James Ashcroft - Making a Killing - The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq

The Americans were about to load the two guys into a Humvee. It was at that moment that the farmer realised he was being taken away and he went berserk. He snapped the plastic cuffs, an almost impossible feat that momentarily stunned us all, and started fighting like a man possessed. Sergeant Navarro leapt up and caught him in a throat lock and the two of them went down under a rush of six soldiers. It was like a cartoon. Helmets and rifles came flying from out of this great cloud of dust and bodies. Maybe I should hire this guy, I thought, I couldn’t believe his energy.

About five minutes later Sergeant Navarro finally choked him unconscious and the farmer dropped his bladder and bowels. They hog-tied his body with about ten pairs of cuffs. I was positive that he wasn’t a terrorist. I knew that. Lieutenant Gazzard knew that too. He was just a man who didn’t want to be taken away from his children.

During the fight, the well-dressed guy just watched emotionlessly.

I looked back at the farmer. One of the Americans was checking his breathing. Potter, to my surprise, re-appeared out of the shack with another pair of trousers and after they had cut off the plasticuffs on the guy’s ankles, they started to change him. I suppose they would have got mess all over the Humvee otherwise.

‘Gus, this guy’s innocent,’ I said. ‘If he wanted to fight us, he would have been shooting at us as soon as we came in.’

The interpreter backed me up. ‘Yes, Yes. This man is a farmer,’ he said. ‘He say there is no mother, he say please don’t take me from the children.’

‘It’s the greaseball here who has hidden the stuff,’ I added. ‘I bet you he’s with the guys we’ve just shot. He probably co-ordinated the contact.’

Gus was sympathetic. ‘There’s a procedure, Ash. He’s just resisted arrest. I have to take him in.’

He said he would take the farmer in, check him on the database, ask him a few questions and then bring him back to the squatter camp.

‘I won’t let him sit in jail and rot for a couple of weeks while he goes through the system.’

Gus told the interpreter to tell the kids that. I added my own warning: ‘And tell them they are going to be good children. They are going to stay in their houses until their father returns later tonight.’

The last thing we wanted was for the farmer to return and find some of the kids had run off.

It was important to me to always maintain goodwill among the people. If the farmer was treated well, he was more likely to support the Coalition. Every man offended or shamed was another candidate for the insurrection. Iraqis will do almost anything for money, but it helps if there’s goodwill.

The guy in the suit had remained relaxed throughout the brawl. This may seem sensible, in his position I would have done the same. But Iraq is a tribal society and watching another member of your tribe fight a dozen Americans without stepping in just wouldn’t happen. They are proud, violent people with short fuses. He would have exploded and joined the fray. He knew the score. I was sure the patrol would take him back and they wouldn’t find anything on his record.

‘Check his ID again and again,’ I said to Gus. ‘He’s not worried about being taken in. Even if he’s innocent, he should be pissing himself with fear.’

I didn’t need to mention that everyone in Baghdad had heard stories of what went on behind the walls of Abu Ghraib. It had been the notorious prison under Saddam where the secret police tortured prisoners and now, under American control, rumour had it that the same treatment was being dished out to ‘enemy combatants’.

They loaded the unconscious farmer into the Humvee like a sack of potatoes.

They put the smart guy in another Humvee and he got angry for the first time as one of the troopers made him lie down. He was screaming abuse. He was being taken prisoner by the Great Satan, but seemed more concerned about getting dirt on his suit.

The noise stopped suddenly. Navarro looked suspiciously at the gunner inside the Humvee. ‘Hey, specialist, are you standing on that prisoner?’

The gunner stepped down off something. ‘No, Sarn’t.’

At this stage they realised that one of the Humvees had a flat front tyre, possibly from a lucky bullet from the enemy. I was astonished to find out that they did not carry spares but apparently this was routine. They hooked a tow-strap to another Humvee and prepared to set off with the two prisoners and two dozen sacks of fertiliser and soap flakes. There was enough to fill a van, enough to destroy a building.

They took me back to the villa and Seamus told me to get a move on. We were going to have to hurry if we wanted to get into the CPA gym before the evening rush hour. I would have to write up the incident later.

I spoke to Gus next day. He had kept his word. After four hours’ interrogation, he returned the farmer to his children with a bunch of PX goodies and a sheep bought from the company petty-cash fund. The nearby farmers were hugely impressed and I was pleased to see a little progress in the hearts and minds campaign. I had already learned from our local informants in Karrada that the squatter was simple-minded. He hadn’t known who the Americans were and, as I had suspected, he was only storing the sacks under threat by the insurgents.

The guy in the suit was far more interesting and had been passed up the line to Brigade headquarters. He wasn’t Iraqi but a Syrian jihadi from a well-off family, which fitted the pattern.

Jihad, literally ‘fight’, is a slippery concept with infinite interpretations, peaceful as well as violent, and deriving from the fundamental religious duty of all Muslims to spread the teachings of Islam. Since the invasion of Iraq by the United States the jihad in Iraq attracted volunteers from all over the Arab world and for different reasons.

In Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, jihad in Iraq found resonance among both the rich and the middle classes, much as writers and intellectuals were attracted to the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. For the vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East, Islam permeates every facet of their lives and defines them as individuals. An attack against other Muslims is thus perceived by many as an attack both against their religion and also against themselves in a way that would never be understood by Western strategists and politicians.

After a lifetime of indoctrination in how America helped Israel persecute their Palestinian brothers and was plotting against Islam worldwide, young Muslim men from many countries were clamouring to get into Iraq to wage holy war against the ‘American-Jewish pigs’. Among the poor from all these countries there were also cash incentives to come and fight the Amerikiyeh ; but especially in Yemen, which provided half the inmates at Guantánamo. The volunteers came from the dire poverty in the Arab world’s most backward state. For anyone who wanted to escape poverty and make their families proud, jihad was practically the only option.

Immediately after the war in the spring of 2003, journalists, peace activists, aid workers and even a few tourists were travelling around Iraq unescorted. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had spent the rest of 2003 praising Iraq’s progress. But a year on from the invasion, none but the foolhardy moved without PSD escorts and accommodation in secured and fortified hotels such as the Al Hamra and the Palestine.

Between September and December 2003 the rate of attacks dropped off by nearly two-thirds, and the first few months of 2004 were relatively calm. We could train our guard force in safety and pop into the Green Zone without any dramas; Seamus had pulled yet again and was currently shagging a Military Policewoman with a thing for handcuffs. We were lulled into thinking that military operations in co-ordination with diplomatic initiatives were making headway; either that or the insurgents had suffered crippling losses.