The Iraq War at One Year
By Karl Zinsmeister

These are two excerpts from a 27-page article presenting photos and reporting from Baghdad and Fallujah. Subscribe now, or order a single copy of the April/May 2004 issue to read the full report.

*****

In Iraq, the roles of good cop and bad cop must be filled by the same American soldiers, and today it is time for the 82nd to rap some knuckles. Two of the most inflammatory imams in southern Baghdad--Sheik Akram of the Mekkad al-Mokarama mosque, and Sheik Riyad of Abu Bakr--have been summoned to appear before Col. Fuller. Despite being called to the police station on Wednesday and read the riot act by Lt. Col. Haight, both imams repeated thinly veiled threats against Coalition forces in their latest Friday sermon. Something has got to give.

The U.S. commanders don't know exactly where the imams live, and aren't sure they will show up for today's meeting, though Iraqi Police have been dispatched to each mosque with a summons. Finally, perhaps a half hour late, they arrive. Sheik Akram wears a kind of dished turban on his head, and a floor-length cream tunic. In two long meetings where I have a chance to observe him, Akram strikes me as a deceiver, and a bit simple. His eyes shift rapidly and he often shrugs his shoulders and cracks pained satirical smiles. Sheik Riyad, chubby and dark-bearded and wearing a white shawl over his head and shoulders that always holds an exquisite little crease where it falls above his nose, is brighter but even less transparent. He is openly haughty, arrogant, and dripping with disdain.

Once again, the American commanders exhibit bottomless patience--if anything, erring on the side of being too enduring, in my judgment. They earnestly lay out American concepts of faith, toleration, and free speech. Col. Fuller has studied the Koran this summer, and he asks the two clerics to explain their understanding of what the book counsels on religious belief, Godliness, jihad, and killing. He asks them to be specific about who are "the enemies of Islam" (which they refer to ritually in their sermons). The conversation snakes its way through an Army interpreter, somewhat painfully, over a period of two and a half hours.

Fuller allows Sheik Riyad a long speech on the American deficiencies that create armed resistance in Iraq. After hearing him out, and explaining the rules under which he operates, Col. Fuller gets to the heart of the matter. "While we go to great lengths to be respectful, and avoid embarrassing people, you must understand that our actions are often a matter of life and death. I am responsible for stopping terrorists who have killed and hurt hundreds of people in this area. And I need the help of all good people in the community.

"Unfortunately we know that there are imams who support terrorists, and who actually encourage terrorist attacks. Many of the terrorists we see act on religious grounds. You must know that the freedom of speech carries with it great responsibilities. In particular, you cannot incite violence. A real holy man would never do that anyway.

"So I need to know today whether you are my ally or my enemy. I suppose you will say you are not my enemy, as you have in the past. But then in your public statements to your audience you call for death to the enemies of Islam, and violent opposition to occupiers, and so forth. What am I to do?"

Akram recognizes that this is a climactic conversation, and finally answers carefully:  "Iraq is our country, but it is now occupied. We must accept the status quo. So I am going to try to avoid these subjects that have created misunderstanding."

Haight confronts him forcefully: "But you told me that on Wednesday. And then you went right out on Friday and conjured up more violence anyway. You know what? You may deny you are instigating attacks, but when you say people should attack 'infidels' and 'the enemies of Islam' they think of one thing: this uniform [tugging hard at his own sleeve]. And you both know that!"

Akram: "In my Friday prayers I asked God to 'kill the enemies of religion, wherever you find them, split them, destroy them, wherever you find them.' I did not say Americans or British."

Fuller, exploding: "I don't care who you said to kill! You cannot tell people to kill others. No holy man would do that! Where does the Koran sanction such a thing?"

Akram: "I have been doing that for 20 years. Saddam never objected to this."

Haight: "Then you've been wrong for 20 years."

Akram: "OK. I'm not going to say it from now on."

Fuller: "Yeah, and you promised that last time, then broke your word just a few days later."

Akram: "When you asked me to this meeting I consulted with my mentor at the Religious Science Organization. He counseled me to avoid words like 'enemies,' 'unbelievers,' and so forth, so I am going to try. I will preach only about patience, the Koran, and such. I will leave the problem alone now."

Dodging, rationalizing, and backpedaling when forced to, Akram and Riyad are skating at the brink of arrest for inciting violence. But American officers throughout Iraq are striving mightily to avoid such detainments. They are bending over backward to show respect for imams, mosques, and the Muslim religion, so as not to feed paranoia that the U.S. presence in Iraq is part of a crusade against Islam.

Col. Fuller later tells me he thought he would have to arrest the two sheiks at this meeting. In the end, though, he issues another stern warning and sends them home. Whether these men are active partisans of the resistance or just religious fanatics too zealous to care about the effects of their words on their congregations is not clear. Also unclear is whether they realize how close they are to being locked away and charged. But they will get no more free passes.

"That's it," says the colonel to his officers after they leave. "If those men cross the line again, you roll them up."...

*****

This morning I'm picked up bright and early by the men of 1st Battalion of the 82nd's 504th Regiment--the "Red Devils." I'm back with the infantry. In the words of my transport crew, the transition from the brigade headquarters to their Camp Mercury is like "heading off to the redneck stepchild's house." I actually find it a comfortingly familiar layout of a few concrete buildings, lots of gravel, a bank of porta-johns, some noisy generators, and tents.

To help patrol the roads for IEDs and lend some heavy firepower to certain operations, there is a detachment of armor here out of Fort Riley, Kansas--always a bit of an oddity for paratroopers (the tanks, that is, not Kansas). Off in another corner is the "Red Devil Roof Inn," the concertina-wire-ringed detention tents where the two companies operating from this location can hold prisoners for up to 72 hours. Hundreds of Iraqis have been processed through this facility since the battalion arrived during the summer. About a quarter typically get released after a few days; the rest are sent to the brigade level for further interrogation. From there the most hard-core go to nearby Abu Ghuraib prison, the country's principal lockup, which sits about an hour west of Baghdad and currently hosts about 6,500 guests of the U.S. government.

At that level the Coalition considers the prison "full," though Saddam, less fastidious about humanitarian issues, reportedly packed 40,000 enemies of his state into the main lockup--40 or 50 to a cell. He also carried out many executions at Abu Ghuraib. In the fittingly gloomy light of dusk I visited the death chamber, where prisoners were hanged two at a time, then cut down to fall into a pit where their bodies were burned. Uday and Qusay Hussein would often preside over the executions, the M.P.s now running the prison have learned, and liked to operate the gallows themselves, sometimes even entering the holding cells to simply shoot prisoners when the executions fell behind schedule.

One company of 504 soldiers are long-term residents at Abu Ghuraib themselves--they secure the region surrounding the prison. Just one week before I visited, President Bush released 500 of Abu Ghuraib's "least dangerous" prisoners as a gesture of good will. Apparently these prisoners weren't non-dangerous, though. Soldiers told me that the amnesty brought an immediate spike in mortar attacks on the prison, as the parolees apparently offered up information on the facility's layout, or launched attacks themselves. The soldiers' own quarters took numerous hits, pulverizing the roof tiles, but fortunately not penetrating the heavy concrete over their living area.

The brain trust of the 1-504 gathers every evening for a Battle Update Brief which summarizes events of the last 24 hours and lays plans for the future. These require "Secret" security clearance, but here, as in many of my other travels with the 82nd, the battalion commander accords me the privilege of sitting in. This night's proceedings provide clear evidence that there is still much fighting to be done in this country. Just within the last day, this area experienced a mortar attack, two IED incidents, and explosions thought to be 122mm rockets that were launched from nine miles away.

How is it known where the rockets came from? Courtesy of the powerful new Q36 and Q37 radar systems, which lay down a thick blanket of radar extending for many miles in every direction. Any time something flies upward through this blanket and comes down somewhere else, the system captures the entry and exit points and the land impact point, calculates the trajectory backwards, and almost instantly yields the coordinates of the launch site.

A response can be dispatched with a single radio call. Should soldiers be patrolling near the firing point they will chase the shooters down. Otherwise, the coordinates are sent to U.S. counterfire batteries--either a mortar or artillery team kept on station at all times. Within minutes, they rain fire down on the Iraqi attackers. That takes all the fun out of launching an assault on an American position.

The Iraqis have figured out ways to reduce their chances of getting punished, however. They shoot and scoot--popping off a handful of rounds, sometimes right from the back of a truck, and then hightail it out of there. Other times they'll launch from an area where they know American decency will protect them--amidst a residential neighborhood, or next to a busy highway. Before the counterfire batteries are let loose U.S. soldiers check their maps to see what's located at the coordinates given to them by the Q36. If there's a significant chance of hurting innocent people, the shelling is cancelled.

Insurgent rockets can be particularly hard to respond to. For one thing they can be launched from further away than a mortar. And because they fly horizontally rather than looping steeply upward and then down like a mortar, they sometimes evade radar detection. Of course, rockets require careful aiming, and the improvised launching systems the Iraqis have had to resort to have not been very precise. They are improving, though.

"These latest rockets landed just outside the walls of our camp," warns battalion commander Marshall Hagen. "I want you to watch out. These guys know what they're doing." ...

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