Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq by Mark Urban

Ever since the fiasco of Andy McNab’s unauthorised publication of Bravo Two Zero (his rather skew-eyed but gripping look at the regiment’s operations in the first Gulf war), attempts to record the SAS’s place in history have been obstructed by a draconian contract of confidentiality imposed on all members of the special forces.

In this ground-breaking investigation into the SAS war in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, Mark Urban has worked his way around all that and, with obvious top access, has put together one of the few truly authentic accounts of the modern SAS outside the world of fiction. Such an account is needed. With the success of the main British mission in the Iraq campaign (namely, running the city of Basra) getting a somewhat iffy verdict, it is only by knowing at least something of what Britain’s special forces did in the war that a fully rounded view of the UK’s contribution can be offered.

Occasionally, Task Force Black is weighed down by the influence of the Ministry of Defence censor. Sometimes the perspective seems a bit too aligned with that of the SAS. But, for all that, there are some re-markable insights here. And the most prominent of them is that, for all the recognition its role has now achieved, the SAS only carved out its place in Iraq after heated infighting with its military superiors back in London.

When the Americans assaulted Fallujah in November 2004, British troops from the Black Watch moved up to support. But after the unit lost five men in the first fortnight, Downing Street started to backpedal. On the ground the SAS’s D Squadron, fuelled by what Urban calls its “airborne aggression” and the Para motto of FIDO (“f*** it and drive on”), wanted nothing more than to join the fray. Filling their wagons, they drove out to a rally point just outside Fallujah. By now, their friends in the US Delta force were already in combat. But then a “red card” came down the command chain and they were told to withdraw.

LIKE most of those in the inner orbit of General David Petraeus, the American commander whose ‘Baghdad surge’ helped to turn the war in Iraq, Colonel Peter Mansoor is forthright and blunt.
As the general’s former chief of staff in Baghdad (technically his ‘executive officer’), Mansoor says the American army fought with the wrong strategy in Iraq for as long as the US fought Hitler in Europe in World War Two and “that nearly led the United States and its allies to defeat in Iraq.”
But the difference between the US and Britain, his article in the British Army Review makes clear, is that American learned its lesson – realizing the Iraq war would be won not just by offensive operations to kill or capture terrorist leaders, but by recognizing it was a so-called “counter-insurgency” like Vietnam. The key to winning lay not with destroying the enemy but with securing and winning over the population.
Britain by contrast, says Mansoor, misread Iraq as a peacekeeping operation like the Balkans and regarded their own experience as more suitable than that of the Americans. “This conceit led to a serious understanding of the situation in southern Iraq,” he said.
Misreading an initial calm in southern Iraq, British forces had failed to deal with the growing threat of Shi-ite militias like the Mehdi Army of Muqtadr al Sadr. And when security deteriorated in 2006 they engaged in “futile” attacks against the militias without the ability or resources to protect the population from the Medhi Army’s death squads. And then at the end of 2007 they pulled out of Basra completely – just as General Petraeus was doing the opposite in Baghdad.
“Rather than protecting the Iraqi people in Basra and thereby insulating them from militia violence and intimidation, British political and military leaders had abdicated responsibility for their security – the exact opposite of what was happening in Baghdad and elsewhere, as US forces were moving off their large forward operating bases to position themselves among the Iraqi people where they lived.”
Operation Charge of the Knights, launched on March 3, last year (2008), to recapture the city proved, says Mansoor, that at least one person, the Iraqi prime minister, knew what was happening. When the initial attack faltered, General Petraeus “piled on support”, including US troops from Baghdad, that helped turn the tide of the battle in Basra.
The “British failure in Basra” was not due to conduct of British troops, “which was exemplary”’ but rather to “a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics at play in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along with increasing reluctance to risk blood and treasure to conduct effective co-insurgency warfare.”
With the British public losing their will to fight, British forces were hampered by political constraints and had a government that “insisted on running operations from Whitehall”. Meanwhile, British “attempted to cut deals with local Shiite leaders to maintain the peace in southern Iraq, an accommodation that was doomed to failure since the British negotiated from a position of weakness.”
Is Mansoor alone in his views? To prove he is not, the Army Review publishes two further papers that support his thesis, although a third more controversial one was blocked by the Ministry of Defence.
Dr Daniel Marston, an American military historian who was a regular adviser to UK forces in Basra and is an acknowledged expert on counter-insurgency, claims that many officers and soldiers blame many of the Army’s bigger mistakes on Whitehall and the lack of a joined-up approach with other agencies “and they are correct to do so.”
With its past experiences, many expected the British to do better in a counter-insurgency war than the Americans but the British Army, in practice, “appeared to be losing its way” with applying its theories. While the Americans turned their efforts to protecting the population, Marston says that agitation by mid-ranking British officers for British strategy to follow suit were ignored for too long.
Although the British, he says, did play their part in the Charge of the Knights and turn a defeat into success but the Army “cannot turns its back on a difficult campaign and disregard the lessons some of which are admittedly very tough to swallow… Whitehall and also some senior officers failed to understand the nature of the growing insurgency in the south and as a result they failed to implement a counter-insurgency strategy until the 11th hour.”
Anthony King, a professor of sociology at the University of Exeter who has been studying change in the Army, writes that the British Army is “currently in a predicament which as a close to a crisis that any public institution can likely to get… as even senior generals admit” the Army has emerged from Iraq with a damaged reputation.
Suggesting that commanders realise the need for a top-to-bottom transformation, King suggests: “Reform – and that means admitting mistakes – is bad for morale. Strategic defeat is worse.”

AFTER all the terrible trauma and military failures of World War One, the Imperial General Staff, notes Mansoor, chose not to even establish a committee to examine the lessons learned until 1932. Even then the chief of the general staff “suppressed the report because it was too critical of army performance.”
Likewise after the Vietnam War, the US Army did adapt its doctrines but it chose to wish away the concept of counter-insurgency warfare. The special forces centre at Fort Bragg was told by army leaders to throw away their files on the subject “since the US would supposedly never fight that kind of war again.”
As American and Britain are embroiled ever more deeply in the so-called “brushfire” conflict of war against guerrillas, an ever growing contrast has emerged, say many generals, between the open public debate that now characterizes US military strategy, and the attempts in the UK to stifle that debate.
And while the Army Review edition reflects a certain glasnost when it comes to Iraq, ever more vital lessons, say commanders, need to be drawn rapidly from nearly eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, including three years of intensive conflict in Helmand.
While US Afghan commander General Stan McChystal was this weak talking openly of revising a failing strategy, Britain’s own chief of defence staff, Sir Jock Stiirrup, spoke in Helmand of Britain’s own successful strategy.
Banned from the British Army Review by the Ministry of Defence was a paper published by two academics at King’s College department of war studies, David Betz and Anthony Cormack, both with extensive access to the military, and who described what they called a “strategic defeat” in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The plain fact of the matter is that, at the time of writing, it seems entirely possible that the Britain will suffer what amounts to a strategic defeat in both its ongoing counterinsurgency campaigns.”
Always struggling through a lack of resources — whether numbers of troops or numbers of helicopters — the Army has been undermined in Afghanistan because of past decisions taken to slim-down the British military to make for a “high tech” fighting machine designed to deliver huge combat power for fighting the Soviets or other major armies but not support the “boots on the ground” required for guerrilla warfare.
But because “given that a fish rots from the head,” they say, the root cause of military failure is British government is itself lukewarm in its commitment to the Afghan war and therefore unwilling to provide the resources needed for success. “The confluence of these factors has created a strategic void into which the Army has fallen.”
The decision to ban such words from a British Army publication was surprising, said Betz, because the same paper had already been published in the US
“It is very disappointing,” said Betz. “It’s important to learn lessons from Iraq but even more important to learn lessons from what’s happening in Afghanistan and apply them fast while there is still an opportunity of changing things.”
According to Army insiders, the decision to impose line-by-line censorship came after a previous edition of the British Army Review in which a military intelligence officer described the British presence in Helmand as an “unmitigated disaster”. A total of three articles were removed by the censors and the editorial was also watered down to remove a reference that implied a criticism of politicians.
“The line from Whitehall is that it’s OK to talk about mistakes in Iraq but not helpful to reveal errors in Afghanistan,” said one senior Army officer.. “The Army is being openly self-critical of itself and is really trying to learn the lessons from Iraq, “ he said, and “attempts to censor debate to limit short term embarrassment of ministers or ambassadors in the end loses wars and gets soldiers killed.
General Richards, meanwhile, is to press on with attempts to stir a public debate. He is to call for the creation of a British version of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) that the US set up after the Vietnam War to completely overhaul its army. For now, he hopes, Afghanistan is not quite Britain’s Vietnam. But to win, he believes the Army still needs a radical transformation

THE Ministry of Defence has suppressed a report which warned that British troops are facing “strategic defeat” in Afghanistan.

The decision to block publication of the critical academic paper in the army’s in-house journal coincides with a scathing attack by a senior US military officer on the “arrogance” of UK tactics in Iraq.

Colonel Peter Mansoor, who worked closely with General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq until a year ago, said Britain’s political and military leaders had “abdicated responsibility” in Basra by failing to protect local people.

Mansoor’s comments are made in the latest edition of the British Army Review which demands the “brutal truth” about the UK’s shortcomings in guerrilla warfare.

Sir David Richards, the new head of the army, favours a public debate so that lessons can be learnt from previous military mistakes.

However, critics believe that mandarins at the MoD have deliberately been less open to spare the blushes of politicians.

Last Friday Gordon Brown, insisted that Britain’s aims in Afghanistan were “realistic and achievable”, contrary to the warnings of Eric Joyce, who resigned as ministerial aide to Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary.

“The line from Whitehall is that it’s okay to talk about mistakes in Iraq but not helpful to reveal errors in Afghanistan,” said a senior army officer.

“Attempts to censor debate to limit short-term embarrassment for ministers . . . loses wars and gets soldiers killed.”

Although they allowed Mansoor’s article to be used by the British Army Review, defence officials vetted the publication line by line, watered down the editorial and banned three other pieces. One of these was a paper written by David Betz and Anthony Cormack, two academics at the department of war studies at King’s College London, who had extensive access to the military.

In their paper, which had already appeared in an American journal, they predicted Britain would pull out in failure from Basra earlier this year and faced looming defeat in Helmand, Afghanistan.

They wrote: “The plain fact of the matter is that, at the time of writing, it seems entirely possible that Britain will suffer what amounts to a strategic defeat in both its ongoing counter-insurgency campaigns.”

The academics argued that the army has been undermined in Afghanistan because “defence reforms” have geared it up to take part in large-scale battles rather than guerrilla warfare.

Ultimately, they blamed failures to date on the government’s lukewarm commitment and unwillingness to provide sufficient resources.

Betz said he was “disappointed” by the article’s exclusion. “It’s important to learn lessons from Iraq but even more important to learn lessons from what’s happening in Afghanistan and apply them fast while there is still an opportunity of changing things,” he said.

Such views are shared by Richards, who took over leadership of the British Army at the end of August.

General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in overall charge of allied troops in Afghanistan, has indicated that the military strategy needs to be overhauled. He believes that greater emphasis should be placed on protecting the population and winning hearts and minds rather than killing Taliban insurgents.

It is precisely these tactics that the British Army failed to heed in southern Iraq, according to Mansoor, a retired former chief-of-staff to Petraeus. American forces, by contrast, were able to adapt their strategy, building on their experience on fighting insurgents in Vietnam.

At the end of 2007, British troops completely pulled out of Basra city and tried to cut ill-conceived deals with Shi’ite leaders to maintain the peace.

Mansoor writes: “Rather than protecting the Iraqi people in Basra and thereby insulating them from militia violence and intimidation, British political and military leaders had abdicated responsibility for their security — the exact opposite of what was happening in Baghdad and elsewhere, as US forces were moving off their large forward operating bases to position themselves among the Iraqi people where they lived.”

Failure in Basra was not due to the conduct of British troops, “which was exemplary”, says Mansoor, but rather to “a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics at play in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt”.

A senior British Army officer has hit out at the lack of protection given to his former translator after the man was forced to go on the run when Iraqi insurgents murdered his brother-in-law and kidnapped his wife.

He says the Iraqi interpreter, who also worked for the Foreign Office, was turned away by British officials and told: “Make your own way to safety.”

Last night, Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer, who was head of the Army’s legal service in Iraq, said Britain had an obligation to help Haider Samad.

He said: “We owe this man an enormous debt – we can’t abandon him and his family.”

Lt Col Mercer said Samad had been crucial to his work in establishing law and order after the British took over in southern Iraq. “We couldn’t have done it without him,” he said.

The news comes despite Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s promise to protect former employees of UK Forces in Iraq and allow them to settle in Britain.

Last night, Haider Samad was on the run in Basra and in desperate danger after he was turned away from the British base at the city’s airport.

Armed militias behind a terror offensive against British troops in the region have launched a manhunt for him, and have already launched a murderous attack on his family.

Other former translators who worked for British Forces say the situation is serious. The Foreign Office’s own figures suggest that 40 ex-employees of the British have been killed so far.

Many in the Army believe there has been insufficient care taken to remember those who have died a manhunt for him, and have already launched a murderous attack on his family.

Other former translators who worked for British Forces say the situation is serious. The Foreign Office’s own figures suggest that 40 ex-employees of the British have been killed so far.

Many in the Army believe there has been insufficient care taken to remember those who have died.

Samad had worked for British forces since they first arrived in 2003; he had been held for the previous four years under house arrest by Saddam because of his pro-democracy work.

In March 2007, he left his final job as an interpreter for ArmorGroup, a UK firm running a Foreign Office contract to train local police, after death threats from Shia militias.

In September his brother-in-law Ali was captured and killed by the militias. They left a note on his body urging Samad to give himself up.

Samad then fled to Iran but his wife and children and his wife’s uncle, Ahmed, were kidnapped last weekend.

They were all later released but Ahmed is in an intensive-care unit with four bullet wounds in his chest.

Samad said: “I appeal for anyone with a conscience to help me. This is a question of life or death for us.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said officials were ‘keeping closely in touch’ with Samad and doing their best to help him.

A BRITISH Army operation to purge an Iraqi police unit blamed for torture, murders and attacks on troops is being opposed by senior politicians in the southern city of Basra.

British commanders say they have repeatedly clashed with Mohammed al-Waili, the provincial governor, and other elected leaders during a crackdown on the local police’s Department for Internal Affairs (DIA). Al-Waili threatened last week to break off relations with the British after troops arrested two senior policemen.

The row dates back to last September when two SAS soldiers became involved in a gunfight and were held at Jamiat police station, which served as DIA headquarters.Whitehall sources said the soldiers had been following a senior member of the DIA when they were spotted.

Al-Waili, who belongs to a Shi’ite group called the Islamic Virtue party, angered the army by refusing to call for the soldiers’ release.The DIA has been blamed not only for killing and torturing prisoners, but also for effectively operating a death squad whose victims may have included Steven Vincent, an American journalist who was killed last August.

DIA members are alleged to have close links to Iranian-backed insurgents who have been planting roadside bombs against British troops.

“It’s fair to describe the DIA as one of our main enemies in Iraq,” said a British defence source who has recently returned from visiting Basra. “They are not just thugs but murderers and terrorists – with the blood of our soldiers and innocent civilians on their hands.”

The Sunday Times disclosed in February 2004 that the station in Jamiat had become a focal point for the most corrupt elements of Basra’s new British-trained police forces. A police commander admitted then that recruits were drawn from the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade and the militia of the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr.

Last year the British Army appealed to the Iraqi government to disband the DIA and order the arrest of its most corrupt commanders. But it became increasingly clear that whether because of complicity or fear, the politicians were reluctant to act.

Three months ago, after pressure from the British embassy in Baghdad, the Iraqi interior ministry finally gave orders for the DIA to be shut down. A paramilitary police unit was sent to its headquarters on November 20 to disperse its officers. Insurgents struck hard at the British that day. Sergeant John Jones was killed by a bomb planted close to a police station. Al-Waili was reported to have travelled to Baghdad to lobby against the order to close the DIA.

The situation in Basra has been complicated by allegations that senior politicians have been making fortunes through involvement in oil smuggling and links to armed militias.

Brigadier Patrick Marriott, commander of the 4,000-strong force from the 7th Armoured Brigade (the Desert Rats), was philosophical about the challenges. “I read a short while ago in a very good ‘lessons learnt’ pamphlet produced by the Americans that most successful insurgencies, when dealt with in the 20th century, took about nine years and those that failed took 13 years,” he said. Asked how long this one would take, he replied: “I don’t know. The jury’s out.”

My friend Mohaned, an Iraqi doctor, writes from Baghdad. “It’s a horrible place these days,” he says, “no public services at all, six hours of electricity, and finally, no tap water at all since six days. Very nice circumstances for a happy elections!” Like most Iraqis, he despairs of what has happened to the country since the Americans and British invaded and “really can’t imagine” what the future will bring.

But the last thing he wants is for western forces to run for the border after the elections. After all the suffering, he hopes that some form of democracy can be salvaged. As he puts it: “I don’t think the new politicians will be any less corrupt, but at least we should have the chance to vote them out every few years.”

Others I have met around the country share those hopes. They believe the invasion was misconceived but they want something to show for it – and not just a civil war. Most educated Iraqis would like a taste of western-style democracy. Are we simply to abandon these people?

Whatever the propaganda may say, almost everything tangible about the invasion has been bad for the Iraqi people. Their government, schools, hospitals, water, electricity, fuel, roads, salaries and sense of security have all suffered and the only gain has been the intangible promise of freedom and democracy, towards which these elections are supposed to be an important step.

Yet it is precisely at this juncture that calls in Britain for a troop withdrawal, for a “cut and run” strategy, are gaining momentum.

I know there are many who honestly believe that a withdrawal of foreign troops is the only way of ending the violence , or at least that it might make the inevitable civil war less bloody. Yet I suspect there are also many who, in calling for a retreat, are indulging a sneaking desire to see everything in Iraq go wrong. They hope, at least at the back of their minds, for a disaster that would vindicate their opposition to the war.

Britain’s armed forces, I have learned, are hedging their bets: preparing for both the long haul and the swift escape. On the one hand, whole brigades are preparing for deployment to Iraq in 2006, and on the other, blueprints exist for an exit within weeks.

Last summer I heard the head of British defence intelligence, Lieutenant General Andrew Ridgway, predict that Britain could start withdrawing soon after these elections. He argued that a government in Baghdad could win credibility only by ensuring that foreign troops left. Besides, he said, much of the violence in the country was, of itself, generated by the presence of outsiders like us. “I believe that our manoeuvre troops [the infantry battalions] will be out by the end of [2005] at the latest,” he said then.

Ridgway was right to say that a new government must at least go through the motions of negotiating for the withdrawal of foreign troops, but, like many others, he was wrong to think that newly trained Iraqi policemen and National Guard units would be ready by now to “hold the bridge” against insurgents. It may be years before that point is reached.

If we are in, therefore, we must be in for the long term; there will be no sudden upturn in Iraq to make our troops redundant. So now is the time to confront any doubts. Britain must decide: do we stay and carry on, or do we withdraw and leave the US with the responsibility for clearing up a mess that, after all, is largely of its own making? That second option would be a political crime of the worst kind, for we would be reneging on every promise we have made to the Iraqi people.

Whatever glee the war’s opponents might have in saying “I told you so”, would it really feel good to abandon the Kurds, who have suffered so much; to abandon the Shias, whom we abandoned before in 1991; and to abandon the peaceful democrats whom we promised to help establish a new political future? Leaving now would be the “Congo solution”: destroy a country’s native society, as Belgium did, and then abandon it to its destruction. And the ensuing bloodbath could be comparable with the slaughter of Hindus and Muslims when India was partitioned.

There is also a wider strategic consideration. Would it be in Britain’s interests to allow Iraq to become a new Afghanistan – with entire regions left lawless, where training camps for militants could be freely established for the preparation of recruits for a worldwide battle against the west?

Entering Iraq may have been a vast strategic blunder – and I have yet to meet a Briton in Iraq who will say it was not – but it is time to move away from refighting the politics of the 2003 invasion and turn instead to the politics of how we help to get this country on its feet. The great undiscussed subject here is how we have failed the swathe of Iraq that is in effect under British rule.

Visiting Basra before Christmas, I saw a disturbing opinion poll conducted for the military which revealed that an incredible zero per cent (that’s not a single person) had noticed any economic reconstruction since Saddam Hussein was toppled.The evidence was everywhere – pools of sewage in the streets, tap water scarcely available, queues for petrol and fuel oil that were longer than I’d ever seen, and electricity that worked for six hours a day (nearly a year after the British announced the restoration of round-the-clock power). “You can see why it’s hard to maintain consent here,” remarked one British officer.

At the British divisional headquarters I met a Colonel, just leaving after a tour spent trying to get to grips with such problems. “We have not been able to carry out the reconstruction we would have expected,” he admitted. As the Americans diverted money to pay for increased security up north, he saw one major project after another – in sectors such as electricity, water and sewerage – being cancelled. Up to $3bn of promised reconstruction cash was diverted by the US from its programme for the south. “I would hesitate to use the word ‘raped’ but I would say they have taken away money from the areas that desperately needed money,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Colonel revealed that money was squandered on badly thought-out projects, such as a new gas-power station built in the desert without thought of a pipeline to supply the gas. Like his predecessors, he had hoped to solve the shortage of electricity with a scheme to connect Basra to Kuwait’s national grid, where there is an excess of supply, or through quick-build power stations on the Kuwaiti side of the border. All such schemes have been vetoed from Baghdad without explanation, however. “The truth is that people here are going to carry on living in the desperate state they are in,” he said. “As a soldier, I didn’t come out here for Blair or Bush, I came out to help rebuild the country and we have achieved a lot. But I wanted to achieve so much more.”

Brigadier Paul Gibson, commander of Britain’s 4th Armoured Brigade in the Basra area, was hardly more positive. “Most people I talk to have the view that things have not changed. There was a great expectation after the war. We are not scratching that itch. We are spending money but are not capturing people’s imagination.”

Britain has been running a few of its own projects, some paid for from the American pot, others by our own Department for International Development (DfID) – but many of the projects run by the army are geared, quite reasonably, to looking after their own soldiers’ safety, or “force protection”, as it is called. Money is channelled to communities near their bases and to known insurgent hot spots in an effort to buy off hostility.

What of Britain’s financial contribution? Do the British really have any right to complain when the Americans turn off the tap of money to the British zone? Did we arrive in Iraq simply as mercenaries, with no plans or projects of our own? That last question produces a wry smile from British soldiers because the hope was to fund reconstruction from Iraq’s oil exports.That was never realistic. It ignored the billions needed for the job and it overestimated the value of Iraqi oil. With almost no taxes coming in, current oil revenue just about pays for the government’s day-to-day budget; it can hardly fund reconstruction.

So Iraq needs money to rebuild. Having invaded and disrupted the place, we owe its population at least the price of restoring order. The insurgency will run and run until people find jobs and don’t feel that every aspect of their lives has got worse. Blair’s war has a cost that we have not yet paid.

Even if we had the money, though, that is only the start, for the experience of Iraq teaches us an unexpected lesson. We need more than cash and more than well-drilled fighting men. We need administrators who are capable of organising the work of reconciliation and repair effectively. The army has tried, but this is not its role. Apart from anything else, officers spend at most six months in Iraq; some commanders (due to rotations of command) are spending just three months. Nor is aid from DfID the answer – the department quite rightly wants to concentrate its money and best people on tackling world poverty.

Like it or not, Britain’s mission in Iraq is neo-colonialist; it is about the projection of power and the installation of a new regime more acceptable than the previous one. For this job, we need people who serve not as soldiers but as administrators.

It is time, then, to reinvent Britain’s Colonial Office, with a staff of people who are prepared to rough it like the old political agents on the North-West Frontier, and who will know their territory and accept the risks in exchange for the romance of doing a valued job in wild places. And yes, some of them will die for their work, just as the political agents once did. It could be called the Office for Foreign Administration, or something like that.

We need it. Look at the rush of interventions since the end of the cold war – Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan. Iraq is not a one-off. Yet we insist on using amateurs, volunteers from around Whitehall, to handle the politics and administration.

Handling complex negotiations with an Iraqi tribe is not something that an army officer with a one-month course in Arabic, or a young diplomat on detachment from his London desk, can be expected to do successfully alone. Without a specialist institution, a proper department staffed by real experts, the danger is that we will make a botch of one intervention after another.

We must not leave Iraq now. That would be a betrayal. But carrying on as we are is no better an option. Iraq needs sophisticated, intelligent and dedicated support. If Britain is to be a policeman on the world stage in this way, it is not a job that can be fairly left to our soldiers alone. We need civilian officials capable of picking up the pieces and rebuilding the communities for which we are assuming responsibility.

This article first appeared in the New Statesman

Observations on Iraq. By Stephen Grey

On a cold winter’s night in Iraq, a young shopkeeper stands outside in the
driving rain, his storefront illuminated by a sputtering petrol gen-erator.
It is a flickering pool of light in a city of darkness. Basra has been
getting barely four hours of electricity a day – one year after the British
army announced the restoration of round-the-clock power.
The young owner, Mohamed Hussein, shows us a poster, plastered with a
picture of a Shia saint, that announces the Iraqi elections on 30 January.
As we talk, a Kalashnikov bullet echoes across the street. The British
soldiers with me drop down for cover. Hussein does not flinch. “There is not
a single person in this city that will not vote in January,” he says. “We
have waited all our lives for this moment.”

Talking to Shias in southern Iraq, you get the impression that however many
suicide bombers or assassins stalk the streets, they will cast their vote.
Their leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has ordered them to vote: they
will obey.

For Shias – at least 60 per cent of Iraq’s population – the importance of 30
January dates back to the defining moment of Shi-ism itself: the martyrdom
(and hence defeat) of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala in 680AD. Through the centuries since,
the Shias have never held sway in Mesopotamia. All their insurrections since
the collapse of the Ottoman empire have failed – against the British in 1920
or against Saddam Hussein in 1991.

So Shias, from illiterate Marsh Arabs to the thin ranks of Shia
intellectuals, share the belief that these elections are their main chance.
And that is why, conscious of how George W Bush’s father abandoned them to
be slaughtered by Saddam in 1991, they are so sensitive about talk of
delays.

The Americans worry more about the outcome of the vote than whether it will
take place. Their big fear is that if the Sunnis boycott the poll, the
agents and collaborators of Iran will come in, riding on the back of a large
Shia victory. US politics in the Middle East has been geared for decades to
supporting the Sunni establishment of sheikhs and generals who have safely
guarded world oil supply.

The biggest electoral force, the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition created
on the orders of al-Sistani, reads like a checklist of Tehran-friendly
politicians who want the imposition of sharia law and clerical rule. It is
led by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was
formerly based in Tehran and whose leader, Sayed Mohamad Baqir al-Hakim,
spent years in Iran. It also includes the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah, which
is close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Dawa Party, whose
leaders were also exiled in Iran, and the Iraqi National Congress – whose
leader, Ahmad Chalabi, US officials accuse of being an Iranian agent.

Yet al-Sistani is rowing back from ordering Shias to vote for the coalition
that he helped to create. And even in places such as Basra, in the Shia
heartland, Iran is unpopular. Also comforting for the Americans is that
their creation, the interim prime minister and secular Shia Iyad Allawi, has
become immensely popular in the south for giving US marines the green light
for their assault on Fallujah. In the face of disorder, the desire for
security seems universal. Again and again, I heard: “We like Allawi because
he is a strong man.”

Tribal politics still count. Amer al-Fa’azi, a leading member of the Dawa
Islamic Movement but also head of the 140,000-strong Beni Amer tribe, said:
“I don’t need to campaign for these people to support me. Of course they
will all vote for me, because of my tribal relationship. It’s not like in
Europe.”

So far, despite one provocation after another, Shias have rarely retaliated
with sectarian attacks, nor, despite the failure of US and British
reconstruction promises, have many joined in violence against the coalition.
When the Shia Mahdi army, led by Moqtada al-Sadr, declared war on the
western coalition, most of the well-armed Shia militia refused to join their
action. But there are warning signs of a sectarian civil war – in, for
example, the increased rarity with which Sunnis and Shias worship at each
other’s mosques. And a little-noticed Shia militia, calling itself the
“angry brigade”, formed in December to organise reprisal attacks on Sunnis.

If the promise of democracy – the one clear gain of the invasion – fails to
deliver for the silent, patient majority of Shia Iraqis, who have endured so
much in return for so little, they may finally pick up their rifles and go
to war.

This article first appeared in the New Statesman. For the latest in current
and cultural affairs subscribe to the New Statesman print edition.

by Stephen Grey

BRITISH officials in Iraq warned the Foreign Office and American authorities of serious concerns about the treatment of prisoners six months before the torture and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib was revealed.

Several civil servants seconded to reconstruction jobs in Iraq have described in interviews how they witnessed ill-qualified American guards ignoring basic human rights as they turned Abu Ghraib into a military interrogation facility — rather than the civilian installation they wanted.

Gareth Davies, governor of Pentonville prison in London, discovered in December 2003 that Americans were using leg irons and belly chains to hold prisoners — a violation not only of new Iraqi laws adopted by coalition forces but also, he believed, of international conventions and of Britain’s 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.

Davies, awarded an OBE yesterday for his six months’ work in Iraqi prisons, protested to American and British officials. He also withdrew British prison staff from Baghdad to avoid complicity in any wrongdoing. The scandal erupted in May this year with publication of photographs showing US guards humiliating their charges.

“At that point in late December, I was pleased there were no longer any UK personnel in the department of prisons in Baghdad because I thought there could easily be a risk of embarrassment were we to be associated,” said Davies.

He criticised American officials for committing a “cardinal sin” of prison management by failing to adopt strict rules for handling inmates.

Davies also revealed that in one US-run jail, juvenile prisoners were punished by being made to stand for hours in contorted “stress” positions that could have led to asphyxia.

He insisted, however, he was not aware of anything “remotely on the scale of the disgusting practices revealed in May 2004 as occurring in Abu Ghraib” — where it emerged that naked prisoners were sexually humiliated and routinely deprived of elementary needs.

When Davies first raised the alarm, the worst of those abuses, including the use of dogs to terrify prisoners, had already taken place.

Sir Hilary Synnott, who was Britain’s most senior diplomat in Basra, confirmed Davies had told him of his worries. “He was concerned about some of the conditions which he encountered and the possibility that they contravened international norms,” Synnott said last week. “London was informed of these concerns.”

The American-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) made no initial response, however, and it is not clear why complaints were not made to the American authorities at a higher level.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Davies was among other civil servants who had warned of mistreatment as far back as the summer of last year. “Ministers were kept informed of those concerns and these issues were raised through appropriate channels,” he said.

Ann Clwyd, Tony Blair’s envoy on human rights in Iraq, said she was never informed. “I think officials knew, but politicians did not,” she said.

The scandal continues to reverberate in London and Washington, where new photographs began to circulate on the internet this weekend that appeared to show Iraqi captives being abused as early as May of last year.

The American military said yesterday it had launched a criminal investigation into pictures of Navy Seal special forces sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, some of whom appear to be bleeding from beatings. The images — if proved genuine — appear to be of suspects being arrested rather than prisoners in a jail.

The Abu Ghraib scandal had threatened to end the career of Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, but President George W Bush decided last week to allow the 72-year-old to remain in office.

Republicans close to the White House said the president was unwilling to change his military team in the run-up to elections in Iraq. The White House has blamed the Abu Ghraib abuses on a minority of junior soldiers and civilian contractors, some of whom attended pre-trial hearings yesterday at a military court in Fort Hood, Texas. Specialist Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader, is due to appear tomorrow.

From the start of the coalition takeover, British officials were closely involved with the reopening of the jail, which had been one of Saddam Hussein’s most feared prisons.

Bill Irvine, a British former prison governor now attached to the United Nations in Kosovo, was head of the Iraqi prisons department from May to September 2003. Although never involved in its detailed operation, he supervised the jail’s refurbishment until it reopened in late August.

Foreign Office sources say Irvine quickly feared Abu Ghraib was being transformed into an American military camp. “We never imagined the scale of abuse that was going on but we didn’t like what was happening,” said a colleague. “It was deteriorating.”

After Irvine left in September, another British official, Ken Grant, a forensic accountant from the Department of Trade and Industry, was placed in temporary charge of the Iraqi prison department. Although later replaced by an American, he remained at the prison ministry’s headquarters in Baghdad until the end of December.

Grant is said to have been frequently excluded from key meetings by the Americans. He also witnessed the gradual shifting of responsibility towards American civilian contractors, many of them veterans of the US private prison system, who encouraged the use of restraints such as leg irons.

In late August, Major- General Geoffrey Miller, then commander of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was dispatched to Iraq in a drive to find ways of extracting more useful intelligence from prisoners at Abu Ghraib. According to British officials, Americans believed Miller had given authority for Abu Ghraib to be “Gitmo-ised”. The US military calls Guantanamo Bay “Gitmo”.

“The Americans said they had a get-out clause that meant they didn’t have to follow the law,” said one official.

One of the US officials closely involved in the refurbishment of Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Baghdad in summer 2003 was Lane McCotter, the former head of the corrections system in Utah. McCotter has not been accused of involvement or responsibility for Iraqi prisoner abuse, but his methods troubled British officials.

Despite his misgivings, Davies remained until the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government in June, by which time there was little contact with the American authorities.

He stuck to his task, drafting codes for prison discipline and staff conduct “and at least 15 or so substantial documents” for consideration. He did not receive a single comment from the CPA. “In the end, communications were minimal and I concentrated on keeping our region in order,” he said.

In the thick, sweaty heat of a Baghdad night, a family sit in their garden

under a full moon, and wait for news. They’ve been sitting and talking for

many hours now, smoked too many cigarettes and drunk too many cups of tea.

Now they just sit on plastic white chairs and listen.

Many sounds are familiar and reassuring: the occasional dog’s bark, the buzz

of crickets, the rustling of fronds in the date palm tree, the steady

clack-clack of the electric fan propped up on the lawn. From a distance come

other sounds that would normally have them on edge: the bursts of a

Kalashnikov machine gun and the roar of an American fighter plane. But

tonight, the sounds that fray their already stretched nerves, the sounds

that might mean an end to the waiting, come from the road just beyond the

garden wall: the screech of tyres, the horns, and the slamming of car doors.

Photographer Steve Bent and I are waiting with Harb Nayma and his family for

the return of their 23-year-old daughter, Shayma – kidnapped seven days

previously. This afternoon, 62-year-old Harb went alone to a deserted

backstreet to hand over a ransom. The kidnappers had promised to release

Shayma and send her home within one hour. Five hours later, there is still

no sign of her. From inside the family’s house, we occasionally hear the

wails of Shayma’s mother, Khariya. She is so paralysed by fear and anxiety

that she can no longer walk. The rooms she is now crawling round are all

empty. Harb has sold off all the furniture to raise the ransom money.

It is more than a year since Saddam Hussein was toppled by the invasion of

American and British troops. For months, the world has followed the growing

wave of violence and the terrorist attacks against US forces. But ordinary

Iraqis like this family have their own story to tell: of how, since Saddam

Hussein’s departure, a terrible insecurity has descended.

As foreign journalists, we are worried about being here. The family have

asked us to stay – they want the world to know what they and others are

going through. So now we sit here with them, as they wait to see if their

daughter will ever come home. But we are afraid – afraid that the kidnappers

will discover our presence. Maybe they will raise the price of the ransom,

or even murder the girl in an act of revenge.

Each night, dramas like this are being played out all over Iraq. Kidnapping

has reached epidemic proportions and is terrorising whole communities. One

police officer estimated that, in Baghdad alone, there have been more than

15,000 kidnaps in the year since the coalition forces took control, although

many regard this as a huge underestimate; it is almost impossible to find

any family that does not know some close relative or friend who has been

kidnapped. Everyone is affected. Most families don’t report the crime; they

simply pay the ransom – but the police still have dozens of pictures of

women and children who have been executed by their abductors.

Often it seems to make little difference whether a ransom is paid or not.

Harb and his eldest two sons, Hossam and Husham, are well aware of this.

That’s the worst thing, they say, the feeling of powerlessness. “We’ve given

the money to the gang and they still have my daughter. We are at their

mercy,” says Harb.

On the day of the kidnap, Shayma had been preparing for the first of her

final-year college exams, which she was due to take that afternoon. She had

been studying computing and accountancy. Her family home is a two-storey

house with a pretty, green-lawned front garden, surrounded by whitewashed

high walls, in the comfortable and quiet district of Zayoona, traditionally

a neighbourhood for military officers. The dusty road outside her home,

lined with date palms and a swept pavement, is peaceful. But the walls and

metal gates of each family’s compound provide not only privacy; they mean

that few can observe what is happening outside.

Just before 11am, the dustmen had arrived on their regular rounds. As they

drove off, Shayma noticed that some litter had fallen off the van. She told

her mother she was going outside to sweep up the mess. Several minutes

later, Khariya had wondered why, in the heat of the day, Shayma was taking

so long, and walked out to see where she was. The rubbish was gone. And so

too was her daughter. The street was deserted. “We started calling all her

friends, and spoke to all the neighbours, but no one had seen her; she

disappeared,” recalls Hossam, her eldest brother.

By 4pm, the family were desperate and were preparing to visit the city

morgue to look for Shayma’s body. Just then, the phone rang. Harb answered.

A stranger’s voice came on the line: “We have your daughter here and we’re

going to kill her tonight, unless you pay us a million dollars. We know

you’re rich!”

Harb had certainly once been an army general, one of thousands under Saddam.

But he had retired 15 years ago, lost money in a failed business venture,

and now just worked part-time as a bookkeeper. His two eldest sons were

doing well; they’d just set themselves up as goldsmiths, but all their

savings were tied up in the business.

The following days had been relentless. Harb pleaded with the kidnappers -

though he and his family were comfortably middle class, there was no way

they could raise the kind of money that had been demanded. Once or twice a

day, the kidnappers phoned with more menacing threats. Finally, Harb’s

protests seemed to sink in. Still, they were slow to reduce their demands.

After two days they had still been asking for $ 800,000. Then, by the fifth

night, they had at last reduced the ransom demand to $ 100,000. But it was

stillan outrageous sum – far more than the family could afford.

After days without sleep, Harb’s face is etched with tension. Hossam is more

composed. He had spent the past few days collecting money – emptying their

bank accounts, getting help from neighbours, selling their possessions. But

so far he has raised just $ 8,000.

“There is so much waiting. We talk endlessly, and smoke too much, but our

words are not enough to touch the hearts of these criminals,” says Harb.

Shayma’s family believe they have been targeted because of their religion.

They are Mandaeans – members of one of Iraq’s smallest religious minorities.

With perhaps only 100,000 practitioners worldwide, half in Iraq, Mandaeans

follow their own religious texts and monotheistic traditions. Some trace

their origins back to John the Baptist. “Our community is being picked on,”

says Harb. “They are singling us out because they know we are peace-loving.

They know we have no weapons and will not fight back.”

On the face of it, there certainly seems some truth to this. Just around the

corner, another Mandaean family have been in negotiations with another group

of kidnappers, trying to get their four-year-old child back. But dig a

little deeper and it soon becomes apparent that no family is safe -

particularly not Iraq’s large middle class. In Shayma’s street alone, there

have been at least three other children kidnapped.

And it is not only children who are being targeted. The most high-profile

abductions have been of academics and doctors. Three days after Shayma’s

abduction, one of Baghdad’s most famous eye surgeons, Dr Fars el Bakri, was

surrounded and taken at gunpoint as he drove home from his private surgery.

Another eye specialist, 68-year-old Dr Ghiath Abidin, described how, two

months previously, he too had been abducted at gunpoint just a mile away.

The price of his freedom was $ 70,000. Last year, his wife was beaten and

tied up in their home, and the couple were robbed of some $ 150,000. Now

they have eight armed bodyguards. The bodyguard business is booming. Those

who can afford it are either sending their children abroad or hiring gunmen

to escort them back and forth to school.

While Shayma Nayma’s family waited to see if she would ever come home, they

scanned the local paper. It carried an advertisement headlined

“Announcement: Kidnapping of a doctor.” A dermatologist, Dr Zuhair al Azawy,

had just been abducted for ransom, it said. According to the advert, the

kidnappers’ aim seemed to be “to empty this place” of doctors and

scientists. “Save the distinguished people of Iraq!” it demanded.

Shayma has been missing for six days when the phone rings again. The

kidnappers. It is 1.30pm. From the living room, where Harb is sitting

cross-legged on the carpet, it is barely five yards to reach the receiver.

But, for this now frail man, it is proving to be a journey that requires a

huge effort of will. “The problem is that you cannot be too weak with these

criminals,” Harb had been saying. “Whatever the stakes – because if you are

weak they will take everything you have, and come back for more.” But how to

keep your cool when the price of a failed conversation could be the death of

your loved one? And what is her price? How much would and should he pay for

the life of his daughter. “We’re fed up with you. We can’t go on for ever.

We’ll have to leave your daughter’s body in a ditch,” says the

harsh-accented kidnapper.

“We’ve collected everything we have, sold all our things, and taken money

from friends, and it adds up to $ 8,000. I beg you to accept this.” Harb is

pleading by now.

“You’ll just have to find more,” snarls the kidnapper, and the phone goes

dead.

Nobody seems to know who these gangsters are. The police believe they are

simply common criminals exploiting the anarchy that now prevails in Iraq.

One of Saddam’s last acts had been to release thousands of such criminals

from his jails. With so many Iraqi families now obtaining and storing a

weapon at home, one criminal source also suggested that kidnapping was seen

as safer for the gangs than house burglary. Some judges have even accused

political parties of being involved. An aide to Dr Ahmed Chalabi, the head

of the Iraqi National Congress, was accused of involvement in one doctor’s

kidnap. But the charges remain unproved. Some evidence has also emerged that

insurgent groups – involved in a terror and guerrilla campaign against

American “occupation forces” and their allies – are using kidnapping to fund

their activities.

Hossam, Shayma’s brother, did at first try to track down her kidnappers. He

could see their Baghdad number displayed on his telephone, and he tried to

trace it. But the kidnappers found out he was making inquiries and warned

the family to stop.

“So there was nothing we could do,” he says. “We have just had to sit and

wait, and then handle these kind of things that we’ve never dealt with

before in our lives.”

The following day, Shayma’s father stands at the end of his driveway in the

midday sun, making the most dangerous decision of his life. In his pocket is

$ 10,000 in cash: close to the price finally agreed for almost all kidnap

ransoms in Iraq. The deal had finally been struck at 6pm the previous night.

The kidnappers had brought Shayma to the phone to prove she was still alive.

“Please release me, father; please give them what they want,” she had

pleaded.

Now, the kidnappers order Harb to come alone with the money to one of the

most dangerous districts of Baghdad. And they are offering no guarantees

about how Shayma will finally be released. “You must not go. It’s too

dangerous. They will take your money and just kill you,” Husham’s wife,

Sabah, is saying. She bursts into tears as she and the other women raise

their hands and implore him not to go alone. “You’re too old for this.”

“We are terrified that after they take me they will do something bad about

her, maybe kill her,” Harb says. “But I have to do this.” He pauses to shake

our hands. Fear is furrowed into his face. And then he sets off alone.

Time drips slowly by. The heat is now intense but, with another power cut,

there is neither electricity nor running water to cool the house. And so we

sit on the porch and drink tea and smoke cigarette after cigarette.

Ahmed, Shayma’s 31-year-old brother, paces the driveway, almost burning out

the soles of his rubber sandals. Hossam had gone to the police when his

sister was first abducted. It proved fruitless. “The police were more afraid

than us. They said if they helped they would be kidnapped themselves. ‘Just

negotiate and pay a ransom,’ they said.”

Kidnapping is now routine. Hossam mentioned the 12-year-old boy next door

who had been taken, then released for $ 20,000. A Kurdish family had paid $

40,000 for their boy – but the kidnappers killed him anyway. The family’s

cousin, Ali, recounted how a secretary at his office had phoned: her

sister’s seven-year-old boy had been kidnapped that morning.

It is more than three hours before Harb phones. He is safe, the money has

been handed over, Shayma will be freed in one hour. Twenty minutes later, he

staggers back up the driveway. “They have utterly exhausted me. I have been

walking the streets for hours. ‘Go here, go there.’ They wouldn’t stop.”

The kidnappers had repeatedly called him – maybe 30 times. Each time they

had told him to go somewhere new. “They talked like they were watching me,

but I looked behind and there was no one there. It was strange.” Once, to

his horror, some old friends spotted him in the street and rushed to say

hello. Another time an American patrol came by. “Both times they rang me

immediately and asked what was going on. I begged them it was just chance.”

At last, three armed, hooded men stepped from a car on an otherwise deserted

street and demanded the money. “Where is my daughter?”

Harb had asked, but the men just snatched the cash. “She will be free in an

hour,” they said.

“Now they have both the girl and the money,” Harb says. “We just have our

faith.”

The family has gathered round as Harb is handed the Ginza Raba, the

Mandaeans’ most holy book, bound in white leather. Kissing it first, he

opens it and begins to read. “Don’t weep because of death and tear your

clothes in grievingI Arm yourself with faith not weapons. Your weapons are

your good honest words.” As he reads, his back to the wall, he keeps

glancing through the window to the gate.

At 6.30pm, the kidnappers call again. Too many American patrols are on the

road, they say. Shayma will now be released in two hours’ time. It has begun

to get dark, and we all move into the garden. The family talk now about

everything, just to pass the time: their history, their religion, and,

inevitably, of Saddam Hussein. Like most Iraqis, they detested the dictator.

But now they wish he was back. At least he provided security. At least under

his regime bandits did not control the streets.

They try to talk of Shayma, about what might have happened to her in

captivity. But it is too difficult to contemplate – far too painful. Just

after evening prayer, at 9.45pm, the telephone rings one more time. Shayma

is on the line, but still with the kidnap gang. She says the gang had tried

to free her but the roads are still blocked by American troops.

One of the gangsters interjects, but this time, his by-now familiar voice is

gentle: “Do not worry now. You should sleep. The deal is done and she will

be released tomorrow.”

We slip away to our hotel. It is no longer safe for Westerners to be up so

late. Harb and the rest of the family stay in their plastic chairs in the

garden, clinging to the hope that Shayma might walk in at any time. “It was

the longest night of our lives,” they said later.

At eight the next morning, the first neighbours begin popping round to see

if there has been any news. Tea is served again in the garden. Half an hour

later comes the sound of a taxi pulling up outside. Hossam runs to the gate.

Shayma is standing there. She falls to her knees and, at the sight of Harb,

begins screaming. “My father. They are criminals. We’re in danger,” she

cries. Her three brothers pick up their sister and carry her indoors to her

stricken mother. “They’ve hurt me,” says Shayma as they lay her down.

We’re out in the garden again. It’s three hours later. A sheep is tethered

to a deckchair, busily chewing up the lawn. It’s going to be slaughtered for

the family feast that will celebrate Shayma’s return. Already the smell of

rich, spicy stew is wafting in from the kitchen.

Shayma’s return has been bitter-sweet. Exhausted after the days of sleepless

nights and tense negotiations, the family has reached its emotional limit.

Relief is being replaced by anger: fury that these criminals have stolen so

much – and that they might want even more. Shayma has brought back a

chilling message: “They kept saying that all our lives and our property now

belonged to them. They said it was halal (permitted in Islam) for the gang

to seize anything from us at any time in the future.

They kept repeating this.”

In the garden, Hossam and his wife, Hind, are arguing. He wants to pop down

to the shops. She is begging him not to go outside. “You’re still in

danger,” she pleads. “They’ve said they will kill you at any time.”

In their house without furniture, Harb’s family contemplate their future.

They want to get out, they’ve lost too much. They ask our advice on how to

get visas to other countries.

When Shayma first arrived home, she was exhausted, and had instantly fallen

asleep. But now she rises and begins to tell her story. “I was in the street

and these men jumped out of two cars. They pushed machine guns in my face,”

she says. The gangsters tied her hands, put a plaster on her mouth, and then

shoved her on to the floor of a car, pushing their feet down on her back. “I

was choking.”

The gunmen drove around for two hours until they reached some kind of house

in the countryside. Shayma was led to a concrete cell, her home for the next

eight days. Most of the time she was bound and blindfolded. Only

occasionally would they release her bonds – so she could stare at the blank

walls and the only window – a tiny hole in the roof through which a shaft of

sun or moonlight would shine.

“I really thought I would die. I could not believe I would survive this

experience. They seemed to know everything already. They knew all our family

names and all our ages and jobs.”

Trussed, with both her hands tied to a metal rod on the wall, she was beaten

repeatedly with a thick rubber hose. “Why are your family refusing to pay?

Don’t they know we will kill you if they don’t,” they shouted.

Some of the beatings were carried out by the men, but mostly they were by a

middle-aged woman who brought in food once a day – a little jar of water

with a crust of bread and some kind of root vegetable. She spoonfed it into

Shayma’s mouth.

Even as she pondered her own fate (for she knew that many kidnap victims

were simply murdered even after the family paid a ransom), Shayma worried

about her own family. “They kept talking about Hossam and how he was trying

to track them down. They said they would go and kill him in the street.”

Three times she was allowed to speak to her father, but her words were

carefully coached. “Father, father, release me. Give them everything they

want,” she had begged.

On the final night, she was told to tell her father that she’d been taken to

see a roadblock, and to explain why they could not take her home. “But it

was all lies. They never took me anywhere. In fact, that night they were

discussing whether I should be killed, whether they would take me back at

all; it was my worst feeling of terror.”

Did she have a change of clothes? She looks at me awkwardly. “You know they

used to strip me,” she says. “I only got my clothes back when they released

me.” As I look into her eyes, I have a sense of foreboding that worse things

happened – events of which she does not yet have the courage or desire to

speak.

The final truth about Shayma’s ordeal emerges three weeks later. In a small

flat in North London, Shayma’s elder sister, Jinan, who has lived in England

with her husband for six years, explains how it took Shayma several days to

reveal the whole story: how she was tied to the floor and raped on every

night of her captivity – by six different men. “These are horrible things to

talk of, but the family asked me to tell you. They want people to know every

truth,” says Jinan, bursting into tears.

Shayma has developed serious medical complications from her ordeal. She

cannot sleep at night, and has been prescribed antidepressants. There will

also be social consequences. Within the Mandaean culture, to lose her

virginity in this way means that it is possible she may never marry, and

certainly not have a normal wedding. In their culture, the whole family is

now stigmatised.

It seems the kidnappers delivered on their promise to take revenge on Hossam

for his efforts to track them down. A week after Shayma’s release, he was

driving when another car pulled alongside and gunmen opened fire.

Hossam accelerated away and escaped the attack. Hossam has now taken Shayma

and his own family and fled to Jordan: hopefully their first stage of a

journey to a better life in a safe country.

The end of the kidnap story for one family marks only the beginning of a new

struggle – to cope with its aftermath. For thousands of other families in

Iraq, whose child or breadwinner has recently been kidnapped, this whole

grim saga is only just beginning.

*This was first published in the Times magazine, London, july 2004.