Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Saad owned his previous house and had shared it with ten other relatives. He was a construction worker before he was displaced, but now he relied on the Ethar Association for food and aid. “The government is busy with itself,” he said. “It doesn’t care about people. It only cares about itself.” I asked him if he wanted to go back home. “Is there anyone who doesn’t wish to return to his home?” he asked me. But he didn’t think it was safe enough.

Abasya Aziz was from the Sunni Mashhadani tribe. She and her family were expelled from the house in Hurriya they had lived in for thirty-five years. For two days Shiite militiamen shot at their house and called on them to leave. The men left to find a new house, but the women stayed another four days until one was found. “We were very scared alone,” she said. “I was scared to take all the furniture at once. So every day I take some of the furniture, and I also had to leave some furniture there.” Their new house had no electricity, so she had to show me around with a flashlight. The landlord originally wanted rent to be 350,000 dinars but because they were poor he reduced it to less than 250,000. “I wish to return [to Hurriya] and live a stable life,” Abasya Aziz said. “That’s what we are looking for. Now we can’t go back there because it is not safe. Also, I am afraid for my other sons. I can’t go back. It has been one year, and it’s still not safe there.”

On the outskirts of Amriya, on a muddy field, I found a Sunni family in a makeshift brick home. I spoke to twenty-two-year-old Haidar, who lived there with eleven other family members. He told me that they were expelled from Amil by the Mahdi Army in 2006. His eighty-three-year-old grandfather had owned their house in Amil. Now Mahdi Army men were living in it. Haidar was on crutches, his legs amputated after a car bomb exploded too close to him when he was working as a mechanic in Bayaa. “Honestly, I don’t wish what happened to us even on my enemy,” Haidar told me. “We were displaced from our area. We left our house without any reason. It was a big house with two floors. We don’t have issues with anybody. We left our house and came here to live in this dirty house while they came and lived in our house. We suffered lots of damages. Before I used to go with my brother and sell gas to earn a little money. Now I can’t anymore.”

I returned often to Amriya and saw a lot of Um Omar. Of the 104 students in her school, ten received free education, fourteen were orphans, thirteen had fathers in detention, and most of the rest had been displaced within the past year. “It is a very bad life,” Ms. Rasha, one of the teachers, told me about her students. “Our students, especially last year, we told them to study and focus on their school, especially the ones in the last year of the high school. They say, ‘What is the benefit? Let’s say we got into a good university, can we go study in that university?’” The students couldn’t go to university because of security problems and bombs, she told me, but also sectarianism. “Most of our students are named Omar. They say, ‘My name is Omar. When the teacher reads my name on the exam papers, they will mark it as failed and throw it away.’ Last year they canceled the results of the final high school examinations. Specifically they canceled the results of the students of Amriya, they didn’t mark their exam papers. The students made a second attempt on the exams and even a third attempt, but they’ve never received their results back.”

ABUL ABED WAS KNOWN for his brutality. He was a short, thin thirty-five-year-old who had broken his knuckles beating prisoners and suspected members of Al Qaeda. He destroyed the homes of Al Qaeda men and hung pictures of their dead bodies on the walls of Amriya. He claimed four of his brothers had been killed by Shiite militiamen, and he kept pictures of their broken and tortured bodies on his phone. He and his men blasted through Amriya, letting everybody know they were its new rulers. According to some stories, Abul Abed had been working with a network of informers for the Americans, targeting Al Qaeda and Iranian spies, finally infiltrating Al Qaeda in Amriya. Abul Abed also had a good relationship with politicians Saleh al-Mutlaq and Ali Baban, a Sunni Kurd who was minister of planning and who had been expelled by the Islamic Party. Many of Abul Abed’s men were displaced Sunnis from Mahdi Army-controlled areas like Hurriya, yet he claimed he helped seventy-five Shiite families return to Amriya.

I first met with Abul Abed in what looked like a school or ex-Baath Party headquarters that had been converted into an office, and I later interviewed him several times in his lavish home. (One morning I found him drinking a can of nonalcoholic beer.) The street where he lived was manned by his guards, who stood at roadblocks. He traveled in convoys of pickup trucks and SUVs with his men hanging out of windows, their rifles and pistols waving about, sirens blaring, a pale imitation of the Blackwater style. He was a former military officer and leader in the Islamic Army of Iraq, but much of his biography was apocryphal, and he had labored to construct a heroic legend about himself.

He claimed that in 2006 he and others from the Islamic Army decided to fight Al Qaeda, which had declared the Islamic State of Iraq and was trying to control other Sunni groups, insisting that they pledge allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who would be the future caliph, and demanding a portion of their loot. The Islamic Army refused, and Abul Abed and his men began a clandestine war on Al Qaeda. The conflict started with assassinations but soon escalated into open warfare. Abul Abed claimed he had spent months collecting intelligence on Al Qaeda fighters who had sought sanctuary in Amriya after fleeing from other parts of Baghdad or the Anbar.

In May 2007, fourteen American soldiers were killed in Amriya. Until then Lieut. Col. Dale Kuehl had lost only three men in Amriya. On May 29 Sheikh Walid of the Fardus Mosque called Kuehl up and told him Abul Abed’s men would be attacking Al Qaeda in Amriya. They attacked an Al Qaeda base at the Maluki Mosque, and the next day Al Qaeda men struck back at Tikriti Mosque. Sheikh Walid contacted the Americans, who sent Stryker vehicles to assist Abul Abed’s fighters. The Americans helped defeat Al Qaeda in that battle and then provided medical assistance to Abul Abed’s wounded men. That first week Abul Abed and his men, along with the Americans, killed about ten Al Qaeda suspects and captured another fifteen.

The official name for Abul Abed’s Awakening group, the first of its kind in Baghdad, was the Fursan (Knights) of Mesopotamia. But Abul Abed and his men referred to themselves as the Thuwar (revolutionaries). Part of Kuehl’s deal was that he would help Abul Abed’s men if they did not torture prisoners or kill people who were not from Al Qaeda. They would be allowed to hold prisoners for only twenty-four hours. Kuehl knew that as an American, he would never know the area or its people as well as the local Awakening men. At first Kuehl’s men asked the Fursan to wear white headbands and sit in the American vehicles to identify Al Qaeda locations. But soon Al Qaeda men took to wearing white headbands. Riding along with the Americans also didn’t work because the windowless vehicles left the Fursan disoriented and unable to locate targets. The Fursan were given special reflective armbands that the Americans could see as well as handcuffs and flares to help send signals to the Americans. Kuehl collected their biometric data and agreed to provide them with some weapons.

At first Abul Abed believed he could spread his control into other Sunni areas in western Baghdad. When Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, of the Sunni Islamic Party, visited Amriya without coordinating with Abul Abed, the Fursan leader was furious and nearly clashed with Hashimi’s bodyguards. Abul Abed felt threatened by the Islamic Party, and that same night he raided the home of Abu Omar, Um Omar’s husband, and a subordinate commander who was allied with the party. Shots were fired and civilians were threatened. Abu Omar was not home, but Abul Abed arrested several of his men.