“You should not have done this. Saddam was a bad man, but America should have waited for the Iraqi people to overthrow him themselves. In time, we would have crushed him.”
“Hammed, I’m just a lieutenant,” I said. “I lead patrols. I don’t make policy. Either come help us or go home, but don’t pick a fight with me this morning. I’m too busy.”
We traveled east along a dike overlooking Sadr City. Fetid trash and pools of stinking sewage waited below for any Humvee unfortunate enough to slide off the dirt berm. We eased under fallen power lines while packs of yapping dogs ran alongside. Children playing soccer stopped to wave as we passed, and women dug for water in the foul dirt fields between apartment buildings. Men rocked on their haunches in the shade, smoking bad cigarettes and staring us down. I got the feeling that only our overwhelming force kept them from stringing us up as infidel invaders. From my admittedly narrow perspective, the climate on patrol had worsened in only a few days. Violence and looting continued to plague a city lacking even basics such as electricity and clean water. I felt as if we were under constant scrutiny by people who were less and less impressed with what they saw.
I stopped the platoon outside a collection of brick buildings three kilometers beyond Sadr City. A heavyset man with thinning hair led a crowd toward us. He introduced himself as Mr. Kadem and requested, with a ceremonial flourish, that all aid to the village be coordinated through him. I asked what sort of aid he wanted.
“We need only two things: clean water and bronze statues of George Bush.”
I decided to play along. “We can help you with the water, but what will you do with statues of George Bush?”
“We will put them in our streets to show our loyalty. First, though, the Americans must help us pump the sewage which is flooding our town.”
I told Mr. Kadem we could give him a hundred gallons of water immediately and would stay for an hour to provide medical care to children. He nodded and barked commands into the crowd behind him. Men surged forward, pleading for aid while pointing at small bruises and cuts or their seemingly healthy eyes, legs, and heads. They shoved the children aside.
The platoon started throwing elbows and pushing with rifle butts. For a moment, I feared a riot. Mr. Kadem restored order, and we treated a long line of kids for cuts, burns, and dehydration. With the Marines’ help, a team appointed by Mr. Kadem emptied our spare water cans into the town’s common cistern. Depleted of water and medical supplies, we packed up and continued east along the berm, looking for the next place to put our drop on the Iraqi sponge.
The dike ended at a paved road leading north from Baghdad. People there, a week after Baghdad’s fall, had not yet seen Americans. Crowds filled the street. Open markets sold everything from fruit to stereos.
Storefronts lined the road, and above them clotheslines stretched between balconies. Every few blocks, a mosque punctuated the parade of buildings sliding past our windows. Most of the town was dusty brown, dilapidated, and forlorn, but not the mosques. Bright lights stretched to the ground in strands from the minarets, like the rigging on cruise ships. The buildings were washed a bright white, with garish murals of happy crowds and singing children. Even their yards were well tended, little islands of greenery in a sea of dust and stagnant sewage. Of everyone we saw, the men lounging near the mosques looked the toughest. According to the map, we were twenty kilometers from the power plant, and I felt every inch of it. Normally, we updated the battalion on our position every two hours, but I started sending updates every thirty minutes, just in case.
In the same spirit that had inspired us earlier in the week to roll into the neighborhood that had looked most like a Ba’athist hideout, we parked in front of the biggest and most ornate mosque. We were careful to stay outside the mosque’s marked perimeter but wanted to “show American presence” and speak to someone with real authority over the people living nearby. In post-Saddam Iraq, those authority figures were the mullahs.
As expected, it took less than thirty seconds for a crowd of men to surround us. Mostly middle-aged, they didn’t surge forward to touch us and practice their English as other Iraqis had done. Instead, they kept their distance and appraised us. Espera and I stood together near the front of the crowd.
“Mexican standoff,” I said. As was usually the case, I left my rifle in the Humvee, wearing only a pistol on my thigh in an attempt to close the distance between occupier and occupied. I was helmetless, but not quite committed enough to remove my body armor. The rifle slung diagonally across Espera’s chest loomed large in my peripheral vision.
“Sir, I’m deeply offended that you would slur my people that way,” he said jokingly.
An older man, dressed in white and crowned with a turban, stepped forward and introduced himself as Mullah Mohammed of Diyala. Next to me, Espera mumbled under his breath, “Yeah, well, I’m Sergeant Tony of Los Angeles. Who gives a fuck?”
Hammed lingered behind the Humvees, trying to hide his face from the mullah. He knew we would eventually leave, but he had to live there when we were gone. I called him forward and asked Mullah Mohammed what we could do to help the people of his community. He launched into a long monologue, distilled by Hammed as a list of facts and requests: one hundred thousand people lived in the area; there had been no reliable source of fresh water for five years; there had been no electricity since the start of the war; looting was not a problem, and he knew of no fedayeen activity; he would appreciate one American sweep through the town each day. I offered to return the next day with fresh water. The mullah accepted, but only on the condition that we would bring the water to him and allow him to distribute it to the people himself.
I didn’t want to play kingmaker. At that point, our priority was to get life-sustaining services to people in need, not to empower local strong-men and allow our aid to become a tool of political advantage. I didn’t know whom to trust. Our only Arabic speaker was Hammed, and I wasn’t sure I could even trust him. Most of the time, he cowered in the back seat of the Humvee, afraid to be seen helping the Americans. He would say whatever he had to in order to save his own skin. So I delayed the decision. I decided to consult with the colonel and Major Whitmer back at the power plant and simply told the mullah that we would return in the morning to distribute water to his people. He thanked us and uttered a few words that Hammed translated as a blessing reserved for unknown strangers.
I brewed coffee in the morning, taking comfort in the simple ritual. We had dragged a cast iron stove down from one of the offices. It sat in the warehouse doorway, surrounded all day and all night by Marines on ammo cans and MRE boxes. My tin canteen cup was too hot to touch. I held it in gloved hands, blowing steam from the coffee and watching the sun rise over the fields beyond the fence.
We were ready to go, waiting only for Hammed to arrive. He insisted on walking to the power plant in the predawn darkness rather than allowing us to pick him up at his home. I watched Hammed come through the gate, a small figure in a jacket and tie stumbling along the rough dirt road. He waved jauntily to me but made straight for a group of Marines sitting around a coffeepot. They welcomed him warmly and pulled up another ammo can. A few minutes later, when I walked over to give them a ten-minute warning, Hammed held a canteen cup and was engrossed in a debate over the name of the youngest-ever Play-boy Playmate. His criticism of American culture was already starting to waver.
The night before, during our patrol debrief, I had asked higher-ranking officers in the battalion how I should deal with Mullah Mohammed. After the initial “fuck him” response, Major Whitmer agreed that our assistance shouldn’t be made a weapon in local power struggles. We were to drive into town and offer water to all comers. If the mullah didn’t like it, he and whatever suicidal followers he could muster were free to try to stop us. Follow-on peacekeepers, civil affairs experts, and civilian consultants could debate who was allowed to play in the rebuilding of Iraq. That wasn’t for us to decide. Our only goal was to prevent a humanitarian disaster from tearing the country apart. That meant food, water, shelter, and medical care for every single Iraqi, regardless of religion, social status, or former party affiliation. His reasoning made sense to me and became our guidance for the day.