The Iraqi Army Diaries — Entry 2
by S. D. Liddick
In the spring of 2009 I embedded with the U.S. Army’s 1-63 Combined Arms Battalion, in the small town of Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The town is a cardinal point on what American soldiers have termed the Triangle of Death. Within a month I was offered a de facto embed spot with the Iraqi Army (IA), by General Mohammed, commander of the 17th Division. I quickly accepted and we determined that I would stay with one of his sub-commanders, Colonel Wisam Wisam, the Lieutenant in charge of the 2nd Battalion of the 25th Brigade.
What was supposed to be a several-day venture turned into almost two months (by the end I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t been passively kidnapped) and I came to know many of the men on Wisam’s base—soldiers and officers alike. They were a group of committed and bright (though not highly educated) officers who were in charge of a group of men—the contingent of soldiers I came to know at headquarters was hundreds strong—that was uneducated and often illiterate but caring, sweet and determined to make its country a better place. Those soldiers (and some officers) were also suspected by American counterparts of being affiliated with both Al-Qaeda and the JAM (Jaish Al Mahdi army)—and I’ve no doubt that some of them were.
Those young Iraqi officers carried me on dozens of missions, kicking in doors and unearthing stashed 500-pound bombs. They carried themselves more or less professionally despite lack of training and a tremendous paucity in equipment and funding (the officers I followed into dark houses during those raids didn’t have rifles as the Battalion couldn’t afford them, and would normally breach doorways with nothing more than a sidearm resting on their hip). They also lacked a fundamental understanding of the media-military relationship and showed me an uncomfortable level of candor, especially in their treatment of prisoners. This is the second in a series of journal entries from that assignment. Entry 1 is HERE.
Day Four
Could it be day four already? I’ve lost track of time so quickly. In some ways, it feels as if I arrived at Second Battalion just yesterday. It’s been smooth so far—and fun. The two most crucial factors: they let me sleep my own schedule (three or four o’clock in the morning till about ten) and I have coffee whenever I need it. With those two prerequisites in hand, I could be happy anywhere.
Yesterday I had a long conversation with my new friend, Lieutenant Ahmed. Ahmed’s friends call him the Russian because his countenance says nothing of his Arabic blood. His father is a high school electricity teacher and his brother is a doctor. I’ve quickly come to like and respect him.
We were talking about the rest of the world (Ahmed, like the majority of Iraqis, has never been out of the country) and the topic of American prisons came up. Ahmed told me how great they are.
“They’re like a dream for an Iraqi,” he said. “They’re clean and warm and spacious and the people there get fed everyday—three times a day.”
I asked him how he knew this, and he told me he watches Prison Break and other programs about jail life. I warned him about developing his impressions from TV and movies.
“It’s all relative,” I offered. “I’m sure if you ask someone in one of those prisons, they’ll tell you they’re hell.”
“That’s ‘cause they haven’t been to Iraq yet. Just let them come see this place and then they’ll know how good they have it.”
Ahmed is infatuated with the U.S. I think he wants to be an American more than I do (we joke about trading citizenships). It’s odd and touching how much he loves the idea of America. Ironically, that unrestricted good will and optimism that built and at one time defined Americana now seems to live outside its contiguous borders. At the same time, maybe America’s greatest admirers—people like Ahmed—are the ones who’ve grown up in the grottos of dictators like Saddam Hussein; they’re the people who’ve learned of American democracy from TV screens (much like those spectators in Plato’s cave learned of the world from the shadows on the wall).
Ahmed has an Iraqi high school diploma, which isn’t saying a whole lot. In fact, fundamental problems with education over the past thirty years have had stark implications for contemporary Iraq (education coffers were looted by Saddam’s regime to support a string of wars). When religious zealot insurgents swept through the country in 2004 and 2005 they found an illiterate, poorly schooled population easily swayed by propaganda.
What Ahmed lacks in book lessons he compensates for with a quick mind and hard-earned sagacity. Together we laugh constantly, and it’s easy to forget he’s just a kid. After high school he went to the Iraqi Army’s officer training school (a rushed six-month affair that probably wouldn’t qualify for Basic Training in the U.S. Army), and in 2006 he was initiated by fire during tough fighting in Sadr City. He was 22 years old.
It’s hard to believe he was so young when tasked with the duty of leading other kids into the jaws of the Jaish Al Mahdi (JAM) army. Ahmed was knocked unconscious by an RPG in heavy fighting and he lost friends in that place. The JAM might be sadistic and deceptive, but nobody doubts the kids comprising it can fight. Sadr City is the hell hole of Baghdad and until recently Iraqi soldiers were sent there to die en masse. I have a bottomless amount of respect for Ahmed and young men like him for their courage and determination to make their country livable.
Ahmed explained that the U.S. is an entity sent by Allah and run by saints. He said that where he comes from in the south of Iraq the people used to pray everyday that the U.S. would come and free them from the chains of a repressive dictator (one who kept the country mired in a hellish kind of poverty with incessant wars and a military budget that sucked up 90-percent of the country’s GDP).
“And now you’ve come,” he said. “You’re sent by God—believe it, man.”
I’m an American by passport, but a journalist by trade, and I’ve never shown much compunction about shitting on other people’s rosy perceptions.
“What about all those Iraqis who don’t agree with you? I asked him. “Surely their opinions are as valid as yours.”
“Who are you talking about, man?”
“All those people saying America go home.”
“Where?” he said. “Where are all these people? There aren’t any people like that. I’m telling you, my friend.”
“Don’t tell me that, Ahmed. You’re insulting me. With all due respect to your nationality—you’re Iraqi and I’m not—I’ve talked to people all across this country: civilians, government officials, sheiks, shepherds, teachers, doctors and housewives. And if you think there aren’t people out there who want the U.S. to go home, you’re deluded.”
“They’re all Baath Party people,” he said. “People who were made rich by Saddam—and they’re all dirty. You can’t listen to them, not a single one of them.”
I like Ahmed for many reasons, chiefly because he’s honest. He’s a great admirer of America, no doubt, but he’s realistic, too. I told him it’s dangerous that America has decided to come to another country and solve its political problems—that we’re riding on the rim of a slippery slope, flirting with the danger of slipping into the hollow of the cup of nothingness.
“Americans with guns have no right being in so many foreign countries,” I said, “and I think that’s why the twin towers fell.”
“Why do you think that?” Ahmed asked.
“Because that’s what Al-Qaeda said,” I told him.
Ahmed nodded in acknowledgment and said he understood my concern. In answer, he told me again about the repression the Iraqis were under, their abject poverty and what they’d come to see as a curse visited upon them by Allah. He talked about the fanaticism of religion, and of people who use his sacred Islam as an excuse to unleash violence and proliferate their agendas.
As we got deeper, I realized we were butting up against an ideological chasm I hadn’t intuited. When asked, I said I thought the U.S. came to Iraq for a perfect storm of bad reasons, natural resources chief among them (the driving force behind most imperial conquests).
“I’m sure liberating the Iraqi people factored into the decision to invade,” I said, “But you’re naïve if you think it was a primary reason.”
He concurred but then came right back to the fact the U.S. has liberated a repressed people. I smiled. He was refusing to let my benighted version (one that I see as simple common sense and realpolitik rationality) take hold in his more effulgent interpretation of history. Maybe I’m wrong. But then again, maybe through Ahmed’s example a motif of victimization can be seen in the contemporary Iraqi psyche (a psyche, others have explained, that is bruised at best and possibly shattered).
A poor analogy: you can tell a woman who’s been freed of the chains of domestic abuse that the man who pulled her out of her hell—who beat the shit out of her abusive husband and carried her away—only did so because he was sick to death of the screaming that kept him up at night. But on a deep level the victim will only see that man in the positive light of her own redemption and liberation.
“You think the U.S. is heavy with its military?” Ahmed said. “I’m 24 years old and I’ve lived through three wars already. Everybody in this country has lost a family member in those wars. Every person. What the hell is up with that?”
S. D. Liddick is one of the national writers of the year with the City and Regional Magazine Association. He’s been on international assignment for Rolling Stone and San Diego Magazine (where he was website editor before leaving for Iraq). His investigative articles have garnered dozens of awards with the Society of Professional Journalists, including half a dozen Best of Show nods. In 2006, he won the Sol Price Prize for Responsible Journalism after being jailed in pursuit of a story. In 2008 and 2009 he spent eight months in Iraq (five months with American forces, two months with the Iraqi Army and a month living with sheiks in Anbar Province). More at www.sdliddick.com.