Aftermath Read online

  Aftermath

  Nir Rosen

  Nir Rosen’s Aftermath, an extraordinary feat of reporting, follows the contagious spread of radicalism and sectarian violence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing civil war have unleashed in the Muslim world.

  Rosen—who the Weekly Standard once bitterly complained has “great access to the Baathists and jihadists who make up the Iraqi insurgency”— has spent nearly a decade among warriors and militants who have been challenging American power in the Muslim world. In Aftermath, he tells their story, showing the other side of the U.S. war on terror, traveling from the battle-scarred streets of Baghdad to the alleys, villages, refugee camps, mosques, and killing grounds of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and finally Afghanistan, where Rosen has a terrifying encounter with the Taliban as their “guest,” and witnesses the new Obama surge fizzling in southern Afghanistan.

  Rosen was one of the few Westerners to venture inside the mosques of Baghdad to witness the first stirrings of sectarian hatred in the months after the U.S. invasion. He shows how weapons, tactics, and sectarian ideas from the civil war in Iraq penetrated neighboring countries and threatened their stability, especially Lebanon and Jordan, where new jihadist groups mushroomed. Moreover, he shows that the spread of violence at the street level is often the consequence of specific policies hatched in Washington, D.C. Rosen offers a seminal and provocative account of the surge, told from the perspective of U.S. troops on the ground, the Iraqi security forces, Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents that were both allies and adversaries. He also tells the story of what happened to these militias once they outlived their usefulness to the Americans.

  Aftermath is both a unique personal history and an unsparing account of what America has wrought in Iraq and the region. The result is a hair-raising, 360-degree view of the modern battlefield its consequent humanitarian catastrophe, and the reality of counterinsurgency.

  From Booklist

  This could not be a more timely or trenchant examination of the repercussions of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Journalist Rosen has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s, among other publications, and authored In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006). His on-the-ground experience in the Middle East has given him the extensive contact network and deep knowledge—advantages that have evaded many, stymied by the great dangers and logistical nightmares of reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. This work is based on seven years of reporting focused on how U.S. involvement in Iraq set off a continuing chain of unintended consequences, especially the spread of radicalism and violence in the Middle East. Rosen offers a balanced answer to the abiding question of whether our involvement was worth it. Many of his points have been made by others, but Rosen’s accounts of his own reactions to what he’s witnessed and how he tracked down his stories are absolutely spellbinding.

  — Connie Fletcher

  Nir Rosen

  AFTERMATH

  Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World

  To my mother and father for making me who I am,

  To Tiffany, my love, my challenge,

  To Dakota, may you defy the world

  the way you defy me.

  PRAISE FOR AFTERMATH

  “A searing, first-hand account of the consequences of America’s ‘war on terrorism’ by one of the most respected voices on the Middle East. Honest, fearless, devastating. No one but Nir Rosen could have written this book.”

  —Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Beyond Fundamentalism

  “A brilliantly told story of post invasion Iraq—and the Middle East’s descent into a sectarian hell mess we’ll all pay for generations to come. There’s no one out there more courageous or better equipped to tell it than Nir Rosen. And when Rosen speaks, I listen.”

  —Robert Baer, author of See No Evil

  “Nir Rosen has been reporting from Iraq for years the way it should be reported—from the inside out. He spends his time in Iraq not at American news conferences in the secure Green Zone, but in the villages and cities of the battered nation, interviewing the victims of Saddam Hussein as well as the victims of our seven-year-old war. His dispatches, and this book, reflect the madness of the mission.”

  —Seymour Hersh

  “Nir Rosen is always provocative—he makes you see another side of an issue. In Aftermath, Rosen, at great personal risk, captured how Iraqis, Lebanese and Afghans from across society view U.S. actions in their nations. You may disagree and you will probably be angry, but if you wish to understand these conflicts and their impacts into the future, you need to read this book.”

  —Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, United States Marine Corps (Ret.), author, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century

  “For Americans, the story of U.S. military involvement in the Islamic world centers on ‘us’ not ‘them,’ with Afghans and Iraqis cast as victims or bystanders. In this brilliantly reported and deeply humane book, Nir Rosen demolishes this self-serving picture, depicting the relationship between the occupied and the occupiers in all its nuanced complexity.”

  —Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War

  “If you think you understand the war in Iraq, or just think you should try to, read this book. This is a deep dive through the last seven years of America’s foray into the Middle East. No one will agree with everything here, but anyone interested in what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan will benefit from reading it.”

  —Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and The Gamble

  “The world would be a more dangerous place without Nir Rosen’s Aftermath. His bracing recounting of the invasion of Iraq and subsequent insurgency, and blunt dissection of the myths surrounding the surge are an essential antidote to the complacency that has set in as America exits Iraq—and which could lead to similar debacles in the future.”

  —Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century

  “Aftermath is a masterwork, the product of a life devoted to a relentless pursuit of the knowledge and understanding of strange men who walk in nearly unimaginable paths across the far places of the world. I first met Nir Rosen when we sat together on a panel discussion on the ‘Newshour.’ I wondered then how this quiet young man could have acquired so much expertise so early in life. By the time of our next meeting years later I had learned of his incredible persistence and willingness to go and sit among those whom most of us would fear to meet at all. Over the years I have come to expect to hear from him or of him in his wanderings in places so perilous that one would expect that only soldiers would venture there. Nir Rosen’s marvelous book is the record of the disaster that ignorance, often willful ignorance produced in Iraq, continues to produce in Afghanistan and is likely to produce in places like Yemen and Somalia. Read Aftermath and hope not to repeat this history.”

  —Colonel Walter Patrick “Pat” Lang, United States Army (Ret.), former executive at the Defense Intelligence Agency

  “It is a painful experience to read Nir Rosen’s highly informed account of the destruction of Iraq and the spread of the plague of sectarian violence incited by the invasion to Lebanon and beyond. The image this meticulously detailed rendition brings to mind is of a brutal ignoramus wielding a sledgehammer to smash a complex structure he does not understand, with unpredictable but predictably awful consequences. Amazingly, Rosen finds rays of hope in the ruins. No less compelling, and distressing, is his vivid account of his experiences in Taliban-controlled territory. An indispensable contribution to the understanding of great contemporary tragedies.”

  —Noam Chomsky

  “Nir Rosen has almost single hand
edly rescued the name of journalism in the Middle East from a class of reporters who function as courtiers and propagandists for the military and our political elite. Rosen’s fierce independence and honesty, as well as an ability to see the wars we are fighting from all sides, make his book exceptional for its nuance, complexity and insight into our bloody march through the Muslim world. Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World is a stark, unvarnished account of the folly of empire, the futility of violence as an instrument of reform and democracy and the gross ineptitude of our political and military class. Rosen lays before his readers the anguished voices and experiences of those we occupy. He does this with a sensitivity and cultural literacy that is as rare as it is essential. Aftermath is one of the most important contemporary accounts of America’s misguided ‘war on terror.’”

  —Chris Hedges, author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion

  “Nir Rosen has written a deeply reported, authoritative account of the American occupation of Iraq and the regional fallout from that adventure. Aftermath deepens our understanding of the events of the troubled past decade in a rich and satisfying manner. Rosen also gives voice, character and nuance to the Iraqi side of the story, which very few have had the courage or ability to do.”

  —Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc., and The Osama bin Laden I Know

  “As a reporter, Nir Rosen scares the dickens out of me. He’s willing to go where few will follow and to give voice to those who are rarely heard. His reporting is all the more precious because of it.”

  —Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower

  Also by Nir Rosen

  In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq

  OUR COUNTRY IS A GRAVEYARD

  Gentlemen, you have transformed

  our country into a graveyard

  You have planted bullets in our heads,

  and organized massacres

  Gentlemen, nothing passes like that

  without account

  All what you have done

  to our people is

  registered in notebooks

  —Mahmoud Darwish

  Translation: As‘ad Abu Khalil

  Research support for this book was provided by

  THE PUFFIN FOUNDATION INVESTIGATIVE FUND AT THE NATION INSTITUTE

  Baghdad

  Iraq

  Lebanon

  Beirut

  Afghanistan

  Part One

  THE LEBANONIZATION OF IRAQ

  CHAPTER ONE

  Occupation

  ABDEL SATTAR AL-MUSAWI’S DECOMPOSED REMAINS LAY ON THE ground above his grave. His older brothers sat beside them, holding them, crying. Although he had been arrested in 1998 and killed in 2001, they had just learned of his death three days earlier, and now they had come to claim his body. “His crime was loving freedom,” said his friend Abdel Karim, who had come to find his own brother too.

  It was April 2003, and I was beginning my career as a journalist. I had been in Iraq for only a few weeks, and I thought nothing good would come of the war: it was predicated on lies, and would subvert democracy and law at home as well as abroad. I was skeptical that a foreign occupation would be welcomed by Iraqis, and I knew that the American civilian and military leaders were ill prepared to understand a different culture, especially a Muslim one, and especially after the trauma of September 11. But I had come to Iraq wanting to give a voice to Iraqis, and this meant restraining my views and listening. As Iraqis rubbed their eyes and awoke to the new reality in a mix of shock, depression, and euphoria, I was as confused as they were; nothing seemed black-and-white.

  With the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of thousands of political prisoners were finally being revealed to their families. Iraqis could find files on their loved ones and discover what had become of their fate. More often than not, the news was not good.

  Several dozen members of the Musawi family had come to claim four of their brethren from the Karkh cemetery. The cemetery, in Haswa, just outside Baghdad, entombed political prisoners, many of whom had been murdered at the nearby Abu Ghraib prison. All four murdered members of the Musawi family were cousins: Abdel Sattar al-Musawi, born in 1966, hailed from the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad and was married with two children; Salah Hadi al-Musawi, born in 1974, was from Baghdad’s Thawra neighborhood; Salah Hasan al-Musawi, born in 1971, was also from Thawra, as was Saad Qasim al-Musawi, born in 1967, who was married with six children. The body of family friend Qasim Ahmad al-Maliki was here too. He was Abdel Sattar’s age, from Thawra as well, married, with no children. All had been killed in 2001. “They were killed for no reason,” a friend of the Musawis explained. “There was no justice, no court, no defense.”

  The Musawis had traveled by bus and in a pickup truck. They carried with them flimsy wooden coffins made of boards and a black flag of mourning. At seven in the morning, they were the first family in the cemetery that day. The dafan, or grave digger, Muhamad Muslim Muhamad, was a small man in sweatpants with a buttoned shirt tucked in. He assisted with an obsequious eagerness, and I suspected that he was compensating for an unconfessed complicity in the crimes he helped bury.

  Karkh was the size of a football field, surrounded by a brick wall fringed with eucalyptus trees. The ground was a sandy gray, with mounds to mark the shallow graves. Some of the mounds had holes burrowed into them where animals had fed on the corpses. On a stick in each mound was a card with a number on it. The Musawi family had the plot numbers for their dead, and Muhamad led them to the first one, casually strutting over other graves. It belonged to Abdel Sattar. When the family found the grave, the previously silent men collapsed in loud sobs. They kneeled on the ground and clung to one another, quieting down only when the grave digger began to undo his work. They watched in an apprehensive and lachrymose silence. Perhaps they still hoped that the grave would be empty? The digging slowed as the earth being removed turned to a wet, dark red, as if stained with blood. Muhamad abandoned his shovel and used his hands. Abdel Sattar’s exhumed body was the color of the earth, thin and dry. Amid calls for “my brother!” his body was placed on a plastic sheet and wrapped in a kiffin, or white cloth. It was then placed in the wooden coffin to await the trip to Najaf, south of Baghdad, where it would be buried in the City of Peace—the biggest cemetery in the world outside China, and the preferred burial site for all Shiites.

  As Abdel Sattar’s brothers and a handful of others remained by his coffin, the rest of the family moved on to another cousin’s grave. The body emerged in separate pieces, and the bones were placed together in a pile around the skull. By nine in the morning six other families had arrived to reclaim their loved ones, and their wailing cries could be heard from all corners of the cemetery. I couldn’t help but cry too. Abdel Sattar’s former employer was also present. “He was a lovely boy,” he said. I asked if this had happened to many people he knew. He gestured behind him to the hundreds of graves and said, “See for yourself.”

  I felt ashamed to be intruding on the Musawis’ private pain, and I sobbed with them. One month into my career as a journalist, I was not yet able to watch other people’s pain without participating in it.

  Hussein al-Musawi told me he had served time in the Saddam City security prison with his four murdered cousins. He was jailed for seventy days beginning in July 2001 because the regime had learned that in 1991, after the failed uprising against Saddam following his defeat by the Americans, a relative of the family attempted to defect to Iran. The relative had visited Abdel Sattar before escaping, and this was the cause of the Musawi family’s suffering: eleven men were arrested. In prison Hussein’s interrogators had tortured him with electricity. They had tied his hands behind his back and hung him from them, dislocating his shoulders. And they had beaten him with cables and metal rods until he was drenched in his own blood. At the cemetery he told me he would still be able to
recognize the faces of the security officers who had done this to them. “If I saw them I would seek revenge,” Hussein said. “I would eat them.”

  Before leaving the cemetery, several men of the Musawi family voiced their resentment toward the Arab press. “They were a part of these crimes,” one said. “They covered it up. They always said Saddam was a hero, and they took his money.”

  Baghdad—City of Decay

  The Musawis had not known whether their lost sons were dead or alive until three days before they dug up the bodies. They received the information from a remarkable organization called the Association of Free Prisoners. Located in the confiscated riverside villa of a former security official in the Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad, the Association formed right after the war ended. Muhamad Jamal Abdel Amir, a twenty-eight-year-old volunteer, explained that the Association was created by four former prisoners. It was an entirely Iraqi project; the founders had not coordinated their activities with anyone foreign or received any outside help. After the war, when Iraqis began looting the headquarters of the security organizations that had terrorized them for so long, many handed over the files they found to the Association.

  On the external walls of the Association hung sheets of paper with alphabetical listings of prisoners’ names. Hundreds of desperate people ran their fingers down the lists taped to the walls, hoping to learn their relatives’ fate. Inside, past the two boys with machine guns who guarded the Association, workers bustled back and forth, their faces blocked by the immense piles of documents they carried to different rooms in order to organize them by subject. They planned to enter all the information into a database, but for now the dozens of rooms were full of thousands of files going back to the 1960s. The files were stacked on top of one another, stored in sacks or kept in their original file cabinets. They were marked “Dawa” (for a banned Islamist party) or “Communist,” or had other labels that indicated independent political activity—all designating the subjects as victims of ruthless repression.