Special Iraq Coverage: Your Hearts and Minds, or Else
Gert Van Langendonck, October 9, 2003
Editor's Note: GNN is proud to kick off a month of special Iraq coverage with an exclusive dispatch from Gert Van Langendonck, a veteran war correspondent and our newest contributor. Van Langendonck reports that U.S. troops facing fierce resistance from Saddam loyalists in the so-called Sunni Triangle are taking a page out of an old textbook, rewarding Iraqis who cooperate with them, and punishing those who shoot at them by destroying their houses and crops. It didn't work out very well in Vietnam, and it doesn't look like it's working out in occupied Iraq.
(Balad, Iraq) Mohammed Al-Awasari's shack was no match for the American M-113 armored personal carrier. In a matter of minutes, the APC's powerful tracks reduced his small shop in the village of Albu Hishma to a pile of rubble. The U.S. soldiers on this "PSYOPS" (psychological operations) mission deep inside Iraq's Sunni Triangle, were laughing, some were taking pictures to show back home, while the gathered villagers stood around and looked on helplessly.
Shopkeeper Mohammed was out of luck. The U.S. troops had decided to give him a break after he told them he wasn't responsible for the spray-painted pro-Saddam slogan on his shop's facade. But the Kurdish translator working with the Americans entered his shop and found a notebook in which Mohammed had apparently been practicing writing the very slogan on the wall outside: "Saddam is the heroic leader of a cowardly people. Saddam is the heroic leader of a cowardly people. Saddam..." Mohammed was given five minutes to clear out his produce before the APC went in.
Mohammed's shop was one of five houses in Albu Hishma that were partially destroyed on this day by the soldiers of the 1st Battalion 8th Infantry, stationed near the town of Balad. Several other villagers escaped the same fate by hurriedly covering up the anti-American graffiti with mud. Today's mission was part of a new, two-tiered approach to winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis in this area, notorious for its stiff resistance against the U.S.-led
"We have tried to help these people and they have thanked us by shooting at us...We want to make them understand that there is a price to pay if they support the terrorists."
"I feel bad that the children have to see this," said Specialist Bryan Bledsoe, "But we have tried to help these people and they have thanked us by shooting at us. Now we're trying it this way. We want to make them understand that there is a price to pay if they support the terrorists."
The Americans refer to Albu Hishma as "Tupac," after the slain rapper Tupac Shakur. "On our maps this place is called Albu Shakur, so we just went with Tupac," said Specialist Brad Lewis. It is doubtful whether anyone in Albu Hishma has ever heard of Tupac Shakur - American pop culture is not high on people's minds here. Albu Hishma is one of many villages in this area where U.S. troops come under attack on a regular basis.
These days, most of the attacks are done by IED's, Improvised Explosive Devices, which are hidden on the side of the roads or buried in the road surface and remotely detonated, or by mortar attacks from the fields surrounding the many U.S. bases in the area. Balad airfield, a sprawling former military base of the Saddam regime, which is on its way to becoming the biggest American support base in Iraq, gets shelled on a nightly basis. Officially, the U.S. military refuses to give out figures on the number of wounded-in-action at Balad airfield, but individual soldiers spoke of one incident in which fourteen medical personnel were injured. Battalion headquarters at Balad town, too, has come under repeated mortar attack, and during a recent visit, work was underway there to surround the old school building with an anti-hand-grenade fence. The Americans' closest neighbors have wisely moved away.
The 1st Battalion 8th Infantry is confronted with a peculiar local situation in Balad. Battalion headquarters is in an old school in the town of Balad, which has a majority Shia Muslim population and has been cooperating with the Americans. But the town is surrounded by what the Americans call a "donut" of Sunni Muslim villages where many people remain loyal to the old regime. "Inside the 'donut', there hasn't been a single shot fired at the Americans," said Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, "and our policy from the start has been: If you don't shoot at us, you will be rewarded."
The policy is eerily similar to that of the Saddam regime, only in reverse.
So the Americans are pouring money into Balad - $1.2m so far - providing help with the water and electricity supply, and fixing up schools, whereas the villages where the Americans get shot at get slapped with an early 7 p.m. curfew; they get four hours a day of electricity and very little in terms of reconstruction projects. The policy is eerily similar to that of the Saddam regime, only in reverse. Sunni villages and neighborhoods traditionally loyal to Saddam received subsidies and favors, like a continuous flow of electricity, while Shia areas suffered neglect and outright oppression at the hands of the dictator and his henchmen.
The PSYOPS mission in Albu Hishma was preceded by an action a day earlier by the 1-8th's Lightning Platoon, which received the "Eagle Play of the Day" award "for firing white phosphorous grenades into the fields south of Albu Hishma, burning several acres of vegetation," which added "extra emphasis" to the next day's PSYOPS mission.
PSYOPS, of course, brings to mind Vietnam, where the "hearts and minds" program originated. The Americans at the time were trying to "pacify" South Vietnam by giving aid to villages supporting the communist guerillas, and financial incentives to encourage Viet Cong defections. But PSYOPS also had a sinister aspect to it, in that uncooperative villages were punished, often cruelly. Capt. Gerard Walsh, a civil affairs officer with the 1-8th, admitted that the hearts and minds campaign "ultimately didn't work in Vietnam since we lost the war." But the tactic has never disappeared from the Army's textbooks "because it was felt that, regardless of the outcome of the war, the tactic itself did produce positive results."
"I realize that today's mission in Albu Hishma doesn't exactly send the message that we are here to help them," Lt. Col. Sassaman said afterwards. "In fact, you could say that we are using some of the same tactics as Saddam's people did. But it does send the message that we will not be threatened by anyone. Keep in mind that our Battalion alone has had eleven wounded-in-action since we arrived here in June."
It helps that, at least in Balad, "We are treated like rock stars," said Lt. Col. Sassaman. The Shia population has embraced the U.S. presence, and the town's officials work closely with the Americans in providing information about the resistance. The town's mayor, Nibil Dawash, says he entirely agrees with their approach to the loyalist villages, "These people are supporting terrorists. They deserve to die."
But working with the Americans is not without danger. On the morning of the interview, the mayor's staff discovered two handgrenades and explosives just outside city hall. Several weeks ago, there was an attack with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG's). The mayor refuses to see the conflict in terms of the Shia-Sunni opposition, blaming the attacks instead on outside influences, "former Baath party members from Fallujah and Ramadi, and local Wahabi's, religious fanatics who get support from Saudi Arabia." He feels that, "If we are mean and strict with these people, the situation will improve. There is no use being nice to these people."
It remains to be seen whether the carrot-and-stick approach to the loyalist villages will make the Americans anymore popular there. Several days after the raid, in the absence of U.S. soldiers, the people of Albu Hishma seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. Fifty-five year old Hassan Ali Hamoud proudly pointed to his ten-year old son Maher as the author of the "Long live Saddam!" slogan which resulted in a two-room dependency of his house being demolished by the Americans. "They will never stop us from loving Saddam," he said.
Are the Americans turning to the Israelis for pointers on how to run an occupation?
The similarities of recent American tactics here to the Israeli army's policy of destroying the houses of Palestinians suspected of supporting terrorism, is not lost on the people of Albu Hishma. "We are worse off than the Palestinians now," said Ali Hamoud.
The Israeli connection is not just in the minds of the people. According to a recent AP report, the U.S. has expressed interest in acquiring software the Israeli army uses to train its troops patrolling the occupied Palestinian territories for pointers on how to subdue a hostile population.
In the nearby town of Aduluwiya, Israeli-like "collective punishment" tactics were in full-effect. Last week, the Americans destroyed the palm orchard that has been in twenty-five year old Mohamed Ali Sadoun's family for fifty years because passing U.S. convoys had been attacked from its cover. "As far as I am concerned, it is Israel that destroyed my orchard," Ali Sadoun said. It took three days for the American bulldozers to uproot all of his one-thousand date palms. When Ali Sadoun asked for a few days reprieve to harvest the dates, the Americans refused.
"I hated the Americans before and I hate them more now," he said. "I will teach my children and their children to hate the Americans until the end of their lives. Even if they pave our streets in gold, we don't want them here."
Every night, local Saddam supporters taunt the Americans by defacing the freshly painted white wall with slogans like "Yes, yes, Saddam" or "Down USA." And every day, the Americans have the wall painted white again.
Accoording to Ali Sadoun and other standing by, everybody in Aduluwiya, "except for a handful of spies," supports the guerrilla fighters.
One thing the Americans have accomplished. There will be no new pro-Saddam slogans painted on the walls of Albu Hishma. "We're not stupid. They will just destroy more houses if we do," said Ali Mahmoud. "No, we will paint them instead on the walls of the school the Americans have just renovated."
The school, just outside Albu Hishma, is one of the few American reconstruction projects in this area. Every night, local Saddam supporters taunt the Americans by defacing the freshly painted white wall around the school with slogans such as "Yes, yes, Saddam" or "Down USA." And every day, the Americans have the wall painted white again.
It is a constant source of frustration for Lt. Col. Sassaman, because he knows the Americans would look ridiculous if they tore down the very school they helped renovate. "No, we're not going to tear down that wall," he said angrily. "We're just going to have the Iraqi police paint it white over an over again, as long as it takes."
Lt. Col. Sassaman is popular with the men of the 1-8th because of his gloves-off approach to the loyalist villages, but privately he is given to some doubt. "Our first approach didn't really work all that well," he admitted. "We found that the former regime loyalists where using the fact that we were favoring the Shia in Balad town to rally support against us amongst the Sunni villagers." Recently, he has given the battalion's civil affairs officers permission to start some reconstruction projects in the loyalist villages. "Meanwhile, we will continue to militarily target the people shooting at us from those areas," he said.
Determining who those people are is the job of the Battalion's intelligence officer, Capt. Alex Williams. It has been an uphill batte. "Although we have been successful in taking out enemy cells, we realize that in doing so we have alienated a part of the population. Sometimes we hit the wrong house, mistakes are made." In the beginning, he said, they were far too gullible about Iraqi informants. "Everyone here has a hidden agenda. People would come to us and denounce others as senior Baath party members, and we would raid their houses. Then we noticed that a lot of the people being denounced belonged to the same local tribe, and we realized that we were being used in a local vendetta. Meanwhile, of course, you have pissed of an entire tribe. So now we make a point of taking the informant with us whenever we go out on a raid."
Recently a new guerrilla faction has surfaced that goes by the name of the "Sept. 11 Revolutionary Group."
The larger threat the Americans face, according to Williams, is "the alliance between former Baath party members and extreme religious groups. We believe that the Baath party people are financially supporting these religious groups because they have a common goal: getting the U.S. out of Iraq." There is evidence of "some kind of a contingency plan put in place by the former regime," and it is believed that the villagers are being paid as little as $50 to shoot at American soldiers, and as much as $1,500 if they manage to kill one. Locally, there is a branch of the so-called "Mohamad's Army," a larger cell that extends to Samarra," and recently a group has surfaced that goes by the name of the "Sept. 11 Revolutionary Group." It claimed a recent attack on the Americans in a leaflet bearing the logo of the Fedaheen, Saddam's paramilitaries, combined with the Iraqi and Palestinian flags and a verse from the Koran. "But personally, I don't get too hung up on names." Williams said. "In these parts, you get three guys together in a room and they're a group."
Three such guys are sitting in a room in a house near the Tigris, somewhere in the Balad area. They all claim to be "mujahedeen" on a personal "jihad" against the U.S. occupation. One of them is a former officer from the Special Republican Guard, Saddam's bodyguards. Another is an Iraqi police officer, who works with the Americans during the day and shoots at them at night. "We give them the daylight but the nighttime is ours," he said. "This goes for all of the Iraqi police in this area."
The policeman described his first mission against an American convoy in great detail. It was a bungled mission, because an Iraqi "spy" had spotted them and gave away their position to the Americans. "After the Americans opened fire, I hid in a field for an hour. Then I made a run for it, and made my way home by swimming across the river."
The three men admitted that theirs was a fairly small-time operation. "About a month after the fall of the regime, some of us started holding secret meetings, always in very small groups because we didn't know who could be trusted", said the former soldier. They have no knowledge of any type of organized resistance by the former regime. "Some people came up here from Falluja once to carry out an attack, and we gave them lunch. But they wouldn't tell us anything. Like us, they were sworn to secrecy."
'Many Americans had been killed,' said the guerrilla. The American say the attackers had overshot their target, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding seventeen.
The men had many tall stories to tell about past operations, in which they invariably killed dozens of Americans. Their accounts are at odds with official U.S. casualty statistics, and are probably not true. The former Iraqi soldier told of one recent attack against Battalion headquarters in Balad. The attack had been very successful, he said, and many Americans had been killed. In fact, the American said, the attackers had overshot their target, and the shells had landed instead in the town, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding seventeen.
"It's not an insurgency," Lt. Col. Sassaman said. "I truly believe that ninety percent of the Iraqis support us. But there is a lot of ambivalence. Many Iraqi's are sitting on the fence right now. They are not quite convinced that the old regime is finished, and they are afraid to be labeled as American spies should Saddam ever come back. This is why it is so important that we catch Saddam. Then those people on the fence are going to sigh with relief, and the Iraqis will finally be able to get on with their lives."
GNN's newest contributor Gert Van Langendonck was embedded with the 4th Division, 3rd Brigade, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Combat Team at Balad, Iraq. Van Langendonck is a Belgian freelance journalist based in New York City, and the former foreign editor at the Brussels daily De Morgen. He has covered the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Somalia. |
