Her heart skipped a beat. “What’s happening?”
“I couldn’t stop for them, Manal. They would have killed us,” he sobbed.
“Get back here as quickly as possible,” she told him.
A few months earlier the drive to Karbala would not have been considered dangerous, but things were heating up. Support for Muqtada al-Sadr had grown as the Shia in the south lost faith in the United States’s promises of security and reconstruction. He fanned the flames of anti-Americanism with his newspaper, Al Hawza, which regularly published reports of abuse by U.S. soldiers. In recent months, truck drivers working for U.S. contractors had come under attack by members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia. Alone on long stretches of empty highway, travelers were highly vulnerable targets, and choking off the Americans’ supply route was a classic tactic of insurgent warfare. Those not attacked for political reasons were often carjacked or robbed for profit. Western journalists and aid workers were increasingly uncomfortable taking the road from Baghdad to Basra. Some female journalists occasionally traveled disguised in a black abaya, but most sent their Iraqi translators instead. Manal had made the trip several times herself in the last year, but she had done so less frequently lately, fearing that she would be kidnapped.
Within thirty minutes, Amjad was back at the center. His face was ashen, his hair askew, and his shirt damp with sweat. When Manal saw the blood smeared on the hood of his car, she was mortified. “I couldn’t stop, Manal,” he kept saying. “People were reaching out for help, but they were chasing us and if I stopped, they would have killed us.”
Amjad told her what happened as Manal called the police. On the way down to Karbala, he had been lost in thought on the long, straight highway and had begun to count the enormous potholes he had to slow down to pass over. The highway was divided by a deep ditch, and surrounded by vast, endless desert. Every few dozen miles, they passed a village, a shepherd and his flock, or a roadside vendor, but otherwise, there were very few other people around.
Suddenly, Amjad noticed a car whose occupants were wearing red-and-white-checkered headscarves wrapped around their faces. Trying not to alarm the women in the car, Amjad slowed down and pulled off the road as the car with the masked men slowly passed him, intending, he told Manal, to turn around and avoid whatever the men were planning to do. But he didn’t have time. As he was turning around, the men opened fire on a cargo truck a few cars in front of him. Seconds after the gunshots, he saw the truck jackknife. The attackers swerved alongside the truck and blocked the road with their car. They fired recklessly into the cargo bed of the truck, and then began rampaging down the highway, shooting into the cars that were trying to reverse. Amjad was fortunate that he had a head start in turning around, but as he headed back up the highway, he felt his stomach drop—about twenty cars behind him, another vehicle with masked men had blocked the road. The men were working as a team. They had trapped the vehicles in between, and were walking up the line shooting into the cars. Amjad picked up speed before the shooters approached his car. Luckily, since he had been counting the potholes, he remembered where to slow down and skid out of the way. Other cars were trying to turn around as bullets flew. As he slowed to pass a pothole, a man with a bloodstained shirt stumbled toward Amjad’s car and fell onto the hood.
“Please, let me in,” he moaned.
Amjad had little time to react, but in a split-second decision he swerved and sped away, leaving the wounded man behind. The women in the car were crying and screaming.
“They were organized,” Amjad recounted to Manal. “The front car must have been talking to the back car. This was a thought-out plan.” He seemed unable to catch his breath. “Manal, we only escaped because I had been counting the potholes and I knew where they were and didn’t need to slow down.”
The police arrived. Whether it was a highway robbery or something even more nefarious—a targeted attack by Sunnis on those heading toward the Shia south—Amjad didn’t know. It had all happened in seconds. Amjad kept reliving the moment, terrified, desperately insisting he couldn’t have stopped for the people reaching out.
Manal spent the afternoon dealing with the crisis. It wasn’t until much later that she suddenly thought of Fern. Amjad’s car had not been far from Hilla, and it was on a road that Fern drove often, unguarded. Manal couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. She walked to her computer and dashed off an email to Fern. She copied it to Salwa, Fern’s Iraqi colleague.
“Guys, our staff was attacked en route to Hilla. Please be careful. I’ll give you more details later.”
Into the evening, Manal thought more and more about Fern, and patterns formed in her mind. She had been worried about Fern since she first met her, but in recent weeks something had changed. Although her and Fern’s relationship revolved around women’s rights work, Manal had spent enough time with her to feel she knew her well. In the frenzied activity of a typical day, Manal hadn’t stopped to put herself in Fern’s shoes, but she suddenly realized that Fern had a lot on her plate—too much. Her list of projects had grown incredibly quickly. She seemed to have as many as a dozen in the air; the funding was pouring in, and Fern complained she couldn’t spend the money fast enough. The CPA in Baghdad had hundreds of millions of dollars and was under pressure to spend it, but struggled because so few workers were willing to leave the Green Zone to work on projects. Fern was someone in a position to get things done.
Manal knew Fern had received more than $1 million so far, in cash. Just two weeks earlier, Fern had received another $320,000. Without functioning banks, Manal imagined Fern must have been hiding it in suitcases under her bed, traveling between Hilla and Karbala with bricks of hundred-dollar bills in the trunk—it was the only way to move money. The CPA had tried to force Manal to take money for the women’s center in this way.
“Come pick it up. Bring some duffel bags,” the woman in the convention center had told her.
“No way,” Manal had said. That was way too dangerous, and sloppy too. She wanted a paper trail, to protect herself. She had insisted that the money be transferred to Women for Women’s D.C. bank account, and they brought the money in from Jordan, on an as-needed basis.
Rather than be thrilled at the excessive funding, Fern’s recent emails to Manal had had a sense of increased urgency. Each project she got herself involved in seemed to carry with it complications and controversy. In addition to the programs at the women’s centers, Fern wanted to take a team to Jordan for a democracy conference. She also helped individual cases: a small child who needed a medical operation, and an old woman who lost her land to a Ba’athist. Fern had pushed that particular case to a local court and won permission to bulldoze the man’s house, despite her friends’ objections that she was going too far. In typical Fern style, she wouldn’t back down.
Fern had always taken on too much, though. What was new in her emails, Manal realized, was that she was also complaining about the Americans working in the CPA office in Hilla. Fern didn’t trust the several businessmen and military officers in charge of subcontracting multimillion-dollar projects. The dollars were just disappearing, and she was making enemies by raising questions. None of the work was getting done, she complained.
Fern didn’t have that many friends left inside the CPA. They called her naïve, even though Manal suspected their disapproval stemmed from their own defensiveness about staying inside the Green Zone. Manal defended her. Fern was smarter than people recognized. And the CPA certainly didn’t disassociate itself from her when it came time to issue a press release on her CPA-funded women’s centers. Manal had even heard that Fern was going to be fired for recklessness, and Fern seemed to be aware of that. Her latest email to Manal had been tinged with fatalism. “I’ve stepped on too many toes and I have made too many complaints. But you know, I am not going to back down.”
THE MORNING AFTER the attack on her staff, Manal was back in her office. She still hadn’t received a reply from Fern, which was odd. She was planning on holding a s
taff meeting about safety, when she received a call from an American friend in Hilla.
“Have you seen Fern?” she asked.
Manal felt her mouth go dry. This wasn’t a casual question.
“No,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Three people went missing yesterday. I don’t have any more information.”
“Have you called the police in Hilla?” Manal asked. The friend hadn’t, so Manal offered to. When she hung up, she found herself unable to pick up the phone again. For a moment, she bowed her head. She reminded herself that rumors abounded in Iraq.
Slowly, she punched in the number for the police chief in Hilla. Before she could even ask, he said, “Manal?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Fern.”
“What? No, I don’t think so,” Manal replied. Mistakes were made all the time in the chaos and confusion of Iraq. False alarms occurred every day.
“Three people were gunned down on the highway,” he said. “I’ll drive over to the morgue to verify their identities.”
Manal sat silently for what felt like an hour, staring into space. When someone entered her office to speak, she took a few seconds to look up, having not heard anything they had just said. She didn’t dare share her suspicions, for fear of it being bad luck.
The police chief called back in less than an hour.
“Fern’s dead. I saw the body,” he said. In short, official sentences, he shared what he knew. Fern had been driving from Karbala to Hilla the prior day when gunmen opened fire. The car had swerved off the road and ended up in a ditch in a remote farming community called Abu Gharaq. Her assistant, Salwa, was dead too. She had been hit in the car and afterward, it appeared, in the ditch at point-blank range. Another American was also in the car, and he was killed too.
Manal bowed her head. When she hung up the phone, she didn’t know what to do. The first person she called was Heather. She was the only woman who would understand the gravity and meaning of what had just happened. This wasn’t only about Fern’s murder; this was the targeted assassination of a women’s rights activist, done to send a message. When Heather chirped hello, Manal realized she had no easy way to break the news. “Fern’s dead,” she said. There was a long pause.
“Oh my God,” said Heather. “Oh no. I’m so sorry, Manal. This is terrible.”
“My staff was attacked right around the same time, also near Karbala,” Manal said. Her pitch began to rise as fear flooded into her mind. “I have staff in Fern’s centers. They need to be evacuated or protected.”
“Absolutely.” Heather was all efficiency, instantly prepared to fire off emails to military and political connections to get any necessary help.
“There are many, many Iraqi women who worked closely with Fern and loved her,” Manal said, her voice straining. “They’re going to be distraught. We have to get them counseling.”
Each woman confronted her grief with a list of tasks to keep herself busy. She had to think of her staff, Manal told herself, and caring for others somehow felt easier than thinking about her own loss. However, every few minutes she would suddenly think, Fern’s dead, and an image would flash into her mind of Fern laughing or talking about her projects. She had been so full of life—so vibrant and special. Now she was lying alone in a morgue in Hilla. It was too much to bear. Manal and Heather spent the rest of the day organizing a grief counselor for all the staffers who had worked with Fern and who loved her. Heather got the army counselors on board, and all the women were called to the convention center for a meeting. News flew through the CPA. Fern Holland is dead.
A MEDIA FRENZY ensued, as Fern was the first CPA worker killed in Iraq. Bremer called the FBI down to Hilla to investigate the deaths. A press conference inside the convention center was jammed with cameras and jostling reporters. Every major international news outlet carried the story. Back in D.C., memorial services were planned by women’s rights activists who had worked with Fern.
Within two days of the murders, arrests had been made, but that only served to heighten fear. Of the six men arrested, four were members of the Iraqi police force, who had been issued proper documentation and wore police uniforms. Two of them belonged to the drugs division of the Karbala police, which had offices directly opposite the Karbala Women’s Center.
“The slayings have shocked the Americans here, who now face the possibility that the men to whom they turn for cooperation in fighting the insurgency may include insurgent infiltrators or those paid to do their work,” The New York Times reported on March 13, 2004. Another article quoted the local Iraqi police chief as saying that Fern had been targeted because of the controversial nature of her work.
“The killings raised questions about the American effort to promote values here that often conflict with local attitudes and traditions,” another New York Times article, on March 12, 2004, said. “But senior American officials said that the effort to promote ‘Western values’ of sexual equality and other individual rights would not be curtailed.”
Criticism rained in on the CPA: Why was Fern allowed to drive in a car without armor plating, and with no backup security? On this subject, CPA officials declined to comment. But inside the palace, criticism was directed at Fern for taking such risks. Many people said they weren’t surprised to hear that she had been killed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ZIA HEARD ABOUT Fern Holland’s death—everyone in the Green Zone had. She suspected that Fern had not realized where she was or with whom she was working. “Faithful doesn’t even begin to capture Hilla,” Zia explained to Keith. “People there would die for their faith. Men and women down there don’t eat together, the schools are segregated. If a woman works, her office must be all women—and even a thousand years won’t change their mindset,” she said sadly. Yet she was not surprised to think of a young American working to overturn a millennium of tradition. Zia had learned that Iraq attracted all sorts of unusual birds—wanderers and dreamers, idealists and go-it-alone adventurers. Just recently, she had gotten to know a young American man named Nicholas Berg. An engineer-in-training, he loped around IMN’s campus, chatting with everyone and talking in airy, excited words about erecting communication towers to help Iraqis. What made this young guy, not much older than Zia, travel across the world to a dangerous place just to try and help? He wasn’t simply after the money or the chance to play cowboy, Zia felt. He seemed sweeter, more naïve, and he had inspired Zia to keep her faith in the Americans.
But the terror of the murders, compounded by the fact that the CPA was set to disband in June, sucked any remaining life out of the agency. No one wanted to risk their life with such a short period to go. Anyone venturing out into the “Red Zone,” as the rest of Iraq was dubbed, was considered a fool who would “end up like Fern.” Around Saddam’s pool, Fern was invoked as an example of an American “betrayed” by the locals she was trying to help. As the Americans withdrew into their shell, the Iraqis grew more frustrated and suspicious. At night, insurgents continued to shoot rockets from the outlying neighborhoods into the Green Zone. Paranoia set in.
Soon, Fern’s death was eclipsed by even more dramatic events. In early April 2004 in Falluja, a Sunni city of about 300,000 people an hour west of Baghdad, four Blackwater security guards were attacked. Their SUVs were hit with rockets and gunfire, and they burned to death in their vehicles. Video taken by one of the attackers showed the blackened bodies being dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge. Rumor in the Green Zone was that some of Blackwater’s Iraqi employees had set them up to be ambushed.
Many in Iraq hated the Fallujans, especially Shia families like Zia’s, who considered them khadaras, or dirty people. They viewed Falluja as an insular, incestuous community whose loyalties lay with local tribes, not the national government. Fallujans were also tough and proud, famed for resisting the British occupation in the 1920s. Even Saddam had known not to challenge the sheiks of Falluja; he had given them jobs in his government to appease them. The Fallu
jans hated the Americans, just as they had hated the British. Back in April, soldiers had opened fire on a crowd in Falluja, killing scores of innocent people. Since then, the city had become a hideout for Ba’athists, Al Qaeda, and most other anti-American groups. Zia saw the steady reports of attacks on Americans there as insurgents planted Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), staged ambushes, and even downed several helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. A U.S. effort to train the local police had ended when the police station was overrun and fourteen Iraqi officers were killed. The military had been threatening to attack Falluja, so after the Blackwater contractors were killed, the marines invaded.
Zia’s family wanted the Americans to hit Falluja hard. But neither they nor the military anticipated the popular reaction. To their surprise, when the military bombed Falluja and sent in troops, many in the rest of the country reacted with outrage. Across Baghdad, Iraqis took to the streets to protest. They accused the Americans of being occupiers, not liberators, and chanted at rallies, “Sunnis, Shias, unite! Our brothers are being killed in Falluja by the infidels!”
Most reports coming from the Arab media fanned the flames by showing images of women and children bleeding and dying, buildings in ruin, and soldiers shooting indiscriminately. Some news outlets reported that innocent civilians were blocked by troops from fleeing the city or getting to hospitals. The Ministry of Health estimated that two hundred Iraqis had died, but the Arab media posted a much higher figure of more than a thousand. No firm number was ever agreed upon. Refugees who did get into Baghdad were given housing by Sunni families. Schools and stores closed down, some in solidarity and some under threat by militias. If there were many Iraqis who supported the Americans, they stayed silent out of fear. The country felt as reckless and chaotic as it had in the first few days after Saddam’s statue fell, except this time, no one believed the Americans were in control anymore. The Green Zone went on lockdown, again, and no one was allowed in or out—not that anyone wanted out. The Americans, stunned by the countrywide uprisings, abruptly canceled the invasion after only three days of fighting.
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