WAR IN IRAQ MILITARY: 'The US military are wonderful people, but they are very blunt about what their job is: to kill' By Charles Clover
The battle for Najaf is largely over. The 101st Airborne Division is now patrolling the city and resistance from Iraqi Fedayeen units is slight. For me, this is the most interesting part of the story: the outcome of the war is basically inevitable; the outcome of the peace is not. I have one telephone number to start with, that of Seyd Abdulmajid al-Khoi, a Shia cleric who fled Najaf in 1991 and has just returned courtesy of the US government. By the end of the week he will be dead. Peace will seem farther away than ever.
Saturday April 5 I meet Khoi near the tomb of Imam Ali, the holiest spot in Najaf, where the Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law is buried. Khoi's family has been one of the leading families of the Shia Muslim establishment in Najaf for centuries. His father was Grand Ayatollah of Najaf, ruling much of the Shia world, from 1970 until his death in 1992.
Khoi was visiting the tomb for the first time in 13 years, and I, as a non-Muslim, was forbidden from entering. He asked me to meet him a few blocks away where his special forces guards were waiting. Bringing armed American soldiers to the tomb of Ali was highly sensitive but the decision to send them away would prove fateful indeed.
When he emerged from the shrine and met me his eyes were shining. We drove to an abandoned factory outside Najaf where I interviewed him.
Along the way I met an American "government employee" entrusted with minding Khoi's return to Najaf. An avid Arabist like me, we discuss the marvellous Hans Wehr dictionary of modern standard Arabic, and obliquely, US policy in the Middle East. "The US government doesn't always do good things," I recall him saying, "but this one, bringing Seyd Abdulmajid back, is one of the best things I have ever done."
Sunday Khoi and the US "government employee" wake me up. It turns out they have moved into the same complex where I am staying, and I will be treated to a front row seat for the beginning of a US covert operation. "Do you have a room where we could videotape him?" asks the American. Of course, there is room, even some plastic flowers we can put next to him. Khoi is dressed in clerical robes. A special forces soldier sets up a video camera. This is the beginning of the intifada (uprising) against Saddam Hussein, which US forces have evidently put off until they control the southern half of the country.
The videotape is to be broadcast from an aeroplane which jams Iraqi TV and replaces the channel with a tape of Khoi calling on the populations of Najaf to welcome US forces, and for the citizens of other Shia cities to throw off their chains. Outside, I see other exiles wandering around in their slippers working satellite telephones.
Monday We get the news the night before that US general Tommy Franks is due in Najaf. He arrives by C-130 cargo plane later that day, and all the journalists from 1st brigade of the 101st Airborne gather at a military school for a small ceremony. He is extremely tall and has a very loud laugh, which seems almost like a shout. He is briefed by the brigade's commanders and pins bronze stars on two soldiers, as the rest of Charlie Company looks on.
"I'm going to quote General George Patton," said Gen Franks. "I am a simple soldier. I don't think where I go, but I win where I go."
The US military is a caste all to itself, it occurs to me. They are wonderful people, dedicated to their jobs, but they are very blunt about what that job is: to kill. "They are running out of guns, and running out of lives," said Gen Franks to a junior officer from the Brigade, who was briefing him on enemy casualties.
I will always remember one line from the novel Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut: "So it goes". The phrase is repeated after every detail of killing and death. It is a comment on the blasé attitude about killing, how there is no transition from before and after for the killer and for those left alive. I have seen how fantastically easy it is for a 19-year-old from Lansing, Michigan or Tampa, Florida to make the change from coddled American teenager to killer. There has been an entire lexicon created by the military to ease that transition. One private, who fired 15 rounds from his machinegun into a grey car bearing a university professor during a firefight last Wednesday "busted his cherry." I saw him laughing and complaining that his weapon jammed or he would have gotten off more rounds when soldiers came to congratulate him. Only later did we find out who was in the car. So it goes... Tuesday US covert strategy to install a new pro-American government in Najaf has taken a turn for the worse. Our battalion translator, Ahmed, says he was visiting Hay Al Ansar neighbourhood on the south side of the city yesterday where the residents claimed the local US backed militia has been looting residents.
They are the Iraqi Coalition for National Unity (ICNU), which no one has heard of until they showed up in the city on Thursday riding on US special forces trucks. At first, they seemed more like ridiculous goofballs whose only fault is that they will be ineffective. Now they are turning into a serious liability, as the US forces appear to have left them in charge of policing several neighbourhoods. I go to Hay Al Ansar. Later I see a journalist who is travelling with Khoi who says that the ICNU has become a major headache with plans to choose an administration for the town "no one has ever heard of them, they just have the guns," he said.
Wednesday Najaf is a fascinating story, but I am feeling it is time to push on for Baghdad, which by now is practically under control of US forces. There is a battalion from the 101st Division in Baghdad, and I have a chance to hitch a ride with a convoy north to the Baghdad international airport to join them, so I take it. Driving takes all day, until we get to the rear of 3rd Infantry Division, camped out near the Euphrates river.
By now we are a group of six journalists, including a Danish television crew with about 20 bags. It takes a lot of cajoling and arm twisting to get the 3rd to drive us to the airport. I allow the crew of a Humvee to use my satellite phone to call their families in the states in return for a lift.
Thursday The six of us arrive at the airport to find the Division's press officer in a rage. "Who the fuck told you you could come here?" he asks, and threatens to put us all on a flight to Kuwait that night. Eventually he calms down, but doesn't want to upset the "integrity of the media embed process" by allowing us to switch units like hats. A group of about ten journalists sit around on the airport tarmac holding an informal contest to see who has the grossest war story. Ron, a radio journalist with 3rd, wins the day with a story about seeing a tank run over a corpse.
One of the arms got stuck in the treads, going around and around in a macabre gesture. "Come on! come on!" he imitates. The six of us find the 101st Battalion which is guarding the airport.
They are camped out in the rose garden behind the VIP lounge, possibly the nicest place I have stayed yet.
Getting to Baghdad will be trickier, though, as the battalion will not be leaving the airport any time soon.
Then we get the news that Khoi has been murdered in Najaf, stabbed to death by a mob near the Shrine of Ali. So it goes.