Al-Qaida Might Be Gone, but Baghdad District Remains in Shadows By Michael Gisick (Contact)
Friday, November 9, 2007
BAGHDAD — Dawn is still an hour away as Army Capt. Francisco Javier Lopez and a squad of U.S. soldiers step off their armored vehicle into the dusty remnants of the night, passing the twisted wreck of a sedan and slipping into the walled garden of a middle-class home.
They have come to listen.
Until recently, that was not their main occupation. If the military's claims that al-Qaida in Iraq has been routed from the capital prove true, then neighborhoods like this one in southeast Baghdad's Hadar district were among al-Qaida's last strongholds, where fighting raged through most of October.
But if the gains in the district are emblematic of progress across Baghdad, then Hadar is also a reflection of the minefield the Americans have taken over - literally and figuratively.
Scarred by sectarian bloodletting, its economy and infrastructure broken, Hadar is a scattered puzzle. And even the most optimistic Iraqis, fearing a return of the extremists, prefer the shadows.
So Lopez and his men pass quietly into the darkened home. Its owner, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, had been expecting them.
A professional in his 30s with a receding hairline and a striking resemblance to a young Tony Soprano, he recently has become a sort of consigliere to the 34-year-old captain from Texas - part adviser, part instructor on the deep mysteries of accomplishing anything in the fractured city.
On this morning he has several pieces of urgent counsel.
The Americans must capture one of the leaders of the al-Qaida militia that lately controlled this area and is still believed to linger, he says. And they must begin construction of the concrete wall they have promised to build around the district.
"Even if it is one block," the Iraqi says in fluent, lightly accented English. "Even one piece of concrete - people must see something happening. They must believe it is not just talk."
Both are confidence measures, as much smoke as fire, but in Hadar confidence is in critically short supply.
The Americans have come before, the Iraqi says, and everyone saw what happened to the people who helped them and then watched as they left.
Although 2007 is already the deadliest year of the American effort in Iraq, the military sees that largely as a result of a dramatic change in U.S. strategy that pushed troops into areas held by insurgents.
On the ground, the strategy manifests itself in the experience of units like the 3rd Squadron of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment - the team of which Lopez is a part.
Beginning in early October, these soldiers fought a three-week battle against the Sunni insurgents who had taken over Hadar. About one in seven of the squadron's 500-plus men were wounded in the fighting; six were killed.
As the fighting stills, the military says it is determined to hold its gains but acknowledges that the political climate in Washington means the clock is ticking.
Men like the one sitting across from Lopez provide a critical link to the neighborhood's pulse.
A resemblance to "The Sopranos" character isn't the only reason he might be called Tony.
He has a fake ID that identifies him as a Christian of that name. It's virtually indistinguishable from his real ID.
"I am Sunni, so if I am stopped at a national police checkpoint, I am in trouble," he says.
The national police, perhaps the worst of Iraq's many dubious institutions, have been infiltrated by Shiite militias and implicated in sectarian killings.
"But," Tony continues, "al-Qaida has some checkpoints, too, and if I am stopped there and I have a fake ID that says I am a Shiite, I am in trouble again."
He shrugs. "So I say I am a Christian and hope for the best. Fortunately, we can get good fake IDs."
His point, made with characteristically dark humor, highlights the endemic corruption that defines life in the capital - corrupt police thwarted by fraudulent documents. But there's also a deeper meaning that goes to the core of Baghdad's miseries.
In the capital, identity is as delicate and explosive as old dynamite.
Like much of the city, Hadar was until recently a mixed area, with a considerable Shiite minority and three Christian churches. The military doesn't have census data, but there's another way to measure the vanished diversity: empty houses.
Perhaps a third of the district's families have fled, and most homes appear to have been abandoned this year. Parched gardens still bear signs of life. In one home decorated with crucifixes and icons, an American captain found a half-eaten meal left on the table.
With American forces then focused on central Baghdad, the al-Qaida insurgents found little resistance when they arrived in Hadar this year, and a Shiite area with its own militia to the west gave them a natural claim on the loyalties of Hadar's Sunni majority.
The militants set up a court to enforce Islamic law and papered the neighborhood with jihadist propaganda, but in many ways it more closely resembled a sectarian gang than a disciplined force of Islamist zealots. Its economic ventures included protection rackets and looting vehicles from a government equipment yard, American officers say.
Two months after leaving its base in Germany and arriving in Iraq, the cavalry squadron pushed into Hadar at the beginning of October. It met immediate resistance from a force they estimate at between 200 and 250 fighters.
Over the next three weeks, the Americans pushed slowly through the district. They encountered more than 100 improvised explosive devices, about 80 percent of which they disabled. The rest took their toll, but the insurgents never again mounted a determined fight.
"After that first battle, their tactics were more hit and run," says the squadron's operations officer, Capt. Samuel Davis.
"You'd have a guy fire off a few rounds, put down his weapons and blend in, make his way to another cache, fire off a few more rounds, and so on."
By mid-October, the fighting was all but done.
"A couple of weeks ago, this was probably the hottest spot in the country," Davis says. "Now we're going a few days at a time with no incidents at all."
Two days before Lopez's Halloween patrol, the squadron's commander, Lt. Col. Rod Coffey, stood smoking a cigar outside a meeting of the area's District Advisory Council.
Originally an elected body, its ranks have been thinned by assassination and desertion. It's now a mix of the elected and the appointed.
More properly, it's pretty much whoever shows up.
The day's agenda: Establish eligibility requirements for a voluntary security force, which the military compares to neighborhood watch groups. The idea, Coffey says, is to give residents a stake in their own security and to create a pool of vetted recruits for more professional Iraqi units.
Like many of the strategies the Americans are attempting to unveil in Baghdad, the security volunteers have already been fielded in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.
Once so thoroughly controlled by insurgents that a U.S. intelligence estimate termed the province "lost," a revolt by tribal sheiks allied with the Americans has made Anbar the quietest province in Iraq and a model for the rest of country.
American officers throughout Sunni areas of Iraq see al-Qaida as its own worst enemy, having brutally overplayed its hand. And in that sense, they say the military's inability to put down the insurgency earlier is now paying a perverse sort of dividend.
"I think there are some unintended benefits," Coffey says. "People have seen what it's like to live under al-Qaida. We're fortunate in our enemy."
But grafting the successes of Anbar onto the streets of Baghdad is a difficult project. The Anbar sheiks command considerable respect because their province is almost entirely Sunni and remains largely a traditional tribal society.
Baghdad is neither, and as the Americans search for Iraqi partners in the capital, there are few obvious candidates.
The imam at the mosque nearest Tony's house fled to Syria or Jordan several years ago, Lopez says, and one of the mosque's elders was killed.
Even Tony admits he is helping the United States because he hopes it might win him a U.S. green card and a ticket out of Iraq. Thousands of the middle-class, educated residents whom the United States once counted on as the backbone of its dream Iraq have long since fled.
At the district council meeting, the conversation quickly turns back to the sectarian question, specifically whether the people who have fled their homes should be allowed to join the volunteers.
"Let us speak honestly," one councilor declares. "The people who have left are the Shiites."
Although an increasing number of American politicians are beginning to advocate at least a partial partition of Iraq along sectarian lines, most U.S. commanders in Baghdad say cementing the de facto partition that has already occurred in the capital would have disastrous consequences.
"It might seem to have some (security) benefits in the short term," Coffey says, "but I don't think Baghdad can function like that. You have your Sunni enclave and maybe it's relatively safe there, but to get fuel, to get food, to get medical care, you have to travel through a Shiite area. It just doesn't make sense."
And it would be a sad fate, he says, for one of the world's oldest cosmopolitan cities.
For Coffey, Iraq has been a series of changes.
Like many who have served past tours in Iraq, he acknowledges the military failures of the recent past - too few troops, no clear strategy - as though they were obvious.
During the initial invasion, he says, he was once assigned to develop a contingency plan to incorporate units from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army in case they wanted to switch sides - an absurd proposition on several counts.
"We need to disassociate what happened early on with what's happening now," he says.
Four years later, he believes the Army has adapted. He says it will take four or five years of a sizable American presence, but Iraq can be held together. And he sees a moral imperative in staying, something rarely mentioned in the political debate at home.
"We've signed plenty of treaties saying that, when we go into a country, we have to put it back on its feet," he says.
As his armored vehicle pulls away from the council meeting, Coffey lights up a cigar in his hatch and pulls out a paperback on Shiite Islam.
After a few stops to check on the neighborhood, Coffey visits a shop owner whose brother has been detained by the military. As he lays out the details - the brother is accused of helping al-Qaida maintain weapons and reporting U.S. troop movements - his men joke around with some middle-aged men. A group of boys kicks a soccer ball back and forth.
The late afternoon sun slants over the neighborhood, warm gold. Coffey has picked up rumors that al-Qaida is trying to send its soldiers back into the district, but he's smiling easily as he talks to the shop owner.
A very young, very thin man walks toward him, settling within earshot. None of the soldiers has ever seen him before, and the middle-aged men whisper that he is bad news. Under questioning, he says he is 19 and offers what the soldiers consider a flimsy excuse for his presence, but they let him go.
Now Coffey turns to face him.
"I know you," Coffey says, his smile flashing as he walks away, trailed by his interpreter. "I know who you are."
"Who?" the gaunt teenager replies, raising his arms. "Who am I?"
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So, with this as a backdrop...now what? What would you recommend? Be a straw that stirs the drink...who is really in the shadows? The Iraqi's, al-Qaida in Iraq...or U.S. Forces?
Chris, I love you son and remember your sacrifice every day. We look forward with anticipation to your R&R in May. Keep your head on a swivel and be safe!
v/r,
- Collabman
It appears to have been a fairly quiet news day for the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment operating in Baghdad. Also, for those asking it's been a week since we've had a phone call from Chris but that just goes with the territory - he and his fellow warriors are busy based on recent reporting.
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