Secrets of Curveball - the spy behind a war

BBC Newsnight broadcast a film by me with new revelations about the spy whose evidence, more than any other, provided the intelligence case for the Iraq war.
We find Rafid Alwan, aka Curveball, in a town in Germany; and discover just how many doubts existed about Curveball - before the war - among both US and British intelligence.

Watch the film

Abandoned by Britain, the interpreter fleeing from Iraqi death squads

By STEPHEN GREY - first published Mail on Sunday on 11th November 2007

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.

Iraqis stop British purge of police

by Stephen Grey in Basra (first published in Sunday Times, London)

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."

Desert Rats' Diary

BBC Radio’s: Desert Rats' Diary :
From an old colonial hotel on the banks of the Shatt al Arab River, the Desert Rats go about the business of reclaiming Basra City from years of devastation. Stephen Grey has been given exclusive access to their inner circles, and for the last several months has been following their work in southern Iraq. He reports from the frontline - where being bricked and mortared is a way of life.
Broadcast: Radio 4 (UK) 9 February 2006 and 16th February 2006; at 8pm; and BBC World Service on Thurs 2nd March and Friday 3rd March; both days at 11.32 and 1532 GMT.
Hear episode 2 by streaming audio: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/desert_rats_diary

We blundered in. Let's not betray them too

New Statesman Special Issue Stephen Grey Monday 31st January 2005

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

Shias wait for elections, or war

first published in the New Statesman, Saturday 1st January 2005

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
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Britons sounded alert on Abu Ghraib

first published in the Sunday Times, Dec 05, 2004.
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.

'We have your daughter and we're going to kill her tonight' :

by Stephen Grey

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.

Who should we believe?

first published in the New Statesman, Monday 10th May 2004
The more people are victimised, the less account we take of their witness to torture and abuse.

By Stephen Grey

Abdullah crouched down until his knees just about touched the ground, nearly but not quite, and his head rested against a concrete wall. It was in this excruciating position that he was made to stay, blindfolded, for hours on end. "If I touched the floor with my knees," he explained, "they would come behind me and strike with their boots, or with rods."Freed after four months in detention, Abdullah was describing his experience of a special US interrogation centre inside the Baghdad airport base. His worst moment, he said, was the electric shock treatment. Drawing a detailed diagram, Abdullah showed how crocodile clips had been attached to his genitals and then wires passed to a device which looked like a wind-up field telephone that generated a painful electric current."I could not believe they would treat a human being like this," said Abdullah, who was accused of involvement in the insurgency against US troops. He asked me not to print his full name as he still feared he might be rearrested. There is no appeal against such detention.I interviewed Abdullah in Baghdad a couple of months ago, but I never published his account. How could I verify the terrible things he had said, in the face of total denials by US forces? How could I impugn their humanity? After all, Abdullah was a Sunni from el-Adhamiya, one of the city's quarters most hostile to the occupation, and perhaps he was lying.Now I am inclined to believe what Abdullah told me. Like many Iraqis and Americans and Britons during this past week, I have crossed a sort of watershed in comprehension - in my willingness to believe the testimony of alleged victims of such abuse. This was apparent, too, in the official military inquiry into inmate abuse at the US-run Abu Ghraib, once Saddam Hussein's torture prison.A few days ago, sitting in my hotel room in Basra, I was reading a report by Major General Antonio M Taguba dated 4 March, and originally marked as "secret/no foreign dissemination". The report outlines a shocking catalogue of torture that goes well beyond the photographs first glimpsed on the CBS show 60 Minutes. According to Taguba, various soldiers had confessed, among other things, to "forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped . . . placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture". Further allegations included "breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees" and "sodomising a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick".Taguba said that "in the circumstances" he found these claims credible.This phrase - "in the circumstances" - really struck me. It seemed Taguba, too, had crossed the watershed where he also could believe the words of the victim.What happens, however, before such a conversion experience? How to tell fact from fiction in a war zone where every side requires powerful propaganda?Driving around Amriya, another Sunni district in Baghdad, in January, I met residents who described what seemed like a systematic programme of arrests and detention by US forces as they searched for insurgents they believed might be lurking in some of the houses. One home I visited had been searched by troops with grenades. There was shrapnel in every wall and a hole in the middle of every floor: evidence of a grenade attack. I talked to the woman of the house. "All they had to do was ask and I would have let them in," she said. "Why did they have to destroy everything?" I wondered how much to believe: I knew her family did have links with the insurgents.By a mosque, I came across a group of houses that had all been raided simultaneously one night, this time apparently by Polish special forces, working for the Americans, who were dropped by helicopter on to the buildings' roofs. A former chief of intelligence to Saddam had lived nearby and it seemed the US had decided to lift all young men and boys from the surrounding houses. Boys as young as 15 were held for three or four days and interrogated by soldiers. The evidence for their claims was on their wrists and ankles - most still had deep, festering gouges in their skin where plastic handcuffs had been left fastened for days.The evidence of a policy of indiscriminate detention by US troops seemed clear. But then again, this was Amriya, a guerrilla stronghold. Who should believe the boys' words, or even sympathise with them because of their wounds?Whether in Palestine/Israel, Bosnia, Rwanda or now Iraq, it is a terrible irony that the more a community is victimised, the less account we are likely to take of their witness. The victims have an axe to grind; they may be intent on revenge - and so they cannot be reliable. We reporters long for an "innocent" victim to give credibility to a story. Again, who to believe?The great anger that has swept the world because of the US photographs of torture is a testament to the power of the visual image - but it is also a testament to its inherent weaknesses. Taguba's report shows that prisoner abuse was first confirmed last May; yet our anger was sparked only when, essentially, the abuse was all over. By raising the bar of what is considered acceptable "proof", we condemn ourselves to acting too late.Whether the Daily Mirror's photo-graphs are authentic or not, they prove that the image as a medium for truth depends on the credibility of those who supplied it. Ultimately, it all comes down to human testimony, to staring someone in the eye and judging whether they are telling the truth - or whether you are.

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

The Sound of Freedom

First published in the New Statesman, Monday 22nd March 2004

Across much of "liberated Iraq", you can search in vain for irony. Despite
what conspiracy theorists may say about America's designs over oil, most US
officials really do want to make a success of a free Iraq. They believe in
it with that kind of deep stare that makes you want to start fidgeting.
On completion of their time in Iraq, senior officials are presented with a
signed certificate from L Paul Bremer III, thanking them for bringing
democracy and freedom to the country. The Brits sometimes giggle at the back
of the room, murmuring "inshallah" ("God willing"). The near-Messianic
commitment extends to the US military. The other day, an Iraqi journalist
asked a military spokesman what should be said to children scared by
low-flying US helicopters. "Tell them it's the sound of freedom," he
replied, without batting an eyelid.
More committed still are spokesmen for the Coalition Provisional Authority,
which officially runs Iraq until 30 June. Many are determined to install
democracy, not just in Iraq but across the whole Middle East. Why not topple
the Saudi government while they are at it?
But most are also volunteers directly from the Republican Party - political
appointees on leave from positions inside the Washington administration.
Part of their job is to help George Bush win a second term. They have
instructions to make at least the public face of the CPA into an
"all-American show". One official said: "We are in election mode now, and
that means the US elections. The orders came from the White House to make
sure no Brit was on the platform for any crucial soundbite."
Until a couple of months ago, the CPA's deputy spokesman, a young British
mandarin named Charles Heatley, was often on the podium facing the cameras.
But he is gone and has not been replaced. There is now only one on-camera
spokesman, a Republican named Dan Senor, a former communications director
for Spencer Abraham, an ex-senator who is now US energy secretary. Although
almost half of Iraq is now occupied by non-US troops, Senor responds to
questions about the "coalition" by referring simply to "we Americans".
The British officials - mostly neutral-minded civil servants, frequently
Arabists by training and instinct, some of them participants in last year's
Stop the War marches - are more than a little shame-faced to be appendages
to an American military machine.
Until now, to ring them on their mobile phones, you've had to dial 914, a US
area code, as though it were a call to Westchester County, New York. You
could reach their landlines only by dialling a 703 area code, the same as
for the Pentagon in Washington and the Central Intelligence Agency in
McLean, Virginia. And their e-mails still end "centcom.mil".

US learns the Bogside lessons

first published in the New Statesman, Monday 8th March 2004

Observations on Iraq by Stephen Grey
The first sound was a low roar; then the windows began rattling. Families
woke up and looked outside to see the tanks, armoured cars, trucks and
bulldozers of the British army. It was 4am on 31 July 1972, and 20,000
troops were sweeping into the IRA's "no-go zones".
The launch of Operation Motorman brought an end to "Free Derry" in the
Bogside and to IRA control of parts of West Belfast. Twenty-two years later,
as insurgents cause havoc across northern Iraq, most recently with the
blasts in Karbala and Baghdad, US commanders are preparing for operations
similar to Operation Motorman in an attempt to defeat the resistance.
I have just returned from seven weeks in Iraq, and my impression from
talking to US military officers, resistance fighters and ordinary people in
the Sunni Triangle is that there are two distinct threats. Most Iraqi
resistance fighters will tolerate almost any attack on Americans and their
local "collaborators". But they do not support the cells of mainly foreign
fighters who kill civilians indiscriminately with the kinds of attacks seen
on Tuesday.
Both sets of fighters, however, operate from what amount to no-go zones
within many of the towns and cities of the Sunni Triangle. Although there
are no Derry-style barricades, the sheer frequency of attacks and the depth
of civilian hostility have led the US army in effect to pull out - and so to
lose any significant ability to collect intelligence on the ground.
For example, I spent a day in Fallujah, an hour's drive west of Baghdad,
without seeing a single American soldier. I also found almost universal
support for the resistance. A week later, insurgents raided and captured the
police station, killing 23 and freeing prisoners; the American forces made
no intervention.
But now, a new rotation of more than 100,000 US troops is arriving in Iraq -
trained no longer just for major combat but for a specialised
counter-insurgency mission. On the streets of Ramadi, I talked to US
soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, who are about to hand over to the marines.
"From my perspective," said David Pit-tare, "the 82nd has been too soft.
We've let ourselves be attacked and then we run away. The marines will
change that. If they get attacked, they will flatten the area."
Two major lessons emerge from Ulster. The first is the need to clear any
zone where a guerrilla feels safe. Duncan Spinner, whose Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders battalion came to Iraq after three years in Belfast,
told me: "Above everything else, there is the need to dominate the ground -
to prevent the insurgents being able to prepare and manoeuvre with ease.
Only then can you get about and start gathering the sort of intelligence you
need." The second lesson is the famous one about operating within the law
and winning "hearts and minds". This, I was told, was emphasised by British
officers who visited training camps in Texas last year to share experiences
from Northern Ireland. After all, even General Sir Frank Kitson, whose
manual Low-Intensity Operations caused such outrage in the early 1970s by
urging army officers to prepare for counter-insurgency operations on the
British mainland, stressed the need to win local consent and (unlike the
Americans in Iraq) to veto the use of helicopter gunships, bombers and
artillery.
Although the US is desperate to withdraw from Iraq and hand over
sovereignty, and although the troops now arriving are said to be "culturally
sensitised", the hardest confrontations may lie ahead.

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

Dunya's WAR: Fallujah, Feb 2004.

By Stephen Grey, Falluja.
THE WAR for little Dunya Hamid began and ended in a warm afternoon last
autumn. She was playing with her sisters in a dusty palm grove when the
American army opened fire on her hamlet.
Just two years old, Dunya had no words to utter but ''mama''' and ''dadda,''
when just after 4pm, the soldiers approached her village from two sides in
armoured Humvees cars. Dunya ran for safety but she was cut down, shot in
the head with a machine gun bullet before she could reach the back door of
the family's squat four-bedroomed bungalow.
Her sister, Manal, aged seven, who was injured from shrapnel, recalled: "I
saw Dunya playing outside. When she heard the shooting she wanted to go
inside but then I saw her falling to the ground. Then I was hit. I didn't
feel anything bu I saw my blood come out. We were very afraid."
In the fast-moving pace of events in Iraq, Dunya's death and the injuries of
four other children in the hamlet merited just a brief paragraph in
newspaper accounts of a bloody day of fighting between American forces and
guerrilla fighters. A day earlier, in the same town of Fallujah, US troops
also shot dead ten Iraqi policemen by mistake.
Yet for Dunya's family the events of September 12 last year and the
perceived failure of US forces to investigate or compensate them for the
incident remain uppermost in their minds. Her case illustrates what many
Iraqis describe as a deepening sense of outrage at the failure of American
occupying forces to address the injustice of the innocent people who die or
are wounded in the crossfire of military operations.
Separating fact from fiction is difficult task in a town like Fallujah, a
town at the heart of violent resistance to American occupation of Iraq, and
where the soldiers of the US 82nd Airborne, who now occupy the town, seem to
have few friends left.
Senior commanders admit that in places like Fallujah there is little
question of winning hearts and minds – what once was acronymed 'Wham' in
Vietnam. They would settle now for a sullen neutrality. They hope only to
prevent local citizens from lifting guns or launching grenades at them, and
to stop harbouring those that do.
But Dr Abdul Wahab, orthopaedic surgeon, at the general hospital in
Fallujah, said support for the resistance was very strong indeed. "Everyone
who works for the Americans are considered an enemy here."
Everyone knew, he said, that when American troops are attacked they
responded by spraying fire in all directions around, with the inevitable
loss of life to innocent civilians.
Said Wahab: "When someone attacks the Americans, they shoot at random around
them. I know this is true because I have treated the casualties of this
policy. I have treated may be 15 children with injuries from bullets or
shrapnel in the last year."
Dunya's family say her death occurred.after resistance fighters detonated a
roadside bomb near the hamlet under an American convoy. Angered by the
attack, the US troops had retaliated by driving up to their homes and
opening fire from two directions. All those interviewed denied there was any
fire on US forces from their houses.
Although the US forces last week declined comment on the incident, accounts
from US officials differed from what the villagers said. They described the
firing on Dunya's hamlet as a response to hostile fire from guerrillas
sheltering within its buildings.
But, as Dunya's grandfather, Turki Abbas, pointed out that, whatever its
justification, the American fire was hardly accurate. Showing us around the
village, as he clutched amber prayer beads, he showed us a score of machine
gun rounds that had torn through the Brieze block walls of different
buildings. There were four more bullet holes through the metal door beside
which Dunya died.
"How can a two-year-old child be described as a supporter of the resistance?
How did she threaten any American?": Abbas said. "I had such dreams for this
little child: just to live in peace and security and have a healthy life. We
are farmers and can ask for nothing more."
Regardless of whether Dunya was killed by undisciplined random fire, as the
family allege, or caught in the crossfire of an actual engagement, it is
clear that Americans have done little to investigate the incident. An
official report reported compiled by a local police lieutenant, Bashar
Khadir, provided a detailed map of whether Dunya was killed, and showed the
bullet trajectories leading from American vehicles. A medical report was
attached that confirmed bullet injuries as the cause of death.
Khadir concluded his report by demanding compensation for the family and for
a full investigation by US authorities. Yet Dunya's father, Hamid, says they
have heard no more. "We were told we would get compensation but they lied.
We have had nothing," he said.
Marla Ruzicka, an American living in Baghdad who has founded a group called
the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (civic), argues that, at the
very least, US forces need to systematically pay out generous compensation
when they kill the innocent – and to properly investigate each and every
case.
She said: "The Iraqis feel that American soldiers are operating with
impunity. It doesn't send the right message at all when we need to show we
have different standards from other brutal regimes. It would really make
American lives safer in Iraq when we showed we cared too about Iraqi lives."
Ruzicka's campaign has been one of those that has helped America start a
limited programme to compensate for the first time the victims of so-called
collateral damage.
Karin Tackaberry, an army lawyer with the 82nd Airborne, explained that
America was liable to pay out damages when caused by US negligence. But
these pay-outs, made under the Foreign Compensation Act, did not apply as
soon as any incident was declared as a combat operation.
"Roughly speaking when the bullets start to fly in both directions then
there is no legal right to compensation," she said.
Instead the US has allotted its commanders a new discretionary budget to pay
out what amounts, in the Arab tradition, to so-called blood money and can be
used, with no admission of blame, to pay-out even for deaths or injuries
caused by crossfire in combat cases.
In the government offices in central Ramadi, another town in the Sunni
triangle that is also under 82 Airborne control, Tackaberry and her
assistants arrived last week with 90,000 dollars in cash to pay out on a
long list of damage claims.
Since last October, over 150 discretionary payments have been made in the
Ramadi area. Most amounted to pay-outs for traffic accidents, damage to
houses caused by off-target bombs or artillery, and to compensation for
wrongful arrest or loss of property. Others have been pay-outs for injury or
deaths: but, her staff explained, there was maximum pay out of 2500 dollars
for any death caused by US forces.
In a measure of the area's insecurity and the difficulty of local people to
lodge their claims, the session was suspended for three hours after
Tackaberry's convoy of vehicles was attacked with a roadside bomb as it
drove to the centre. One armoured vehicle was flung up into the air in a
cloud of black smoke and orange sparks, but no-one suffered serious injury.
Later, when the convoy reached the headquarters, heavy machine gun fire
could be heard in the background and the whole complex was sealed off.
"This compound has just come under attack. It seems an Iraqi policeman on
guard outside has been killed," announced Tackaberry.
Despite the fighting outside, a handful of claimants did make it through the
police cordons to lodge claims or receive payouts. Allaway Rashid Abid, 42,
accepted a payment of 2500 US dollars for the destruction of his car by
Americans searching for weapons.
"If I get the money I will forgive them," said Abid. "You know us Arab
people look for revenge but what can I do. You accept what you can."
But his lawyer, Mohamed Mukhlif, who handles dozens of complaints from
Ramadi residents, said the Americans seemed more willing to pay out for
broken cars than for the civilians they killed. "For every family that
receives compensation for a death, there are ten that received nothing at
all."
He said he handled one case when the Americans paid out 500 dollars to the
family of an un-armed un-uniformed civilian who was shot dead as he walked
down the street. Even the local tribal system of blood money, he said,
required at least 5000 dollars to be paid by one family to another as
retribution for any murder or wrongful death, "so the amount they pay out
here is considered shameful."
Tackaberry said believed the payments could help to correct the idea that
American forces cared nothing for any damage they caused to local
communities but she said innocents would continue to die while the war
continued.
"There is a perception, a terrible perception, out there that we kill
innocent people. It's not always completely true or completely false because
the truth is that the enemy operates and fires from the vicinity of innocent
people. We know that collateral damage happens."
Elsewhere, US commanders defend their right to respond aggressively when
their forces feel themselves under attack.
Col Steve Russell, commander of the US forces in Saddam's birth city of
Tikrit, which continues to remain largely hostile to US occupation, said his
soldiers initiated 40 per cent of contacts with the enemy. "The soldier has
the right to self defence. If he is under fire then he can use whatever
lethal force he needs to end the threat."
Russell said there it was surprising there was not more collateral damage.
"Innocents are injured as a result of the immoral nature of our opponents.
They are lawless terrorists who try to mask themselves among the civilian
population. They use the innocents as shields for their attacks."
Among Iraqis, however, soldiers like Russell have much work to do to
convince them that the lives of those innocent like Dunya Hamid are really a
concern for the average American soldier.