by Nir Rosen
Kuehl’s operation officer, Lieut. Col. Chris Rogers (who was then a major), wrote a response to Gentile in the January 2008 issue of Armed Forces Journal titled “More Soup, Please.” “Gian had been criticizing the surge and the change in focus for some time,” Kuehl said. “To be honest, it really pissed me off. Here we were trying to make this work, and he, a commissioned officer, was openly critical of the effort. I found this very unprofessional on his part. Furthermore, not once did he ask my opinion on what had changed and how we were trying to do things. In fact, he never once contacted me while we were in Iraq. I think he took some of my comments in the press as personal criticism of how he did operations, which was never my intent.” (Gentile responded in Armed Forces Journal with an article titled “Our COIN Doctrine Removes the Enemy From the Essence of War.”)
“Several times I have heard Gian say that we had done nothing different from his formation,” Kuehl told me. “He uses a platoon leader from my battalion as a source to back up his argument. This platoon leader said that he did not think we did anything different, and he was critical of my decision to put an outpost in northwest Amriya. I am pretty sure I know who this was, and he was not exactly one of my stellar performers. It seems a bit odd that Gian would rely on the opinions of a lieutenant who had a lieutenant’s view of operations, as opposed to the experiences of the commander and XO of the formation, who had a broader perspective.”
I asked Gentile if he might have been stretched too thin. “Not in Amriya from August until the end of November—I made the conscious choice to concentrate almost all of my squadron in Amriya, because it was such a critical district. The notion that the surge brigades greatly increased the amount of combat power on the ground does not work in Amriya. In fact, what Kuehl brought into the area was roughly the same with what I had there. Kuehl did not increase the overall amount of combat power relative to what I had there, so the premise to this question is flawed based on actual conditions.” Gentile did not have a strong presence in other parts of Baghdad that were technically under his authority, and as the next chapter, on Washash, will show, the paucity of troops did allow militias to operate without hindrance.
Kuehl ended up expanding the area under his control. “Shortly after taking over, we expanded our area to include all of Mansour,” he said. “This gave me a broader perspective, since we had a much larger area to be concerned about. Gian was focused almost exclusively on Amriya, with one company in Khadra. The rest of Mansour was under the control of a Stryker unit for a couple months, but they were not permanent. The expansion to include all of Mansour under our responsibility allowed me to see the problem of Al Qaeda and other insurgent movement more clearly. Along with intelligence I was getting I was able to trace the infiltration routes used by Al Qaeda into western Baghdad. One of these was along the road to Abu Ghraib. AQI could easily bypass all the checkpoints and get into central Baghdad. The result of this was the improved walls along this road as well as around Ghazaliya, Khadra, and Amriya. This severely restricted the movements of AQI. Gian did put walls around Amriya, but it was very ineffective, consisting only of the shorter Jersey barriers. Insurgents could easily move them, go over them, or around them. The barrier we put up was much more comprehensive and effective.”
I VISITED SHEIKH KHALID AL-OBEIDI, president of the Council of Notables, so vaunted by U.S. occupation forces. I found him in a large hall receiving a long line of supplicants seeking food or help with medical problems or with finding missing loved ones. In another office I saw a similarly occupied Sheikh Hussein of the Maluki Mosque. I was curious to hear Sheikh Khalid’s views on why security in Baghdad had improved. “The U.S. Army has given the chance for these areas to be protected by their own,” Khalid told me. “Thus many people of these areas have volunteered to protect their own areas. This has helped to impose better security in the areas. This experience was successful to a large extent, but it needs a further investment, and we are afraid it might fail at the end. What pushed the people to accept such a project and even pushed the U.S. forces to support and allow it was the resistance operations against the U.S. forces. The U.S. forces need the people in order to protect themselves and protect the people. The people were suffering from militias in these areas in addition to the military operations in these areas. People have been asked to help and have been given the chance to protect themselves. In terms of future outlook, this is not going to help build a government, but in the meantime, people feel it is safer now than then, since they have the opportunity to protect themselves.”
But Sheikh Khalid was extremely cautious about the future. “The Iraqi people find themselves passing through a time much worse than any other time,” he said. “Much worse because nothing has changed for the better. Iraqi people have no life. They are insecure and incapable, even to leave their house safely. They have very few sources to earn money and even the political elite that came now didn’t bring anything better than the previous one. There is no real project that helps people. Iraq is a very vital place for the security of the entire world. A stable Iraq means stable oil prices and a stable economy. An unstable Iraq means a bigger Iran that imposes its control over the Gulf region and threatens all neighboring countries. Help will only come through reconsidering the political process and giving a better chance to Iraqis to choose who represent them. The political project in Iraq didn’t start right from the beginning. It was built on a sectarian basis, and thus some parties have gained control of decision making in Iraq. They have marginalized lots of skilled people, those who would have helped to shape and lead the Iraqi state. In order to let Iraq exit its ordeal, we all need to reconsider the political process and give an opportunity to the Iraqi people to choose their government without the pressure factors that were used in the previous elections. The current changes in Iraq’s security situation have shown the American administration that peace has only been gained with the people’s help and the help of the key figures—only through the help of Sunnis. If the same marginalization stays in Iraq, I think it won’t be good for anyone at the end, and the political and democratic process in Iraq that the West is hoping to achieve won’t be accepted in our communities because people won’t believe in it.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Eclipse of the Mahdi Army
ONE DAY IN EARLY 2008, I WAS ON PALESTINE STREET IN EASTERN Baghdad, heading to a meeting at the Interior Ministry. My driver stopped to buy some black-market gasoline from a man selling containers on the sidewalk not far from where a national police pickup truck was parked. I gave the man a twenty-dollar bill, but he thought it was fake, so he took it to the police to see what they thought. They saw my beard in the distance and the American money, and so they came to my side of the car to ask for my ID. Upon hearing my foreign accent they panicked; then I showed them my American passport and the press ID the U.S. military had given me, and they panicked even more, unable to read English but aware I was a foreigner. Pointing their rifles at me, they ordered me out of the car and tried to handcuff me. One of them poked me in the ribs with his rifle, searching for a suicide vest. I asked them if I could call my friend at the Interior Ministry, who would tell them who I was, but they worried I would detonate my bomb with the phone. We struggled as I refused to let them handcuff me, afraid that they were members of a militia who would kidnap me. My driver told them I was Iranian. When they heard that, they relaxed somewhat and swore on Imam Ridha that they would not harm me. “We are the state,” they told me. “We are all Shiites.”
Eventually, I told them I would go with them, but not if they handcuffed me. They put me in the back of their truck, and we drove to their headquarters. The officer stared at my IDs for several minutes, not saying anything. He was probably worried about having to deal with all the officials I was naming in case I was telling the truth, and in the end he let me go. His men told me to shave my beard so I wouldn’t look Saudi. In retrospect, despite my fear, they were not abusive. It was a change, a sign that they took their r
ole as “the state” more seriously. I would see more and more of this in the next two years.
I waited for my friend at an Interior Ministry safe house. Inside, a barber agreed to give me a “Mahdi Army”-style shave. Televisions were all tuned to Shiite religious channels showing Muharram processions. In the lobby of the ministry itself, and in the minister’s reception area, the Shiite TV channel Al Furat was showing live images of religious processions in Karbala. My friend, who was the minister’s secretary, showed up late and explained that as he was driving to the office he saw men in a pickup truck belonging to the Facility Protection Service (FPS) stop on the street, grab a young man, blindfold and handcuff him, and throw him in the back of their truck. The FPS was a government militia that protected ministries and other Iraqi government offices but was notoriously lawless and loyal to sectarian Shiite militias. My friend complained that it was impossible to control these FPS guys. As I left I saw that Shiite religious flags were placed on the roof of the Interior Ministry across the street.
The televisions in the lobby and waiting room at the Interior Ministry were tuned in to the Shiite religious channels. Shiite religious music blared from radios of police vehicles. Shiite religious banners hung on the walls of the Interior Ministry and other ministries, while Shiite religious flags waved in the wind above the nearby Oil Ministry and other government buildings. It may have seemed harmless, but it made Sunnis feel like they did not belong and were not wanted. It was a way of letting them know that the state now belonged to sectarian Shiites. But while Shiites seemed to be firmly in control of the establishment, one group that had been marginalized by Saddam was beginning to feel similarly marginalized by the new order. The angry, poor revolutionary Shiites who found a political voice in Muqtada al-Sadr and whose influence peaked during the civil war had found that their power had started to wane after the Mahdi Army cease-fire.
Like many mass movements, the Sadrists were misunderstood and reviled. Muqtada was often mischaracterized as unintelligent or boorish, despite surviving a Baathist regime that killed his father and brothers and an American occupation that swore to kill or capture him. The Mahdi Army was often described as a militia, but it was also a people’s army. All Iraqi men have at least a rifle and some ammunition in their homes, and Muqtada’s force was composed of such volunteers, who could never be fully demobilized or disarmed because they armed, and in many cases mobilized, themselves. At one time the Sadrists were probably also the largest humanitarian organization in Iraq, providing sustainable assistance to more Iraqis (albeit Shiites) than anybody else. No other movement or leader in Iraq had such devoted and inspired followers. In a volatile and fissiparous Iraq, the Sadrists were there to stay. Muqtada represented the anger of many people. He was oppressed and angry like them; he had suffered like them. He did not lead them; they led him. He was only as popular as he was angry, and when he stopped being angry, stopped being “anti,” his popularity went down. After he ordered his militia to freeze, it was common to hear Mahdi Army men say, “Assayid jundi wasarahna” (the sayyid [Muqtada] is a soldier, and we have relieved him of his duty).
In February 2008 I revisited Abul Hassan’s office in the Mustafa Husseiniya. When I had last seen him he had been brooding over the efficacy of the Mahdi Army’s cease-fire. But now he seemed absorbed by more mundane pressures of sustaining the social welfare network that the Sadrists had built for their base of supporters in the slums. During one of my visits I found him distributing, in his rarely empty office, bags of clothes and rations to poor women in black abayas, many of whom were from displaced families, expelled by Sunni militias. Most Iraqis had depended on the Public Distribution Service, an extremely efficient ration system that provided essential staples for all Iraqi families under the former regime. But the system had stopped functioning because of security problems, corruption, and sectarianism. Most families did not receive even half of what they used to, and displaced Iraqis, especially Sunnis, received nothing at all. The Sadrist movement was supplementing the rations for Shiites as well as it could, although some of that assistance may have come from extortion and other militia activities.
When I visited Abul Hassan another time, his office was still crowded. Two young men from the Iraqi Security Forces were among those visiting him. One was a member of the FPS; the other belonged to the Iraqi National Guard. Both proudly told me they were also members of the Mahdi Army. “We want you to know that most of the Sadrists are working for the government,” said the FPS member. They listed their many friends who had been killed by Sunni militias. “Many of my friends got killed in Adhamiya, Sleikh, and Bab al-Muadham when they were heading to their work,” he told me. “One of my friends got killed, and they burned his body. His body stayed in the street for two days. It was only when the security forces intervened that his family was able to get his body.” “I’m a soldier in Iraqi army, the Iraqi National Guard, for three years,” said his friend. “We saw that none of the political parties or movements are working for the benefit of the people except this movement. The Sadrists are devoting their time and effort to help Iraqi people. I thought the best way to help the people is by joining them.”
One man had absconded to Abul Hassan’s office because the Americans were looking for him. “They came to our house,” he told me. “They arrested my brother after destroying our furniture. They said that I’m wanted by them. They took him because he is my brother. If they do not find the one they are after, they will take the brothers. Sometimes they take the father.” Several men were seated on the floor awaiting Abul Hassan’s arbitration services. He was to adjudicate a legal dispute over real estate. “We can’t reach the registration directorate,” they told me, because it was in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold. “We might get killed if we go there because of the sectarian problems.”
Abul Hassan’s faithful assistant, Haidar, was always present. He had the dark skin of southern Iraqis. He was thin and muscular, and always wore a cap. He sedulously did Abul Hassan’s bidding, and was in charge of feeding the guests and making tea for them. Haidar and his family had lived in Abu Ghraib. He insisted that there had been no sectarian tensions in the area before the war, and said he had played soccer with Sunnis. Things got worse after the battles in Falluja in 2004, he said, when foreign radical Sunnis killed people they accused of being spies and threatened to slaughter Shiites. In 2006, because of these threats, he and his family were forced to leave Abu Ghraib and come to Shaab.
I persuaded Haidar to show me his new home in Shaab and introduce me to his family. His mother told me about the fraught circumstances that led to her family’s flight. “Abu Ghraib was a Sunni area,” she said, reflecting on her old neighborhood, “the Sunnis are good people. After one of my sons joined the police, we were told to leave the area, but there was nowhere to go. I accepted my son joining the police because we needed money. His father was a police sergeant, and after the war there were not enough jobs. Seven months after he took the job, we were one of about seventeen houses that received letters threatening us to leave the area. My two sons came to Shaab and found us a house to rent, and we stayed for a year there. My other son, the policeman, was killed during the course of duty. That house was not good enough for us.”
“This house belonged to a [Sunni] terrorist,” said Haidar, who joined the Mahdi Army soon after the American invasion. “He became a takfiri and was killed. Then the house was given to the Sadrist Current. There were a lot of takfiris here, and they committed a lot of killings in the area. Then the Mahdi Army came and finished them. There are no Wahhabis in the area anymore.” Three other families also shared the house; the home received about thirty minutes of electricity a day from the national grid, so they paid to receive more from a local generator.
“I wish peace will be upon everyone,” Haidar’s mother said. “We are getting tired. We just need a decent house to live in and decent food to live off of, and that America gets out so the Sunnis and the Shiites get back together without any differ
ences. I wish for my sons to get an education and to be teachers or lawyers, and for the girls to grow up and get marred with a good future. I am a believer in God, and to die in dignity is better than another kind of death.”
“I don’t think I’m able to go back,” Haidar said of his old home, “because the tribes there now are against Shiites.” Although the Anbar province was more stable because of the powerful Awakening militia there, Haidar and his family, like other Shiites, did not feel reassured. “The Awakening are the same,” he said. “They were with the terrorists before, and they are the Awakening.” He told me he would like to take revenge for his brother’s death.
Haidar took me to the nearby Saddah area on the outskirts of the city, where hundreds of impoverished Shiite Iraqis, many of them displaced by Sunni militias, lived in makeshift homes. There were about three hundred such homes in the area, with ten to twenty residents in each one. Locals complained that they were harassed by the Americans. The only help they received was from the local Sadrists.
Jasim Muhamad was an Iraqi army veteran who was wounded during the American invasion of 2003. He and seventeen of his relatives, including eight children, now lived in three adjacent shacks. They were from Haswa, near Falluja. They said that no one had returned to Haswa since some women went there to transfer their children’s school papers to Baghdad and were killed. “No one from the family tried to get us back to our homes,” said Jasim’s wife. “If I go back, I will get killed.” Up to three thousand families from Haswa were displaced, they told me, their homes looted. The Iraqi army had told them to leave Haswa because it was unsafe. They believed that the Awakening members were the ones who had expelled them and that these same militiamen would threaten them if they dared to return.