On the Road to Falluja
By MICHAEL R. GORDON - NEW YORK TIMES
FALLUJA, Iraq, June 6 - The road home for the Spartan Brigade is through Falluja. The mission is to put an end to the attacks that have plagued American troops in this town 40 miles west of Baghdad.
I went along with them as they pulled up stakes in the Iraqi capital and headed west. Almost immediately, the mission became an excursion into the complex politics of postwar Iraq.
The American soldiers who advanced into the heart of the Iraqi capital in April soon found themselves face to face with an Iranian resistance movement as they sought to sort out living arrangements for the soldiers in this dirt-poor and looted region. By the end of my first day here, I had meandered through an underground bunker complex, enjoyed a fine Iranian meal and heard a lecture on repression in Iran from a member of the resistance movement who had earned a university degree in Wichita, Kan.
All this occurred before the official mission began: sending troops into Falluja to patrol the streets, win the support of the people and capture and kill the die-hards who have been firing rocket-propelled grenades at American troops.
The Spartan Brigade, officially, the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, is the unit that raced into Baghdad and took up positions in the heart of the capital. Along with the rest of the Third Infantry Division, it was charged with securing the city.
But this week, the brigade headed west to Falluja and Habbaniya to relieve the cavalry squadron that has been policing the region. The deployment of the 4,000-strong brigade and associated engineer and military police units will roughly quadruple the forces in the region. So the motto of this operation might be, "Size Counts."
So does experience. The night before I left Baghdad, I saw one last example of the brigade at work. I went to dinner at Al-Saa restaurant, one of the best known in Baghdad.
Just before I arrived, someone dashed into the street, tossed a grenade into a passing Humvee from a military police unit from Missouri, and escaped down the crowded street. Maj. Ricky Nussio, the executive officer of Task Force 1-64 Armor, one of the Spartan Brigade's combat-hardened battalions, happened to be on the scene and rushed to administer first-aid to the driver, who had been hauled onto the roof of the vehicle by fellow soldiers.
The driver was lucky. His ankle was broken and his leg was ripped by shrapnel, but his wounds were not considered maiming or life-threatening, an outcome that seemed to be a minor miracle, since the front of the Humvee was disfigured by the blast and a front tire was blown out.
Later that night, I watched Army trucks hauling away debris from a building around the corner from Al-Saa. The building was bombed on April 7, after American intelligence reported that it was being used as a safe house by Saddam Hussein and his sons. Residents say Mr. Hussein left the scene shortly before the blast and that the bombing had killed 14 civilians.
It is difficult to verify these accounts, but the United States government is apparently going to try. The Army is hauling the rubble to the airport, where it is going to be picked through by intelligence experts looking for DNA or other traces of the Iraqi leader.
For me, it was an unusual moment in almost two months of living with the troops in and around Baghdad. And it got stranger from there.
I hit the road with the troops the next day. The Spartan Brigade was like a band of nomads. They took the furniture, light fixtures, anything to make their stay in Falluja more bearable. Some soldiers even took the toilets and sinks from a bombed-out palace. They figured that the palace was a total loss and that the items could be put to better use in their new quarters, which seemed to me an eminently sensible calculation.
But what were the new quarters? As the brigade arrived, it turned out that it would be setting up camp in a compound built by the Mujahadeen Khalq, an Iranian resistance group that the Clinton administration put on its terrorist list but that asserts it does not support terror attacks against the United States and wants to make common cause against the Iranian government.
This group had quite a story to tell. I heard it from Amir Ghassemi, who had received the university degree, in mechanical engineering, in Wichita. He said his brothers and a sister had been arrested and executed by the Khomeini regime for handing out leaflets after the shah was ousted. He has been a member of the Iranian resistance movement for 16 years.
The resistance movement assumed that it could stay on the sidelines during the American-led attack on Iraq and had sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell indicating that it had no intention of opposing the American invasion. The United States bombed their bases anyway.
After the war, the United States concluded an agreement with the group, which resulted in the handing over of its tanks, artillery and other weapons. They are stored at a camp under American supervision. Thousands of the group's fighters and supporters live at a camp at Ashraf, north of Baghdad.
But at the sprawling compound here, where the Spartan Brigade was setting up Camp, the American military presence was their immediate concern. The compound was the resistance movement's rear logistics base and includes a 100-bed hospital for women, including female fighters, that had been stripped bare by looters after the war. It also has an underground bunker system that is outfitted with a filtration system, a precaution that they say is against an Iranian missile attack.
The movement says it spent $15 million building the complex, using funds donated by Iranian businesspeople within Iran and in exile. The compound was abandoned after the Americans bombed part of it during the war to topple Mr. Hussein, but now the Iranians want to move hundreds of its women here.
The Spartan Brigade's commander, Col. David Perkins, met with a woman who is one of the Iranian group's military commanders to discuss arrangements for using the compound. The Iranians surprised the Americans by serving a chicken dinner. The resistance movement seemed prepared to accept the Americans, but made the point that it was their compound and that they eventually expected to get it back.
I left with a handful of leaflets about the Iranians' cause and bedded down for the night with the 1-64 Armor. There I ran into Major Nussio, the officer who had raced to help the wounded driver in Baghdad. He had a pail of water, and was trying to clean the driver's blood from his uniform.
It was just another day in Iraq.
nytimes.com |
