Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Another longtime resistance fighter was Abu Ali, commander of Jeish Nasr Salahedin (The Army of Salahedin’s Victory) in the Tikrit area. A short, stern man wearing a brown jacket, a sweater showing his shirt collar, and green pants, he had a small mustache atop his tight lips and spoke without expression in a low voice. He had arrived in Damascus with two comrades who were wounded and could not get treatment in Iraq. “Our people here said they could help them,” he told me. The Americans had raided his home, and he had not slept there for two years, stealing only occasional visits to see his family. I was told that Abu Ali had led a much-publicized attack on the American base in Tikrit on the day American ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad attended a ceremony handing it over to the Iraqi army, and he confirmed this.

“They expressed democracy with bullets against demonstrators,” he said of the Americans. “I will keep fighting until the last American and Iranian leaves.” Abu Ali added that he anticipated a clash with Al Qaeda as well. Although there was no political leadership in the resistance, he said, “there are politicians, and we express our ideas to them.” He worried that the resistance was becoming too public, with many people appearing on television and claiming they led it. “The secret of the success of the resistance is that nobody knows who we are,” he said. “If we make it public, then we will be like Palestine, sixty years and no state.”

The prospect of the Palestinian refugee crisis happening all over again is especially worrisome for Jordan. At least half its population of nearly six million people are Palestinians who were expelled from their homes in 1948 or 1967. Following the Gulf War in 1991, Kuwait expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom ended up in Jordan. Jordan has close and longstanding ties to Iraq, dating back to that country’s monarchy.

In a fast food restaurant in Amman I sat with a major from Jordan’s powerful General Intelligence Directorate. He insisted that there were more than one million Iraqis in Jordan, though in truth the number never exceeded more than a few hundred thousand. He denied that they were refugees because they had not been forced out of Iraq. When I asked him what he expected a Sunni living in Shiite militia-dominated Basra to do, he told me that the Sunni should merely move to a Sunni area of Iraq. “Nothing positive has come from the Iraqis,” he said. “You can’t trust an Iraqi.” Like most Jordanians he complained that the influx of Iraqis had tripled housing prices.

After Iraqis associated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda movement struck two Jordanian hotels in November 2005, detonating suicide bombs in a wedding, Iraqis began facing interrogations at the border. Beginning in 2006 Jordan imposed strict restrictions on the entry of Iraqis. By the end of that year a sign on the Jordanian border proclaimed that men between eighteen and thirty-five years of age could not enter. Families entering with many suitcases or belongings were turned away as well. Many Iraqis entering Jordan at the border and airport reported being questioned about whether they were Sunni or Shiite. Shiites were more likely to be turned away. Once in Jordan, Iraqis could register with UNHCR for their temporary protection cards.

At first, Iraqis were given three-month tourist visas; but when they left Jordan to renew the visas, they could not return. As a result, many Iraqis chose not to leave and fell into illegal status. Underground, they were unable to work formally and often didn’t get paid for the work they did illegally. Many young Iraqi men left their families behind and came to Jordan seeking work. They lived in virtually empty apartments, the only furniture being mattresses on the floor. Their children did not have access to schools or medical care. In February 2006, there were officially fourteen thousand Iraqi children in Jordanian private schools.

Jordanian society was very sympathetic with the plight of Iraq’s Sunnis, but Shiites had a hard time there. A young Iraqi Shiite man working with an NGO in Jordan reported being regularly questioned about his identity. Major Jordanian newspapers like Al Rai often published anti-Shiite articles, he said. “In Jordan, if you want to work they might ask you if you are Shiite or Sunni, and if you are Shiite you can’t work,” he told me. “Taxi drivers ask me, ‘Are you Iraqi? Are you Sunni or Shiite?’” If he answered truthfully, they would ask him why he was helping the Americans. “After Saddam was executed, they asked me, ‘Why didn’t Iraqis make a revolution after his execution?’ They don’t believe Saddam committed crimes. I told one I am Iraqi and Shiite. He asked, ‘Are you supporting those Iranians killing Iraqis?’ I don’t argue, I don’t want trouble or to be taken to police station. I bought a bicycle to avoid the taxi drivers.”

Dr. Mouayad al-Windawi was a Shiite professor of political science who left the University of Baghdad in May 2005. “In my first lesson after the war, I said this will be a disaster and bring us nothing. We will live in chaos for a long time.” A member of the Baath Party until 2001, he explained to me that under Saddam there was some sectarianism, but it was not overt. A glass ceiling kept many Shiites from advancing too high. “I worked with the Iraqi government for the last forty years,” he said. “Not much attention was paid to who you are.” I asked him how sectarianism had increased after the war. “Ask Mr. Bremer,” he told me, referring to Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. “Bremer’s system for political parties was good for blocs, not parties. It was good for Kurds and [Supreme Council leader] Hakim. Nationalists boycotted the political process after 2003, but the hawza and Sistani told Shiites to wait and see, and Sunnis had no such guy to issue a fatwa . The Jaafari government forced Sunnis to see themselves as defending themselves and not the nation. Former Baathists and nationalists like me have no place. I realized there is no future. I told my family we have to stay ten years away from the country.”

Mouayad lived in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold in Baghdad. Members of Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad militia attacked his house. His brother, married to a Sunni woman, was kidnapped and released after a ransom of twenty-five thousand dollars was paid. He then fled to Damascus. “I realized that the country would have a civil war one way or another,” he told me. “I still believe the worst is coming, not only to Iraq but in the region. It’s the first stage of a conflict that might lead to a Sunni bloc against Shiites. There is no hope for the future.” A month before I met Mouayad, his house was occupied by a Sunni militia. Two days before we met, a relative of his was killed when mortars landed on his home.

In Jordan Mouayad was working as a consultant for the political advisory group to the United Nations ambassador to Iraq. “Jordanians were very cooperative until last summer,” he said, “but they realized the civil war might lead to new wave. Sixty-five percent of Iraqis in Jordan are Sunnis because Sunni areas in Iraq are under attack.” He did not expect the sectarianism to spread to Jordan. “In Jordan security is too strong, and Iraqis here don’t want to engage in sectarianism. But over time things might change.”

Many officers from the former regime in Iraq had chosen to settle in Jordan. I met two one rainy evening at the home of Maj. Gen. Walid Abdel Maliki, a former assistant to the minister of defense before the war. With him was Gen. Raed al-Hamdani, a former commander in the Republican Guard Corps. Both men, I was told, “had contacts” with the Iraqi resistance. As we sat down, Abdel Maliki’s young son burst into the living room. “This is the Mahdi Army,” Abdel Maliki told me as he kissed his son, “his behavior in the house.” The two former generals were nostalgic for the time before Iraq was overrun with sectarianism. “We never had this sort of fighting before between Sunnis and Shiites,” said Abdel Maliki. “Saddam didn’t believe in Sunnis or Shiites; he was tribal. Saddam didn’t put down the Shiite rebellion because they were Shiite but because it was an uprising. The soldiers who put down the Shiite uprising were Shiites. We never heard from our fathers and grandfathers such a thing as is happening now. The problem now is from Sunni and Shiite political leaders: Hakim, Dhari, and Adnan Dulaimi are playing the same game.” Abdel Maliki blamed Iran for the problems in Iraq. “It’s a military idea, to move the battle from your land to the enemy’s land,” he said, and Iran sought to confront the U.S. in Iraq. “Iranian occupation is worse than American occupation. The only way is a military solution. Al Qaeda, the Shiite militias, the Iranian groups—they have their own agendas but don’t want to solve their problems. We have to attack Al Qaeda and the militias. Thousands of Iraqi officers can help Americans.”