A Breaking Story
Observations on Iraq
By Tim Lambon
03/17/07 "New
Statesman" -- --
It's hard to describe the noise when a whole cabinet of crockery
is emptied on to the floor. Even harder not to shout in
indignation when the American soldier who intentionally tipped
it forward, until the plates and dishes slid smashing to the
floor, says without regret, "Whoops!" and crunches over the
shards past the distraught owner. "Cordon and search" they call
looking for Sunni insurgents and their arms and explosives. But
at what cost to the battle for "hearts and minds"?
The sweep was a co-operative action between Delta Company of the
2nd Battalion 12th Cavalry and the Iraqi Army's 246th Battalion.
The plan was for the Iraqis to lead and the Americans to provide
security and back-up. With engines throbbing, the force waited
for 45 minutes at the start line for the Iraqis to arrive.
"And you think they haven't been calling their buddies in there
to tell them to shift their sorry asses?" growled Sgt Penning in
disgust. By the time we rolled into the middle section of the
Baghdad neighbourhood of Ghazaliya, there wasn't a single shot
being fired in our direction. Any insurgents were long gone. But
the hapless residents were not. They watched, almost
impassively, the random violence of the searching troops, too
frightened to object. Some of the houses, whose Christian or
Shia owners had fled, were empty. Occupied or not, if no one
quickly answered the demands to open up, gates, doors and
windows were smashed down or blown open with shotguns.
Inside, damage was done to anything breakable. Living-rooms
became a jumble of furniture. Beds were overturned, cabinets
thrown down, shelves emptied on to floors and beds: an orgy of
destruction and arbitrary searching.
And yet the soldiers sometimes missed the obvious. In one house,
no attention was paid to two computers. Just the day before, the
platoon had received intelligence that someone in the area was
using the internet to co-ordinate insurgent activities.
In one home, while I filmed upstairs with a couple of soldiers
and the son of the house, on the ground floor an Iraqi soldier
helped himself to $400 and the mother's identity papers. As the
search progressed, several blocks later, the parents and their
son pitched up and tried to retrieve the ID papers. The Iraqi
commander shouted at them, incensed that they called his
soldiers thieves, yelling that they were lying because they were
insurgent sympathisers. Only when I showed him the footage of
his soldiers turning over the house, did the colonel admit his
men may have been responsible.
It was an extraordinary example of how such operations can
exacerbate the problem in a Sunni neighbourhood not infested
with insurgents, but definitely used as a transit area and a
place to stash explosives and weapons. The population,
borderline in support for the government, becomes further
alienated and more likely to engage with the jihadi fighters.
Conventional armies are a sledgehammer to crack a nut when it
comes to fighting guerrillas. With the US military's emphasis on
"force protection", what is important is the recovery of weapons
or the capture of insurgents who can kill US soldiers. Breaking
up people's homes is an unfortunate by-product, the "collateral
damage" of war.
This time they did get lucky.
A local resident, angry with the insurgents for some reason,
shopped them to the soldiers searching his house. The fighters
had occupied a house down the street, he told them. Sure enough,
a few houses away they discovered a secret door, plastered over
to look like a wall. Inside were a dozen rusty old mortar bombs,
20 or so rocket-propelled grenades, loads of small arms
ammunition and an "improvised explosive device". Three warheads
were primed for attachment to the IED and the Iraqi soldiers
triumphantly carried them away to their truck. In the face of
protests from the US Captain Fowler, the small pick-up bounced
dangerously off down the street.
"Dammit! You know they're just gonna sell them back to the bad
guys!" exclaimed one sergeant.
Tim Lambon of Channel 4 News is embedded with US troops in IraqClick here
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