Aftermath Read online

  New files continued to come in by the thousands from all over Iraq. One revealed that a soldier accused of joining the Dawa Party in 1981 and criticizing the regime had been sentenced to five years in prison for his crimes. Another file documented the mass execution of sixteen people. Saad Muhamad, a volunteer at the Association responsible for gathering information, explained he was imprisoned for four years for criticizing Saddam. He showed me a Procrustean British-made traction couch that had been found in the general security headquarters. It was used during interrogations to stretch victims until their bodies broke and tore. He also showed me a meat grinder used for humans.

  I found my own trove of records one day as I was walking through Baghdad’s streets. In the poor neighborhood of Betawin, I stumbled across an abandoned police station housing the Saadun General Security Directory Office on its second floor. It was clear that a systematic attempt had been made to destroy the documents on the second floor, presumably by the minor intelligence officials who had worked there. I found two overturned document shredders and thin strings of paper strewn all over the floor, along with broken glass and ashes, the only remnants of the bureaucratic records of various horrors. Most file cabinets and their contents had been thrown into a few rooms that were torched; all that remained in the drawers were ashes. A young Christian boy brought sacks for me to load files into. Those that were salvageable documented the mundane daily operations of a dictatorship’s local security station over the previous years, right up to March 2003, the final days before the war. The files recorded: the 2001 duties of security officers, changes of residence of ordinary Iraqi citizens, information from a snitch about a stolen antique sword, lists of people belonging to enemy or sectarian organizations, lists of people who criticized Saddam, lists of people under surveillance, reports on people observing religious ceremonies, information on participants in the 1991 Shiite uprising, weekly orders to spread proregime rumors and combat antiregime rumors, lists of executed political prisoners and the reasons for their execution, information on bank employees in Baghdad, lists of spies in mosques and churches, names of applicants to study in the Islamic university, reports on people who had tried to leave Iraq illegally, orders to spread rumors that Iraq could defeat the U.S. and would attack Israel and liberate Palestine, a list of people accused of belonging to a group seeking to avenge the murder of Shiite leader Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and a report about a man accused of breaking a picture of Saddam, among others.

  One dense folder particularly caught my attention. It contained numerous security service memos concerning the arrest of Abed Ali Safai Ahmad, who had been accused of insulting Saddam and the Baath Party. According to the files Ahmad was a taxi driver, born in 1975, who lived in the Shiite slums then known as Saddam City. He was a veteran of the war against Iran, and one of his brothers had been killed in that war.

  On July 4, 2002, the leadership of the Abtal al-Tahrir (Heroes of Liberation) section of the Al Aqsa group office of the Baath Party ordered the arrest of Ahmad for his “assault on the person of the master and leader the President may Allah bless and protect him.” Basically, he stood accused of assaulting Saddam, and it had been decreed that he undergo detention for “a reasonable period.”

  Basher Aziz al-Tamimi, Ahmad’s neighbor, also a taxi driver living in Saddam City, testified against him. A staunch Baath Party member from the Al Aqsa branch, Tamimi alleged that he encountered a very drunk Ahmad on the night of July 3. According to Tamimi, Ahmad suggested they sell a privately owned car, but Tamimi reminded him that such a sale would be illegal. Tamimi then testified that Ahmad cursed Saddam Hussein, saying, “Saddam’s sister’s pussy over this law!” (In Arabic, as in any other language, referring to the vagina of a man’s female relatives is a terrible insult.) Tamimi asked Ahmad why he was attacking the president when he knew that Tamimi was a member of the Baath Party. Ahmad is quoted as replying: “Your sister’s pussy and the Baath Party’s sister’s pussy!” A fistfight ensued. Tamimi presently reported the case to his Baathist supervisor, Saad Khalaf: “He requested I file a written report, and then we went to Shahab because he is responsible for the branch security.” The men organized a group to go to Ahmad’s house and confront him. Apparently, when they arrived Ahmad hit Tamimi and threatened, “I will shave your mustache and the Baath Party’s mustache.” (In Iraq a mustache is often considered a symbol of manhood and honor, and threatening to shave a man’s mustache—like referring to the genitals of a female relative—is a terrible insult. A man can also take an oath, swearing by his mustache, and if he or his sister, for example, has been humiliated, he can shave his mustache and refuse to grow it until his honor has been restored.)

  Other witnesses testified in support of Ahmad’s accusers. In his defense Ahmad claimed, “I did not assault the person of the master and the leader president, Allah bless him and keep him.” Ahmad insisted he had witnesses who supported his side of the story. He admitted that he had assaulted Tamimi on the night the party committee came to arrest him: “I was in a bad temper and I hit him, and as he does not have a mustache I said to him, I shave yours and the party’s mustache, and I did not mean to direct the assault on the party in my words. . . . I was under the influence of alcohol and was drunk and in a bad temper for I had a brother who was martyred in the great battle of Qadisiat Saddam. His name was Abad al-Radha, and he died in 1986. . . . I seek forgiveness, and this is my testimony.” Ahmad claimed that Tamimi owed him ten thousand dinars and that when he asked for it back they got into an argument. Ahmad was jailed but released in an amnesty granted two months later.

  Another file I found documented the arrest of a woman accused of being a witch. I tracked down the accused witch, Aliya Jasem, who lived in the village of Huseiniya, north of Baghdad. Amid sewage and waste-filled unpaved roads where half-naked toddlers played, I finally found Aliya’s modest house. Her husband, Sadiq Naji Muhamad, was a tailor in Baghdad. They had four children. Sadiq had been a prisoner of war in Iran for nine years. He told me that Shiite prisoners were singled out for special punishment by the Iranian guards, who viewed them as traitors fighting for Sunnis. He was held in the Hashmetiya prison in Tehran, where he saw many fellow prisoners killed or tortured.

  As an unrelated male, I could not meet Aliya; I could only catch a glimpse of her silhouette or the end of her dress, hear her voice as she spoke with her husband and hear her moving about in the kitchen. Sadiq related their shared story. Aliya was a fortune teller, psychic, and traditional healer. Many Iraqi Shiites believe that descendants of the Prophet Muhammad can treat the spirit using the Koran. Aliya was one such descendant. She treated spiritual ailments such as depression. If a woman had been expelled from her husband’s family’s home, Aliya could treat her and she would be taken back. If a dog had attacked a child, she would open and close the Koran three times in the child’s face in order to cure it. She cured women who were not wanted as wives by placing special stones in front of the afflicted woman’s house, washing her, and reading from the Koran and the sayings of Imam Ali, Muhammad’s nephew and a key figure for Shiites. Sadiq proudly related that even though Aliya could not read or write, she could know everything about a person by looking at her face.

  When Aliya was a child, her legs were paralyzed. No doctor could treat her, so her family took her to a Shiite shrine near Hilla—where, Sadiq explained, she was able to stand and walk. Since that moment she had possessed special powers. “There are two types of magic,” said Sadiq, “the devil’s magic, practiced by some sects in Iraq but which is against the Koran, and merciful magic, which can combat the devil’s magic and which she practiced.”

  Aliya was paid for her services, but very little. Traditional healing is very common in Iraq, and since every woman in the neighborhood knew about her (she only treated women), word of her abilities spread. Sadiq maintained that most women in his wife’s field were also security agents or collaborators. The security service wanted Aliya to work with them because she had access to every w
oman in the city and could discover the secrets of each home, such as who was involved in illegal political activity. Aliya refused to be an agent and was subsequently accused of harboring an anti-Saddam political group in her home. In describing this course of events, Sadiq accused the mayor of being a security agent and Baath Party official.

  On August 10, 2002, Aliya was arrested by the Iraqi Security Forces. She was found guilty of witchcraft and spent two months in jail. The order to arrest her came from the national security directorate. The documents said she was released because of her husband’s request. He wrote a letter to the security service saying that she had only been using special spiritual techniques to cure ailments of the soul. She only had treated women and only had used the Koran. Sadiq asked for another chance, promising that Aliya would never practice healing again. He also mentioned that he had been a POW in Iran and had chosen to return to Iraq, unlike other Shiites who had joined Iranian-sponsored anti-Saddam militias.

  Although Aliya was sentenced to six months, she was released after seventy days from the Rashas women’s prison (she was transferred from the Al Rusafa prison) in a general amnesty. Aliya had been beaten in the police station, and Sadiq was still bitter. “She is a good wife, and they put her in the same prison with prostitutes,” he complained. “She was so traumatized she has ceased performing her magic.”

  After her release Aliya went to the tomb of Abbas, an important Shiite shrine to one of Ali’s sons, and said, “If I am really your relative, prove it by destroying Saddam and all his men within a year.” Six months later, his government fell. Sadiq explained that this happened because “God answered the prayers of those who had suffered.”

  I AM OFTEN ASKED now if it was all worth it. Would it have been better to leave Saddam in power? Are Iraqis better or worse off than they were before the American war? I never know what to say. How do you compare different kinds of terror? Those who were spared Saddam’s prisons and executioners may be better off, though they have not been spared the American prisons, or attacks, or the resistance’s bombs, or the death squads of the civil war. The Kurds are certainly better off, on their way to independence, benefiting from their relative stability and improved economy. But the rest of Iraq? Under Saddam the violence came from one source: the regime. Now it has been democratically distributed: death can come from anywhere, at all times, no matter who you are. You can be killed for crossing the street, for going to the market, for driving your car, for having the wrong name, for being in your house, for being a Sunni, for being a Shiite, for being a woman. The American military can kill you in an operation; you can be arrested by militias and disappear in Iraq’s new secret prisons, now run by Shiites; or you can be kidnapped by the resistance or criminal gangs. Americans cannot simply observe the horror of Iraq and shake their heads with wonder, as if it were Rwanda and they had no role. America is responsible for the chaos that began with the invasion and followed with the botched and brutal occupation. Iraq’s people suffered under the American occupation, the civil war, and the new Iraqi government, just as they did under the American-imposed sanctions and bombings before the war and just as they did under the years of Baathist dictatorship.

  While the spontaneous burst of repressed fury from one segment of Iraqi society often caused more damage to property than the American bombs, another segment demonstrated solidarity and a volunteer spirit eager to restore security and normalcy. Common civilians stood all day directing traffic in a country with no traffic lights or rules, where there was absolute liberty to drive anywhere, in any direction, at any speed. These volunteers protected neighborhoods and established order, but it was too late. After the war, looters pillaged the country, stripping everything but the paint from the buildings they preyed upon. Under the gaze of U.S. troops, looters destroyed the physical infrastructure of the Baathist state, while the U.S. occupation eliminated its bureaucracy.

  The atmosphere of lawlessness that pervaded the country in those first few days and weeks never went away. Eventually it allowed for criminals, gangs, and mafias to take over; it replaced the totalitarian state and the fear it had imposed with complete indifference to the idea of a state. It was a shock from which Iraqis did not recover. In Baghdad the dominant man in any area was called a shaqi. He was normally a thug who would sometimes engage in extortion and other small crimes; after the war these shaqis were recruited into armed groups and even religious militias.

  A few weeks after the war against Saddam’s regime ended and before the war against the resistance began, I moved into a house in the Mansour district, where I stayed for a month. I was stringing for Time magazine, but I clashed with my colleagues, who were focused on the English-speaking elite Iraqis, the American military, and the Shiite clerical establishment, but ignored the Iraqi street, the mosques, the Sadrists. At night, to the sound of gunfire and frogs calling, I would sit by the pool and watch bats swoop down to sip water, as I fought loneliness by making calls on the satellite phone to my future wife. Taha was our somnolent guard. He arrived in the afternoon and left in the morning. He had a chair in the driveway, where he sat with his Kalashnikov leaning lazily against the wall. I bought newspapers for him every day because I sympathized with the solitude and ennui of his job, but mostly so that he would remain awake a little longer. He was a sound sleeper. He sat reading the newspapers, or staring in front of him, his head hanging down wearily, and evinced no perceptible reaction when machine gun fire erupted outside our walls, as it did intermittently all night. I grew accustomed to it, but sometimes, when I was sitting on the lawn eating dinner and a burst went off on our street, I still jumped.

  Five minutes from the house was a market that sold looted goods and heavy-caliber machine guns, bazookas, grenade launchers, RPGs, handguns, and ammunition. The grenade launcher was fifty dollars. I was inquiring about prices one day when a large burst was fired from right behind me. I leaped high in the air, checking my body for holes. The sellers were demonstrating their merchandise to interested consumers by firing them into the sky.

  Not far from the neighborhood I was living in was the Washash district, its narrow streets awash with sewage. Like much of Baghdad, a greenish brown deluge had descended upon the streets, reaching from one side to another. Residents waded through the putrid liquid, and children ran barefoot through it. Women gathered in a loud gaggle, anxious to voice their complaints. There was no electricity, no gas, the water was dirty, and their children were sick. There was shooting all night, and they were afraid to go out. These families, like 60 percent of Iraqis, relied entirely on the state’s food distribution program to survive.

  In a field in the Jihad neighborhood of Baghdad, I found every little boy’s fantasy. Several dozen abandoned Iraqi tanks lay beside bushes and palm trees. Their treads had been sabotaged by the Americans, but they had plenty of ammunition. Fifty feet away were mud houses, with cows beneath the shade of a tree. A troop of local boys, ages five to twelve, avoided the cluster bombs on the ground and climbed on top of and inside the tanks. They lit some explosive powder. Somebody blew up a tank, and the turret shot a few dozen meters in the air before embedding itself in the ground by a house. I gave an eleven-year-old named Ali a dollar to show me around. He was timid at first, denying ever having played with the tanks, so I asked him to show me the tanks others had played with, and then I asked him which one he had played with, and which one he and his friends had shot, and he admitted more and more. His cousins joined us and said they were scared to take me to the ammunition. I told them they were girls, and they said, “No, we are strong!” and puffed their chests. Then their uncle showed up and ruined our fun. He told me he was scared for the children, but it didn’t seem like he was making any attempt to control their behavior.

  My driver’s children, about five and three years old, played with ammunition their uncle had found in a nearby arms depot that had been abandoned and looted. He showed me live anti-aircraft bullets and a bundle of detonation cords for explosives, which Iraqis were
using to cook. Five-year-old Fahad lit one and watched the flame shoot through it while his three-year-old sister held one of the charges in her mouth. In a restaurant where I often had lunch, I took note of an increasingly common sight—a customer walked in with a pistol stuck in his belt behind him.

  We assumed with egotistical condescension that Iraqis were “used to” the ubiquitous hardship that has been their unearned fate, as if they were different from us, suffered less than we did, and did not have the same hopes for a prosperous, peaceful life. Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, and Iraqis were in no way used to the nadir to which life had sunk. Since the Gulf War they had slowly watched their heavily developed, educated, and industrialized society deteriorate and regress to a preindustrial era. Power, water, and security were not just abstractions; they meant life or death.

  Imagine bombs raining on your city, the ground shaking, the walls reverberating. Imagine your city losing its power, its water, its security, its communications, and its government. Law and order disappear, weapons abound, machine guns rattle, and bullets fly. Mountains of garbage grow higher on the streets as goats, donkeys, and children sift through them, dispersing the waste everywhere. Rivers of sewage cut through neighborhoods and roads, and people wade through them. The food supply dwindles, dead dogs litter the streets, their legs frozen in midair with rigor mortis, and a modern city becomes a jungle. Hundreds of thousands of foreign occupiers are ensconced in the bedrooms and barracks of the former dictator, their leviathan tanks dominating traffic, but the newcomers do not replace the system they destroyed. Armed gangs roam freely, and dogmatic religious organizations attempt to fill the power vacuum, though they too have no experience in governance and espouse an intolerant and regressive political ideology.