been criticizing the surge and the change in focus for some time,” Kuehl said. “To be honest, it really pissed me off. Here we were trying to make this work, and he, a commissioned officer, was openly critical of the effort. I found this very unprofessional on his part. Furthermore, not once did he ask my opinion on what had changed and how we were trying to do things. In fact, he never once contacted me while we were in Iraq. I think he took some of my comments in the press as personal criticism of how he did operations, which was never my intent.” (Gentile responded in
“Several times I have heard Gian say that we had done nothing different from his formation,” Kuehl told me. “He uses a platoon leader from my battalion as a source to back up his argument. This platoon leader said that he did not think we did anything different, and he was critical of my decision to put an outpost in northwest Amriya. I am pretty sure I know who this was, and he was not exactly one of my stellar performers. It seems a bit odd that Gian would rely on the opinions of a lieutenant who had a lieutenant’s view of operations, as opposed to the experiences of the commander and XO of the formation, who had a broader perspective.”
I asked Gentile if he might have been stretched too thin. “Not in Amriya from August until the end of November—I made the conscious choice to concentrate almost all of my squadron in Amriya, because it was such a critical district. The notion that the surge brigades greatly increased the amount of combat power on the ground does not work in Amriya. In fact, what Kuehl brought into the area was roughly the same with what I had there. Kuehl did not increase the overall amount of combat power relative to what I had there, so the premise to this question is flawed based on actual conditions.” Gentile did not have a strong presence in other parts of Baghdad that were technically under his authority, and as the next chapter, on Washash, will show, the paucity of troops did allow militias to operate without hindrance.
Kuehl ended up expanding the area under his control. “Shortly after taking over, we expanded our area to include all of Mansour,” he said. “This gave me a broader perspective, since we had a much larger area to be concerned about. Gian was focused almost exclusively on Amriya, with one company in Khadra. The rest of Mansour was under the control of a Stryker unit for a couple months, but they were not permanent. The expansion to include all of Mansour under our responsibility allowed me to see the problem of Al Qaeda and other insurgent movement more clearly. Along with intelligence I was getting I was able to trace the infiltration routes used by Al Qaeda into western Baghdad. One of these was along the road to Abu Ghraib. AQI could easily bypass all the checkpoints and get into central Baghdad. The result of this was the improved walls along this road as well as around Ghazaliya, Khadra, and Amriya. This severely restricted the movements of AQI. Gian did put walls around Amriya, but it was very ineffective, consisting only of the shorter Jersey barriers. Insurgents could easily move them, go over them, or around them. The barrier we put up was much more comprehensive and effective.”
I VISITED SHEIKH KHALID AL-OBEIDI, president of the Council of Notables, so vaunted by U.S. occupation forces. I found him in a large hall receiving a long line of supplicants seeking food or help with medical problems or with finding missing loved ones. In another office I saw a similarly occupied Sheikh Hussein of the Maluki Mosque. I was curious to hear Sheikh Khalid’s views on why security in Baghdad had improved. “The U.S. Army has given the chance for these areas to be protected by their own,” Khalid told me. “Thus many people of these areas have volunteered to protect their own areas. This has helped to impose better security in the areas. This experience was successful to a large extent, but it needs a further investment, and we are afraid it might fail at the end. What pushed the people to accept such a project and even pushed the U.S. forces to support and allow it was the resistance operations against the U.S. forces. The U.S. forces need the people in order to protect themselves and protect the people. The people were suffering from militias in these areas in addition to the military operations in these areas. People have been asked to help and have been given the chance to protect themselves. In terms of future outlook, this is not going to help build a government, but in the meantime, people feel it is safer now than then, since they have the opportunity to protect themselves.”
But Sheikh Khalid was extremely cautious about the future. “The Iraqi people find themselves passing through a time much worse than any other time,” he said. “Much worse because nothing has changed for the better. Iraqi people have no life. They are insecure and incapable, even to leave their house safely. They have very few sources to earn money and even the political elite that came now didn’t bring anything better than the previous one. There is no real project that helps people. Iraq is a very vital place for the security of the entire world. A stable Iraq means stable oil prices and a stable economy. An unstable Iraq means a bigger Iran that imposes its control over the Gulf region and threatens all neighboring countries. Help will only come through reconsidering the political process and giving a better chance to Iraqis to choose who represent them. The political project in Iraq didn’t start right from the beginning. It was built on a sectarian basis, and thus some parties have gained control of decision making in Iraq. They have marginalized lots of skilled people, those who would have helped to shape and lead the Iraqi state. In order to let Iraq exit its ordeal, we all need to reconsider the political process and give an opportunity to the Iraqi people to choose their government without the pressure factors that were used in the previous elections. The current changes in Iraq’s security situation have shown the American administration that peace has only been gained with the people’s help and the help of the key figures—only through the help of Sunnis. If the same marginalization stays in Iraq, I think it won’t be good for anyone at the end, and the political and democratic process in Iraq that the West is hoping to achieve won’t be accepted in our communities because people won’t believe in it.”
CHAPTER NINE
ONE DAY IN EARLY 2008, I WAS ON PALESTINE STREET IN EASTERN Baghdad, heading to a meeting at the Interior Ministry. My driver stopped to buy some black-market gasoline from a man selling containers on the sidewalk not far from where a national police pickup truck was parked. I gave the man a twenty-dollar bill, but he thought it was fake, so he took it to the police to see what they thought. They saw my beard in the distance and the American money, and so they came to my side of the car to ask for my ID. Upon hearing my foreign accent they panicked; then I showed them my American passport and the press ID the U.S. military had given me, and they panicked even more, unable to read English but aware I was a foreigner. Pointing their rifles at me, they ordered me out of the car and tried to handcuff me. One of them poked me in the ribs with his rifle, searching for a suicide vest. I asked them if I could call my friend at the Interior Ministry, who would tell them who I was, but they worried I would detonate my bomb with the phone. We struggled as I refused to let them handcuff me, afraid that they were members of a militia who would kidnap me. My driver told them I was Iranian. When they heard that, they relaxed somewhat and swore on Imam Ridha that they would not harm me. “We are the state,” they told me. “We are all Shiites.”
Eventually, I told them I would go with them, but not if they handcuffed me. They put me in the back of their truck, and we drove to their headquarters. The officer stared at my IDs for several minutes, not saying anything. He was probably worried about having to deal with all the officials I was naming in case I was telling the truth, and in the end he let me go. His men told me to shave my beard so I wouldn’t look Saudi. In retrospect, despite my fear, they were not abusive. It was a change, a sign that they took their role as “the state” more seriously. I would see more and more of this in the next two years.
I waited for my friend at an Interior Ministry safe house. Inside, a barber agreed to give me a “Mahdi Army”-style shave. Televisions were all tuned to Shiite religious channels showing Muharram processions. In the lobby of the ministry itself, and in the minister’s reception area, the Shiite TV channel Al Furat was showing live images of religious processions in Karbala. My friend, who was the minister’s secretary, showed up late and explained that as he was driving to the office he saw men in a pickup truck belonging to the Facility Protection Service (FPS) stop on the street, grab a young man, blindfold and handcuff him, and throw him in the back of their truck. The FPS was a government militia that protected ministries and other Iraqi government offices but was notoriously lawless and loyal to sectarian Shiite militias. My friend complained that it was impossible to control these FPS guys. As I left I saw that Shiite religious flags were placed on the roof of the Interior Ministry across the street.
The televisions in the lobby and waiting room at the Interior Ministry were tuned in to the Shiite religious
