Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Johnston’s platoon raided Abu Dshir one night. The soldiers broke down the gate of a home and rushed into the house. “We are not Mahdi Army, we are in the Iraqi army,” an old man protested. “We are not Mahdi Army or anything.” It was a middle-class home with no overt signs of religiosity and none of the typical things associated with Muqtada’s supporters. The five women and one child were herded into the living room as three men were interrogated. “Mister, I am no Jaish al-Mahdi,” one man protested in English. “Okay, okay, uskut, shukran ” (be quiet, thank you), said a soldier. “We hate the Mahdi Army,” said an old woman, “believe me.” Thinking I was a translator, the residents looked at me and begged me to explain that none of them had anything to do with the Mahdi Army. The women were made to stand, empty their pockets, and pat themselves down, starting with their arms, down their chests to their legs.

One man, it turned out, was a laborer who had signed up for the Awakening. Another worked in their father’s pastry shop. Their father was seventy years old, and a brother who was absent was in the Iraqi army. The men’s pictures were taken. They were shown pictures of Mahdi Army suspects and asked to identify them, but they recognized none of them. “We are not terrorists,” the old man said. “We like the government.” Most of their protests went untranslated. “Why do you think automatically I’m looking for the Mahdi Army?” Johnston asked. “Because you have been arresting people and accusing them of being Mahdi Army lately,” the man replied. He was handcuffed and complained that they were too tight. Johnston put his finger between the cuffs and the man’s wrists. “If I can fit one finger, it’s okay,” he said. The two sons were also handcuffed, and they were all taken away. Their phones, computer, and cash were also taken, as were their personal papers, CDs, and other objects of interest that had Arabic writing on them. “They probably got some propaganda in there,” a sergeant explained as he carried off a hard drive.

Neighbors who rushed into their homes when the Americans arrived provoked American suspicion, and they too were brought in for interrogation. One old man started crying, fearing the Americans would take his son away. On the way back the tired soldiers bantered in the Stryker. “You know what I hate most about detainee duty? Watching those motherfuckers shit,” one complained. “I bet there’s an Iraqi rap song about being arrested by us,” another said.

In Virginia, sometime after my trip to Iraq in December 2007, I met P.J. Dermer, a former Special Forces aviator who had been a Middle East foreign area officer in the U.S. Army since the late 1980s and had traveled independently through much of the region. In 2003 he worked with the Iraqi army; subsequently, he returned to work under Petraeus. “Sunnis realized they were in trouble—we were killing ‘em, the Shiites were killing ‘em,” Dermer observed. “As we saw the Awakening develop, we realized we can’t kill our way out of this. But some guys were afraid to come out, and we had to make sure Maliki was soothed.”

Even in 2004 and 2005 American commanders established relationships with Sunni tribal leaders who were tired of the Al Qaeda presence in their area. But there was no systematic approach to transition these temporary alliances on the battlefield into a normal relationship with the Iraqi government. In July 2007 Petraeus established the Force Strategic Engagement Cell (FSEC). Its task was to reach out to the resistance and “reconcile” them with the Iraqi government. Typical of the military, the unusual name for talking to resistance leaders was “key leader engagement.” According to Petraeus, the goal of KLE was “to understand various local situations and dynamics, and then—in full coordination with the Iraqi government—to engage tribal leaders, local government leaders, and, in some cases, insurgent and opposition elements.” This was a challenge for the military, which needs a formula or system for everything it does, even building relationships. Petraeus formalized KLE because developments like the Awakening were occurring with little involvement or support from the Iraqi government. As a result the government was very suspicious of the Awakening and the Americans’ motives. In addition, Petraeus had no body of his own through which to coordinate these local developments or approach them strategically.

“You cannot kill or capture your way out of an insurgency,” Petraeus said. He hoped to establish a dialogue between members of the resistance, or at least influential supporters, and the Iraqi government. This would facilitate the American and Iraqi forces’ takeover of areas controlled by the resistance without requiring combat in village after village. Of course, those in the resistance, whether Sunni or Shiite, who were “irreconcilable” would be killed or captured. FSEC was composed of a few dozen mostly military officers, although the American ambassador appointed a civilian from the State Department to work with them. “Engagers” working for FSEC developed “lanes” to reach out to the Iraqi government and resistance.

“We gave insurgents a place to come see us, to realize we weren’t ogres,” Dermer said. “The Awakening was also a movement within Sunnis at large, but they didn’t realize what they wanted. Some wanted to take over from the Shiites, others just wanted to go back to normal life. We were getting deeper and deeper [with the Sunni resistance], further up the hierarchy, and having more success. But Sunnis were way too divided.” Dermer met leaders of the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunna, the Jihad and Reform Front, and some people connected to the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

Dermer would meet these resistance men in Jordanian hotels. In Jordan and Syria he also met with Iraqi businessmen and expatriates who were in touch with the resistance but were not driving it. In 2003 he had been involved in the creation of the new Iraqi Defense Ministry. Many of the former military officers he had met then were now influential in the resistance.

The Iraqi government’s Implementation and Follow-up Committee for National Reconciliation (IFCNR), led by the notorious Dr. Bassima al-Jadri, was set up by Maliki to work on “reconciliation” issues with the Americans and to deal with the Awakening movement. “The Awakening wasn’t a reconciliation with the Iraqis but with the power to be in the battlefield,” Dermer explained. “The purpose of Maliki’s reconciliation committee was also to thwart whatever we wanted to do. The reconciliation committee was all Shiite except for a couple of token Sunnis. They did a good job of making us believe we were making progress. It was clear to me from dealing with the Iraqi army, Bassima, Adnan [a Shiite former intelligence officer under Saddam], that they [the Awakening] were doomed from the beginning. We kept a nice face on it with all this talk about jobs, yeah yeah, blah blah. The Iraqi government was flabbergasted when we told them how many [Awakening men] we had on the payroll. But it worked. It settled down the killing to a manageable degree. Abud Qanbar hated tribal sheikhs. He’s urban. ‘They had their chance,’ he said. The Iraqis wanted to arrest all the Awakening leaders, and the minute space developed they went after them. Maliki was smart; he created the reconciliation committee. He was building tribal councils, the mirror image [of the Awakening] but Shiites. Bassima and Adnan were involved in building the tribal councils. You could get something done if you had a good relationship with Bassima and Adnan. The tribal support councils were meant to manipulate tribes to be on Maliki’s side, like the Ottomans and Saddam. Bassima was Maliki’s watchdog to mitigate the Awakening and the Sunnis. Some senior insurgent guys were FREs [former regime elements], generals I met in 2003.”