Iraq: A Thousand and One Fronts
By Ulrich Fichtner, Der Spiegel
New York Times March 1, 2004
nytimes.com
spiegel.de
[A SPIEGEL author on progress in Iraq, portraying the 101st Airborne Division and its commander General David Petraeus. Petraeus was also recently interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman:
Q&A: Major General David H. Petraeus on Iraq
From the Council on Foreign Relations, February 27, 2004
New York Times February 27, 2004
nytimes.com ]
Ever since invasion forces occupied Iraq in March of last year, the 101st Airborne Division has been fighting to win over the local population. The US occupiers' showcase division is considered successful in "nation building" - but it could still lose the day-to-day war.
Six to eight times a day, the war returns to the north of the new Iraq. On this Tuesday, it strikes a military convoy as a hazy dawn lies over Mosul. A bomb remotely detonated on the side of the road has ripped apart a troop transporter in a large traffic circle in the southern portion of the city. The early morning traffic - cars, gasoline trucks, donkey carts - grinds to a halt. There are no victims, just property damage.
The act of terrorism is ignored early that evening during the daily situation meeting at the 101st Airborne Division's headquarters.
Its been almost a year since the war against Saddam Hussein began, and commanding General David Petraeus has more important things to worry about than demolished Jeeps and a few gunshots.
His 101st Airborne is preparing to leave Iraq. The withdrawal is already underway, and by early March, the elite unit consisting of 20,000 men, 275 helicopters and thousands of vehicles will have begun making its way home to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, by way of Kuwait. Petraeus must think about his balance sheet, about his occupying regime's debits and credits.
At precisely 5:30 p.m., one hundred staff officers take their seats, surrounded by the gaudy splendor of the largest of Saddam's Mosul palaces, perched high above the city. Majors and lieutenants converse in rows in front of strategic wall maps, working on laptops and talking into field telephones, and they all wear ochre-colored combat uniforms. They are weapons engineers, logistics experts, trained signal engineers, sharpshooters, pioneers. But they are not planning the battles of a conventional war. They are fighting for a fragile peace. When they talk, these soldiers sound like city councilmen.
Nothing is said about the morning's bomb attack, nothing about the 250 daily patrols on foot, in jeeps, in armored vehicles, nothing about helicopter flights that take place night after night, venturing as far north as the Syrian and Turkish borders. Nothing about the six to eight raids that happen every day, about the ten or eleven daily arrests, the caches of weapons constantly being found, and nothing about the routine nature of "enemy contacts." Sniper shots, rocket fire, mines, terrorism.
These men talk about light bulbs, school books, trash cans. General Petraeus, a slender man, sits on a swivel chair at the front of the room like a matchstick man, alternately holding a microphone and a black coffee mug to his mouth. He calls the daily situation meeting his "hour of truth." He listens to reports from a new front, a front called daily routine, now the most decisive front in this war. The Iraqis were subjugated more than 300 days ago. Now they must be won over, one hour at a time.
Petraeus wants his people to tell him whether work on road markings has finally begun. How many of the 400 schools reopened since the end of the war still need wall paint. Whether the soccer balls for the teams in Dahuk have arrived. Which village in the Anbar Desert received a new well today.
His people project large, colorful charts onto the screen. The chart tell of their battle against potholes, of septic tanks, public libraries, tree plantings (35,000 saplings were planted in January alone). They show slides depicting the reopening of the promenade along the Tigris in Mosul, a new rest stop on the highway to Baghdad, repaired machines at an asphalt factory near Kajara.
One of the officers, whom they call "Mr. Oil," reports that 400 tankers are now arriving from Turkey each day: "No more bottlenecks at gas stations, sir." After each slide, Petraeus says things like "great stuff," "super," "well done."
His balance sheet headings were all similar until last October. Back in America, big stories were appearing in major newspapers, stories that portrayed Petraeus as the hero of a success story, as a founding father of the new, free Iraq. Everything was going well.
In March and April, Petraeus and his people fought their way northward through the entire country. In the wake of the troops that captured Baghdad, the 101st Airborne took Kerbela, Najaf and Hilla in battles that sometimes lasted for days, and finally gained control over Mosul. Within a few hours, 1600 men had descended upon the city in a major air landing operation, and within a few hours the occupation had begun.
"If we do not deliver progress everyday, people will forget that freedom is a wonderful thing."
In Mosul, Petraeus who, in addition to being a general, holds a doctorate in political science, began a whirlwind of new beginnings. Within a few days, he had organized reasonably democratic elections, the first in the entire country. He repaired the court system, the fire department and the river police, helped the police force regain its footing, and encouraged brigade commanders to begin with reconstruction everywhere and at the same time. Petraeus transformed his soldiers into urban planners, teachers and social workers.
For the past few months, the division's true daily motto has been posted on a 12 by 12 inch piece of paper taped to the upper right-hand corner of the map hanging in the staff conference room. "We are in a race to win over people. What have you done today to make sure we win this race?"
Petraeus has made sure the motto remains posted where it is now. He believes in these kinds of things, in the power of mottoes, in achieving success through sheer willpower. It is a philosophy he has applied to his own life. He recovered from a gunshot wound to his lungs during a 1991 maneuver, and he returned to duty after sustaining a shattered pelvis during a parachute crash landing three years ago.
The only evidence of the accident is a slight stoop when he walks, but nothing else. Within two years, Petraeus was already running the army's ten-mile race in just under an hour. He expects dedication and not obedience from his people. Solutions, not problems. "If we do not deliver noticeable progress everyday, people will forget that freedom is a wonderful thing."
Mosul has become a true model. Only six days after the city was taken on April 22, the Americans held their first conference with local leaders to discuss communal elections, which in fact took place two weeks later. In addition, the soldiers distributed fistfuls of the Saddam regime's money and new dollars from America, totaling more than a million a week.
The 101st Airborne's books currently show funding for 4722 projects. Shop owners were given startup capital and school principals received envelopes containing 5,000 dollars in cash and instructions to whitewash their classrooms. The Americans gave money to vegetable stand owners, taxicab companies and small-scale farmers. They helped former members of the military by sending them to vocational training courses, and they helped launch bigger projects such as the renovation of hotels that had been devastated by looters. Dollars went to sheiks to help them repair grain silos, to attorneys for photocopiers, to hospitals for syringes and blood bags. The army put the kinds of things into practice that the UN is still talking about in theory. They practiced "nation building."
One year after the war, Mosul, a city of two million inhabitants where Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians have been living together in harmony for eons, is now full of life. Shop windows are full of goods, flames shoot from grills in hundreds of kebab restaurants, and the clogged alleys of the bazaar in the city's old section are filled with refrigerators from Thailand, microwave ovens from China, and fan heaters from England.
One should never think of post-war Iraq as a third world country where people get into fistfights over sacks of flour handed out by aid organizations. Even before the war, Mosul was a modern city of the orient, and now it is opening up to Syria, to Turkey, to the world at large, a world people only knew through hearsay during the Saddam era.
Now there are internet cafés on every corner, and the streets are filled with men waving mobile phones under billboards advertising products by Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens. The city's constant traffic jams are filled with fleets of foreign cars brought in through Syrian ports: Dutch used cars, German mini-trucks with expired license plates from Braunschweig, Miesbach and Stuttgart, some still displaying stickers in their windows such as "Wichert Carpentry."
The soldiers distributed fistfuls of new dollars from America, totaling more than a million a week.
160 youth teams go to soccer practice, there are music contests and contests, and 230 satellite programs are available on television, including Japanese game shows, German network ARD's "Tagesschau," and now even local programs.
If the nights were not filled with gunshots and the occasional boom of heavy artillery, and if the skies over the city were not filled with the rattling sound of Kiowa Warrior helicopters and the distant roar of fighter jets, the city would feel like any other city somewhere in the Middle East, a city with the same worries and poverty as any other. It would also feel as if the Americans had prevailed in the daily front. But the gunshots are still there. So are the helicopters, the explosions, the war.
Petraeus has led the fight against terrorism with vigor. His people, the Second Brigade, were the ones who killed Saddam's terrible sons, Uday and Kusay, in July of last year. It was the 101st Airborne that flew sortie after sortie against the old regime's supporters, against the enemies of the new Iraq who fled to the north when Baghdad fell, to Tikrit, Kirkuk and Mosul, where they hid out in shacks and holes in the ground.
The 101st Airborne, active behind the scenes during the war, suddenly found itself back at the front, in the middle of enemy lines. It threw itself into dozens of major operations with code names such as "Forrest," "Grierson," "McLellan" and "Reindeer."
The troops of the 101st Airborne captured thousands of minor and major ringleaders, cataloging their successes like meticulous bookkeepers: they collected 111,807 rounds of ammunition, 1069 Kalashnikovs, 567 rocket launchers, 730 bazookas, 2450 warheads, 6145 mines, as well as pipe bombs, artillery ammunition, hand grenades, and bayonets. They razed training camps and terrorist camps, and they broke up guerilla cells.
They risked their lives for this new Iraq. But, as if cursed, they were not victorious.
Petraeus has to think about his balance sheet. Does he even entertain the possibility that he may have failed? When interviewed, at close range, the 50-year-old general seems more tired than a year ago just after the war ended.
He has worked like a man who is possessed. Seven days a week, 18 hours a day. He was not just the commander of his own troops, but was also in charge of all anti-terrorism operations. Most of all, however, he served as something like a mayor in charge of all cities and villages, a sort of prime minister of northern Iraq.
He cut ribbons to dedicate new roads, opened new bank branches, met with tribal leaders, conferred with religious leaders, gave interviews on Mosul's television stations, and blew the starting whistle at Iraqi-American basketball games. In October, it seemed as if the Americans had indeed captured the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, at least in the north, as if they were doing well on the daily front, and as if the race against terror was as good as won. But then came November.
On the first of the month, a bomb detonated on the outskirts of Mosul killed two soldiers. On November 7, one of Petraeus' men was killed by a grenade, another by missile fire, and six of his people died in a helicopter crash near Tikrit. On the 15th, black Saturday, a Blackhawk helicopter was hit by enemy fire, collided with another helicopter, and 16 members of the 101st Airborne and one GI were found dead in the wreckage. Within two weeks the Americans lost five helicopters, and within six weeks the 101st Airborne lost 30 soldiers, five times as many as were killed during the entire war.
The terrorist attacks quickly covered the colored charts showing repaired potholes, village wells and school books. They made it easy to forget that Mosul was stilled blossoming, simultaneously, as if it were in a parallel world. But none of that reached the outside world. Major newspapers back home in America printed nothing but headlines about how Operation Iraq was turning into a disaster. The only impression the outside world received was of another Somalia, another Vietnam.
"November," says Petraeus, "took us by surprise. This terrible loss of human life... Up here, we really didn't expect that." But what did the Americans expect? Was it clear to them that the problems would really only begin after victory? That daily life would become the new front?
Terrorism kept people from asking such questions. Once again, the Americans were able to do what they do best. Petraeus re-deployed personnel away from schools and trash cans and into combat duty. And, once again, they scored success upon success. Arrests. Weapons seizures. But that was the extent of it: Victory remained elusive. And to this day, it's as if they had won every battle against terrorism, but not the war.
Petraeus must have sensed just how complex his task is. Before coming to Iraq, he worked in Haiti and Bosnia, both major experiments in "nation building." Both situations did not end successfully, and both may suggest possible scenarios for Iraq's future. Haiti is currently descending into chaos. Bosnia is stuck in the exhausting, poisonous minutiae of ethnic strife. Will Iraq fare better?
It is not just Saddam loyalists who are fighting against success. In the north, the Americans are capturing religious warriors with Syrian and Yemeni passports, Jordanians, Saudis, hordes of people from throughout the region who hate America. Today, says Petraeus, the foreigners form the third group of "bad guys," the third source of sabotage and chaos after common criminals and Saddam loyalists.
They force the general and his soldiers into a life-threatening dilemma. They provoke more and more severe raids and force the Americans to behave more like a hostile occupying regime and less like a friendly army of liberators. Successes on the front against terror are turning into failures on the front of daily life.
The 101st Airborne has reduced the number of patrols on foot and has armed its troops more heavily. Unlike in the previous year, convoys now travel quickly through the streets, from point A to point B. Casual stopovers at kebab stands and tee shops have become a thing of the past, and contact with the local population is limited to only the most necessary exchanges. The occupier and the occupied, divided by the terrorists, have become enemies, even in Mosul.
It has become a recurring topic at staff meetings: How do you chase terrorists without alienating the rest of the population? "How do you catch the bad guys without producing new bad guys?" Petraeus says that patience, money and confidence are needed. He says that the enemy cannot win the race. He keeps telling headquarters that the flow of money cannot be cut back. He says that it would be catastrophic if the Americans could not show the Iraqis new successes every day.
In his memos, Petraeus never forgets to write one sentence: "Money is ammunition." It's a sentence intended for politicians at home. He says it and he writes it whenever helicopters or convoys or tankers are hit. Whenever the outside world starts thinking: Somalia, Vietnam.
In his memos to headquarters, Petraeus never forgets to write one sentence: "Money is ammunition."
The 101st Airborne is spending its last few days in Iraq, and Petraeus says: "We must not forget that this is an historic process. Remember what Germany looked like ten months after the war." He smiles his charming smiles. He says: "The security situation is positive, on the whole." But in the confusion of this post-war period, he always ends up opting for only one side, for the good side. He believes in the power of good news. But is he concealing bad news? Is the situation less stable than he is willing to admit?
It is difficult to discuss concepts like security with a soldier. Petraeus experienced weeks of the war, flew combat missions in helicopters over Kerbela, and drove into conquered cities to give the enemy a personal signal: It's over. Nowadays, he is no longer horrified when there are two or three explosions a day. He has forgotten what it's like to be a civilian, how agonizing uncertainty can be.
Iraq is not a safe country. It is a country filled with large and small crimes. Every day, the hospitals treat more people with gunshot wounds than bombing victims throughout the entire war. There is talk of kidnappings, and everyone knows someone who has been a victim. Children are dragged off and sons kidnapped, and they are only released in return for 7,000 or 8,000 dollars in ransom money.
They say it's easy to find contract killers. They say there have never been so many murders. According to the newspapers, more than 600 police officers have been killed in the line of duty since September. There are plenty of reasons to feel unsafe in Iraq. And there are plenty of reasons to hope that the Americans stick around for a long time to come.
A hazy dawn lies over Mosul, mist rises from the Tigris, and two companies of Americans are combing their way through Jadida, a neighborhood considered hostile. On the maps, it's referred to as Sector 1. They arrive in armored personnel carriers and continue on foot. Jadida is a section of the daily front.
The captains visit imams and school principals. They drink the tea offered by their hosts and practice the art of civilian conversation, all the while holding their heavy guns across their knees. Brian Mellen, a 32-year-old platoon leader, spits long streaks of chewing tobacco onto the street and scares away the children who crowd around the occupier like grapes on a vine. They call out "hello, mister" and "America good," a chorus of the thin voices of children playing with large men from the West; they touch the soldiers' trousers in little shows of courage, and they look up to them.
The GIs outside amble from house to house, crackling radios strapped to their shoulders, assault rifles at the ready, always in groups of three or four men called Fire Teams. They pound on doors and show people flyers with polite sentences asking for their permission to search for weapons. Once inside, they churn through closets, lift bedspreads, and leave boxes, boxes and suitcases open.
They find one Kalashnikov in every house. Each Iraqi citizen is allowed to own one, and everyone does. Some residents already have their guns ready to show to the soldiers when they open their doors.
It's like a game. People laugh. Some of them even know each other a little. The Americans say words in Arabic, and the Iraqis say things in English. They happily speak past one another.
In one of the houses, built, like every other house in the area, around an open inner courtyard and extending upward for two or three twisted stories, a father shows the soldiers his son. The face of the boy, perhaps 17, has been beaten. It's swollen and bruised. The father says: "You did this. Americans. You beat him three days ago. The boy needs an operation."
An interpreter stands between the family and the soldiers. The GIs discuss the situation. They know a thing or two about wounds, and they conclude that the injuries must be older, that the boy doesn't need an operation. They tell each other the old man is talking nonsense. Their leader tells the interpreter that this is unprovoked aggression: "Tell him that he's a piece of shit and that he should keep his mouth shut." The interpreter hesitates. The soldier says: "Come on, tell him he's a piece of shit."
It's like a scene out of a movie. You expect to hear a gunshot. Something excessive, a horrible, irrational discharge of emotions. But this is not a movie. One of the soldiers ends the scene. He says the father should contact headquarters. The interpreter remains silent. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a business card showing the division's hotline. The Fire Team moves on the next house. Another raid. This continues for the next hour. House after house.
From the soldiers' point of view, every window in Iraq is a potential embrasure. A rocket launcher could be set up on any roof, and every unsecured sidewalk could conceal a bomb. The attackers use remote control devices for TVs and car locks as triggers, and the bombs are called IEDs, or Improved Explosive Devices, homemade bombs. 410 Americans have died since the war ended, which is 271 more than during the three hot weeks of the war. The real front, the daily front, only began to materialize after Saddam's statue was toppled.
For the Americans making their way to Jadida on this morning, each step could be their last, and this has been going on for months. Danger begins to feel like a disease in one's own body, an inner unease, a circulatory disorder. The soldiers of the 101st Airborne are used up. The disease has eaten away at them, and even rock concerts such as the one given by Bruce Willis and his band, flown in to entertain the troops, can no longer lift their spirits. They dream of being back home.
They count the hours. During the raid in the Jadida quarter, they even count the minutes. There are no gunshots. They encounter no "hostile contact," not this time.
In the end, after five hours, they have pulled a dozen illegal weapons from closets, including a machine gun, whose owner they take along, as well. All in all, nothing unusual has happened. Have they made friends with the Iraqis or created new enemies?
On the way back to the base, the convoy encounters a long line of military trucks. Inside the armored personnel carrier, the soldiers see the trucks on a monitor as a grainy television image in black and white. The soldier in front, in the hatch, yells to the truck drivers, asking them where they are going. From the other side of the road, a man yells back over the roar of the engines, hysterically: "Missouri." Then it becomes very quiet in the armored personnel carrier.
These are the 101st Airborne Division's last few days in Iraq. The police force is preparing to fill the gap that the Americans will leave behind when they leave. In and around Mosul alone, the number of troops will be reduced from 20,000 to 9,000, and in the entire country from 130,000 to 110,000. The new Iraqi police force is supposed to provide security, but at the moment it is more concerned with its own insecurities.
The police chief in Mosul is named Mohammed al-Barauwi. He is a charming individual with the aura of a 1940s movie star, with his thin moustache and mild eyes. His office is in the new police headquarters building in Mosul-Duhas, a fortress-like building protected by concrete barriers and barbed wire. In front of its doors, guards stand around in their new blue uniforms, bought and procured by the Americans, nervously fingering their weapons whenever a car approaches.
Even though a dozen people are still standing around in his office, newly sworn-in officers listening to a speech being given by their new boss, he asks us to come in. He tells the officers that his door is always open to them. That they should apply what they have learned during the past few weeks. That they should be pleased to be allowed to help build a new Iraq. The men stand at attention. They have all been police officers under Saddam, and now they are officers again. "But now we have democracy," says the chief of police.
He has already barely escaped two attempts on his life. In December, his white Toyota Land Cruiser was hit by a homemade missile, and three months earlier attackers in a passing car opened fire on him. Barauwi, in his mid-forties, was hit in the leg with three bullets. But he recovered quickly. He walks slowly, hiding a slight limp. He was a commando soldier in Saddam's army. He gets along well with Petraeus, the American.
Barauwi says that Mosul would have descended into chaos without Petraeus. "Our police here, our cars, the weapons, the buildings, nothing would exist without the Americans. We are very grateful to them."
The security situation? "There are not too many problems." But what about the nightly shootouts? "Yes, the shootouts. There are many criminals in Iraq. Criminals Saddam quickly released just before the war. Foreign terrorists. Saddam's old guard." So there are still problems? "Not many. History moves forward, not backward. We are doing good work. Our police force is strong."
The force now numbers about 7,000 men, and is expected to grow to 13,000, a force with jurisdiction over about four million people in the city's metropolitan area. To find work for unemployed soldiers, the Americans also established the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, 4,300 men so far. There are also at least 2,300 border patrol officers, and they've begun recruiting for the New Iraqi Army.
The situation is similar throughout the country. By the end of the year, 220,000 Iraqi security forces are to maintain public order, and no longer the American occupiers. Applicants may not have not been more than mid-level officials in the Baath party, and are not allowed to have any previous offences. They attend courses for one or two weeks to become democrats. Most of them already know how to shoot. Now they have to learn about freedom, how to interact with citizens, how to maintain a peaceful order on a daily basis.
Five jeeps, a BMW 5-series, and two Toyota pickups with machine guns mounted on their beds drive around the police headquarters courtyard. The police chief is on his way out. Barauwi has an appointment at the new police academy, where he will attend a graduation ceremony.
"Just think," says the general, "what Germany looked like ten months after the war."
The convoy, with its sirens and flashing lights, cuts through dense traffic. The vehicles' passengers have their fingers on the trigger. Outside, Mosul passes by, endless, sprawling, a seemingly boundless city stretching along wave-like hills to the horizon. Shismet, the police chief's personnel bodyguard, says that the people are constantly clamoring for security, "but they hunt us policemen as we were traitors." He turns to face us from the passenger seat. "Look at the door and the holes in your seat - those are all gunshot holes."
The Americans are already waiting at the police academy. Colonel Joe Anderson, the bald-headed commander of the Second Brigade of the 101st Airborne, greets Barauwi like an old friend. They embrace and kiss, putting on a show for the others standing around. Anderson chose Barauwi for the position of police chief.
In his speech, the police chief praises the Americans. A muezzin sings verses from the Koran, the Iraqi national anthem is played, and the entire room - granted, it's only about 100 by 70 feet - is so densely packed with 600 people that there aren't enough chairs. Five women receive diplomas, the first women in the new Iraqi police force.
Their faces are filled with a happiness that was never intended to exist in the previous Iraq. In those moments in which the women shake hands with the US commanders, with the new Iraqi commanders, Iraq feels like a country emerging into a new era, one in which life could be very good.
Nowadays, half a dozen ceremonies like this one take place every week in and around Mosul, ceremonies for teachers, lawyers, judges, municipal officials, and the Americans are always there. General Petraeus usually attends in person, and he always gives the same speech to his audiences. He says: "The possibilities in this country are endless, as long as you all work together."
His speech is always followed by diplomas, flowers and sweets, and Petraeus shakes every hand that's held out to him. On some days there are 600 hands to shake, and on one of these winter mornings the man shook 4,000 hands.
4,000 men attend a de-Baathification ceremony, as they call it, the largest in the entire country. The men stand in line to break their ties with the Baath party, with Saddam, and to denounce their old faith. Many have pulled out their best suits for the occasion. They spend hours standing in the cold, waiting their turns. It is an impressive procession.
"I cannot rule out," says Petraeus afterwards, "that many of these people really come here because they hope it will get them a job. But I don't care about that. They swear that they want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem." It's a sentence from his speech, a speech he has given hundreds of times. It finds its way into his conversations. At these ceremonies, especially at these ceremonies, the general believes every word he says. Be believes that his balance sheet is looking good. Super. Great.
These are the final hours of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, and its commanding general, David Petraeus, must think about his balance sheet. On the streets, some children wave while others yell "fuck you." There is no balance sheet at this point. This is a still a battle on many fronts, fronts that cut straight through daily life. Every day, the war returns to the new Iraq. At the same time, however, the peace begins on a thousand street corners.
Translated by Christopher Sultan |
