From DELO (biggest slovenian daily) this saturday
Occupation for dummies
American soldiers in Iraq have it hot, they are under stress and in the cross fire of armed adversaries – war-proven fighters want to go home
Baghdad -. The first time since American soldiers have occupied Iraq, the name of the soldier, printed out in fat letters, close to the heart, on his desert uniform, has absolutely no importance. “Kill the motor! Hands above head! One after another, OUT! One after another!” howled the soldier at the checkpoint in the Baghdad Karada quarter and his every single word was accompanied by epithets, vulgar enough to be replaced by beeps, when broadcast on any US network before 9PM.
By our special correspondent
“I wanna go back to Germany! Back to my wife! I don’t want this stinking hot hole anymore! She bore me a kid yesterday,” the solder, who decided to break my car into parts, half an hour before the curfew in the Iraqi capital, was shouting. The checkpoint in the middle of the capital looked like some military outpost out somewhere in the African bush. The kids, armed to their teeth, were so frightened, that the passers-by were certain, they felt they had nothing to lose by shooting some civilians.
“Our boys are dying day after day”, shouted another soldier. “Hands up! Just let me hear one more word! This is a routine search” screamed yet another man, and we could not believe him either. He pushed his pistol into my face and his AK rifle was dangling all over the place. Now and then it hit the car and several time the bodies of its unintented victims. Even if we understood what solders were saying, we could not figure out, what they wanted. they kept shouting controversial orders over the car: ”Let her go!”, “Search the bitch”, “Hands up!”. “Listen, you, let her GO!” If you happen to understand them, you will know, you are in serious trouble.
However, if you don’t understand them, you are sure, you are dead. Just a shot, somewhere far away, just one wrong move in the crossfire of orders and you would be proven right. “Gerout of the car!” screamed the guy on the left hand side. “Now, you just stay in the car!” shouted the one on the right hand side, sticking his rifle into the car. The suggestion, they should make up their mind, was enough to cause them drag us all out of the car, put us against the wall and bind our hands on our backs .”She’s from Slovenia, OK?” the hottest among five shouted over the heads of his buddies, complaining loud, he’s hot and stressed, because he cant sleep and he does not know what the f*k he’s doing in this f*d-up country. “Is that your way to thank us for everything, we’ve done for your f*g country?”
By now American soldiers have been in Iraq for three months. In the absence of military orders and political strategy of a civilian administration, and after the rise in guerrilla attacks, they have lost their nerve. They came as victors and the last two days have made it clear to them, they’ll be leaving as losers. The soldiers are predominantly young men, who came to Iraq to get their 15 minutes of glory on their local network, but without any idea about where they are actually going to, what’s the language that’s spoken there, what they would do in the liberated Iraq and when they would be leaving. That’s why Iraqis, the “poor bastards”, who after the liberation went for the riches of the fallen regime, have mutated into terrorists after the first armed attack on their liberators.
That’s how the senior officer, who few days ago, all relaxed, shot breeze with visitors at some Baghdad crossing, answered the question, why Iraqis are killing his brothers in uniform :”I try to be friendly. Many don’t. That’s why we all are possible targets. That’s why some of us have been dying.” To defend “unfriendly” soldiers, he added: ”We’re all members of armed forces. We came to fight a war with this state and not to police it. From the front we have moved into the residential areas. Many among us have not yet figured out this switch in their responsibility and I doubt, if they will get through without killing some innocent civilians.”
The officer Maloney is the press person of the brigade, that controlled Karadi that night. The impressive woman sleeps in dilapidated Sadam palace, where soldiers have no water and no power. “The life is surrealistic. When we moved in, I was afraid, that Sadam’s ghost would roam around in the night. But it did not. Maybe this means, he’s still alive,” she says, while her buddies in camouflage uniforms walk like shadows in and out of the ruined splendour of the regime, they helped bring down. Maloney is the only woman in the brigade. That’s why she sleeps alone in the Sadam’s guest room.
Next to her bed there’s books about Near East, biography of the Iraq president and the manual of Arabic language. “I have always been interested in this region, but unfortunately I have not much time for reading,” the officer says. She’s a member of the intelligence unit, that’s been doing many different tasks after the American power takeover in Baghdad. In the morning she’s organizing the local government in Karadi. In the afternoon she’s handling the rebuilding of the Baghdad zoo. In a fortnight Maloney learned a few Arabic phrases and organized the transport of wild bears. In the zoo, that the top civil servant Paul Bremer opened ceremoniously this week for the “Iraqi children”, she succeeded to fix the power supply and to organize air condition, so the animals enjoy life in conditions, similar to their natural habitat.
Asked about the behaviour of her colleagues in the dark alleys of the capital, she did not offer any answer. Maybe she did not like the comparison, that the Israeli occupation of the West bank and Gaza was professionally brutal, in contrast to the American occupation of Iraq, that was professionally chaotic. American soldiers in Iraq behave like a wild bunch, who, in the absence of orders, look for applause or critique for their actions within their own combat unit.
The suggestions regarding the American occupational policies may be a painful and a very brazen act to an outside observer, because they legitimise 36 years of Israeli military occupation, with thousand of Palestinians dead. After having some experience regarding the checkpoints of American army, however, it is clear that the pedantic organization of Israeli barricades probably has not cost so far a single civilian his or her life.
If the military command will not hammer into the heads of their subordinates the responsibility, resulting from the fact, they are the occupation force, there will be many errors in Iraq. After 35 years of Sadam dictatorship and after 12 years of embargo, a life in Iraq is very cheap. Americans, however, were convinced, the price would rise after the liberation of Iraq. It took them five years of Vietnam to realize their mistake. In Iraq this is clear after three months, at least to all those, who watched the movies.
Barbara Surk |
