thedrifter
12-04-05, 05:19 AM
My big preoccupation that morning, March 2, 2004, was to avoid getting trampled. Hundreds of thousands of people shuffled past the city's two main shrines; separating the two monuments was a pleasant but now teeming palm-filled park—almost like a Mexican zócalo—on a site reduced to rubble a decade earlier as Saddam's forces crushed a Shiite rebellion. Once among the mass of pilgrims, I and others were carried about as though part of a larger organism, and most everybody was sprayed repeatedly with blood from the penitents. I don't like crowds as a rule and felt terribly vulnerable knowing how little it would take for a human stampede to kick off. I was relieved once we were out of the maelstrom and vowed never to get sucked into an Iraqi crowd again.
We paused at a chai stand at a quieter spot down the road, one of a number of sites where volunteers were providing hourglass-shaped goblets of sweetened tea from steaming caldrons. I savored two, then three glasses of the narcotically sugary drink and smoked as many cigarettes, taking in the retreating humanity that was then decamping from the shrine site, many still engaging in ritual self-mutilation as they ambled by.
My Iraqi interpreter, Raheem Salman, wanted to leave; Westerners always drew stares, even in the Shiite heartland, which welcomed the ouster of Hussein. I understood the value of not lingering. This was to be my last chai. And that's when we heard it: a not-so-distant thud, like a mortar round. "Not good," said Raheem, who had helped navigate me out of difficulties in Najaf and other places.
A few seconds later, another blast erupted about 40 yards down the street to our right, more or less where we would have been walking had we not procrastinated over the chai. Debris, falling bodies and panicked worshipers were soon coming our way in a kind of rippling, uneven wave. The next explosion was closer, perhaps 20 yards to our left. A fireball shot into the air. The ground shook.
Through pure chance, we found ourselves in a relatively secure spot—right between two killing zones. In that terrifying instant, my mind somehow recalled the televised scenes of people fleeing the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. The survival instinct kicked in.
We shoved our way through the cascading victims and the miasma of debris and dust closing in from both sides. I glimpsed figures falling, others unconscious and some shrieking in fright: men, women, children. We cut down a side street filled with garbage up to our ankles and ran as fast as we could, adrenalin driving us on. The detonations persisted: We assumed the city was under mortar attack. I counted eight blasts before we ducked behind a brick wall at a construction site. I used my sat phone to call my wife, my office in Los Angeles and my bureau in Baghdad, as we hunkered down and then prayed we would get out alive.
Once it seemed relatively safe to wander about, we found several bomb sites littered with ball bearings—flesh-piercing metal pellets packed into suicide vests and belts. Strips of human tissue and globs of coagulated blood clung to buildings, walls and overhead cables like gruesome confetti. Bloodied shoes were scattered about. I recall a pair of blood-drenched girl's sneakers; she must have been about my daughter's age. I offered my satellite phone to anguished Iranian pilgrims who were desperate to call home. One man was collecting pieces of seared flesh and placing them in a plastic bag. They deserved a decent Muslim burial, he explained, as he went about his task.
A week later, I returned to the site of the tea stand to retrace my steps. I wanted to measure how close the bombings were—and, to some extent, exorcise the still-palpable fright. Nine suicide bombers had struck in Karbala, the deputy police chief told me, killing 130, while as many as 70 other pilgrims perished in synchronized strikes the same hour at the resplendent Shiite shrine of Khadimiyah in Baghdad.
On the main drag in Karbala, an entrepreneur was hawking CDs with video clips of the fireball we had seen close up, spliced with scenes of slaughter. The CD, which cost about 40 cents, was a big seller.
'WE'LL COVER YOU . . . ON THREE'
More than a year later, the hunted eyes still follow me.
The rebel in white sneakers was in shock, stooped over on the curb, life seeping from his young body. Another insurgent lay dead on the sodden ground nearby, a big chunk of his back blown open, exposing a gouge of raw meat and jagged bone. I caught the dying man's gaze as I passed by with a Marine squad.
There was no obvious hatred in those eyes, no anger, just the fear and dread of a young man knowing he was taking his final breaths. He shivered in the cold with massive internal injuries, though no wound showed. Among the last things he would see on this earth was the unthinkable: U.S. Marines on the streets of Fallouja, a place he surely thought would never meet such a fate, abandoned by God, he might say. We didn't stay long. "He could be booby-trapped," a Marine said. A medical corpsman did attend to the wounded insurgent. But it was too late. He was dead in a matter of minutes.
They called last November's battle for Fallouja the Marines' most intense bout of urban warfare since Hue, more than a quarter-century earlier. I was among the few journalists who were able to live with a Marine infantry company as it prepped for the fight, and then walk in with the troops as they took the rebel-held city.
In the anxious days before the attack, there was a lot of talk about "payback time," as Marines recalled comrades lost and maimed in and around Fallouja, as well as the corps' ignominious retreat from the city during an aborted incursion the previous spring. When word came that the invasion was imminent, some of the men in the unit I was accompanying—Charlie Company of the 1-8, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C.—began composing what they called "just-in-case" notes. These were letters, tucked in their body armor or pockets or wallets, to loved ones back home: dads and moms, wives and children, best friends.
"That's the first time I thought about death," said Lance Cpl. Stephen Ross O'Neill, 19, of Cincinnati, who had just addressed such a missive to his father. "I don't think anyone should have to write a letter like that."
Among the journalists in our camp, nerves were becoming frayed as "I-Day," or the day of the invasion, neared. Some had decided not to go in during the first 24 hours, expecting a blood bath. We were all feeling queasy and not getting much sleep. An experienced broadcast journalist who had opted to stay behind asked what I and my colleague, Times photographer Luis Sinco, intended to do. We had decided to go in, largely because to do otherwise would have felt like a betrayal of the Marines who had been decent enough to share their lives with us. "Don't ask me to push your wheelchair," the broadcast guy sneered at me.
On the eve of the attack, we headed out before dawn in the Marines' trademark 7-ton trucks, a line of transport vehicles brimming with troops motoring through the chilly rain of the western desert. In the fog and mist the scene felt like a replay of a World War I battle. "My friends are back home flipping burgers," boasted Rafael Peguero, 19, from the Bronx, as we rumbled along toward the rebel stronghold.
We spent the daylight hours in foxholes gouged from the scorpion-infested earth north of Fallouja. Nightfall brought a spectacular display: Artillery and jets pounded the city, softening up the town before the onslaught. The Marines cheered each explosion. It was hard to imagine anyone surviving the bombardment. Finally, about midnight, we headed in, hiking through desert brush, swampy canals and bomb craters to the town limits.
It was a rough entry. The platoon I accompanied was pinned down for four hours at a traffic circle under heavy fire. A cold rain descended upon us. Before the invasion, I had imagined an almost invincible front of thousands of Marines and dozens of tanks and armored vehicles as we crossed the threshold into Fallouja. Now, though, there were no more than a dozen soaked and freezing grunts in the vicinity, and the enemy appeared to be everywhere. Illumination rounds of white phosphorous periodically transformed the inky night into an eerie day, exposing our vulnerable position and drawing curses from infantrymen who were seeking cover in the dark. I'd written about several Marine units that had been overwhelmed and nearly wiped out; I didn't savor being part of the next one.
I pulled my flak vest tight and stuck my helmeted head down in the curb, getting as low as I could to the grimy street as rocket-propelled grenades and tracer fire arced overhead. I tried to calm myself by transporting my mind elsewhere—to a favorite family retreat in Italy's Dolomites, near the Austrian border, where my wife, daughter and I go to escape. The first snow there would be falling.
Somehow we weren't overrun, and before dawn the platoon I was with finally started moving deeper into the city—first in the shadow of a giant Marine bulldozer, which shortly broke through the pavement and got stuck. Advancing through those abandoned streets in the dark was even more terrifying than being pinned down.
Fallouja was surreal and sinister; most civilians had wisely fled, leaving mainly U.S. troops and guerrillas, who took up hiding positions in houses and waited for a clear shot. Unseen U.S. aircraft groaned in the sky. We all knew the pre-sunrise lull would soon end—and it did. Insurgents opened fire on the squad I was with shortly after first light (and morning prayers) as we proceeded down a residential street. I was caught a little to the right of the main group and dashed for cover into a seemingly abandoned house; all the Marines scattered to walls on the left.
I was on my own, unarmed, at the entrance of a building with fire coming from several directions. And I wasn't aware of an important fact: Marines had entered the house a few minutes earlier and found it filled with arms and ordnance—and possibly wired to blow up. Numerous homes and vehicles had been booby-trapped.
"You gotta cross," Staff Sgt. Dennis Nash, the platoon commander, yelled to me from across the way. "We'll cover you . . . on three."
I didn't have time to think about it. At the count, I grabbed my bulky pack and sprinted across the street, no more than 15 feet wide but appearing as a vast chasm at that moment. The Marines put down a wall of fire; I could hear bullets skipping on the pavement. I dived through a hedge and onto a strip of mud where two riflemen—I recall a tall Dominican American kid, Dominguez, from New Jersey—were covering me. "I never knew you could run so fast!" one Marine after another repeated to me later. My harried dash swiftly entered company lore.
We spent several nights in mosques, many heavily damaged after serving as rebel redoubts. Waking up in a place as sublime as the Khulafa Rashid mosque in Fallouja—and finding sleeping Marines on its fine carpet as a dazzling morning sun pierced the stained glass—was something very strange indeed. After a few days of the American blitz, Fallouja lay in ruins.
For many Marines, Fallouja was their first experience in sustained combat: urban warfare, house by house, fire from the "mooj," or mujahideen, at some points coming from 360 degrees. Iraq had mostly been a hit-and-run affair; troops seldom faced off against their enemy and frequently referred to the insurgents as "phantoms" who quickly melted into the population. "I've been waiting for this fight ever since I joined the Marines," Staff Sgt. Nash, an 11-year veteran, told me. "This battle is going to be written about in history books."
Famously, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, who headed the Marine expeditionary force that reclaimed Fallouja, declared that U.S. forces had "broken the back" of the insurgency. The fact is, the rebels lost a safe haven, but were far from beaten. A grim revolt already had broken out in the much larger and strategic northern city of Mosul. Samarra, Fallouja, Mosul, Tal Afar, Qaim, Buhruz—how many times had I attended press briefings and heard Sunni rebel strongholds declared "secured," only to be contested again?
I began receiving e-mails from relatives and friends of these Marines. They wanted to know about their men in Fallouja. The experience was very humbling and somehow harked back to a different war era, when people scanned newspaper accounts for word of their loved ones. Of course, the Internet and satellite technology had made it all so much more accessible and faster.
One woman from Texas e-mailed me photos of her recent wedding, which her brother, a captain in Fallouja, had missed. Then there was the wife of a combat engineer who was ecstatic to receive a call from her husband after I lent him my sat phone. "I am currently six months pregnant with our baby boy and he hasn't got to be here for any of it," she wrote of her husband. "Him calling was so special to me, and it made my day. We have lost several babies in the past, including one last year during the war and he was unable to be with me at that time. This is the first baby that has thrived and is making it this far. I know that he is a strong man, and that is what keeps me going."
A Marine mother from Connecticut put it to me this way: "You are our only link every morning.
WHEN THE WAR TOOK THE DAY OFF
Election day, Jan. 30, 2005, broke cold and ferocious in Baghdad. From the L.A. Times bureau at the heavily barricaded Hamra Hotel, we could see puffs of smoke and feel the familiar detonations. It seemed as though the worst predictions for violence might materialize. But I'd learned to expect the unexpected in Iraq.
As the hours went by, the capital quieted down; more people headed for the polls, some dressed in their best clothes. We could see lines of citizens defying death threats and walking to the booths in a city now free of cars and under extremely tight security. The desire not to be left out in this singular experiment in democracy became infectious among certain groups, especially Shiites and Kurds, who had suffered such repression under Hussein's rule.
A colleague and I headed into the Jadriyah neighborhood near our hotel. Walking the streets wasn't something one did regularly in Baghdad anymore, not since the kidnappings and beheadings of Westerners. Most news organizations had given up independent houses and opted for restricted life in some version of an armed compound. We all were terrified of being kidnapped and thrown in a cage for our loved ones to view on a grisly video. Long gone were the days when we jumped in a car without thinking twice and headed off to Mosul or Kirkuk, Najaf or Basra, the Syrian border or Kurdistan in search of a story. We now traveled in armored vehicles with bodyguards and a chase car, plotting every trip.
As we ambled through the oddly festive capital on election day, someone from among a group of children playing soccer in the streets yelled and threw something at us. A harmless anti-aircraft shell skittered our way. We maintained our pace and didn't look back. My Fallouja experience was still raw, and I stayed close to the walls to avoid snipers overhead, just like the Marines had taught me.
It was exhilarating strolling those streets, now largely devoid of traffic; civilian vehicles had been mostly banned as a measure against car bombs. The war seemed to take the day off—though there were, in fact, scores of attacks in the capital and elsewhere, mostly in the morning. People proudly displayed their purple index fingers, dyed to show that they had voted. The image is a cliché now, but it's hard to understate how uplifting it felt then. I'd never experienced Baghdad like this. The election site, at a school, was downright inspiring.
"We feel we are really doing something good," said Abdul Munaim Abdul Karim, a 63-year-old engineer and secular Shiite, who said he and his wife trekked six miles to find their polling place. "This is a historic day for Iraq."
An occupational hazard of working as a journalist in Iraq is to be accused of being too negative. Yet on Jan. 30, we were probably too positive. The press hailed the results (though we dutifully noted the poor Sunni Arab turnout, dampened by threats, distrust and a call for a boycott).
But what became obvious in the months following the elections is that the vote likely exacerbated Iraq's festering ethnic and political divides. Shiite- and Kurdish-backed slates captured about 75% of the votes; the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority felt more marginalized than ever. We were soon witnessing a relatively new and sinister phenomenon: paramilitary-style executions of civilians, reminiscent of the death squads of Latin America's civil wars of the 1970s and '80s.
Scores of bloated bodies, victims of sectarian slaughter, floated in the Tigris. Most appeared to be Shiites who had been kidnapped by Sunni Arab assassins. Inevitably, bodies of abducted Sunnis began to appear in ditches in Shiite-dominated Sadr City and environs, their hands tied behind their backs, blindfolds over their eyes, bullet holes in their heads. Witnesses reported that men in white SUVs—a trademark of the largely Shiite security services—arrived at night and took away their men.
History may well judge the landmark Iraqi elections of January 2005 as a seminal advance for democracy in the Middle East. Up close, though, the vote seemed to open even wider the floodgates of mass murder.
In February, I received an e-mail from a Marine captain with whom I had spent time during the Fallouja operation three months earlier. We'd met one dark evening in an abandoned building near city hall, where his hard-hit recon platoon—with a Purple Heart rate approaching 50%—had taken up sniper positions. They picked off rebels, one by one, from the blacked-out windows. The captain informed me that he had been seriously injured in a raid south of Fallouja after we last spoke; his ulnar nerve and an artery were severed in his right forearm, and he was scheduled for nerve-graft surgery. A sergeant whom I'd also met had been killed in the same operation.
"The election turnout was inspiring," the captain wrote. "It was good to see that our contributions mean something to these people."
I couldn't help but admire that kind of hopefulness. But I also couldn't help feel that he and others had been used as instruments of someone else's grand ambitions—like warriors from time immemorial, I suppose. The entire enterprise in Iraq rests on two shaky premises: First, that the disenfranchised and radicalized Sunni Arab minority—accustomed to being dominant—will somehow acquiesce, accept the new Iraq and abandon its armed struggle. And second, that the Iraqi armed forces, notoriously infiltrated by the rebels, will be able to keep the peace without a large-scale, open-ended U.S. troop presence.
The country's Shiite political elite—mostly longtime exiles with strong links to Iran—know they've ascended for one major reason: U.S. force. But they cannot say that to the Iraqi public. Instead, they must hint obliquely that Hussein's overthrow was the result of some kind of internal Shiite revolt or divine intervention. To give credit to the Americans, to Sgt. Nash and the men of Charlie Company and all the others, would be political suicide.
U.S. forces in Iraq have no illusions about their dual, contradictory role. They prop up the government and provide some measure of security—probably holding off an all-out battle for control of Baghdad. On the other hand, their very presence is the insurgency's major selling point.
THE LONG ROAD HOME
I saw Nahrain Yonaan one last time before I left Iraq.
We arranged to meet at a mutual friend's house. At this point, I dared not go into her neighborhood in Baghdad's southern Doura district, a hotbed of insurgent activity and rebel checkpoints. Nahrain looked drained, lacking the vitality I had sensed even when she was half-conscious in that hospital bed more than a year earlier. She had lost her left eye, her right eye was close to sightless, her hearing was disintegrating and several toes and fingers were mangled or missing. Pain was constant and shrapnel remained in her body—the result of pitiable medical care.
The frequent gunshots in her neighborhood terrified her; she feared insurgents might return to finish her off. "Everyone was nice to me during my time with them," she said, still befuddled that the Army had not offered medical assistance. "I was shocked to be ignored by them."
By Nahrain's side sat her older sister, Atoor, 27, a spirited soul who was filled with resentment about the new Iraq. "I am a young woman, but I can no longer go out freely and walk the streets," she said. "I cannot put on jeans and walk out because people will start calling me bad names." As Christians, Atoor and Nahrain were appalled at the graffiti that smeared their churches, the bombs at Sunday services, the coerced wearing of head scarves and the threats to a group that had lived side by side with Muslims for centuries. In their view, a wave of fundamentalism and moral absolutism was sweeping their nation.
Nahrain and her sister were on their way to Amman, Jordan, looking to start fresh in a new place. Their dream was to acquire U.S. visas, but the sisters had little hope of ever being granted the prized documents, despite relatives in America who were willing to sponsor them. Iraq, the country of their birth, wasn't for them anymore.
It's something you hear a lot in Iraq these days: The lucky ones get out. "I still have hope in the future and in life," Nahrain said, "but not here."
I bade farewell to Iraq in mid-July, hoping for the best as we careened down the airport road, past the bomb-gouged potholes and the unlucky spots where so many had been blown up. I must have traveled this way 50 times. A few months earlier, Marla Ruzcika, a 28-year-old aid worker from Northern California and a friend of many journalists, had been killed there, along with her driver-translator, in a suicide bombing that had targeted a convoy traveling near her car. The fate of this woman whose exuberance seemed to mock the very notion of mortality was on my mind as we sped along.
I got dropped off and double-stepped with my bags past the carcasses of vehicles destroyed by suicide bombers to the relative safety of the Nepalese contract guards at Checkpoint One, behind a comforting concrete wall. I took a deep breath. I endured a final round of searches, preoccupied as always that someone in line might be concealing a bomb and preparing for paradise. I then waited eight hours in the Baathist cathedral that is the Baghdad airport terminal for a flight out.
A series of odd summer sandstorms had enveloped Iraq, and the few commercial flights were spotty. Many blamed the Americans—who else?—for the curious meteorological events that had cast an ochre pall over the battered capital. Something about military activity in the west kicking up the sand and dust.
Abruptly, the sky cleared and the Royal Jordanian jet that was to extract me and a motley assemblage of security contractors and assorted Iraqis approached the airport on its delayed run from Amman. As if on cue, an explosion shook the terminal. A mortar landed harmlessly about 100 yards away, drawing a glance from the seen-it-all security men also waiting for the flight. "They're getting closer," commented an Aussie contractor, who looked out the terminal window and watched the reddish-brown earth erupt as the mortar struck the desert.
We boarded uneventfully and took off safely, the jet banking severely into the overcast skies to avoid potential rocket fire. Two hours later I was in a taxi in Amman. This had been my 12th or 13th trip into Iraq. I'd lost count. But I was in one piece, more or less. I telephoned my wife in Italy. It was time to start a new life. Iraq was somebody else's story now.
Patrick J. McDonnell is The Times' Buenos Aires bureau chief.
Ellie