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.
Contrary...
Contrary...
Contrary...
Once, I get contrary, I know it's time to go to bed! *LOL*
God bless those flippin' Brits.
It bears repeating, we didn't come in until VERY late in the conflict, almost too late. The Brits had been holding the fort throughout the Battle of Britain, and at that time they were very glad to see us finally roar back to brutal life on the battlefield. Had Britain not held the Nazis at bay throughout their conflict, undoubtedly we would be looking at The Third Reich's version of Europe. God knows, the Brits did what the rest of Europe, barring Russia, could not do - beat Hitler back. And they didn't even have old man winter pulling for them - just the sea and their indomitable spirit. That spirit, so marvellously displayed throughout this present crisis, is the Britain I was brought up to love and revere.
What is strange is that I, not even being of that generation, had this love of the British spirit passed to me by the very men sent to save Britian at the time she needed us most. This article, sadly, bears none of gratitude that friendship breeds - it only jeers and sneers at the very hands we offered in friendship so long ago. Were there none who spoke lovingly of us, of these who willingly came to Britain to save it? Are there none left who remember we came, not with a gun to our head, but with our guns in our hands to rescue them? What they now deride, they once needed? We have not changed - we are a passionate and violent people, ready to die for the freedom of others. Since when did Britain come to hate us for being what they so desperately needed in their time of darkness?
This article is not representative of the British - American relationship, but it still hurts us to hear our fighting men and women described in such a brutish way. You can bet we will NOT return the favor - the Tommy will not be smeared in the American press, for he deserves better. So do we.
You are correct about the spirit of Britain that held back the NAZI hordes. Despite what the press may spew, I still see Britain as the best friend the US has ever had. I feel honored to have them fighting with our troops in Iraq. I feel it a priviledge and a duty to fly a Union Jack, along side the Stars and Stripes outside my home.
That is my whole point. It is this newspaper, the Telegraph, and not the real conservatives of Britain and certainly not her troops that has this sorry attitude.
Your entire post is really beautiful, dandelion. Thank you.
Spoken like a true armchair general who ignored every last article I posted about the raids taken to soften up Basra. Perhaps you'd like to tell the lads who went in and were getting shot at that they were merely "pussyfooting around".
You are a complete liar, Pukka. You have got it into your head that somehow it's necessary to leap on every Daily Telegraph article that doesn't completely praise the American forces. The war began in March. We're now in May. In that space of time, in that number of editions, you've found only 2 articles that achieve this. What is more is that you take this to unbelievable, hysterical heights so that even the mildest criticism gets blown up, in your mind, to being absolute slander.
In short, you're fishing for an excuse to start a fight. Someone British along the line obviously hurt you and you're aching for revenge, not truth. For you to ignore the vast number of articles out of the Telegraph that supported America in favour of just 2, makes it obvious.
I feel sure no one wants to have anything to do with your pet psychoses.
Ivan
I think the Brits are doing a fantastic job, and I don't ever begrudge a 'hometown paper' painting them in such a good light. They deserved it. Still, it's tacky to make our boys sound like armored automotons.
The quote above..........I'm calling B.S. on. When's the last time you heard an American, let alone a G.I., speak that way? I'd call it "paraphrasing" at best, a total fabrication at worst.
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