Talking with the enemy

Salon.com ^ | March 31, 2003 | Phillip Robertson

[sadimgnik]

The thin men sitting in the hut are the lucky ones: Iraqi soldiers who escaped U.S. bombs and Saddam's "execution committees." ....

All of the Iraqi soldiers speak of their fear of their commanding officers and the armed security men who make sure that no one defects. The term the soldiers use is "execution committee." The men say the officers warned them that if they do successfully surrender, they will be killed by the Kurds, so they shouldn't think about it.

"Qasim Daragi," a soldier from Baghdad who was stationed not far from Falah Tal Afar, also fled the Thursday night bombing with several other Iraqis. He says he witnessed a mass execution of Iraqi soldiers who tried to quit the war. "Security officers at the Bardarash checkpoint arrested [10 soldiers] as they tried to cross into Kurdistan in civilian clothes," say Daragi. "Nageeb Salah from Baghdad, the security officer for the unit, then took a Kalashnikov and shot them against the wall of the checkpoint building. They brought soldiers from other places to watch it, so they would be frightened. Salah said before he shot them, 'Why are you not defending Iraq? We must kill you because you are not ready to defend the country.' That is why we ran away."

After Tal Afar and Daragi tell their stories, the others ask if they can describe what they have seen, but the Kurdish guard has grown tired of waiting and signals that the time for the interview is over. But the soldiers aren't ready to go. A third Iraqi prisoner wants to testify about the American bombing runs where he was stationed. "The airplanes were flying very low over our position and it was very easy for them to kill us, but they did not. They were so close we could see the pilots. We understood that it was a message and it was a warning for us. The message was, 'We don't want to kill you. Run away.'"

Qasim Daragi and Falah Tal Afar draw closer and quickly add details to their stories, making sure everything is recorded carefully. The men go back in time, years and then decades, describing stints in prison and torture at the hands of the security services. Their stories pour out in a torrent as they sit around the heater and though none of what they say could be confirmed, the accounts did not have the texture of fabrication.

Excerpt. Full transcript at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/31/deserters/index.html

[sadimgnik]

I know Salon is considered too left wing for many here .. but I thought this article was a good read, and shows, by placing a human face on some of the Iraqis, why we need to have troops there.

Sadim