A Marine friend of mine is working on a memoir of his time in Iraq's deadly Anbar province. He's struggling with combat stress and it seems that writing has become therapeutic for him, a way to confront all the transgressions, killings, ambushes, close calls.
The Marine has been sending me sample chapters, and one striking part of his book-in-progress is the number of little missteps that have hobbled the U.S. mission; even mishaps of a single Marine unit can chip away at gains. The major stumbles of the occupational authority are well documented by now, from the rampant post-invasion looting to the early loss of Fallujah to Islamist extremists. Less documented are the little everyday ways this massive foreign military gains new enemies in Iraq. Here's one excerpt from my friend's journal, used with his permission on condition of anonymity:
While on an intelligence gathering mission, we got word to go to a house and bring back an Iraqi for questioning.We weren't given much more information than that, so we thought we were arresting him. So we get to his house, confirm his ID, which wasn't hard as he welcomed us in with open arms, and proceeed to cuff him and stuff him.
It was such an ordeal, he put up quite a fight this old man. Eventually, after being slammed to the ground, Gunny drills the end of his M-4 into the man's temple, with the solemn promise that if he didn't shut up and stop resisting, he would put a bullet in his head. The man, his spirit broken and his body exhausted, gave up and was tossed in the trunk of the Hummer, as per S.O.P.
He screamed and kicked the whole way back to base. We couldn't fathom why this guy was causing such a drama, insurgents more or less go rather quietly when we take them to their hells. In front of the interrogation facility, we opened the trunk and found that he had broken his Flexi-cuffs. He was kicking and screaming the entire way to the room. The intel guy and the translator asked us what the problem was, so we told him how he was resisting arrest and had to be forcibly detained.
The translator, obviously disgusted, curtly told us that the man was not a detainee, but an informant, a good guy. Through the magic of military bureaucracy, our marching orders were miscommunicated and we screwed up a valuable source of information, and turned an Iraqi against us. I felt so ashamed, and stupid.
I spoke with the interrogator some more. It turns out that the man was against Saddam, and was imprisoned and tortured by his regime for years. That was why he had such an outburst, he was having a panic attack because he no doubt had PTSD. Had we only understood what he was telling us out there, this whole thing could have been avoided.
My Arabic teacher here in the US works w/ local military bases to provide some cultural training now and again. A soldier, who had already been in Iraq, shared this story: He had shot a man who held his hand up, thumb to the rest of the fingers with the palm facing upward. He didn't realise the man was trying to tell him to wait-mistaking this very common gesture in the Arab world as a signal of sorts.
Posted by: Cairogal | March 28, 2008 at 11:33 AM