abwehr]) Operation MAMMUT. It is difficult to under-
stand how Gottfried Müller, a young infantry officer, managed to persuade
the normally meticulous Abw II planners during the summer of 1942 that
the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (1878–1956) would lend his
support to an improbable Abwehr sabotage/countersabotage mission to
Kurdistan in 1943. Surely the fact that Müller had, as a mere 22-year-old,
enjoyed meeting the Kurdish sheikh seven years earlier did not constitute
sufficient grounds for the Abwehr to sanction a costly, long-term initiative
dependent on Sheikh Mahmud’s anticipated support. The original encoun-
ter had occurred in Baghdad during Müller’s 1935–1936 cycling tour of the
Balkans, the Levant, and the Middle East, which was probably a thinly dis-
guised Abwehr scouting operation. However, no attempt appears to have
been made subsequently by Werner Eisenberg or Hans-Otto Wagner of Abw
II OR to update their intelligence on Mahmud, or to corroborate Müller’s
colossal assumptions with an objective investigation into the Sheikh’s war-
time political leanings and loyalties.^16 The Sheikh, an ardent Kurdish nation-
alist and briefly self- proclaimed King of Kurdistan (1922–1924), had indeed