Sisters in War

by Christina Asquith

  This morning’s mission was to retake the warehouses, which housed a UN program that had been distributing food baskets to tens of thousands of needy Iraqi families since the sanctions of the late 1990s. “Get the food to the people” was the order. The baskets contained beans, flour, rice, soap, and a few other basic staples—and were essential to survival for many families. Distribution had been first disrupted when the Iraqi government’s Ministry of Trade, which operated the program, had been looted and burned. Now they had the armed gunmen to deal with. Swathed in red-and-white-checkered headscarves, they carried AK-47s and looked “like Al Qaeda,” according to other units who had seen the men outside the warehouse. But since few of the U.S. soldiers spoke Arabic, they could only speculate as to whether these guys were Saddam’s men, foreign jihadis, or local teenagers with guns. Debate ensued as to whether they should arrest them immediately, or try something more friendly.

  “Let’s offer them Coyne as a second wife,” a soldier had suggested, to hoots of laughter.

  “Ha-ha, guys,” she said, hardened to the teasing, but no less annoyed by the implied sexism. “Why don’t we try and talk to them?” Despite the importance of communication, Lieutenant Coyne was the only soldier in the unit who spoke Arabic. Her battle-roster position was “Chief of Linguist Team” (though she was the “team”). She couldn’t wait to leave the claustrophobic base and meet the Iraqis she’d been thinking about for so long. She yearned to let them know that her unit was there to help.

  Still, she kept her finger near the trigger of her M16 as her two-Humvee convoy made its way toward Sadr City. The situation had definitely deteriorated since her last tour of the streets. Through her black sunglasses, she self-consciously scanned the flat rooftops, the shaded windows of passing cars, and the crowds of Iraqi men who watched the convoy race past, kicking up dust. Soldiers from her unit had removed the door of the Humvee—it was not armored anyway—so they could lean out and take aim, if need be. At any moment, her commanding officers warned, a soldier could be caught in the crossfire of a disgruntled Iraqi Ba’athist or Al Qaeda operative. It was nerve-racking, but she had to admit she also thrilled at the idea of being in a rough neighborhood and on a dangerous mission. That was why she had given up her job at the White House to be a soldier. She wanted to be on the front lines and out in the world, getting her hands dirty, doing good, and she recognized little contradiction in delivering the message of goodwill from behind the barrel of a gun.

  As the Humvee flew along, the frenzied commercial center of downtown Baghdad gave way to a vast, flat desert of mud-brick houses, broken sewage pipes, and patches of trash-strewn land where young men kicked around a deflated soccer ball. Sadr City, she knew, was the city’s largest and poorest Shia neighborhood. Built in the late 1950s to provide housing for rural peasants, the neighborhood had long operated as a center of political resistance. What began as a Communist stronghold against the Ba’ath Party soon became an organizing base of religious Shia who opposed Saddam’s Sunni regime. In revenge, Saddam had neglected the neighborhood for decades. Heather saw schools without windows, roads uneven from running sewage, and residents dumping their trash in empty lots. Her convoy had to be careful not to trample the barefoot children who weaved into traffic hawking rose-colored packets of tissues or mint bubble gum.

  The convoy crunched to a stop, at last, in front of the warehouse, where a group of sullen-looking men banded together. They wore sweatpants, sandals, and oversize Western T-shirts; the older men wore short-sleeve collared shirts and thin leather belts with shiny buckles. Only about six of them had weapons, but what unnerved Heather was that, while most Iraqis waved and smiled at passing convoys, these men stared blankly.

  Lieutenant-Colonel David Jones, the unit chaplain who was serving as the team leader for this mission, led the way out of the vehicle and greeted the crowd. Heather stepped out behind him, trying to look friendly. After a few brief words, the young guards ushered them into the warehouse and told them they would meet with the group’s sheik, a religious leader. The food warehouse was a cavernous building, like an airplane hangar, with trash, piles of rags, and stripped pieces of metal equipment. A couple of tiny windows let in streams of sunlight, although they were blanketed in dirt.

  Up close, Heather saw the militiamen were not Al Qaeda, but simply teenagers. She couldn’t tell who, if anyone, was in charge since they all dressed in street clothes, and all seemed eager to follow anyone who offered direction, even the Americans. The sheik had not yet arrived, so everyone stood around for a few minutes. The mood lightened as the guards’ youth and curiosity got the better of them. When they realized Heather was a woman, they whispered and pointed at her. In their poor English, they addressed her the best way they knew: “Hello, mister. How are you? Good, good.”

  Heather smiled to herself. If they were meant to appear threatening, they must have forgotten.

  “Salaam aleikum,” she said, using the standard Arabic greeting of “Peace be upon you.”

  “Wa aleikum salaam,” they replied, surprised by her Arabic. “And peace be upon you.”

  “You speak Arabic?” They pulled crinkled cards from their pockets to show Heather laminated badges with their photos, their signatures, and Arabic calligraphy. The group’s name was Al Houza, but that meant nothing to her.

  “We’re in charge of protecting the warehouse,” one said proudly. Ali Babas had come to steal the food and we saved it, they said. “The food is for the people in our neighborhood.”

  Heather laughed with relief. She had expected a hostile army, not some sort of a Muslim aid agency with photo ID badges, even if they did have guns. She told them she was impressed at the speed and organization that had enabled them to issue ID cards in the middle of a war.

  “Your energy and self-motivation are exactly what your country needs to rebuild itself.” She smiled at them, sounding more formal in the foreign language than she intended. She assured them that the U.S. military wanted to help them guard the warehouses. They nodded enthusiastically.

  “Bring your tanks next time!” one shouted.

  The more she spoke with them, the more fascinated—and concerned—she became. These weren’t just armed opportunists who’d seized the warehouse to steal food. These foot soldiers represented a complex political organization with a serious agenda, and they intended to use the aid as a way of building a power base. Although relieved the meeting would not turn violent, she worried that her unit had been dropped into the middle of a situation they didn’t understand. We’re way out of our league, she thought.

  Suddenly, just as she was making headway with the guards, one of her superiors—a civil affairs major from a different unit, who acted as if he knew everything on all matters Iraqi—appeared at her side and demanded to have a word with her. A small, bossy man, his voice was scolding.

  “Lieutenant Coyne, in Islamic cultures men would be offended by your trying to talk with them. I advise you to keep quiet.”

  Heather was taken aback. “Sir, I have interacted with Iraqis and I have never had any problems in any other situations—”

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the sheik, whose already impressive height was exaggerated by a grand white turban fastened with a black, twisted piece of twine and a long robe that trailed behind him. Reverently, the crowd cleared and let him pass.

  “Lieutenant, don’t mess up this relationship,” the major warned her. “Keep quiet and stand back.”

  In light of his higher rank, Heather had little choice but to follow orders. Chaplain Jones was leading the day’s mission, but he had been planning to pass the ball to Heather, since she could address the crowd in Arabic without a translator. But now Heather watched the major elbowing his way to the middle of the room to greet the sheik. Clearly, he intended to dominate the scene, even though he needed a translator to make himself understood, and even though he didn’t completely understand the situation yet. What galled her the most was his lame effort to invoke Arab cha
uvinism to justify his own. Her face reddened from the heat and the surge of irritation.

  Addressing the sheik and his men, the major then launched into a diatribe, telling the sheik exactly what was going to happen—his militia would have to turn over the warehouses to the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, and in return, the vigilantes would receive “certificates of appreciation” and ten dollars each. In return, “Iraq will be a strong, vibrant democracy in which each citizen participates to the fullest. We are gonna redo everything,” the major announced.

  The sheik eyed the major, looking unimpressed. He would not be bought off so easily.

  “Guarding the warehouse is my duty. I have ninety-two men. They need jobs.” As the two leaders talked, the sheik’s voice began to rise in anger and he spoke so quickly that his translator could only emit short phrases. “Why didn’t the Americans protect the city from looters? Hospitals finished; schools finished; ministries finished,” he said, wiping his hands together to indicate demolition.

  Heather knew by then about the heavy damage, as it had been on the news every night. As the sheik continued, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach, since she knew her unit lacked the resources and expertise to handle all these problems.

  But while the sheik was focused on practical matters that directly affected his men and the people he was defending, the American major didn’t seem to get it, talking instead in big-picture platitudes about democracy. As Heather stood there fuming, listening to the conversation go nowhere, she recalled advice she’d read somewhere from Madeleine Albright: “Learn to interrupt,” Albright had encouraged young, ambitious women, “because no one will ever turn to you and ask what you think.” Heather desperately wanted to intervene and get the negotiations back on track, but as a new soldier, it was far from easy. Female soldiers who voiced their opinions were considered outspoken, opinionated, and “bitches”—while those who remained silent were stereotyped as passive, quiet, and “weak.” Furthermore, as a lieutenant, she could be reprimanded for “pushing back” against a higher officer.

  As she struggled with how best to handle this brewing crisis, one of the original group of young guards approached her. The sheik had observed her conversing in Arabic.

  “The sheik would like to speak with you.”

  She scooted over to the sheik.

  “Salaam aleikum,” he said.

  “Wa aleikum salaam,” she replied. She didn’t extend her arm for a handshake, but put her palm to her heart. Careful to observe the cultural niceties, she expressed gratitude to the Iraqis for their hospitality in receiving the Americans.

  “Tell me,” the sheik asked, “what do you think of Iraq?”

  So much, she thought. “Iraq is a country with great riches and history,” she started in Arabic. “This is the home to the world’s first civilization. It has been my dream to come here for fifteen years.”

  The sheik nodded in approval. “Yes, yes, we have much, but there is so much devastation from thirty years of Saddam, a bastard son.”

  She nodded. The sheik spoke in fast, classical Arabic, and she was struggling to keep up, but she was thrilled to be given the chance to negotiate. The sheik’s patient demeanor and friendly expression made her think he appreciated her Arabic skills, however elementary.

  “When you Americans arrived, you protected only the oil ministry,” he went on. “The warehouses were being savaged by looters. My men came in and protected these warehouses.”

  The sheik seemed to imply that the Americans were encouraging the looting as a strategy to weaken the country.

  As Heather struggled to digest this, she didn’t know how to respond. She needed to convince him that they were serious about fixing his country—that they were not trying to destroy it. She couldn’t exactly explain the appalling levels of bureaucratic dysfunction that she had seen during mobilization, the insufficient troop levels, and why, frankly, the soldiers hadn’t taken the looting more seriously when it first started happening. Standing in front of the sheik like this, she suddenly got a taste of the magnitude of the task ahead, and the gulf in expectations between the occupiers and the occupied.

  “Your men did Iraq a service by protecting the warehouses,” she started. “This is the kind of participation that will make Iraq strong again. However, the situation has stabilized now, and we believe the warehouses should be returned to the government ministries, not to a religious group. We are rebuilding the ministry, and we won’t be putting Ba’ath Party members back in control.”

  “Al Houza has a list of Ba’ath Party warehouse employees who are Ali Babas and corrupt,” the sheik said. “We won’t accept their return. Do you not care that the Iraqi people were being cheated by Saddam’s corrupt Ba’athists?”

  “Sir, that is why I am in Iraq.”

  He fell silent.

  “We’re also worried about these problems,” Heather added enthusiastically. “You have to come to us if you hear about corruption. Report the people to us so we can investigate them, absolutely.”

  She pulled out a notebook and jotted down notes of the meeting. Out of the corner of her eye, Heather was gratified to see the crowd’s attention drifting toward her and the sheik and felt a swell of victory at the connection she was making. She invited the sheik to attend a follow-up meeting at UN headquarters, and promised to arrange a peaceful transfer of control of the warehouses from the militias back to the government ministry in which few would lose their jobs. She tried to make only small, specific promises, and swore to herself she would keep them.

  Although nothing concrete had been accomplished, in the end there was a sense of good feeling in the room. The meeting wrapped up with a chorus of thank-yous and “peace be upon you.”

  Before Heather left, she asked one of the guards if this sheik was their leader. They shook their heads. “No, our leader is Muqtada al-Sadr.” A cheer went up. She scribbled down this name, too, not having ever heard it before. When she returned to base, she intended to write a lengthy memo of the meeting to send up the chain of command, explaining the sheik’s needs and alerting them to the fact that politically motivated religious groups were armed and were organizing the men in the neighborhoods. Best to involve them in our efforts, Heather thought, than to make enemies. She recommended that the military coordinate rebuilding efforts with Muqtada al-Sadr’s men to restart the warehouse. As she understood, army civil affairs was prepared to handle the reconstruction effort with the help of NGOs and the State Department. Heather and her unit were gathering information for them. Someone important would read her memo, she believed, and a sensible path would be acted upon.

  That was the Bush administration’s postwar “plan,” as she vaguely understood it, and she had no reason to doubt that everything would go smoothly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SADDAM’S CONCRETE, UNADORNED palace stood before Zia like an impenetrable fortress, the symbol of so many of her nightmares. It was the black hole into which Iraqis disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. “Don’t even look at it,” Baba had always warned her and Nunu.

  But Umar was already confidently crossing the front lawn, walking swiftly toward its entrance as a helicopter whirred overhead. “Yella,” he shouted back to her, Iraqi slang for “Let’s go.”

  Yet Zia felt rooted to the spot. Saddam had dozens of palaces in Iraq, but this, the Republican Palace in the center of Baghdad, had been the seat of his whole government. The palace grounds occupied several square miles, and included a neighborhood of mansions for top government officials, a park, and military parade grounds. Zia had never seen any of it before. Iraqis considered it unwise to approach the palace, for fear of attracting the suspicions of Saddam’s secret police. Most considered it unsafe to even look in its direction.

  Rumors of the evil that occurred inside sent shivers down Zia’s spine: many believed that Saddam kept practitioners of black magic from Babylon in his dungeon to read people’s minds. Others whispered about the wild parties thrown by Saddam’s mania
cal son Uday, in which he got drunk, raped women, and had once beaten a guest to death. Long denied a free press, Iraqis had heard only whispers about Saddam’s cruelty over the last decade, but now, with international human rights groups canvassing the country and the arrival of satellite television, evidence was emerging of Saddam’s atrocities—and it turned Zia’s stomach.

  Mass graves uncovered in the south produced evidence of tens of thousands of Shia men, slaughtered. Human rights activists were estimating Saddam killed as many as 100,000 Kurds in the north, in some cases gassing entire villages. Thousands of victims’ bodies would never be identified, but such physical evidence was not necessary. It turned out that the Ba’ath Party had kept meticulous records of every crime, including torture and execution of women and babies. Those searching through the offices of Ba’ath Party headquarters found execution orders bearing stamps from ministry officials and Saddam himself. Until now, Iraqis had only suspected these atrocities. Now, they and the world were learning the full scope of Saddam’s cruelty.

  Though Zia and her family had been fairly certain there had been such crimes, the confirmation of their details and extent had still come as a shock. For years, Saddam’s bullies had intimidated all Iraqis, and now the Americans had made them run and hide like cowards. But that wouldn’t be the end of it, Zia knew. Saddam hadn’t acted alone. Tens of thousands of Iraqis had propped up the Ba’ath Party, either as passive supporters like her in-laws in Hit or as active members of his government, spy network, and secret police. They’d be back. And when they came back, the hundreds of thousands of mostly Shia Iraqis who had suffered humiliation and torture, and whose families had been killed by the Ba’ath Party, would be waiting for them. Iraqis were going to make them pay—them and their children and their children’s children. Underneath the celebration of the liberation was a thirst for revenge. As Zia walked nervously toward the palace doors, she began to tremble. The violence was far from over, she suspected.