FOR Private Abbas Shomail the war in Iraq ended before it had even begun. Two days ago Abbas slipped away from his sentry post and started running in darkness across the muddy frontline. He stumbled past the newly dug trenches designed to protect Iraq's conscript army from American bombardment.
He kept going. Eventually he found himself in a rolling landscape of green hills and pine trees, the Kurdish self-rule enclave in the north of Iraq. Abbas was the first deserter from the Iraqi military to cross into Kurdistan for several months.
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