Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Abu Jaafar pulled out a list of forty-six people from Saha. “Criminals in the Awakening,” he said. “For two years I was naming these people.” He singled out Hamid, the Neighborhood Advisory Council boss in Hadhir. “Shiites could not join the local council,” he said. “They would be killed.” He blamed Hamid for dividing Saha in two, with Shiites controlling the south and Sunnis controlling the north. But in fact Shiites had pushed Sunnis out of northern Saha, and that area became a key front line in the civil war. Abu Jaafar pointed to two other names. “The Americans told me, ‘If you see these two men, you can kill them or bring them to us.’ Now they are wearing the Awakening uniform in Mahala 828. They said they have reconciled. I have to be patient. We are awake and our eyes are open.”

Al Qaeda had changed its name and now called itself the Awakening, Abu Jaafar insisted. He claimed that Sunnis were acting weak so that they could attack once they regained strength. I asked him about Awakening Council founder Sattar Abu Risha, who had incurred the wrath of Al Qaeda. “He was just a robber in the street, and they made him a leader,” Abu Jaafar said dismissively. I told him that many Awakening members claimed they were fighting Al Qaeda. “How did they fight Al Qaeda?” he scoffed. “Fight themselves? Fight their brothers? And where is Al Qaeda? Did it evaporate overnight? We know everything, but we’re just waiting.” I asked him how he knew Karim so well. “General Karim is a good guy,” he said. “During the battles I was here every day.”

I visited JSS Cougar at the Walid INP station, where the First Battalion, Seventh Brigade, Second Division (172 INP Battalion) worked with a U.S. Army National Police Training Team (NPTT). This team, led by the cynical Major Gottlieb, covered the area of Baghdad the Americans called East Rashid. I turned up dressed very casually, in a T-shirt and jeans. Seeing this, American officers from the 2-2 SCR admonished me to wear my body armor to protect myself from accidental INP discharges. “I did convoy security in the Sunni Triangle and was hit by numerous IEDs, complex attacks, small arms, but I never felt closer to death than when I was working with Iraqi Security Forces,” joked Captain Cox.

A tall and lanky tank officer, Gottlieb underwent about seventy days of training with his men to prepare for this mission. “We don’t know as much as we could know because we don’t know Arabic,” he said. “The INPs here are almost all Shiites. Orders from their chain of command are usually to arrest Sunnis, not Shiites. But they don’t go on ‘Sunni hunts’ like the Second Brigade in Seidiya and a lot of other brigades.” The battalion he worked with was mostly from southern Iraq, especially Basra, and many were more loyal to the Badr militia. “At first they were encouraged to resign or given dangerous missions and were replaced by guys from Sadr City.” I asked him if he had any evidence of Sadrist sympathies among the men. “Today I was sitting in the office and the brigade finance officer’s phone rang, and the ring tone was a Sadr song,” he said. Pointing to the newly painted walls, he said, “It’s all cosmetic. They know if everything has fresh paint and looks squared away, we’ll think they’re squared away.” Local Iraqi National Police were resettling displaced Shiite families in empty Sunni homes in this area. Gottlieb called them “United Van Lines missions”: “The national police ask, ‘Can you help us move a family’s furniture?’ There are people coming back, and we don’t know if they were originally from here. Official U.S. policy is, we do not take part in any resettlement activity. I could make up a deed.”

Gottlieb conducted an inventory of the weapons that were supposed to have been assigned to the base. Five hundred and fifty weapons were missing, including pistols, rifles, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. “Guys take weapons when they go AWOL,” he explained. “It was funny how they always expended four hundred rounds of ammunition. They would have fake engagements and transfer the ammunition to militias.” There was also a problem of “ghost police,” he said. Although 542 INP men were assigned to his JSS on paper, only about 200 would show up at any time. Some would be on leave and some simply did not exist, their salaries pocketed by officers. “Officers get a certain number of ghosts,” he said. He looked at an American soldier nearby. “I need some ghosts. How much are you making?”

I accompanied the NPTT on a joint raid with the INPs. Captain Adil, a trim thirty-year-old with a shaved head and sharp gaze, led the raid, despite his rank and position as a battalion staff intelligence officer, because only 25 percent of the INP’s officer positions were full. As a result, INP officers end up doing a lot of things that American noncommissioned officers do. Adil briefed his men on the mission using cardboard and Styrofoam on the floor to replicate the vehicles. All the men wore the same blue uniforms, but with a variety of helmets, flak vests, and boots. “Today we have an operation in Mahala 830,” he said. “Do you know it? Our target is an Al Qaeda guy.” Adil would be riding in the Reva, a South African armored vehicle. The rest would follow in Hummers and pickup trucks. His men repeated the instructions; he ordered them to shout the answers.

The targets were two brothers, Salah and Muhamad, suspected of working for Al Qaeda. They occasionally visited their family in their brother Falah’s home. Falah was known as Falah al-Awar, or Falah the Blind, because he had lost an eye. He belonged to the Islamic State of Iraq and had been arrested two weeks earlier by the Americans. Under interrogation he revealed that his brothers were involved in similar actions, attacking the Americans, kidnapping, and killing. “He dimed his brothers out,” an American officer said.

Thirty-five Iraqi National Policemen took part in the raid. The INPs climbed over the wall and broke through the main gate. They burst into the house, ordering the women and children in one room while tying the hands of two young men with strips of cloth. One of them was Muhamad, one of the brothers they were looking for. The other young man was Mustafa, Muhamad’s young brother. He wasn’t on the target list but was picked up anyway. Salah was nowhere to be found. Mustafa started crying. “My father is dead,” he said. Adil reassured him, holding the top of his head with his hand, as if he were palming a basketball. Seated in the living room, the women asked how long the two would be taken for. Adil told them they were being taken for questioning, and explained where his base was.

Then it was over. The INPs sped away. The Americans followed, surprised at the hurry. “We just picked up some Sunnis, we’re getting the fuck outta here,” joked one American sergeant. “Yeah, the moral ambiguity of what we do is not lost on me,” said Gottlieb jocularly in response. “We have no way of knowing if those guys did what they say they did.” Gottlieb later said that the Interior Ministry “uses ‘Al Qaeda’ as a scare word for Americans,” describing all Sunni suspects in this way.

Back at the base Muhamad and Mustafa were seated on the floor in the operations room, blindfolded, with their hands in plastic zip ties. Sergeant Costa, an American, high-fived Adil’s deputy, Lieutenant Amar. The names on the prisoners’ ID cards were compared to what Costa and Major Fox had on a printed document of their own. Both were brothers from the Harfush family. These were the guys they wanted. Their pictures were taken, including of their front and rear torsos, to look for scars or wounds and to compare their physical condition then with how it might end up later, in case of future abuse. The older brother had a leg injury, which they photographed. The two were then separated. The older prisoner sat in Adil’s office, which had a locker, a plastic table, two beds, and a television playing an old Egyptian film. Costa and Fox sat on one of the beds with a translator. The prisoner, Muhamad Abdallah Harfush Gertaini, of the Garguri tribe, wore a blue tracksuit. After his blindfold was taken off, he was taken outside to throw up. He came back shivering. “Why are you shivering?” Adil asked with a smile. He gave him Amar’s jacket to stay warm. Adil showed him a picture and asked him who it was. “My cousin Qasim,” he said, and gave his address in the Mekanik neighborhood. “But he was arrested a few months ago.” Qasim was being held in an American prison. “This family, all of them work for Al Qaeda,” Adil said with a laugh.