FALLUJAH, IRAQ – “Ego Buster” was painted clearly on the side of an American tank that rumbled past the Fallujah police headquarters. Below the tank’s name, its crew had painted a motto: “1-2 to the head.”
The tank was part of a convoy of heavily armored U.S. infantry vehicles patrolling Fallujah, while a handful of mostly Arab reporters milled about the central city police station, asking officers to describe a “massacre” of 11 local cops by American soldiers a few days before.
The Iraqi policemen, recruited and trained by the U.S. military, were all eager to speak, convinced the Americans deliberately set out to slaughter their fellow officers.
The actual facts of the incident are still murky, but not completely in dispute. Early in the morning on Friday, September 12, a BMW pulled up in front of the police station. Its occupants opened fire on the building, and several police vehicles took up the chase, which led them out of town and straight into an improvised American roadblock. The roadblock stood in front of a hospital set up two months ago by the Jordanian government.
Moments before, the Americans had reportedly come under fire from a rocket-propelled grenade. The approach of several speeding cars toward their already embattled position may have caused the soldiers to overreact.
For whatever reason, the Americans began shooting at the police, though the vehicles were clearly marked and the policemen supposedly shouted their identities to the soldiers. The police vehicles were forced off the road, and the Americans continued shooting for several minutes, killing eight cops on the spot and wounding others. Western journalists who arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting claimed there was no evidence that the Iraqis had fired back. Hundreds of spent bullet casings were found near the American positions, but none were located near the police vehicles.
During the firefight, the Americans also fired on a hospital building that was being used as a dormitory for doctors and other staff. A Jordanian guard, stationed on its roof, was killed. The building sustained enormous damage.
By Sunday, the Fallujah police had developed an elaborate conspiracy theory to explain the shootings. The Americans, they said, were angry at them because they had refused to provide patrols to a road heavily traveled by U.S. troops. The BMW occupants, they claimed, were most likely either Americans or American sympathizers who led the police into an ambush.
Even more ominously, several injured policemen being treated at the Fallujah hospital claimed they had witnessed an “Egyptian” in an American uniform shoot two wounded police officers at point-blank range after the battle finally ended.
The Americans, of course, flatly denied that there was any ambush or that wounded police officers were murdered. And an Iraqi physician, Dr. Diaa Aljumady–a resident at the Fallujah hospital who had rushed to the scene after the one-sided battle had begun–said he spotted the “Egyptian” walking through the ranks of the wounded but neither saw nor heard any gunshots.
By this point, the facts mattered little. News is spread mostly by word-of-mouth, with tribal elders and Muslim clerics often acting as de facto editors and even purveyors of information. If the town leaders believe the police were ambushed, and that some in their ranks had been murdered by an “Egyptian,” then so be it.
The Americans didn’t do their side much good. A full 36 hours after the shooting, while the police were conducting an angry mass funeral for ten of their dead comrades, the American military would only admit to killing the one Jordanian.
By Sunday, though, the Americans were using the local Fallujah radio station to broadcast an apology for the deaths of the policemen. But at that point, it was too little too late. The long, inexplicable silence had allowed local opinion to harden against them. Critically short of experienced military police, the Americans have been forced to rely mostly on infantry soldiers to patrol Iraqi streets.
The infantry is trained for full-scale war. Infantry soldiers are taught to meet any force, or any threat of force, with overwhelming counter-force. This mindset wins wars, as proved by the rapid defeat of the Iraqi military during the April invasion. But it poses a huge problem during post-war peacekeeping, as demonstrated in Fallujah on September 12–and in late April, when the infantry fired on a large crowd of unarmed protestors in Fallujah, killing 13.
A midnight ride with the 233rd Military Police Company through some of the meanest streets of Baghdad highlighted the dramatic tactical differences between trained military police and infantry patrols. The 233rd, a National Guard detachment from Springfield, seems to be functioning quite well despite their dangerous assignment.
During the patrol, one of them told me that on a previous night an Iraqi teenager had aimed a red laser pointer at his face. “The infantry would have lit him up,” said the MP. “I found him in three seconds.” The teenager was immediately determined to be non-hostile, so he was given a stern warning and let go.
The differences between MPs and the “shoot first, ask questions later” infantry came up repeatedly during the all-night patrol. MPs, the soldiers said, are trained to clearly identify a threat before opening fire. And they are warned against firing back if it could injure innocent bystanders. The infantry, they claimed, is just not suited to the task of policing.
Late that night, the MPs were driving up the “wrong” side of a four-lane boulevard when a dark-colored van came speeding toward them from around a curve. The van’s driver, perhaps blinded by the oncoming headlights, did not stop immediately, but slammed on his brakes shortly before slamming into one of the squad’s two Hummers.
Tension was high during the split-second when it appeared a head-on collision was imminent. But the MPs calmly exited their vehicles, politely ordered the man out, gently frisked him, quickly searched his van, asked why he was out after the 11 p.m. curfew, and then sent him on his way with smiles on their faces.
Asked later what would have happened to the man if he had almost smashed into an infantry patrol, one of the MPs said the Iraqi probably would have been killed.
Unlike the infantry force in Fallujah, the 233rd has developed a strong, even warm relationship with the local Iraqi Police. The MPs have provided constant training, oversight, and advice, helping the IP to protect their station against terrorist attacks and to even set up an Internal Affairs division.
And the 233rd has done all this despite the constant assault on their morale by the Department of Defense. Remember, these are part-time soldiers who were supposed to be home by now. But their return date has been continually pushed back. Just weeks after being finally being given a December 7 pullout date, for example, the MPs were informed that they would most likely be in Iraq until next April.
Even though they patrol a high-crime neighborhood populated with illegal arms merchants and known sympathizers to Saddam Hussein, the MPs encountered no significant problems on the night I was with them.
If you’re looking for some good news in Iraq, the 233rd might just be it.
The bad news is there aren’t a lot of soldiers like them over here.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2003.
