Posted on 05/04/2003 3:04:58 PM PDT by WaterDragon
He counts his unit's kills meticulously, each one a tick in black pen on his khaki helmet which is, by now, bleached by the sun and battered from battle. Perched in the turret of his tank, just behind the barrel that is hand-painted with intimidating war cries such as "kill 'em all" or "I'm a motherf***ing warrior", he talks only to those Iraqis with the temerity to approach: he feels vulnerable without a 60-ton Abrams girding his loins. It is impossible to read anything in his eyes because they are always obscured by mirrored sunglasses.
Only in the safety of his unit's headquarters, behind barbed wire and protected by heavy weaponry, does the American marine take off his body armour and helmet. On the streets of Baghdad, out on patrol, he is wary and ill at ease.
Friendly approach: an Irish Guard patrols the streets of Basra Every Iraqi is a potential troublemaker, a possible target. If one fails to stop at his checkpoint, his response will be to open fire. If more than 50 gather to chant anti-American slogans, he will likely flood the street with soldiers. If he so much as suspects that the crowd has weapons he may well consider a full-scale counter-attack.
Still in full battle dress, though the war is over, he is awesome to behold. His President insists that he was never a member of an invading force, that he was a liberator and is now a peacekeeper. Yet much of the time he is loathed, despised and spat upon by those Iraqis for whose freedom he fought. He and his comrades are among the most hated men in the Iraqi capital.
The manner in which the American forces stormed their way to Baghdad may indeed have been awesome. They fought the war with verve, with valour and with steely determination. How they are holding the peace, however, makes a woeful contrast.
British troops, by comparison, are welcomed in southern Iraq with cries of "We love you Britannia, welcome British." In the south, the British not only won the trust of the locals during the war and used it effectively to gather vital intelligence, they kept it in the aftermath. The Americans, hampered by much stricter rules of engagement and with little experience of peacekeeping, are swiftly losing the battle for hearts and minds.
On the streets of Basra, Safwan and Az Zubayr in southern Iraq, British soldiers, with years of experience of dealing with civilian populations in war zones such as Northern Ireland and of peacekeeping in the Balkans and Sierra Leone, are treated as saviours. They have abandoned their helmets in favour of their more people-friendly berets, have taken off their body armour and mingle with the locals. They have helped to set up a local police force and a council to get the city's infrastructure running smoothly.
"Have you met my buddy Ahmed?" says Sergeant Euan Andrews, from the 7th Parachute Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery, as he swings an arm around an Iraqi by his side outside the freshly painted Basra police station.
Ahmed, beaming in a baseball cap emblazoned with the words "City of Basra police" in Arabic and holding a truncheon, punches his new friend in playful camaraderie. "A month ago we were shooting at each other," says Euan, "now we are on the same side."
As Ahmed, chest swelling with pride, steps out to deal with the next car check by himself, Euan gives him an encouraging nod. "They're all getting there," he says. "It will take time. There is still a lot of: 'He is my cousin, my friend, he is ok.' We have had to explain that police must be impartial. But slowly we are getting there."
That afternoon the soldiers are playing football against the locals and in the evening they have volunteered to repaint the local school. The Iraqis loiter to chat as they pass the station, shaking soldiers by the hand and bringing them home-cooked meals. "Our methods of dealing with the locals are very, very different from that of the Yanks," one officer says over a cup of local coffee. ("Awful," he says, "but they like it when we drink it.")
"Unlike the Americans we have taken off our helmets and sunglasses and we look the locals in the eye. If we see one vehicle heading at speed towards a checkpoint we let it through. It is only one vehicle. We call our method "raid and aid" - don't ask me what we call the American way."
In Basra, raid and aid worked. For two weeks the 7th Armoured Brigade waited at the bridge before entering the city. During that time it built up its relationship with those Iraqis brave enough to provide intelligence about the Fedayeen - Saddam's loyalist fighters - who had held the city to ransom.
The result was that when the British did enter, they knew where to go, who to go after and who to trust. For them the rules of engagement changed as warfare became peacekeeping. Now, they no longer automatically return fire. They wait. Often Iraqi gunfire is a sign of celebration at the return of electricity or running water. They know it is not necessarily attacking fire.
The Americans are, admittedly, bound by much less flexible rules. Their Force Protection Doctrine decrees that all soldiers must wear helmets and body armour in a war zone at all times and that gun fire must be met with response. They also have little experience in the peacekeeping arena, and their experience of urban warfare in the battle for Hue during the Vietnam war and more recently in Somalia has left them jumpy.
The British have learned in the past 30 years that good information on the enemy was their best protection and that putting soldiers at risk to get it was justified; jungle ambushes in Vietnam made the Americans obsessed with "force protection".
Since the killing of four American soldiers by an Iraqi suicide bomber 10 days into the conflict, they have become even more wary of locals.
Last week, Americans killed 15 people - among them two young boys - at Fallujah, an impoverished Shia area 30 miles west of Baghdad - when locals became angry at their occupation of the local school. Though the US troops say they fired in self-defence - and may well have done so - television footage of bleeding Iraqis, clearly unarmed, lying on the roads, have shocked Western viewers.
In Baghdad, where the Americans rarely leave their compounds, lawlessness is widespread. On Friday, when locals realised that Saddam's sister owned a lavish home in Al Jadria in the west of the city, they stormed the house. Pianos, furniture and paintings were dragged away by a mob of looters. When US soldiers arrived they stopped only long enough to warn journalists not to remove anything or they would be arrested, then left the mob rampaging through the house. "I'm not going near that lot," one marine said. "I don't feel safe anywhere near them, unless I am behind a whopping big tank."
In the more affluent areas of Al Mansour and Al Kaarada, local families have been forced to build barricades to keep out thieves as the American soldiers refuse to patrol.
In the Shia ghettos of Saddam City and Khadamia, where the Americans are reluctant to go even in tanks, the local imams have taken matters in hand. "Imams have set up local security stations in the hospitals," says Yousef al Alwani. "Guns that have been looted, many from Saddam's palace, are brought to the mosques and from there the imams take them to the hospital and arm the local militia who are now policing us. The Americans don't protect us and they don't help us. What else are they doing but occupying us?"
Cultural background, say military analysts, explains much of the British success in southern Iraq. "Britain and other European nations have imperial traditions," says Stuart Crawford, a retired lieutenant colonel in the 4th Royal Tank Regiment. "As a result, British troops have been inculcated with the ethos and tradition of colonial policing, where small numbers of men would have close contact on a daily basis with local populations. But America is a young country with no colonial past."
In some respects it is a paradox that Britain, which once ruled an empire, should have a more flexible and sensitive army than America.
At the end of the 19th century, the howitzer and the Maxim gun were the equivalent of the cruise missile and the tankbuster. To maintain control yet allow and encourage people to live in their traditional ways, they became accustomed to understanding and respecting local culture and customs. It is a lesson that the American army has yet, it seems, to learn.
Amen, Chemist_Geek!
Need some sleep, sweetie? ;-)
It's not the question, just the offer.
I have to sleep tonight Pukka...seeing a picture of you may not help peaceful (sans nightmare) sleep! *L*
The obvious thing to write, would be, "Perhaps you ought to be." However, I'm not qualified to say.
What I am qualified to say is that there is no person, no military organization, which is perfect. The United States military is the most powerful on the planet, of that there is no doubt. However, its procedures are not perfect (just ask any supply clerk) and can be improved. If the Coalition is in Iraq merely to smash Saddam and grab the WMD, then it's irrelevant how we treat the Iraqi people. Of course, if we treat them poorly then we'll just have to keep going back, over and over, in the future, and fill up Arlington quicker. We need to create a nation of Iraq which is hostile to terrorists, and friendly to America.
Our forces can learn something - and be more effective in the long term - from the way the UK forces are behaving. There are posts above in this thread from Criminal Number 18F, which say parallel things.
Go ahead and label me a defeatist and America-basher. It'll prove my point.
Yes, actually, I do. I've a busy day scheduled for tomorrow, and it's half-past midnight here. :-)
I'll catch up on the thread later Monday.
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