Iskandariyah, Iraq - 2/6/05
At the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit's nightly command briefing at Camp Kalsu, Iraq, earlier this week, an intelligence officer assessed Iraq's post-election environment. Victorious Shia parties and Kurdish groups are talking, he said. Moqtada al-Sadr loyalists are divided between those who want to get involved in the political process and those who want to keep blowing things up. His kicker, though, was chilling, though he delivered it in requisite military deadpan. "This will be primetime for political assassinations." In other words, the election didn't turn the country into the Garden of Eden, regardless of what Fox News says. Even the military acknowledges this.
Corporal Christopher Zimny, a grunt from Alpha Company, made a series of videotapes with a little handicam before the election. In the first clip I saw, he's standing in downtown Iskandariyah near the "Teapot," a traffic roundabout with an Arabesque golden pitcher at its center. He's wearing full combat gear, and he's animated and alert, almost jumpy. His eyes dart from the camera - a fellow Marine is filming - and the streets and rooftops surrounding him. It's two days before the election, he says.
"The showdown is about to begin. We got gunfire, firefights here and there. It's pretty fucked up.... They're beating the fuck out of us right now." He points to a nearby school that's being set up as a polling site. "It took a couple of rounds. No one got hurt." Zimny made another clip the morning of the election from the back of his Humvee. "We're about to enter into the jungle before those guys try and fucking kill us." He points the camera at himself, then out the window. The Humvee casts a jerking, twitching shadow on the road's shoulder. Iraq whizzes by hazily.
The day after the election Zimny's Humvee hit a roadside bomb about three kilometers north of this base. The blast eviscerated the vehicle, an uparmored Humvee. Corporal Zimny, 27, of Glenview, IL, was killed along with Lance Cpl. Jason C. Redifer, 19, of Stuarts Draft, VA, and Lance Cpl. Harry R. Swain IV, 21, of Millville, NJ. The two other men in their vehicle were injured; the Corporal in the gun turret lost a leg below the knee. A lance corporal who was on the patrol and avoided injury told me it was the largest IED he's been through, and he's been hit 11 times. He and the rest of Alpha leave for the States in three days.
Baghdad's gruesome suicide attacks and car bombs and Fallujah's firefights and large-scale assaults grab headlines and lead US TV reports because they are dramatic -- and because American reporters are there to cover them. This area, north Babil, is the improvised explosive device capital of Iraq, according to Marine commanders here. Close to 200 - 196 between July and mid-January - either blew up or were discovered here. IEDs kill less dramatically -- no tracers in the sky or legions of screaming, hooded men waving AKs -- but no less gruesomely.
The US military's very strength, its armored vehicles, firepower, and mobility, has sparked lethal creativity among insurgents. IEDs are low-tech stealth weapons. Bombers build them on the cheap from old munitions, plant them, trigger them from a distance, and then run away. In seven months, IEDs have killed dozens of US Marines and soldiers, Iraqi Police officers, soldiers of the Iraqi Army (called the Iraqi National Guard until last month), and uncounted civilians. The IED that killed the Alpha Marines was jerry-rigged from 8 to ten 122mm artillery shells, according to a Marine major. Artillery shells are built to be fired from huge guns, howitzers, over long distances -- miles and miles. Traditionally, arty, as it's affectionately known, is used to level neighborhoods and obliterate concentrations of people and vehicles. Up close, arty shells are shockingly deadly as well.
Journalist traffic here is low, too. Dan Rather was here for a hot minute. So were Thomas Friedman (one day) and John Burns (he spent real time here, says Marine Public Affairs). There were only four of us in the 24th MEU's area of responsibility, an a hunk of the nation with roughly 900,000 citizens, for the election: a reporter from CBS Radio, one from AP, a freelance filmmaker, and me. (That was also partly by design. A Marine Public Affairs Officer told me they denied several media requests because the burdens of orchestrating elections and handing over to the Army were too great to host additional journos.)
IED and mortar attacks continue, though the MEU has measurably cut the number of violent incidents. The MEU, to its credit, has also racked up some softer successes. We journalists focus on the exceptional and the bloody, Marines keep telling me, so I give credit where it is due.
"There's been a lot of civil-military affairs work that has been done around here in small projects," Lieutenant General John Sattler, senior Marine commander in Iraq, told me at an award ceremony on Friday. "Now as security around starts to become the norm rather than the anomaly, we'll be able to push more of that kind of assistance into north Babil."
24th MEU commander Colonel Ron Johnson gave me an equally upbeat, slightly earthier report. "When you come in -- and this is a little crass -- but if you brought somebody over here right now from the States that came from a nice quality of life, they'd probably think that this place was a dump. But if they'd seen this place seven months ago like you and I have seen it, well, we made some great strides. Things are improving, people are happy." Last August he gave the MEU a D, a 60% grade, for its delivery of services and security to the local population. "If I had to pull a number out, I'd say right now we're at about 83%."
But Iraq's most obdurate problems are on view here every day. Quality of life for the average Iraqi is poor in absolute terms -- very poor. While commanders point to the low base line -- the terrible privation created by Saddam Hussein's brutal regime --they ignore the hardships caused by the war itself and by the sanctions that preceded it. US-funded infrastructure projects advance only in fits and starts. They are disrupted by insurgents and are chronically understaffed, underfunded, and poorly managed.
And as much as commanders rave about the progress of the Iraq security forces, the ISF cannot guarantee the nation's security and stability. They're not even close. From what I saw during my month on the ground (and my month+ in July and August), most units of the IP and the IA don't yet have the tactical and operational capability to protect themselves. Their US-sponsored training is also less than robust, because warfighting takes priority over everything.
"You're doing a compare-and-contrast between a Western standard and not a new force," Colonel Johnson told me. "I mean, imagine this: these guys have been created in less than a year -- from boot camp to actually dealing with combat operations. It'd be appalling to think that I would pull the same service member with the same amount of training from the States and throw him into combat," he told. But that's what happening with the Iraqis, they're getting a few weeks of training, then being put on the front lines of a counter-insurgency operation.
This is my last night at FOB Iskandariyah. I convoy south to Kuwait with Marines in a few hours. I fly to Camp Lejeune a few days later, and then home to NYC. At midnight tonight the Mississippi Army National Guard's 155th Infantry assumes control of north Babil plus several surrounding towns. The soldiers taking over Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah are, on the whole, older, wider, and for now, cleaner than the Marines deployed here since mid-July. They are weekend warriors who have trained for a matter of few weeks before making this deployment. Early reviews from the Marines are not kind. "They don't have a fucking clue," one particularly harsh Marine staff sergeant said, several times. "They think this is a movie," another said
I have met many wonderful soldiers, but I haven't been impressed by their fitness, preparedness, or their skills. I watched a kindly sergeant fumble with his M-16 and a digital camera during a joint patrol with Marines through a former munitions plant known for insurgent activity. He snapped pictures while the Marines surveyed the rubble for potential bombers and snipers. Marines in the artillery platoon have told me their Army counterparts are positively bewildered by the call-for-fire process. These are the procedures by which you rain artillery shells on your enemy -- and avoid killing civilians and your own forces.
This morning soldiers fired on a civilian vehicle. Three officers I talked to, two Marines and one soldier, assured me it was a legitimate shoot: Two vehicles approached a checkpoint; one failed to stop, so soldiers halted it with gunfire, killing two of the four people in the car. "It happens all the time," a marine warrant officer said. But an enlisted man I spoke with briefly who was privy to early reports implied -- but did not state explicitly - that the soldiers overreacted.
The soldiers have time to learn; their deployment will last at least a year. But I hope for their sake, and that of the citizens of this area, that they learn quickly.
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