In 1985 I was introduced to Kaveh Golestan who was at that time spending six months of each year embedded with Iranian troops covering the Iran Iraq War. (As a award winning press photo journalist.)

We became good friends. When he was in London we spent a great deal of time chatting about war and life and religion, often over coffee his wife Hengameh would bring us to accompany the continuous stream of cigarettes, in his library room in Eton Terrace. It was there, sometime in 1987, or 1988, I heard the story of the Paradise Key.

On one occasion he asked if he could visit my home in Hampton Court to photograph me. In 1987 he spent a few hours photographing me. And then gifted me the photos which have been used many times for my professional purposes.

The Paradise Keys

During the Iran/Iraq War (1980 – 1988) Iran’s Shia fundamentalist regime of Ayatolah Khomeini found themselves in a tricky position. The same Ayatolah who I learned (from Kaveh) subsisted on a diet of raw onions and yogurt. The same Ayatolah whose Iranian Revolution ousted the Shah and established theocratic political rule by Islamic jurists. The consequences of which remain in place in terrorist Iran today where kids are executed at will.

In 1979, the alarming spread of this low tolerance Sharia had to be stopped by the USA for fear of Islam spreading beyond their control. Regionally next-door around the same time, Iraq saw change. in came “cherished comrade Saddam Hussein” on a wave of executions establishing his US assisted control of the Ba’ath party. By August 1, hundreds of high-ranking Ba’ath Party members had been executed by this most murderous of goons. By August 8, of 1979, twenty-one of the twenty-two senior party Iraqis were executed by firing squad for “their part in a plot to overthrow Iraq’s new president”. (The 22nd one managed to flee. Would love to know his story but failed to ask when I should have.) Now with Saddam firmly in control of almost 14 Million people, we were off to the War races. September 1980. Iran’s population was more than double Iraq’s – almost 40 million.

Despite superior numbers that might well have expected to win against a far smaller force, after years of poorly-conceived tactics by this Iranian onion-eating yogurt man, (a euphemism for ridiculously-idiotic battle plans) territorial gains followed by grave losses brought the war between Iran and Iraq to a stalemate.

Khomeini and his blithering-dolt bearded-idiot style leadership had no interest in actual military tactics. They depended on an invisible voice rather than tried and proven techniques evolved in mankind’s historical prosecution of modern warfare. Their battle plan was disclosed nightly in prayer by Allah.

As a result Iran’s military force was, and I paraphrase from historical record; a heroin driven bunch of whacko’s bending over five times a day to face Mecca. It is fair to say Iran’s Islamist forces were superior in number to the Iraqi’s, led by CIA favorite Saddam Hussein, but limited by the lack of sophisticated weaponry and hamstrung by the absence of post stone-age military tactics.

By 1984, exhausted after four years of costly backwards and forwards attacks and retreats the war had found its basic low level, similar to First World War conditions. Two sides in trenches, separated by a one mile ‘no man’s land’ heavily mined with anti-personnel land mines, with machine gun placements on both sides.

By this time hundreds of thousands had already died. Initially Iraq’s leader had been thrilled by his Generals early successes, but when they failed to repeat victory at every turn, his military solution was to execute the Generals who lost. Then appointing another batch to lead Iraq’s military. As a political signature – execution was Saddam’s preferred leadership style. Executing by example.

This may be a sensible tactic, or it may not. Whatever your thoughts on his motivational style of war-command, eventually the pool of talent in the Generals commanding battlefield regiments runs thin once you have executed the top thousand commanders in your own military. It is fair to say Saddam was a supremely ridiculous idiot leader when it came to prosecuting a major war. That killing a commander who does not deliver victory is going to limit your options more with every dead General.

The Iranians did not have a Saddam-style leader directing their operations although theirs may have surpassed Iraq’s in the metric of supreme ridiculousness. (Onions and yogurt notwithstanding.) This was a Holy War. Iran’s supreme commander was Allah. He (PBUHN) gave the orders. It fell to the bearded-believers – the senior believers – to relay Allah’s battle plan to the uniformed conscripts. Institutions like Westport and Sandhurst with all they represented in understanding modern warfare based on the lessons of the past were unfamiliar to these military commanders.
There is only one book. Clearly a one size-fits-all book for any Battalion Commander allocating his resources on the eve of battle.

Unusually in the context of modern warfare Iran’s battle plan was not written by experienced Military men, trained Generals familiar with the history of modern war, but formulated following prayer. No one knows more about battle plans than Allah.

Now – mid 80’s – years into the war – the sheer blind idiocy driving this uniquely idiotic conflict meant battlefield stalemate. The two sets of religiots, one third Sunni Iraqi’s, two thirds Shia Iranians, getting smacked up on Heroin and praying a great deal for divine guidance, lined up on opposite sides of a no mans land, with no idea of what to do next beyond continuing to issue the troops with heroin from the butchery with their allotment of meat while firing occassional bursts of machine gun bullets into the air.

How/why would you launch an attack on the Iraqi defensive line considering the minefield issue, the lines of machine-gunners and the wider context of sheer blind leadership dumbfuckery.

Without access to minefield clearing vehicles their faith was rewarded with an ingenious solution. A message that reached the Iranian military directly from their supreme commander with a little interpretive flair from the Mullah’s.

A human-wave tactic entirely unique to this time and place. In the Quran we learn the highest purpose of a Muslim is Jihad. Dying in Jihad, the journey to knowing God, ensures immediate entry to heaven where 70 virgins await. Everyone knows that. Now the kids. Boys 10 – 12 years old could be blessed with Paradise while at the same time striking a terrible blow against the enemy. Whose Sunni beliefs so offended the Shia truth.

This ‘Paradise Key’ event began when the Ayatolah’s regime placed an order for 500,000 plastic keys from Taiwan. With these keys as an armory, from the Mullahs to the Mothers – word went out across the land – Mothers bring your children to the front line to become martyrs for Islam. A tremendous first-come first-serve early opportunity to get to Paradise with no strings attached. Mothers arrived in droves bringing their young boys, aged 10 – 12, to serve God (Allah in Arabic) in jihad.

Typically 2,000 at a time would be delivered to the front line after school on Friday. On arrival each boy was given a plastic key. They would spend the weekend praying five times daily; bonding with their ‘Paradise Keys’, before lining up on Monday mornings, 2,000 in a line. Holding hands. Preparing for the ‘Human Wave‘ advance across the no mans land.

Upon command, Allahu Akbar, they would rise up from their trenches and walk out, hand in hand, into the minefield. Faced down by Iraqi machine-gun defenses on the front line. Certain death. No child ever made it to the other side.

Eye witnesses to these Human wave attacks say that despite some of the children showing fear, vomiting or crying, not one single child turned and ran away.

Of course in military terms this technique had no value whatsoever. Any ground attack across no-mans land that might have cleared the mines for soldiers to pass would end on the Iraqi machine guns that lay in wait.

And the military purpose behind the supreme commanders thinking?

“The Iraq gunners are Muslim. They know it is a sin to kill a Muslim child. Once they have committed this sin they are damned for all eternity. With every death we get a lucky martyr. They lose a soldier.”

Many many thousands of children died in this way. Martyrs for Islam whose parents traded their children’s lives for a 1 cent Taiwanese plastic key, whilst praying five times a day to their God.

In total around 500,000 people were killed during the Iran–Iraq War, with Iran bearing the larger share of the casualties. This excludes the tens of thousands of civilians killed in the concurrent Anfal campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds. A despicable war crime in which Kaveh was possibly the first journalist to report Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, gassing civilians. With actual photos as evidence.

The combined financial losses of this Shia-Ayatolah meets Sunni-Hussein supreme idiocy is believed to have exceeded US$1 trillion.

Many thousands of the dead were these young boys, 10 to 12 tears old – rewarded with their paradise keys and their 70 virgins in paradise. (For all eternity.) How proud the mothers were in the photos I saw of them delivering their sons to the front line.

The Human Wave.

As witnessed by Penthouse journalist Bob Cringely

‘I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah, run across No Man’s Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars. And that’s exactly what happened in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi soldiers.

Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.’

Although by that time in my life – in my mid twenties – I already knew the perils of blind-faith and religious exploitation of the vulnerable in His Name all too well, I was horrified when I heard this story. But then there were so many horrific stories from that conflict and others raging at the time it took a personal tragedy before I decided to tell the story in a song called THE PARADISE KEY.

Years had passed. It was now April 2nd, 2003. I was walking passed the TV in my living room when I heard the name KAVEH GOLESTAN. I backtracked and turned up the TV. It was the BBC News. He was killed standing on a line mine in Iraq. In reaction to this gut-punch feeling, working with my friend Hugh Burns, we turned the story into a song. In a single songwriting recording session in my Riverbank Studio. With Hugh playing and singing. In one take.

The Paradise Key (Brel/Burns.)

I was a child with the world at my at my feet
I ran and I played where the crossroads meet
Mother drove me to join my brothers in arms
And on the front line we were handed the charm

For two days and nights we listened to talk
how wars are won, how holy men walk
We learned about god and our part in his plan
when the time came we rose as one man

All the way from the east – made especially
A gift from above – to set my soul free
The locks to their heaven will open for me
Cause I am the one with the paradise key
Na na na na — lord look out for me
I’ll be the one with the paradise key.

Then up from the trench, 4 thousand young feet
In a human wave rose for the good god we’d meet
they fell to my left they fell to my right
our victory is sure as the spirit takes flight

All the way from the east – made especially
A gift from above – to set my soul free
The locks to their heaven will open for me
Cause I am the one with the paradise key
Na na na na — lord look out for me
I’ll be the one with the paradise key.

Then below my feet the ground did explode
My motion went slow, on a wave up I rode
I followed the light resolute in my faith
and reached for my key to open the gate

All the way from the east – made especially
A gift from above – to set my soul free
The locks to their heaven will open for me
Cause I am the one with the paradise key

Na na na na — lord look out for me
I’ll be the one with the paradise key.
Na na na na — lord look out for me
I was the one with the paradise key.

My original blog about this story is here

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