by Nir Rosen
Previously Sunnis and Shiites had lived together in the area. Jasim and his family blamed outsiders for instigating the problems. They received a letter from the Tawhid Brigade, stating that because Sunni families had been killed and expelled in Baghdad, infidel families (meaning Shiites) had five days to leave or face death. Those who ignored this warning were killed, including Jasim’s brother-in-law, whose body was never found.
The Ministry of Displacement provided Jasim and his family with beds, blankets, and a small kerosene cooker, but nothing else. After one year of trying, they succeeded in transferring their ration cards from the Public Distribution Service, but they received rations only every few months, and only a small share of what they used to receive. The Sadrist movement provided them with food such as rice, flour, and sugar. There was no running water in the area, so they relied on a nearby well. Although they had been connected to the national power grid, they rarely got electricity. They had to break apart a bed to use it for firewood because they had no cooking gas or kerosene. On some days they had no food. Jasim was unable to register for his pension as a wounded veteran because the ministries were not functioning properly.
Jasim’s brother found an occasional job working in the sewage system, and he would sometimes bring money to the family. Only their older children attended school. The family members had voted in the most recent elections for the Shiite Iraqi Alliance list, but they complained that they had not received anything from the government, not even security. “My message to the American people after five years,” said Jasim’s wife: “They destroyed us and didn’t help us, they didn’t reconstruct the country, they even added more destruction to us. The days during Saddam were better. Now there is killing and nothing good. Before there was security and life was going on easily, while now there is nothing. Now things are getting worse and worse, killing in the streets, and there is no life. Strangers come to our homes and threaten us. I feel life is miserable now and our country is destroyed.”
The neglect in Sadr City and other neighborhoods on the outskirts of Baghdad was shocking. But Washash, in central Baghdad, was stark for its contrast to the upscale Mansour district adjacent to it. Of course, much of Mansour was deserted when I visited because of Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army, but the district’s clothing stores and restaurants were once packed, its shopping boulevard and ice cream parlors open until late at night. The streets of the majority-Shiite Washash remained unpaved dirt, many flooded with water or sewage. It was quiet and removed from the nearby bustle.
Washash was a staging point for Mahdi Army attacks against Al Qaeda and forays into the Mansour district. It was one of the few Shiite neighborhoods I saw that was surrounded by concrete walls, with only one road left open for cars, guarded by Iraqi soldiers. Elsewhere a few narrow openings between the concrete blocks allowed pedestrians to enter one at a time. About five thousand families lived in Washash, but most of its Sunnis had fled or were slaughtered, and the Mahdi Army men there were notorious, even among other Mahdi Army units, for their brutality. In Washash I saw more posters and banners in honor of Muqtada and his father than anywhere else in Baghdad.
When I first visited Washash in April 2003, sewage flooded the streets and there was a thriving arms market nearby. About sixty thousand people lived in an area not much larger than one square kilometer. When American vehicles approached, the weapons dealers would hastily conceal their wares. The revenge killings started in Washash soon after Baghdad fell, and it didn’t take long for the murders to take on a sectarian tone. In October 2003 three Sunnis were killed in Washash: Sheikh Ahmed Khudeir and his brother Walid Khudeir were killed along with a teenage assistant as they walked home from the Sunni Washash Mosque after the morning prayer. The three were riddled with bullets. Locals believed militiamen from the Badr Corps had killed them. Hospital officials reported seeing many similar cases in the area. In August 2004 a police chief and a patrolman were killed in an explosion in Washash. In December 2004 several members of a Sunni Salafist group in Washash were killed, and Sunni gunmen tried to kill a Shiite sheikh called Razaq; they missed Razaq but killed his wife and wounded his son, who remained paralyzed. Following the killings, Sunni and Shiite clerics issued a joint edict banning sectarian fighting. By the summer of 2005, sectarian violence was a common occurrence. Sectarian violence targeting Sunnis was so bad that in July the Sunni waqf (endowment) complained about the targeting and arrest of Sunnis.
Washash and the nearby Iskan were located in northeast Mansour on an important sectarian front line between Shiite-controlled Hurriya and Kadhimiya and Sunni-controlled Khadra, Jamia, Adil, and Mutanabi. In October 2006, during Operation Together Forward II, American soldiers raided a house in Washash while searching for a death squad and found documents recording the cleansing of Sunnis from the area. The documents included a list of nearly seventy homes where Sunni families had been expelled and Shiite families were brought in to replace them. There was also a list of “good” families who would not be expelled. American soldiers discovered letters threatening Sunnis as well as DVDs with the same message from the Mahdi Army, with images of exploding houses and threats to kill a male of the house. That month Washash notables asked the Iraqi government to intervene in a crime wave that had led to the discovery of sixty corpses and the threatening of many families by militias. In November a journalist working for the state-run Al Sabah newspaper was killed in Washash. In December, gunmen assassinated a news editor for an Iraqi radio station as he left his home to go to work. In April 2007 four women accused of being informants for the Americans were killed in Washash.
In the summer of 2007, as American forces pushed the Mahdi Army out of Hurriya, some members of the militia moved to Washash, resulting in an increase of militia activity and murders. In July of that year Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi publicly accused Shiite militias of cleansing hundreds of Sunni families from Washash and added that soldiers from the Iraqi army’s Sixth Division had cooperated with the militias. Dulaimi’s bodyguards had clashed in the past with men from the Sixth Division, and Dulaimi accused the division’s Colonel Rahim of an attempted assassination. That same month, Tariq al-Hashimi, leader of the Islamic Party and the Sunni vice president, complained about Shiite militias in Washash. In August a car bomb exploded close to a coffee shop in Washash. Later that month the First Battalion, Sixty-fourth Armor Regiment, set up a combat outpost nearby. A Sunni Arabic teacher at the local secondary school was shot on the street. Men were killed for drinking alcohol. In September a U.S. airstrike during clashes with the Mahdi Army killed between fourteen and thirty-one residents, some of whom were civilians. Several homes were destroyed, including one that belonged to an expelled Sunni family whose teenage son had been murdered earlier that summer (they had moved to Ghazaliya).
Later that month gunmen assassinated Washash’s notorious Mahdi Army commander, Hamudi Naji, along with two of his associates, leading to reprisals against Sunnis. (Several months earlier Naji and his men had struck a truce with Sunnis in Washash.) Locals believed that two of the assassins were from the Iraqi Islamic Party. Some blamed the small Ugaidat clan; others said Naji was killed by the relatives of a man he had killed two years earlier. Hundreds of Sunnis fled Washash after the reprisals. Many were killed, including whole families, and several homes were destroyed. One car carrying a fleeing Sunni family was hit by an RPG before they escaped. Many Sunnis who fled to nearby Adil complained that American and Iraqi forces had facilitated their displacement by directing them to the highway and escorting them. That month a car bomb exploded in Washash and killed two civilians. The Mahdi Army manned checkpoints and kidnapped Sunnis without American interference.
In the fall of 2007 the bodies of murder victims were often found in Washash. In October more than one thousand men marched to protest the new wall the Americans were planning to build around the area. Their chants rejected the wall and America. Small Jersey barriers were already up, but the Americans were constructing a larger wall that would sea
l the neighborhood more effectively. In clashes with the Iraqi army after the protest, two locals were injured. That month the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi army fought openly in Washash.
In November four Mahdi Army commanders were killed in Washash. It was suspected that the Mahdi Army itself might have been responsible for the assassinations, and that the four were negotiating with the Americans to establish a Shiite Awakening group. In late 2007 Mahdi Army men from Washash declared that they were operating independently of the militia’s hierarchy as a result of disagreements with the local leadership, based in Shula.
In 2006 Washash was technically a battle space “owned” by Lieut. Col. Gian Gentile, but from July to November of that year he did very little there because he was concentrated in Amriya. Gentile told me that no other American combat unit conducted systematic COIN operations there in 2006—the result of low troop numbers, perhaps. By the time an American unit eventually got there, a brutal Shiite militia was running rampant. Lieut. Col. Ed Chesney commanded the First Battalion, Sixty-fourth Armor, Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Georgia. They arrived in late May 2007 and controlled their area of operations from June 15, 2007, to July 3, 2008. The battalion’s area of operations encompassed a large portion of the Mansour district, including the neighborhoods of Khadra, Jamia, Adil, Iskan, Washash, Mutanabi, Andalus, and Mansour. Chesney was on his third deployment to Iraq; he had been an executive officer in Bayji from 2003 to 2004 and a deputy brigade commander in eastern Baghdad from July 2005 to January 2006.
“The battalion and our brigade prepared for the deployment by focusing on our core war-fighting fundamentals and skills,” Chesney said. “We did not focus on COIN until late in our preparation. Most of my senior NCOs and officers had at least one Operation Iraqi Freedom deployment as experience, and we used the collective experience.”
“Washash was the poorest area we were responsible for,” Chesney said. “It was also heavily Shia, with the neighborhoods to the south being mixed to heavily Sunni. The walls were not in place, other than some Jersey barriers on some of the streets. The area was dominated by a criminal JAM element under the control of Hamudi Naji. The Sunnis to the south were petrified of him and his element and did not trust the army. What police there were in the area were from the Kadhimiya district, which did not engender trust in the Sunni population. There had been sectarian killings and intimidation in the mixed and Sunni areas around Washash; all of this was attributed to Hamudi’s group. There was no JSS [joint security station] close to Washash.
“By this time there were not a lot of mixed neighborhoods,” Chesney continued. “Consequently, when the army arrested people in Washash they were almost always Shia, so the people thought they were sectarian. But in Jamia, they arrested all Sunnis and were sectarian. When there was sectarianism it usually took the form of disrespect to the people or had a criminal aspect to it. Also, at times the Iraqi junior leaders performed poorly and were afraid to confront either JAM or Al Qaeda elements—this fostered the notion of sectarianism. The army around Washash, especially the rank and file, was sympathetic to JAM. . . . Lieutenant Colonel Hassan, the battalion commander, did not trust them to conduct cordon and searches properly if U.S. forces weren’t there to watch over them. We suspected corruption in many areas but were unable to prove it.”
Because it was so dangerous for outsiders, my driver, whose cousin lived there, arranged for us to be met by the head of the local tribal council, Sheikh Kadhim Khanjer Maan al-Saedy, who guaranteed my safety. A Sadrist, he introduced me to Mahdi Army men who surrounded us as we strolled through his neighborhood’s dirt streets. Many displaced Shiites from wealthier majority-Sunni neighborhoods had been forced to flee to Washash and work where they could. “We are helping the people who have been displaced from other cities,” he said. “Some of the help is with stipends, salaries, or places to live in. Also we are trying to provide gas and kerosene as much as we can.” Graffiti on the wall behind him said, “Long live the hero leader Muqtada al-Sadr.” The men told me that Ahmad Chalabi had visited the area and promised to help. “He only sat for thirty minutes, drank his Pepsi, and left,” a sheikh told me.
I met one man displaced from Dora. “Shiites were the minority there,” he said, “and they started killing them in their houses. They did not get my son because he was at his college, and we came to this area because it has a Shiite majority.” One month after fleeing to Washash, he said, “the Americans and the Iraqi army came to our street, and they blew up the door to our house, and they arrested us and some of our neighbors, we don’t know why. I was arrested by the American army with my son for eleven months and six days—without any charges. They accused me of being a terrorist, and they don’t have any proof. They released me and they kept my son, and we don’t know for which reason. If anybody says the Americans came to liberate the country, we say it is not true. If they came to liberate us, they should show some respect to us. There are no human rights.”
Sheikh Kadhim introduced me to an elderly man in a head scarf whose home had recently been raided by the Americans. “At 11:30 p.m. they raided our house after breaking our doors,” the man said. “They beat the men, women, and my daughters-in-law. We asked them, ‘What do you want?’ but they said nothing. We don’t know what they wanted.”
As Sheikh Kadhim and I walked down the street, we were surrounded by throngs of Mahdi Army men and other residents of Washash desperate to voice their anger. “As you know, we consider the Iraqi army to be our sons and brothers,” Kadhim told me. “Unfortunately the army unit here which is surrounding the area is giving false information about us. They said we are doing many bad things and the neighborhood is unsafe. When the Iraqi army raid houses, they steal the mobile phones and money, attack the elderly people, and falsely accuse people. For example, some of our young guys were accused of planting bombs. After the investigation, they discovered it is not true. Some of them were accused of killing people; they said such and such killed ten or fifteen. After the investigation they released him. So there are false accusations against those innocent people.”
Kadhim and the people of Washash spoke of the Iraqi army unit in charge of their area much the way Sunnis spoke of the Iraqi police. “They are dealing with us in a sectarian way,” Kadhim said. “Most of the prisoners are Shiites, most of the arrests are of Shiites.” The Iraqi police were different, he said. “The Iraqi police can come without weapons and see if anyone would shoot one bullet. We will be responsible for them as the tribal leaders council. . . . The police are peaceful people. If anyone files a complaint they will respond to him properly. We don’t have any problem with the police.” I would soon find out just how close they were with the police.
We passed men wheeling in goods for sale on pushcarts, and at an intersection I found a tractor used as a garbage truck to clean the streets. “Our sons collect trash with this car,” one tribal leader told me. “The Sadrist Current collects the trash,” a man corrected him.
On the corner sat many women in abayas by dozens of colorful jerricans. They were waiting for kerosene that the Mahdi Army was supposed to bring in, but, they claimed, the Iraqi army was besieging their area and preventing the kerosene from coming in. The women had been waiting for four days.
I approached the women hoping one might agree to talk to me on camera and was surprised by how eager they all were. “My dear,” said an elderly woman with tribal tattoos on her chin, “we don’t have electricity, kerosene, or gas, and we are surrounded and we have been insulted. Where should we go? To whom should we complain? We are waiting for a month to get some kerosene, but we got nothing. Only the Mahdi Army used to bring us kerosene, but now the Iraqi army is not allowing them. It is not true that the Mahdi Army are terrorists,” she said. A tribal leader interrupted her. “The Americans are the real terrorists,” he insisted. “They are bringing Al Qaeda and the terrorists to Iraq!”
A younger woman explained to me that “without the Mahdi Army, our women or
girls could not go outside. We are under a lot of pressure. They are defending us like they are defending their own sisters.” She and her daughters had been expelled from the majority-Sunni town of Mahmudiya, she told me, after two of her sons were murdered. “The Mahdi Army are the only ones who gave me a shelter, and they are protecting me and my daughters. The terrorists killed my sons with a car bomb. One of them was married, and he left behind four children, and I have twelve people to look after. May God bless the Mahdi Army. Now I feel safe to go to the market. We are going out only with the protection of the Mahdi Army. Anyone who says they are terrorists is lying.”
Another young woman, holding her baby, told me that “the Americans are ruining people’s lives. We don’t have electricity, and we don’t receive our rations. They are raiding the houses every night. What we have done? The Americans and the national guards are raiding our houses every day, and our sons are not sleeping there at night. Tell me, what we have done?”
A thick, muscular Mahdi Army man explained that an Iraqi army captain named Salim was preventing the kerosene truck from entering the neighborhood. Another man insisted Salim was a Sunni and was punishing them for sectarian reasons. I found out later that he was, in fact, a Shiite.
“We haven’t had electricity in Washash for four months,” one man told me. “Sewage floods, and there is no water, no electricity, and we are surrounded. It is like a prison inside Washash. Tell me, what is the difference between here and prison? We are surrounded by a wall that prevents us from going to other neighborhoods. Our sons and daughters can’t go to the schools in the Arabi neighborhood, which is the closest area. Our conditions are very bad, and there are random arrests. The services we have are only through the help of the Sadrists, may God bless them. They are cleaning, they are helping the ones who need some money. They are bringing the kerosene and giving it to families.”