Into thin air
This entry was posted on 7/20/2006 11:02 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
When I was embedded in west Baghdad
last weekend I went out on a night patrol with an American major. We drove in a convoy through Jihad and
surrounding neighborhoods, and I looked out on deserted streets made green by
the pair of spare night vision goggles the soldiers passed my way. At the end of the night we stopped at an
Iraqi Army outpost near the U.S.
base and the major chatted with his Iraqi counterpart.
The big news was an insurgent rocket attack that had, through dumb luck, landed on the base. The Iraqis and the Americans divvied up bits
of the rocket as souvenirs. Back in the
Iraqi commander’s office, the major asked about one of the staff officers
assigned to the base. The Iraqi
commander said he hadn’t been heard from in several days. That means, in all likelihood, that he’s been
killed, or that he’s been kidnapped and will be killed soon.
If my experience is any indication this isn’t an uncommon
occurrence. When I was embedded with
police trainers in May and early June one of the soldiers I was with lamented
that a very competent and aggressive Iraqi officer had disappeared and would probably
never return. A few weeks ago the
kidnapping of two American enlisted men was huge news, and with good
reason. But every day members of the
Iraqi security forces—ranging from raw recruits to experienced officers—are
kidnapped or murdered in Baghdad
and across the country. It's a horror that's become so routine no one pays much attention to it anymore.
Americans are used to their Iraqi counterparts disappearing into thin air, and they're used to not quite knowing what to make of the ones who remain.
This afternoon I went to a press briefing in the Green Zone. Getting in was an adventure, because I realized as we approached the main checkpoint that I'd forgotten my press badge. You need two forms of ID to get into the Green Zone, and I only had a drivers license. The "checkpoint" has sprawled out over the years into a massive obstacle course of concrete barriers, concertina wire, and an international collection of soldiers and security guards suffering in the heat. A couple of Iraqi soldiers waved me on before I got stopped at a (mercifully shaded) mini-checkpoint staffed by an Iraqi translator and some Georgian soldiers (Georgian as in home of Stalin, not home of Ty Cobb). They were very friendly, offered me cold water and dates, and had me wait around for 20 minutes until an American major came out from CPIC to walk me through the rest of the checkpoint.
The briefing was a review of the first 30 days of the Baghdad security plan that put tens of thousands of American and Iraqi soldiers on the streets. At the risk of understating it, I'd say it hasn't worked out the way folks had hoped. The general said that the US and Iraqi security forces put death squads (i.e., Shiite terrorists) in the same category as insurgents (i.e., Sunni terrorists). But he was careful, and did not say that particular militias are being targeted. Given that the likely perpetrators of the massacre in Jihad work (at least indirectly) for an Iraqi parliamentarian this is a sensitive issue. I don't mean that as a cheap shot. The Americans' ability to go after certain militias is severely limited by the those militias' prominent and formidable defenders in the Iraqi government, as well as by the raw power of the militias in the city. It's not as simple as saying, "the militias should be disbanded" and then disbanding them. That's mostly an internal Iraqi process, and it's hard to be optimistic about how it will play out.
In the meantime there's the paradox of Iraqi security forces taking the lead in quelling militia violence (at least numerically) in quelling militia violence while simultaneously belonging to or sympathizing with militias. Of course, not every member of a militia is out killing civilians. The militias also provide neighborhood security, defend their community's VIPs, fight with insurgents and other militias, etc. But the dual loyalty is undeniable and creates huge problems as the US searches for trustworthy partners in the Iraqi security forces.
The American major I was with last week said that when a new Iraqi unit enters his area he calls up its American adviser. He asks whether the unit is infiltrated by a militia, how compromised it might be, where its actual loyalties may lie. Some of those units are solid, others aren't. They're allies to whom the US wants to hand over security, and in some cases they're also the enemy.
