Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties
Work for U.S. Leaves Recruits Uneasy
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 25, 2003; Page A01
BAIJI, Iraq -- At the sprawling Baiji train station, long ago looted of everything but rail cars, the men of the city's Iraqi Civil Defense Corps lamented their first two months as a pillar of the U.S.-trained security forces that will inherit responsibility for keeping order in Iraq.
In a Sunni Muslim town suspicious of U.S. forces and often the scene of armed opposition, villagers have derided the men of the 3rd Patrol as traitors, pelting them with rocks as their trucks pass. Some were stopped in the market by men in checkered head scarves and warned that their commander faced death. Last month, U.S. Special Forces mistook them for guerrillas or thieves -- that point remains in dispute -- and opened fire on them. Worse, they feared, was what lay ahead if U.S. forces withdrew from this northern town.
"I swear to God, we'll be killed," said Hamid Yusuf, holding a secondhand Kalashnikov rifle.
"We all have the same opinion," insisted one of his commanders, Qassim Khalaf.
"One hundred percent," answered Jamal Awad, another patrol member.
"My family's already made a reservation on a plot of land to bury me," said Yusuf, 29, breaking into a grin as the men traded barbs tinged with gallows humor. "As soon as they leave, I'm taking off my hat," he said, tipping his red baseball cap emblazoned with the corps' emblem, "and putting on a yashmak," the head scarf sometimes worn by resistance fighters.
The U.S. administration in Iraq has high hopes for the Civil Defense Corps and other forces it is aggressively training, projecting them as an eventual alternative to the 130,000 American troops in Iraq. Some members have performed with remarkable bravery, and dozens have died in the recent wave of car bombings across Iraq. But Yusuf and the other men with the unit in Baiji -- a scared, disheartened and confused lot -- embody the challenge facing Iraqi forces as a new institution in a country still taking shape.
In their conversations over a day at the train station -- hours of monotony punctuated by minutes of action -- they provided a glimpse of Iraq's ambitions for the future and a sobering lesson about its present. The men of the 3rd Patrol are haunted by unanswered questions. Are they fighting for the United States or Iraq? Are they traitors or patriots? And at what cost do they sacrifice ideals of faith, nationalism and tradition, the essence of their identity?
"We have children, we have families and we need to live," said Yusuf, sitting with the others on a stack of railroad ties, as a brisk wind blew over them. "We don't love the Americans, but we need the money. It's very difficult, but there's no alternative."
The eight men of the 3rd Patrol were trained and equipped by Lt. Col. Larry "Pepper" Jackson, the commander in Baiji, who works by a credo that has made the military in Iraq a marvel of improvisation. Adapt to what you have, he said, and work through the challenges. So far, he has outfitted 198 members of the civil defense force, along with more than 450 Iraqi police officers. As elsewhere in the country, the pace of induction has picked up markedly in recent weeks under the rubric of "Iraqification." Of the 131,000 Iraqis under arms -- more than twice the figure of Oct. 1 -- 8,500 are in the Civil Defense Corps, a contingent that will eventually grow to 40,000.
Jackson put his recruits through three weeks of training -- drilling, marksmanship, first aid and basic combat skills. "And I'm talking basic combat skills," he said. He dealt with the language barrier and even established some camaraderie with the recruits -- some call him captain or general, whichever sounds more senior. He faces no target number for enlistment, but was told to work as fast as he could and recruit as many people as possible. He said he felt induction was proceeding at "the right pace," but that, in the end, it wasn't up to him.
"What's to say what's too fast? I don't know," Jackson said. "That's the thousand-dollar question. What's too fast?"
Either way, he said, the goal remained the same -- to turn authority over to Iraqis sooner rather than later.
"I try to tell them it's not loyalty to me, it's loyalty to your community," he said. "I tell them, 'What are you going to do when it's just you downtown? That's what you need to be trained and prepared for, because eventually that's going to come.' "
'What Can We Do?'
Baiji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, sits at the tip of the Sunni Triangle, a swath of territory in northern and western Iraq from which former president Saddam Hussein drew most of his support. But its history with the former government tells only part of the story. It is also a region shaped by tribal traditions and reflexive nationalism, stitched together by a fierce interpretation of Islam. Those questions of identity are even more resonant now. The Sunni Muslims who long held sway in this country, where Shiite Muslims make up the majority, face a future without an organized voice, clinging to the privileges to which they have grown accustomed.
The men in the 3rd Patrol share those fears and feelings of insecurity. Perhaps more than anyone else, they understand the difficulty posed by Jackson's advice. They say they are torn between loyalties to family and faith, country and personal welfare. They have yet to determine where they stand.
The clergy in Baiji, they recalled, had praised those fighting U.S. soldiers as sacred warriors and condemned those working with American forces as infidels. One cleric, they said, had insisted that they could not fast during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food or drink from sunrise to sunset. As collaborators with infidels, the cleric's reasoning went, they were infidels as well. Raised listening to the clergy, many of the men said they did not disagree with that logic.
"Under Islam, you should not shake hands with Americans, you should not eat with Americans, you should not help the Americans," said Shakir Mohammed, 23, a deputy commander of his patrol.
"Islam doesn't accept it," added Yusuf.
"But what can we do?" Mohammed asked. "You have to work. It's my job."
Awad, 25, gaunt like the others, shook his head. It was a gesture at once confused and despairing. "We can quit working with the Americans. Fine," he said. "But will the clergy give us salaries?"
Mohammed grinned at the idea. "They pay us," he said, "and we'll stop working with the Americans."
"Money is good," Yusuf said, kissing his hand with flair. "Clothes and food for my children. This is the good thing. Should I sleep without dinner and not work with the Americans? No. I should work with the Americans and have dinner."
Yusuf and most of his colleagues make $130 a month, a respectable salary in a city where U.S.-provided jobs in security are among the few available. The more senior officers in the corps make $140 or $175. All of them hail from large families -- the smallest with six members, the largest with 14. Nearly all belonged to the now-disbanded Iraqi army, and many have young children at home.
On their twice-weekly, 24-hour shifts, they sleep on a tile floor in a room with no windows, bringing blankets from home. They brew tea in a charred kettle and share a cup fashioned from the bottom of a plastic water bottle. Each day of Ramadan, adhering to the fast despite the cleric's judgment, they dispatch one colleague to bring food from the market for the evening meal.
Like soldiers anywhere, they complain most about what they don't have: cars, radios, bulletproof vests, new uniforms, boots and, in a town where attacks have tripled since July, more ammunition. They trade stories about close calls, most hauntingly about the time they came under fire from Special Forces troops a month ago.
Versions of the story conflict. Jackson, acknowledging the sequence of events was "a little sketchy," said the civil defense patrol traded fire with a dozen or so looters at the rail yards. A Special Forces unit arrived and started shooting. In the end, Jackson said, three or four members of the 3rd Patrol were wounded. Yusuf and his colleagues put the number at five.
"Some guys got caught in cross-fire. It was nothing intentional," Jackson said. "There was a lot of confusion. In war, sometimes that happens. War doesn't go perfectly. My concern was taking care of them and their families. That was my concern."
Yusuf and his colleagues acknowledged that the wounded were taken to a U.S. military hospital and given the best care possible. But they dispute the contention that looters were present or that they fired before being shot at. They insist the Special Forces soldiers mistook them for guerrillas. In a fusillade of fire that one of them compared to a horror movie, they said they ran for cover, scattering their lunch of potatoes, tomatoes and bread. Trails of blood, blackened by time, are still smeared across the train platform.
"We were yelling, 'Civil defense! Civil defense!' " said Khalaf, the unit's leader.
One of their colleagues, Alaa Nasser, 21, was critically wounded in both legs and remains in a hospital in Baghdad. His colleagues said he needs $425 for an operation. The four others have yet to return to work.
"Only Rambo could have handled the situation," Awad said.
An Emotional Toll
In Baiji's atmosphere of unease, other young men in the city express amazement that the 3rd Patrol is still working. Latif Sayyib makes $2 a day as a carpenter, when he can find work. His brother, Wathban, works at the electric utility. No amount of money, they said, would persuade them to face the risks entailed in joining security forces that they contend are indelibly tainted by the occupation.
They grew up with Yusuf and some of the others, attending school together or playing soccer in the city's dusty streets. Suspicion is so intense in the city that they do their best to avoid contact with their old friends.
"I don't want to see them," Latif said, sitting in his home. "I'll see them in their house, but if I see them in the street or the market, I'll only stay a minute or two because I fear I'll become a target."
His brother nodded.
"Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam," Wathban said. "The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here."
In the streets of Baiji, graffiti clutters the walls, tinted black by fires at the city's oil refinery. "Anyone dealing with the Americans will be killed," says one slogan, scrawled by hand. "Saddam will be back, you traitors," warns another.
"The people here don't forget our faces," Mohammed said.
When the men of the 3rd Patrol were training, they said, children threw rocks at them. Awad said he was hit in the back, and had to be kept in bed for three days. Several times, they were pelted with tomatoes as they drove through the vegetable market. They tried to bring civilian clothes with them and change into their uniforms on the job. When they did, their commander threatened to dock $5 from their pay.
Fear has prompted three of the men to leave in the past month, and nearly everyone said they had thought about it.
"Sometimes when I'm in a taxi, I hear the insults," Mohammed said. "I hear them say, 'These people working with the civil defense are traitors, they're agents. Their future will be grim.' "
"It stays in our heart," Awad said.
"We're scared, I swear to God," Yusuf said. "We don't know at what moment we'll be killed. We don't know what will happen tomorrow." Mohammed interrupted him. "Tomorrow? In 15 minutes, we don't know what will happen."
Dusk arrived by late afternoon, as it does during winter in Iraq. The men chatted about the Americans, about their city and their country. It was the talk so familiar in Baiji -- confused, contradictory and ambiguous. Some were fond of Jackson and the soldiers they had met, but angry at the idea of an occupation. Some insisted that the guerrillas were fighting only for money. In the same breath, they insisted that the United States had come for Iraq's resources and that overthrowing Hussein was an afterthought.
"Some people say when the Americans take all our oil, they'll leave," Yusuf said. "They'll leave us to kill each other."
As night approached, they gathered wood for their fire. Dinner arrived -- tomatoes, cucumbers and parsley in a black plastic bag. In a looted warehouse littered with charred wood and shattered glass and concrete, they gathered around -- "like brothers," Mohammed said, in a town that is remarkably unfraternal. And over cigarettes, they talked about what they hoped from their future.
"I want my children to live in safety," said Khalaf, 33.
"We want to be like Kuwait. We want to live in luxury," Yusuf said. " We want fancy cars, not the worn-out cars we have."
"Health," Awad volunteered.
Mohammed nodded his head, then added another. "We don't want to always be scared."
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