J
Joe S.
Guest
QUOTE
'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'
After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence,
members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles
creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating
slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the
next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead,
but they don't worry much about those.
"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.
They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the
right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer
field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of
skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses
are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb
serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast
pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu,
after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the
vehicle and wets his boots.
"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and
children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were
in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all
the hot chicks."
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th
Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad.
It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their
enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to
exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their
experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the
unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will
of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers
from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't
think this place is worth another soldier's life."
While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a
steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah
shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy --
the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.
Before the war, Sadiyah was a bustling middle-class district, popular with
Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military. It has become strategically
important because it represents a fault line between militia power bases in
al-Amil to the west and the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Dora to the east.
U.S. commanders say the militias have made a strong push for the
neighborhood in part because it lies along the main road that Shiite
pilgrims travel to the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half
of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people.
After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to
hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly
that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces
could stop it happening.
The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In
response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as
al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went
from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many
formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites
have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.
"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said
Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.
The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi
security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the
American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian
warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly
Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times
encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers
and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys
within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have
arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks
and other crimes.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, has said that
officials are working hard to root out militiamen from the force and denied
that officers have any intention of participating in sectarian violence.
But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that
the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in
abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco
arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses
that had Sunnis in them."
"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a
cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there,"
recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed
up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the
streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the
area."
As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S.
troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least
half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.
Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding
that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi
Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in
the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.
The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented
Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more
sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for
explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that
blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.
Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the
thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic
services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was
people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.
"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it
was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort,"
Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how
infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.
Lt. Col. George A. Glaze, the battalion commander, says his soldiers are
playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they
can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the
melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government
steps in.
"They're either going to turn the lights on or we're all going to realize
they've moved the switch," he said.
"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do
they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater
good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."
Over the past two months, the U.S. soldiers have recruited more than 300
local residents, most of them Sunnis, into a neighborhood defense force.
This has proved more controversial in Sadiyah than elsewhere; the Iraqi
government has openly accused the force's members of abusing residents and
has limited their freedom of movement. In September, after Glaze led an
eight-month campaign to kick out the Wolf Brigade, soldiers from the Iraqi
army's Muthanna Brigade, which has clashed with Sunni volunteers in the Abu
Ghraib area, arrived in Sadiyah.
The Iraqi army's arrival and the emergence of the Sunni volunteers have
coincided with some positive signs, the soldiers said. Some of the shops
along the once-busy commercial district of Tijari Street now open for a few
hours a day. The number of violent incidents has dropped, although it rose
again over the past two weeks, officers said.
"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in
the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about
it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."
On Oct. 14, Washington Post special correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was
killed while on assignment in Sadiyah.
Those who patrol the neighborhood every day say the fight has left them
tired, bitter, wounded and confused. Many of their scars are on display,
some no one can see. Sgt. 1st Class Todd Carlsrud has a long gash on the
right side of his neck and carries a lump of shrapnel lodged against his
spine that his doctors would not risk cutting out. Another sergeant felt the
flaming pain of a bullet tearing through his cheek and learned the taste of
his own warm blood. He was one of three soldiers that day to get shot in the
head -- a fourth was hit in the biceps -- when his squad walked into a house
and found two gunmen waiting.
"The closer we get to leaving, the more we worry about it," said Alarcon,
27, sitting at a plastic table with several other soldiers outside their
outpost in Sadiyah. "Being here, you know that any second, any time of the
day, your life could be over."
"Gone in a flash," said Sgt. Matthew Marino.
"We had two mechanics working in the motor pool get hit by mortars," Alarcon
said. "You would have never thought." Both died.
Many of the soldiers from the battalion are on their second tour in Iraq.
Three years ago, they were based in Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein, a
city they entered expecting to fight a determined Sunni insurgency. By the
end of their tour, with much of the violence contained, many of them felt
optimistic about progress in Iraq.
"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back
to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."
The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt.
Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.
"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the
higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places,
places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive]
see what we see on the ground."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602402.html?hpid=artslot
END QUOTE
'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'
After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence,
members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles
creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating
slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the
next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead,
but they don't worry much about those.
"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.
They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the
right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer
field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of
skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses
are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb
serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast
pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu,
after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the
vehicle and wets his boots.
"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and
children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were
in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all
the hot chicks."
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th
Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad.
It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their
enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to
exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their
experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the
unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will
of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers
from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't
think this place is worth another soldier's life."
While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a
steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah
shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy --
the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.
Before the war, Sadiyah was a bustling middle-class district, popular with
Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military. It has become strategically
important because it represents a fault line between militia power bases in
al-Amil to the west and the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Dora to the east.
U.S. commanders say the militias have made a strong push for the
neighborhood in part because it lies along the main road that Shiite
pilgrims travel to the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half
of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people.
After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to
hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly
that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces
could stop it happening.
The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In
response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as
al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went
from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many
formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites
have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.
"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said
Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.
The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi
security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the
American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian
warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly
Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times
encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers
and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys
within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have
arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks
and other crimes.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, has said that
officials are working hard to root out militiamen from the force and denied
that officers have any intention of participating in sectarian violence.
But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that
the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in
abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco
arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses
that had Sunnis in them."
"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a
cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there,"
recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed
up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the
streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the
area."
As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S.
troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least
half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.
Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding
that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi
Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in
the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.
The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented
Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more
sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for
explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that
blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.
Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the
thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic
services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was
people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.
"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it
was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort,"
Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how
infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.
Lt. Col. George A. Glaze, the battalion commander, says his soldiers are
playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they
can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the
melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government
steps in.
"They're either going to turn the lights on or we're all going to realize
they've moved the switch," he said.
"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do
they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater
good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."
Over the past two months, the U.S. soldiers have recruited more than 300
local residents, most of them Sunnis, into a neighborhood defense force.
This has proved more controversial in Sadiyah than elsewhere; the Iraqi
government has openly accused the force's members of abusing residents and
has limited their freedom of movement. In September, after Glaze led an
eight-month campaign to kick out the Wolf Brigade, soldiers from the Iraqi
army's Muthanna Brigade, which has clashed with Sunni volunteers in the Abu
Ghraib area, arrived in Sadiyah.
The Iraqi army's arrival and the emergence of the Sunni volunteers have
coincided with some positive signs, the soldiers said. Some of the shops
along the once-busy commercial district of Tijari Street now open for a few
hours a day. The number of violent incidents has dropped, although it rose
again over the past two weeks, officers said.
"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in
the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about
it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."
On Oct. 14, Washington Post special correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was
killed while on assignment in Sadiyah.
Those who patrol the neighborhood every day say the fight has left them
tired, bitter, wounded and confused. Many of their scars are on display,
some no one can see. Sgt. 1st Class Todd Carlsrud has a long gash on the
right side of his neck and carries a lump of shrapnel lodged against his
spine that his doctors would not risk cutting out. Another sergeant felt the
flaming pain of a bullet tearing through his cheek and learned the taste of
his own warm blood. He was one of three soldiers that day to get shot in the
head -- a fourth was hit in the biceps -- when his squad walked into a house
and found two gunmen waiting.
"The closer we get to leaving, the more we worry about it," said Alarcon,
27, sitting at a plastic table with several other soldiers outside their
outpost in Sadiyah. "Being here, you know that any second, any time of the
day, your life could be over."
"Gone in a flash," said Sgt. Matthew Marino.
"We had two mechanics working in the motor pool get hit by mortars," Alarcon
said. "You would have never thought." Both died.
Many of the soldiers from the battalion are on their second tour in Iraq.
Three years ago, they were based in Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein, a
city they entered expecting to fight a determined Sunni insurgency. By the
end of their tour, with much of the violence contained, many of them felt
optimistic about progress in Iraq.
"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back
to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."
The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt.
Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.
"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the
higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places,
places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive]
see what we see on the ground."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102602402.html?hpid=artslot
END QUOTE
