Salon.com > David Axe

Fear and loathing in Baghdad

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Last summer in the town of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, I was accompanying British diplomat Karen McClusky in the downtown market, interviewing residents, when one of McClusky's guards abruptly said, "We have to leave now." We left immediately, no questions asked. The guard later explained he'd sensed hostility in the crowd: dark looks, unintelligible muttering.

Perhaps it was no more than a fleeting specter -- but across Iraq these days and particularly in Baghdad, angry looks and whispered words can be a prelude to death. Westerners, including those working for the media (along with anyone helping them), have continued to be targets for abduction, torture and murder at the hands of insurgents.

The abduction in Baghdad on Jan. 7 of 28-year-old freelance reporter Jill Carroll, who was on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor, is the latest example of how difficult conditions have become. Her respected translator, Alan Enwiyah, was murdered at the time of the kidnapping; Carroll's fate remains unknown. On Jan. 17, Carroll's captors issued a statement demanding that the United States free all female Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody, threatening to kill Carroll if their demand was not met within 72 hours.

Down and out with Iraqi forces

Mon, 23 May 2005 20:45:00 +0000

On the afternoon of Jan. 27 in the Sunni city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces are hosting what they call a "peace day" at a provincial government building near one of the most dangerous parts of the city. The event is an opportunity for known insurgents to sign a pledge against violence in exchange for amnesty from arrest. Outside, Iraqi police and soldiers patrol the wide, garbage-lined streets on foot and in battered trucks that weave through traffic.

At an intersection just yards from the peace-day proceedings, a compact car pulls up alongside a police truck and explodes, scattering debris and body parts and riddling the police truck with shrapnel. Four policemen are gravely injured. Passersby drag them bleeding into a nearby shop while U.S. and Iraqi forces and ambulances race to the scene. For several minutes after the explosion, Iraqi cops speed up and down the street in their ubiquitous pickup trucks, firing machine guns at God knows what.

Where the Iraqis really do throw flowers

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 22:45:00 +0000

Even New York City traffic pales compared to this: On March 22, thousands of cars, trucks, tractors and donkeys crowd a winding mountain highway outside the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, lurching and honking and weaving, careening within inches of precipitous slopes as drivers battle to make their way to mountaintop parks and resorts. There are no lanes, no traffic lights, and only a handful of weary cops with resigned expressions waving at passing cars. Despite the tumult, drivers and passengers alike slow and cheer as their cars pass a log-jammed patrol from the Idaho National Guard's 148th Field Artillery Regiment, based at Camp Stone just outside the city.

"They love us here," Sgt. 1st Class Jose Alvarez Jr., 34, says. He smiles and waves at a truck full of pretty Kurdish girls in traditional dresses.

Especially today. It's Noruz, the Kurdish new year, a celebration of the day more than 1,500 years ago when, they say, a Kurdish blacksmith defeated a tyrant whose shoulders sprouted satanic baby-eating snakes. Until liberation in 2003, Kurds in Saddam Hussein's territory were prohibited from celebrating any national holidays. Now they're making up for lost time --- and they have soldiers like these 148th troopers to thank for it.

On the Sunni side

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:40:00 +0000

At 9 a.m. on Jan. 30 in the Shiite town of Kanan, near this provincial capital in the Sunni triangle, the only living things on the streets were hungry wild dogs. At the city's heavily fortified polls -- which had been open for two hours -- Iraqi police stood smoking cigarettes behind concrete and barbed-wire barriers, waiting for the voters they knew would never come.

Immediately after the Iraqi elections, conventional wisdom from the media has called the voting an unqualified success because millions turned out despite attacks and threats. Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi declared the day's events a defeat for terrorists. But a closer look at towns like Kanan and Baquba reveals underlying failures that are likely to grow into serious problems in the near future. Chief among them: The Sunni turnout in the most volatile regions of Iraq was predictably low, perhaps as low as 30 percent versus more than 75 percent for Shiites and Kurds. And in some towns, there was no turnout at all, Sunni or otherwise.

In Kanan, there was a tension in the air, the kind of atmosphere veteran American soldiers recognize as a community bracing for an insurgent attack. The average Iraqi knows a lot more about the comings and goings of insurgents than most authorities let on. Before many attacks, people shutter their shops, close their drapes and pull their children off the street.