‘I Swear, I Swear I’ll Have Revenge’
Knight-Ridder has been doing some amazing reporting lately, and as just another example of this, here’s a story from Iraq that you could have cut up into a bunch of little parts, and any one of them would still be important:
The Bush administration’s exit strategy for Iraq rests on two pillars: an inclusive, democratic political process that includes all major ethnic groups and a well-trained Iraqi national army. But a week spent eating, sleeping and going on patrol with a crack unit of the Iraqi army - the 4,500-member 1st Brigade of the 6th Iraqi Division - suggests that the strategy is in serious trouble. Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that’s tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population.
The brigade last week raided the home of Saleh al-Mutlak, one of the most prominent Sunni politicians in the country, a day after an Iraqi soldier was shot and killed in the neighborhood. Soldiers said some gunfire had come from the direction of Mutlak’s house during the raid on his neighborhood.
Arab satellite news stations carried images of a car with its windows smashed in Mutlak’s driveway, and Mutlak held a news conference, saying that the soldiers who came into his home were thugs.
Sgt. Maj. Asad al-Zubaidi said Mutlak was lucky he wasn’t shot.
“When we are in charge of security the people will follow a law that says you will be sentenced to prison if you speak against the government, and for people like Saleh Mutlak there will be execution,” Zubaidi said. “Thousands of people are being killed by Saleh Mutlak and these dogs.”
The soldier who was gunned down in Mutlak’s neighborhood was with a group manning a checkpoint when he went to a nearby shop to buy cigarettes. A dark BMW with gunmen pulled up; three shots to the head later, the soldier was on the ground.
The brigade leader, Brig. Gen. Jaleel Khalif Shwail, drove to the site less than an hour after the shooting. The sidewalk was covered in blood, “like a sheep had been slaughtered,” Shwail said.
“These people in Amariyah are cowards,” he said, his voice full of rage as he stood at the spot where his soldier had fallen. “I swear, I swear I’ll have revenge.”
The shop owner was rousted from bed. He said over and over that he had nothing to do with the killing and he begged the soldiers for mercy.
Maj. Saad al-Mousawi, an intelligence officer with the brigade, shouted at the man to shut his mouth.
“Even if you people, you Sunnis, roll tanks on our heads we will not give this country back to you,” Mousawi said. “It’s ours now.”
Shwail, the 1st brigade’s top officer, regularly reviews important decisions, including troop distribution, with a prominent local Shiite cleric who’s closely aligned with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite religious figure in Iraq.
During a recent meeting with his officers, several of them asked Shwail why he didn’t send more troops to the troubled Sunni neighborhoods of Amariyah and Ghazaliyah when he has more than 1,000 patrolling the streets of Kadhemiya, the Shiite neighborhood where the brigade is based and the site of a major Shiite shrine.
Shwail told the officers that Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr had informed him that the troops must stay in Kadhemiya to protect the Shiite faithful.
“Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr has more influence than (Prime Minister) Ibrahim Jaafari,” Shwail said, using an honorific title. “The battalion in Kadhemiya won’t be moved from there for the next 100 years.”
The officers looked at each other, dismayed. Their men, stretched thin in the insurgent hotspots, are shot and killed regularly.
“But sir, we need more troops,” one officer said.
“The problem,” Shwail said, “is convincing Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr.”
Some Iraqi troops went a step further, saying they were only awaiting word from the marja’iya before turning on American forces. Although many Shiites are grateful for the overthrow of Saddam, they also are suspicious of U.S. motives. Those suspicions partly stem from the failure of the first Bush administration to support a U.S.-encouraged Shiite uprising against Saddam in 1991. Saddam suppressed it and slaughtered thousands.
“In Amariyah last week, a car bomb hit a U.S. Humvee and their soldiers began to shoot randomly. They killed a lot of innocent civilians. I was there; I saw it,” said Sgt. Fadhal Yahan. “This happens all the time. If they keep doing this, the people will attack them. And we are part of the people.”
Sgt. Jawad Majid chimed in: “We have our marja’iya and we are waiting for them to decide when the time to fight (the Americans) is, when it is no longer time to be silent.”
Two days after the shooting [of Sgt. Hussein Jabar by a sniper], Sgt. Ahmed Sabri stood outside the Umm al Qura mosque, home to the militant Sunni Muslim Scholars Association. The mosque is just down the road from where Jabar was shot.
“Every man we’ve had killed and wounded is because of that mosque. Thousands and thousands of Shiites are being killed, which is why they’re joining the army,” Sabri said. “Just let us have our constitution and elections in December and then we will do what Saddam did - start with five people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and then go from there.”
Asked if he worried about possible fighting between his men and the Sunnis at Umm al Qura, the brigade’s command sergeant major, Hassan Kadhum, smiled.
“Your country had to have a civil war,” he said. “It will be the same here. Everything in this world has its price. In Iraq the price for peace will be blood.”
Kadhum thought the matter over for a few more moments.
“There will be a day when we take that mosque and make it an army headquarters,” Kadhum said.
Read the Full Story on Knight-Ridder’s Washington Bureau
“Sectarian resentment extends to Iraq’s army”
October 12, 2005
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