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I
RAQ
A
lot had happened in Iraq since I left in the spring of 2003. The
country had been liberated from Saddam Hussein and his army with
the fall of Baghdad on April 9 of that year. But a variety of terrorist
forces either continued or began fighting after Saddam was
deposed. They fought both other Iraqis and the U.S. forces who
were trying to help the country regain stability. Some were former
members of Saddam’s army and members of the Ba’athist Party
that Saddam had headed. There were Fedayeen, members of a
paramilitary resistance group the dictator had organized before the
war. There were small, poorly organized groups of Iraqi guerrillas,
who were also called Fedayeen, though, technically, they weren’t
connected with Saddam’s organization. Though nearly all were
Muslim, nationalism rather than religion tended to be their primary
motive and organizing principle.
Then there were the groups organized primarily around religious
beliefs. These identified themselves as mujahedeen, which basically
means “people on jihad”—or murderers in the name of God. They
were dedicated to killing Americans and Muslims who didn’t
believe in the brand of Islam that they believed in.
There was also al-Qaeda in Iraq, a mostly foreign group that
saw the war as an opportunity to kill Americans. They were radical
Sunni Muslims with an allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the terrorist
leader who needs no introduction—and whom SEALs hunted
down and gave a fitting sendoff in 2011.
There were also Iranians and their Republican Guard, who
fought—sometimes directly, though usually through proxies—to
both kill Americans and to gain power in Iraqi politics.
I’m sure there were a hell of a lot of others in what came to be
known to the media as “the insurgency.” They were all the enemy.
I never worried too much about who exactly it was who was
pointing a gun at me or planting an IED. The fact that they wanted
to kill me was all I needed to know.
S
addam was captured in December of 2003.
In 2004, the U.S. formally turned over authority to the interim
government, giving control of the country back to the Iraqis, at least
in theory. But the insurgency grew tremendously that same year. A
number of battles in the spring were as fierce as those waged during
the initial invasion.
In Baghdad, a hard-line Shiite cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr
organized an army of fanatical followers and urged them to attack
Americans. Sadr was especially strong in a part of Baghdad known
as Sadr City, a slum named after his father, Mohammad
Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, a grand ayatollah and an opponent of
Saddam’s regime during the 1990s. An extremely poor area even
by Iraqi standards, Sadr City was packed with radical Shiites. Said
to be about half the size of Manhattan in area, Sadr City was
located northeast of Baghdad’s Green Zone, on the far side of
Army Canal and Imam Ali Street.
A lot of the places where regular Iraqis live, even if they are
considered middle-class, look like slums to an American. Decades
of Saddam’s rule made what could have been a fairly rich country,
due to its oil reserves, into a very poor one. Even in the better parts
of the cities, a lot of the streets aren’t paved and the buildings are
pretty rundown.
Sadr City is truly a slum, even for Iraq. It began as a public
housing area for the poor, and by the time of the war, it had
become a refuge for Shiites, who were discriminated against by
Saddam’s Sunni-dominated government. After the war started,
even more Shiites moved into the area. I’ve seen reports estimating
that more than 2 million people lived within its roughly eight square
miles.
Laid out in a grid pattern, the streets are fifty or one hundred
yards long. Most areas have densely packed two- and three-story
buildings. The workmanship on the buildings I saw was terrible;
even on the fanciest buildings, the decorative lines didn’t match up
from one side to the other. Many of the streets are open sewers,
with waste everywhere.
Muqtada al-Sadr launched an offensive against American forces
in the spring of 2004. His force managed to kill a number of
American troops and a far greater number of Iraqis before the
fanatical cleric declared a cease-fire in June. In military terms, his
offensive failed, but the insurgents remained strong in Sadr City.
Meanwhile, mostly Sunni insurgents took hold of al-Anbar
province, a large sector of the country to the west of Baghdad.
They were particularly strong in the cities there, including Ramadi
and Fallujah.
That spring was the period when Americans were shocked by
the images of four contractors, their bodies desecrated, hanging
from a bridge in Fallujah. It was a sign of worse to come. The
Marines moved into the city soon afterward, but their operations
there were called off after heavy fighting. It’s been estimated that at
that point they controlled some 25 percent of the city.
As part of the pullout, an Iraqi force came into the city to take
control. In theory, they were supposed to keep insurgents out. The
reality was very different. By that fall, pretty much the only people
who lived in Fallujah were insurgents. It was even more dangerous
for Americans than it had been in the spring.
When I left for Iraq in September of 2004, my unit had begun
training to join a new operation to secure Fallujah, once and for all.
But I went to work with the Poles in Baghdad instead.
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