Generation Kill - Evan Wright [160]
FLAWS IN THE American occupation plan become apparent to the Marines in Fick’s platoon when they mount their first patrol into a vast, predominantly Shia slum on the northeast side of Baghdad. On the morning of April 13, Colbert’s Humvee leads the rest of the platoon into the slum known as Seven Castles. We roll in atop a high berm overlooking about a square kilometer of ramshackle, two-story apartment blocks. According to the translator with us, 100,000 people live here. The twenty-two Marines in Second Platoon are the first Americans to enter this neighborhood since Baghdad fell four days ago. The platoon stops in the crest of the berm overlooking the neighborhood.
Within minutes hundreds of children run up and surround the Humvees, chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!” They are soon joined by elders from the neighborhood.
The translator helping Fick today is a local Iraqi, Sadi Ali Hossein, a courtly man in his fifties who used to work at the factory the Marines occupy. He showed up yesterday to offer his services to the Americans as a translator. (An exceedingly polite man who wears a rumpled yet dignifying brown suit, Hossein vanishes the day after this patrol; other Iraqis who work at the factory later claim he’s a Baathist agent.) With his help as a translator today, Fick tries to find out what the neighborhood requires. Initially, elders who emerge from the mob tell Fick they need just two things: water and statues of George Bush, which they plan to erect up and down the streets as soon as the Americans help them pump out the sewage currently flowing in them.
Fick turns to the translator with a puzzled expression on his face. Hossein explains, “They think Bush is a ruler like Saddam. They don’t understand the idea of a president who maybe the next year will go out.”
The streets below not only run with sewage but are filled with uncollected garbage. In the midst of this, there are pools of stagnant rainwater. Somehow, locals differentiate between pools of stagnant rainwater and sewage, since they dip buckets into the former and drink it.
They say they haven’t had water or electricity in the neighborhood for a few years now. What the elders urgently need help with is security at night. All of them have the same story: As soon as the sun goes down, bandits roam the streets, robbing people and carrying out home invasions. Residents in the neighborhood have set up barricades on the streets to keep them out. Everyone is armed. The locals claim that since armories and police stations were overrun at the end of the war, an AK now costs about the same as a couple of packs of cigarettes.
“They kill our houses,” one of the men says.
“The Americans have let Ali Baba into Baghdad,” his friend adds.
Another man claims enemies from an outlying neighborhood have set up a mortar position behind a mosque and are randomly shelling them at night.
Even late in the morning, you can still smell cordite in the streets from all the gunfire of the previous night. What’s striking about the residents’ complaints is the fact that Marine commanders have been claiming that all the gunfire at night is a result of Shias removing Fedayeen and other enemies they share with the Americans. But this is a 100-percent Shia neighborhood, and these people are clearly distraught by the violence. They ask Fick if his Marines will stay for the night.
He tells them that is not possible, but that his men will try to bring water some other day.
Hossein tells me he has a grim view of Iraq’s future. “You have taken this country apart,” he says. “And you are not putting it together.” He believes that the violence the Americans are allowing to go on at night will only fuel conflicts between the Sunni and Shia factions. “Letting vigilantes