The Jihad

OF THE TWO GREAT RIVERS flowing through Iraq, the Euphrates is slower and bluer. It runs into the country from Syria, cutting across Iraq's western desert as it heads toward the Mesopotamian flood plain in the south. Along its shores, the river provides one continuous oasis through an inhospitable wasteland, a channel of life beside which ancient villages are splayed out.

The town of Fallujah is 50 km west of Baghdad. From there on up, the Euphrates hosts innumerable little farming communities, inhabited by Sunni Muslims. From Baghdad to Ramadi, along the Euphrates, the villages form the bottom side of what the Americans call the Sunni triangle. This is the heartland of the resistance to the American occupation.

I long shunned becoming embedded with the American forces. Since the beginning of the war, what interested me was the freedom of Iraq's civilian population, not the machine that came to deliver it. But eight months into the American presence here, I feel compelled to embed myself with them (shortly before George W. Bush's surprise visit) to have a look at what the Americans are all about. My Iraqi friends are anxious to hear what I might learn from spending time with the strange and aloof forces that now control their country and promise freedom. I could think of no better place to experience this than the Sunni triangle, along the banks of the Euphrates. Like Tikrit to the north, the river towns of Fallujah and Ramadi have been a hub of insurgence.

On a dreary day, I arrive in Fallujah in search of the Americans. It is a scary place. Unlike other big towns in central Iraq, Americans are nowhere to be seen: no checkpoints, no compounds, no patrols. Local police are bunkered down behind sandbags, cement walls and barbed wire. There is graffiti everywhere. It reads: "It is OK to steal from the Americans. It is OK to kill Americans." Or, "Blessed is he who kills Americans." And, "Saddam is a hero of the Arabs. Yes, yes Saddam." Leaning up against the buildings, stern young men scan the passing traffic. I try to disappear into the seat of my friend Anmar's car. Luckily, Anmar's Volkswagen has to be the dirtiest piece of junk on the road, so no one pays attention to us. Up ahead, a boy tracks cars with his toy pistol, occasionally firing an imaginary shot. "Don't get stuck in traffic," I tell Anmar. He begins chain-smoking.

The American base is several kilometres outside of the city, the barracks over 1,000 m inside the outer walls. At the gate, I wait for the appropriate official to take me in. It is cold. The boys at the gate are almost delirious. "Great place, isn't it?" they say, and laugh. "At least you are not in Fallujah being shot at," I tell them. One of them replies, "I'd rather be shot dead than stuck here."

Once I get inside, a friendly major tells me: "In Fallujah, we have decided to let the Iraqi authorities look after the town themselves. The bad guys occasionally try and shoot in here with artillery or mortars. But you saw how far we are from the outside walls. We're too far for them to aim properly. Plus we can acquire mortar or artillery rounds and respond instantly." I ask him to explain what he means by "acquire." "We triangulate the origin of the projectile while it is still in the air and fire right back on the position with deadly force," he says.

I also visit their medical facilities. The base's chief internist explains that they are equipped with all they need, including a dentist and a psychiatrist. "This way we don't send anybody home that we can treat here. With so many soldiers already deployed, we have to preserve manpower," the doctor says. Top military officials have promised to station over 100,000 new soldiers in Iraq next year, to replace the 130,000 currently serving there who will be going home shortly. It is sure to be a real squeeze.

THE NEXT BIG BASE up the Euphrates is in Ramadi, a town that is only slightly less tense than Fallujah. The Americans have camped in one of Uday Hussein's fishing palaces on the banks of the river. Inside, I am lodged in an ornate sandstone villa -- one of many now converted into barracks. My bunkmates are anxiously glued to the television to see whether "the Bachelor" will choose to marry the blond or the brunette in the show's final episode.

Ramadi is a headquarters base. To experience actual operations, the next morning I travel even farther up the Euphrates. A hundred kilometres north, a road climbs out of the river basin at the beautiful town of Al-Baghdadi. It goes through a valley in a desert plateau, and at the end of it is Saddam Hussein's Al-Asad air force base, now being used by U.S forces. Old MiG jet fighters are strewn across the valley floor, each half-entombed in the ground. One theory holds that Saddam, in his numerous conflicts, was reluctant to use his jet fighters for fear they might be destroyed in combat. So he buried them. Now they sit in their individual graves, slowly disintegrating in the desert.

Al-Asad was built with funding from Yugoslavia, and features a sports centre, theatre and indoor swimming pool. Along the edge of the valley, hangars have been cut into the cliffs. On top of the plateau is a vast series of runways and bunkers.

Once again I am greeted cordially by the American soldiers. I eat pork chops for lunch in a huge mess hall. All eyes are focused on the big-screen television as the latest Michael Jackson drama unfolds. "Great! Now all of America is going to be stuck speculating about Michael Jackson's freaky sex life for the next six months," a soldier jokes. "It's better than hearing about us in this damn place," another replies.

Al-Asad is only a short stop along my way. To see any real action, I fly farther up the river by helicopter. A tall young officer in surfer shades is along for the ride. "What do Canadians think of all this?" he asks as we are waiting to lift off. "I think most of us support the UN as the best chance we have for a more peaceful world and are a little suspicious of the American presence here," I respond. "I guess we just don't quite understand what is happening here and why." He considers this and says, "A good part of my own family is Canadian from New Brunswick. I always have a lot of explaining to do when I see them." Before flying into the desert, we momentarily hover over the camp, taking in its full expanse: dozens of helicopters (menacing Apaches, Blackhawks and Chinooks), hundreds of Humvees, and thousands of men to run them all. The officer continues: "You know that I was the one to schedule the Chinook flight out of here -- the one that got shot down over Fallujah. Sixteen men died. They were on their way to Baghdad, going on leave. They were on their way out of here. I tell you we're the first ones to want peace so that we can get the hell out." He pauses. "I don't have all the answers. But answers or not, I have a job to do."

The helicopter glides over the western Iraqi desert, which goes on without a blade of grass for miles. An eerie industrial complex emerges on the horizon ahead: silos and smokestacks in the desert haze -- a vision from Mad Max. It is a phosphate plant whose production stalled due to sanctions. Beside it is a huge railroad facility. This has been converted into my next destination: Tiger Base.

IT IS AN IMPRESSIVE sight, a picture-perfect example of the American military in full operation. At Tiger Base, helicopters are always buzzing overhead, while heavily armoured vehicles constantly roll in and out of the camp -- high-tech Abrams and Bradley tanks. As I arrive, engineer units plow out more docking facilities for more vehicles. The soldiers sleep in big circus-style tents. Rows of them line the abandoned railway tracks. At night, the desert is frighteningly cold. The tents are not heated. Water for showering is in short supply. Now and again, soldiers are served hot meals. There is no lounge, no pool table, no entertainment. In the evening, the troops listen to death metal, play video games and read frat-boy magazines until it gets too cold to sit around. Then they go to bed -- bored and tired.

In the tent next to mine, one young soldier is all too eager to tell me his story. "In the last week," he says, "I been shot at, I been mortared and I nearly been blown up. I damn near freeze my black ass off every night to boot. They didn't tell me all this when I signed up. Goddamn!"

TIGER BASE is set up southeast of the Syrian-Iraqi border at Al-Qa'im on the Euphrates. The Third Armored Cavalry Regiment from Colorado Springs is a few days into Operation Rifles Blitz -- a major crackdown on resistance activities in the region. "We call this place 'the Jihad Superbowl,' " the regiment's colonel tells me. "This border area has long been a smuggler's paradise. Now it's become a haven for anti-coalition cell organizers. Through here, they bring people and equipment in and out of Iraq, then pass them down the 'Rat Line,' the Euphrates River communities. We are here to disrupt all that." That means sealing off three towns whose population totals some 120,000. It means systematically going through every home in the area looking for weapons, banned communication devices like satellite phones, and wanted persons. It means arresting suspicious Iraqis and foreigners. So far the regiment has detained over 317 suspects and inspected 3,054 homes. It is an immense operation.

One night at Tiger Base, damn near freezing my ass off, I am invited to the operations area. Donning a helmet and a bulletproof vest (as per regulations), I am loaded into the back of a Bradley. With me in its dark belly, the armoured vehicle thunders off into the desert. Dust streams in through the air vents. After a good half-hour of rocking and rolling, the vehicle stops and the back hatch is dropped. Outside, more desert.

The commanding officers gather for their orders. They are a tough, competent bunch. As they talk, artillery fire sounds out. Some suspicious location has surely just been annihilated. In the distance, flares shoot into the air. Pointing to a map, the officers list off what areas have been covered and what has been found. They also describe how much money has been passed out, since every household that is searched and found to be in compliance is given US$20. Every informer is paid for useful information.

After that, I am loaded into another Bradley and soon after dropped off in the middle of a row of tanks, arrayed in a defensive pattern. City lights twinkle on the horizon. For the young men here, Tiger Base is a luxury, somewhere to sleep and relax, but rarely. The captain sends me on to the village of Sadah with a tank platoon. I ride in a Humvee jeep, which is driven between tanks to protect us from mines. The desert path to town has been ground to a fine dust by armoured vehicles. We travel in the billowing clouds of an artificial dust storm.

In the village, a severe curfew is in place. Anyone seen in the streets between dusk and dawn will be arrested or shot. My Humvee takes position on a little rise just outside of town on the edge of the farmland between the village and the river. We are there to enforce the curfew. Our tool for observation is a piece of classified equipment: a laser-sighting device mounted on the Humvee's turret. It can pinpoint a person 20 km away. "What you see is not light, but electrons converted into images," the sergeant explains. I focus on the minaret of a little mosque, somewhere across the river and press the range button. The device tells me that the object is 17,465 m away. "The next step will be to relay that information by satellite to our howitzers," he says. "So up to a range of 20 km, you can see your target and bring hellfire down upon it within a matter of seconds." I ask him, "Do you have any enemy worthy of all this technology?" He says simply, "No one will dare to become our enemy ever again."

At dawn, I join a group of foot soldiers who are doing door-to-door searches in the village we've been observing, or the "zone," as the troops refer to it. It doesn't appear dangerous. In the valley between the desert hills, the Euphrates is magnificent. On its banks, people have irrigated plots of wheat, corn and onions. They lead their herds out to graze in the grasses by the river. In their gardens grow oranges, grapes and date palms.

The young soldiers enter people's compounds with a mix of menace and apprehension. As they march in, gripping their weapons, they awkwardly tell the inhabitants "Peace be with you" in broken Arabic. Young girls nervously watch Americans prod through their household belongings. Old men act as if they have seen it all before. In my helmet and flak jacket, I might as well be a soldier, and give up trying to speak with these people. This is Operation Rifles Blitz in full swing. When arrests are made, the suspects' hands are tied and they are made to wear a bag on their heads. They are then driven out of town to the detention centre, a fenced-off plot of land in the desert. The detainees are given two blankets each. They huddle together for warmth at night. They remain there for days.

Between the Americans and the Iraqis there is such misunderstanding. From within their awesome military machine, the American soldiers don't really understand what they are doing in Iraq. It is not surprising that the Iraqis cannot comprehend what the Americans are up to, or relate to freedoms the U.S. claims to offer. To reach out, the Americans need to appreciate the splendour -- and livelihoods -- granted to these people by the Euphrates. To reach out, the Americans have to show some appreciation for the things that move Iraqis -- and some sensitivity to their ancient humanity.

For now, the gap between the two only grows wider. Perhaps, years from now, one of these soldiers will return and be haunted by this river -- and the memory of the young man who once walked along its banks without really seeing it.