We were no longer daring to dream. We were simply hoping to get past the nightmare we knew was coming.
And then, the war was upon us: not as the violent jolt we feared, but, instead, as a distant shriek in the night.
3
Up from the Depths
THE START OF a war is a mysterious thing, an event simultaneously momentous and nebulous. If you are on the front line when the troops cross, or maybe beneath the targeting pipper of an aircraft, things are finite, clear, and terrible.
Absolutely horrible, but black and white, with great clarity and finality.
Farther away, nothing is clear. Miles from the front you hear explosions and see flashes. You feel rumbles. But if the fighting remains distant, you can close off your mind to these things and pretend there is no war, that nothing has happened.
Even if you don’t close your mind, you may not understand war until you actually see it. The conflict might not make sense to you, even if you have seen war before. A man can never fully imagine the reality of war, even if he’s lived it already.
For us, the war with America seemed far away for the first few days, very nebulous. We could see it on television, but that was as close as we got. American airplanes and missiles attacked first, hitting Saddam’s Baghdad palace and striking military targets near the southern border and Baghdad early on March 19, 2003. The next day, American troops came across the border, attacking in the south. Within days they stormed Nasiriya, then continued north toward Baghdad. In the meantime, they secured the southern oil fields and Basra, and hooked up with Kurdish rebels in Kurdistan, in the northern precincts.
Mosul, far from Baghdad, could almost have been in a different country. But a few nights after the start of the war, I was woken by the rumble of an explosion somewhere nearby. Even as the ground was still shaking, I rose and made sure my family was all right, then waited, sleeplessly, until dawn to find out what had happened.
As soon as it was light, a friend and I drove toward the center of the city. Eventually we found the source of the explosion: a Tomahawk missile had struck a building used as a telecommunications center. The facility had housed phone-switching equipment handling the local exchanges. The missile or missiles had struck in the exact center of the building, cratering it and obliterating phone service in the area.
It was an odd sight: The fence that bordered the property was intact, and most of the building’s walls were still standing. But the roof was gone, and from up close the structure looked like a scorched box filled with rubble. The dust from the explosion lingered in the air, scratching my eyes.
From that moment on, the war felt very real, even in Mosul. The city was spared destruction on a grand scale—the business areas were largely untouched by American bombs, as far as I can remember—but there was no longer any way to deny the reality of the war. We were going to lose, badly. It was just a matter of time before the Americans came.
There was no hope for Iraq, or Saddam. The Kuwait war had shown us that the dictator’s military might was a complete fiction. A dozen years had passed, and it was inconceivable to anyone that the military had gotten any better. Iraq itself had gotten worse.
But even if most of us wished Saddam were gone, it was still a depressing feeling to be caught in a country at war. We had grave doubts about the future.
And as much as I hated Saddam, I wasn’t a fan of the Americans. I wasn’t a hater of Americans; my attitude would be closer to neutral, I guess. I admired the culture, or what I’d seen of it—basketball, the movies. I knew the U.S.A. was a great military power. But I wasn’t looking forward to having Iraq ruled by Americans. Nor did I have any dreams or illusions about going to America or, even more extreme, turning Iraq into a Middle Eastern version of America.
Democracy? It was too lofty a concept to consider. What most of us thought about was simple: What things did we have to do to get through the day?
Sometimes we thought about the next day, and the day after that, but that was the extent of our future. Those thoughts were always in the barest terms: How will we survive?
We stayed in our houses mostly, gathering what news we could from the state-run television channels, deciphering the truth from the bullshit. The same day I saw what the Tomahawk had done to the phone building, the Americans launched an attack against the airport on the southwestern side of town. This was a much larger attack, and the explosions seemed louder by a factor of ten.
I saw the attack from a friend’s house near the airport. While we were far enough away to be safe, the waves of bombs or missiles that struck the base were clearly visible. I saw an F/A-18 or similar aircraft fly over the area as the bombs struck.
When the raid died down, we went to the airport grounds to see what had happened. As we got close, I saw a single man, not a soldier but a civilian, handling a Russian-made machine gun on the roof of a one-story house. He was firing into the air, as if his lone gun might drive off the unseen planes.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked. “You’re not shooting at anything.”
The man looked at me blankly.
“You can’t reach the airplanes with that,” I told him. “And truly, if a pilot sees your gunfire, he’ll come back and hit you with a missile that will blow you into a million pieces. For what?”
He stopped shooting, though whether I had convinced him or he simply had run out of bullets, I have no idea.
The American attack had struck the anti-air defenses and some of the military facilities at the airport and camp. But it missed the Iraqi army. The units that had been headquartered in Mosul had already disappeared, the men either ordered away or simply deserting. No one in the city seemed to know where they had gone.
Shortly after the attack on the airport, members of the Peshmerga arrived in town from Kurdistan. The Peshmerga were Kurdish militia, paramilitary forces that in some cases were working with U.S. Special Forces and the CIA to fight against Saddam during the early stages of the war. Whether these men were one of those units or not, I have no idea. I wasn’t about to ask; it was obvious that the best way to deal with them was to keep our distance.
The Peshmerga and the Kurds in general had a long history with Saddam, none of it pleasant. First of all, to explain: The Kurds are a separate people who have lived in the areas of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq for hundreds of years. During that time, they’ve had varying degrees of autonomy over the region they call Kurdistan. In the 1880s, they attempted to rebel against the Ottoman Empire but were unsuccessful. Other nationalistic movements followed, but so far none have successfully established Kurdistan as an independent nation.
The three provinces in Iraq that are predominantly Kurdish are Erbil, Dahuk, and Sulaymaniyah. Years of Kurdish rebellions against Iraqi governments resulted in a pledge in March 1970 to establish autonomy for the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, but those plans were never realized. Saddam’s repression provoked a Kurdish rebellion in the 1980s; the dictator responded ferociously, murdering countless Kurds, civilians as well as freedom fighters. He destroyed whole villages and sent Kurds to other parts of Iraq, hoping to dilute their hold on the north. It was during this time as well that he is said to have used chemical gases on the people.
Mosul is south and west of these areas, and ethnically separate. Still, it is very close—if you drew a straight line from the Kurdish city of Dahuk to Mosul, it would measure roughly thirty-seven miles. A significant number of Kurds lived in Mosul before the war, and there were lingering ethnic rivalries and prejudices, though for the most part everyone got along. I myself have had different relationships with Kurds in general and in particular. I have several good friends who are Kurds; I’ve known Kurds who were jerks. If I were to make a general statement, I would say that most Kurds are very hardworking and honest, but I could easily come up with exceptions.
Following the first American Gulf War and Desert Storm in 1991, the United States and its allies tried to help the Kurds, including their territory in a northern no-
fly zone and extending humanitarian aid. Saddam’s air force, already battered by the war, could not operate in that area, making it more difficult for him to oppress the Kurds. With encouragement from the United States, the government inside the Kurdish area of Iraq became more autonomous.
At the same time, internal conflicts rose. Two different factions rose to prominence and then fought with each other. Iran encouraged both factions at different points and took a clandestine but active role encouraging the fighting and backing its own favored group. In 1996, after an Iranian assault into Iraqi territory ostensibly aimed at rebels planning an attack into Iran, Saddam Hussein sent forces north. The United States bombed Iraqi bases and tightened the no-fly zone, and in the end Iraq withdrew most of its troops from the region, but not before helping the Kurdish Democratic Party, its temporary ally against the Iranians, to win control of the region.
Once the war with America started, the Kurdish factions worked in parallel to rid themselves of the dictator. Both cooperated with the United States, as did their militias. Their goal was to carve out a permanent Kurdish state, their longtime dream. And this was obvious in their actions both inside and outside Kurdistan.
The first thing the Peshmerga and the Kurdish militia did when they arrived in Mosul was open the banks and take most of the money. They blew the safes and made off with the contents. Were they robbing it or, as was later claimed, securing it against Saddam’s forces?
It certainly looked like robbery to me. Just enough was left for local people to help themselves and not feel left out.
Then the Kurdish troops ransacked the army barracks at the airport, taking the weapons and other equipment for their own. They grabbed anything they could move, including artillery pieces and tanks. Large flatbeds came and hauled vehicles away for days.
With the place ransacked, the Kurds left Mosul. By then, order in the city had broken down. The police seemed to be in hiding. People were looting government buildings, taking things they wanted or needed. The rest of us huddled in our houses, gathering to watch the news on our generator-powered TVs and discuss whatever rumors we’d heard.
Every so often a small group would surge past the house, heading to loot one place or another. I remember a friend shouting to me to come downtown with him; he and the others were going to see if they could find any money left in one of the banks.
“No way,” I told him. “I’m not a thief.”
“Come on,” he insisted.
“No.”
“Fuck you, then.”
“Fuck you.”
My friends thought I was an idiot for not joining in.
Al Jazeera, the Arabic news station, became something of an information lifeline for us in the early days of the war. Its reports helped us track what was going on. I spent hours and hours with my friends in small, cramped apartments, smoking cigarettes nonstop and listening to the news, trying to interpret each small tidbit, no matter how trivial.
The British reached Basra, the major Iraqi city in the south, on March 22. U.S. Marines battled the Iraqi army near Nasiriya the next day. These early battles set what would be the pattern for the rest of the war: opposed first by the regular Iraqi army, the U.S.-led coalition forces quickly defeated their conventional enemies. But once the Iraqi army retreated or disintegrated, guerrilla fighters appeared. Some had been in the army, some were from the Fedayeen Sadaam, some were radical Islamists. The last group was less discriminating in its choice of targets; its tactics often included hiding among civilians or even using them as shields. The conventional fighting was quick; gaining actual control of the urban areas was more difficult and time consuming.
Basra was not declared under control by the British until April 6, due largely to the allies’ attempts to limit civilian casualties and damage. It was the first major city declared completely under allied control.
By March 27, a week after the start of the war, U.S. forces had reached the area of Samawah, the city midway between Basra and Baghdad. In the days that followed, the Americans prepared for a drive on Baghdad itself. The assault on the capital began in the outskirts on April 2; the next day U.S. forces took the airport. A week later, on April 9, Baghdad was declared under U.S. control.
In Mosul, we waited for the inevitable arrival of the American army. A few people were optimistic that they would bring change for the better. My wife, Soheila, was one.
“Maybe we will have a democratic government,” said Soheila. “Maybe when it is all over, we will be better off.”
I kept my darker opinions about the future to myself.
“We have to change,” said Soheila. “Life has to change—we will go through this and things will be better.”
She had a few tangible things on her side of the argument—oil, the creativity of the Iraqi people. The country, after all, has the potential to do much that is very good. But even at that time, hoping for a better future could not erase the tension we all felt, nor the sense that we might die in the crossfire between the United States and the last defenders of the regime.
AND THEN SUDDENLY, the atmosphere changed. U.S. soldiers arrived in Mosul, and it was like a holiday. People were excited—and happy.
Kids swarmed around the procession of army vehicles, waving. Soldiers threw them candy and a few gave them toys. There was suddenly a feeling of celebration and liberation. People were overjoyed that Saddam was no longer in charge. The surge of relief made us dizzy.
I DON’T KNOW what we all expected to follow. I don’t know what I expected. Things were better in many ways. I no longer feared being bombed or getting caught in the crossfire between the Americans and Saddam’s troops. But conditions in the city did not miraculously improve. Work was still hard to come by. The store of food and other supplies Soheila and I had put away slowly but steadily dwindled.
Days passed. The electricity came back. But life was far from normal and in no way easy. Few businesses were functioning; there was no government to speak of. I divided my time between asking around for work and hanging out with friends trying to get an idea of what was going on and what would happen next.
One day some American soldiers pulled up in a Humvee on a street where I and a friend were standing. They got out and entered the nearby store. The men were wearing full combat gear, and they reminded me of the heroes I’d seen in American movies. I’d never been this close to Americans, and I wondered what they were like.
For whatever reason, I felt as if I had to talk to them. So I convinced my friend to come with me. We walked over to the men who were waiting outside the store. With not very good English, I asked them for some MREs—Meals Ready to Eat, the standard American military food ration, usually eaten when in the field.
One of the soldiers, who by that time had probably had enough MREs to last a lifetime, handed over a small box.
I took it back to our apartment as if it were a trophy.
“What is this?” asked my mother as I set it down on our kitchen table.
“American food.”
“Let me see.”
We opened the package. Even I was surprised by what we found—chicken, fruit, gum, napkins.
“You know what?” said my mother. “An army with food like this? They will never lose.”
The food was surprisingly good, and not just because we were skimping on our own. And my mother was right—there was no comparison to the rations the Iraqi army typically had. In our military, it was not unusual to go completely without army-supplied food for three or four or even five days. If you couldn’t buy something on your own or get it somehow from home, you would starve. But here was a country that gave its soldiers so much food that they grew tired of it and even gave it away.
From that moment on, I wanted to work with the Americans. I realized they had money and food, two things in very short supply in Mosul, and if I worked with them, I could take care of my family.
I began seeking out American soldiers, asking who I could talk to about getting a job. Finally I f
ound an officer who was relatively friendly. Mack—I forget his real name and even his rank, though I think he was a captain—couldn’t give me a job, but he was respectful and encouraging in other ways. When we met, he was overseeing a work unit building and repairing playgrounds around the city. I started hanging around and helping when I could, digging the holes for swing sets and then helping get them up.
My English was very, very limited. But there were no translators with Mack’s unit, and that occasionally made me useful. I helped communicate a few simple phrases from fellow Iraqis, and slowly I gained his confidence by answering questions he had about the area and different customs.
One day, I noticed a man walking toward the plot of land where the Americans were working. I recognized him right away; he was well known locally as someone soft in the head, often under the influence of drugs. No one in Mosul who knew him took him seriously.
He could, however, be very belligerent some days, and even from a distance it was obvious this was going to be one of those days. He walked up to the soldiers and tried starting a fight. I rushed over and intervened.
“He’s not in his right mind,” I told the Americans, who were bewildered by his rants. “Don’t pay attention to him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
I pushed him away. He retreated—then returned a few minutes later, holding a hand grenade.
The grenade was ancient; I doubt it would have exploded no matter what the circumstances were. But you can imagine the reaction. I ran over and grabbed him before he got too close to the soldiers. I took the grenade away and gave it to one of the soldiers, then pulled the idiot down the street. I found his home and told his family what had happened. They saw to it that he never bothered the Americans again.
It seems remarkable now that an incident like that could have passed without grave repercussions for the man, but it did. This was a calm period of time in Mosul—there may have been some animosity toward the Americans, but if so it hadn’t been expressed in violent terms. A year or two later, a man with a grenade, no matter how old it was, no matter how crazy he was, would surely have been shot on sight. But at this point it was unusual and bizarre, very much out of the ordinary, and fortunately not taken as a real threat.
Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs Page 6