Dirty Deeds Done Cheap (18 page)

Since Saddam’s regime was overthrown in 2003, 270 mass graves have been reported. By mid-January 2004 the number of confirmed sites was up to 50-odd, and this would greatly increase in time. Some of the graves, not dissimilar to the ones we were protecting, were holding a few hundred bodies; some of the other graves went on for hundreds of metres and were packed with thousands of bodies. When we were there, 400,000 bodies had been discovered up to that point – this was by November. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claimed it could even be thousands more.

These people had gone missing over the past two decades. If those numbers proved accurate, they represented a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot’s Cambodian Killing Fields in the 1970s and the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two. In the 1983 attack against Kurdish citizens belonging to the Barzani tribe, eight thousand of whom were rounded up in northern Iraq, the Kurdish people saw more of Saddam’s regime and bore the brunt of it. These poor people were dragged screaming from their homes in the middle of the night and executed in the desert many miles away, and the aftermath of these bloodbaths was what we were witnessing.

To give you a greater idea of how much of a ruthless bastard Saddam was, in 1988, at the culmination of the al-Anfal campaign, approximately 182,000 people just disappeared over a very short period of time. They were later found to have been executed in the west and southwest of Iraq and were eventually found in separate mass graves (typically, men in one, women and children in another). This was the situation we had to face every day on this new mission – looking at what that bastard did to his own people.

That’s not all. I’ll give you a basic rundown showing the extent that this arsehole went to in order to get rid of people who stood up against his regime. He chemically attacked Kurdish villages between 1986 and 1988, including the Halabja attack when the Iraqi air force dropped sarin gas and VX and tabun chemical nerve agents on the civilian population, killing five-thousand people immediately and causing long-term medical problems for the survivors. There were later related deaths and was also an increase in the number of birth defects in a lot of the children. This pushed the eventual death toll up by thousands. It has been estimated that, altogether, more than a million Iraqis ‘disappeared’ under Saddam’s regime.

There was a huge massacre in 1991 after Coalition troops pulled out and left Iraq. I was there and you could see the panic on the people’s faces as we left. There were people in the streets screaming and pleading with us not to go. We had all felt bad at the time and we pulled out at night so we wouldn’t have so much resistance from the Kurds; it was very harrowing. Saddam’s men then went in and killed and maimed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians for fighting for autonomy in northern Iraq after the First Gulf War. Truly sickening stuff.

The forensic scientists we were looking after planned to look at between eight and twenty grave sites and exhume the bodies, fully examine them and perform autopsies – then the case against Saddam could go ahead.

The country is still not stable, though, even to this day. So-called honour killings in 2006 saw around six-hundred women burnt, beaten, shot, strangled, thrown from tall buildings, crushed by vehicles, drowned, decapitated or made to kill themselves. I heard the story of a young girl who was stoned to death in a Kurdish village for meeting a boyfriend. This in turn led to a revenge massacre of twenty-three Sunnis in Mosul, where our main line of work was. This country was fucked.

As we looked around the graves it was amazing to see how these scientists could establish what had happened. It looked as if everything had been frozen in time. The bodies still had flesh on them, obviously from being preserved in the sand. You could still see the expressions on some of their faces – something I’d never like to see again. In my eyes the people
we
shot and killed in our gun battles brought it on themselves. We were forced to kill them purely out of self-defence. We were not executioners: we were just protecting ourselves.

Sometimes, after dropping the scientists off, we went out of the camp for a look around. This place could seem very tranquil and there were some beautiful ruins, as I previously mentioned, that we’d often stop at. However, we had to be careful because if we got into a routine the insurgents would suss this and it would turn into a mess. We’d normally leave the grave sites during mid-afternoon. Then, at around teatime, we’d get food at the scientists’ camp (it was hard to get the Fijians to bypass any opportunity for food – they always wanted to stop). It was usually great grub.

Home time was now here and, after our feed, we all readied ourselves for the run through the north. We got on the main highway and went for it, driving as fast as we could. After around 15 kilometres we started to see some smoke – it was on the right-hand side of the carriageway. As we approached we could see two fuel trucks burning and the pieces that were left were riddled with holes. The guys in the trucks were well and truly dead. They’d obviously tried to run this route through the north without an armed escort (probably their employing company trying to save money) and these naïve guys had paid for it with their lives. There was nothing we could do for them, but we had a quick look at the area – mainly to see if the insurgents were still about – and we saw nothing. The insurgents had obviously hit hard and fast and got out of the area just as fast, leaving no trace. We carried on, leaving the smouldering wrecks and dead bodies behind us.

We arrived back in camp in no time, seeing just a few more bomb holes on the way. The adrenalin was always flowing while we were on the roads, but it was nice to get back to the safety and comfort of the camp.

After the normal rigmarole of unloading and yet more feeding for the Fijians, it was decided that we’d have a party/barbecue just to wind down and raise our spirits. We got all the booze out and some of the lads went up to raid the kitchens – they had to bribe some of the Yanks there with a few cans of beer to get us some fresh food to chuck on the barbie. Once this was accomplished it was game on.

We were soon all dressed in Fijian shirts (which were generally a bit too big for us) and the Gurkhas beheaded another goat – the last one we had. I was actually getting quite fond of that goat so that night I decided I was going to stick to the chicken kebabs. As usual for these occasions, we invited all of our American mates plus all the American women.

The Gurkhas had the whisky and the curry under control and had started to dance. It has to be said that their curries were far better than their dancing – they reminded me of the ladyboys in Bangkok! At least this time someone remembered to confiscate their kukris (knives) for the duration of the party, which in itself was no mean feat, as they don’t like to be parted from them.

The barbie was well under way when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a gorgeous American soldier – even better, she was female! I made a beeline for her and we soon got chatting. Her name was Suzie. It quickly became obvious that there was a mutual attraction going on. We were both pretty plastered at this point, as neither of us had eaten anything from the barbie; in fact it seemed as if everyone was having a good time and was a little the worse for drink. Suzie and I sneaked away from the party and went back to my little hooch for a private drink. Within minutes we had our kits off and we were going for it hot and heavy. We eventually made it back to the party only to find that it had pretty much wound down for the evening, but we managed to scrounge up some leftover grub from the barbie.

After our little escapade that evening a blossoming romance fell into place. It was great. I had all the excitement and adrenalin from my job plus the added benefit of having a romantic involvement and an even better way of relieving my stress! Suzie was a great girl, albeit that she was a sergeant in the US military. Romances in war zones rarely work out back in the real world but I enjoyed it while I could.

O
ur next mission was probably the most sensitive, potentially dangerous and definitely the most complex we had yet had to carry out. As I said, we were flexible and could and would do any mission we were given, so we were tasked with doing the main security for the Iraqi elections – this was going to be no mean feat. It was, yet again, a dangerous, precarious job.

We now needed to take all of our guys training again, as this was going to be different altogether from what we had previously been doing. Most of them had never undertaken any task like this before. We had to train them in perimeter security and teach them search techniques. A lot of us British guys had done tours in Northern Ireland, so we were up to speed on all these procedures. This particular mission involved guarding a huge camp – which looked a bit like Butlins because it was an old holiday camp, but an Iraqi version, if you can imagine that. There were swings, roundabouts, slides, and even quite nice chalets. They had barbies, too – in fact everything that you would get in any holiday complex, except that this complex was in northern Iraq and we were now in control of it. Also, we had big fuck-off guns and were in the most dangerous place in the world. A very strange situation to be in!

The polling stations were going to be extremely tough to protect but the Yanks would be doing that. We just didn’t have the manpower for it, and none of us relished the fact that these polling stations would be getting missiles or some other sort of deadly projectile fired at them at some time. The place we were in was going to be worse, however – far, far worse for us.

We had our white trucks, which had to be camouflaged. Nine times out of ten we had to be overt when carrying out our missions, but on this occasion we had to be covert. We thought about trying to get our hands on some black paint, but we just didn’t have the time. We asked the US military if they could get us some, but, amazingly, they couldn’t source any. So it was like-it-or-lump-it time. Then we were to place the trucks at regular intervals around the perimeter. We had all the country’s leaders’ ballots in our hands. This job could turn out to be mayhem, or not, but only time would tell.

There was a wooded area around the camp we were protecting, and this made for what was probably one of the scariest missions I’ve ever encountered. We’d had our white vehicles dressed in pretty crappy camouflage, which wasn’t good. We just put as much foliage on them as possible so you couldn’t see any white, or at least as little as possible. It was quite comical, actually, to watch all the Gurkhas hacking away at the trees and chucking tons of wood and branches on the Toyotas.

The local militia were very switched on and the Yanks were driving in and out of the Iraqi ‘Butlins’ in their tanks all day – it was truly an amazing sight! When they approach it sounds and feels like an earthquake. When a battle tank (which weighs over 60 tons) comes anywhere near you, the engines are so loud and the tracks they run on make one hell of a racket. You can feel the vibration from hundreds of metres away. The first time they passed only a few metres from me I nearly shat a brick, especially as they were travelling at about 40 m.p.h.! Every insurgent knew what the fuck was going on and we just hoped we had the upper hand.

Vehicles camouflaged (as well as we could, anyway), perimeter secured, everything was coming into place. We were preparing for a battle and, in a worst-case scenario, we would take the trouble to them if needs be. We had got wire cutters in place so that, if the insurgents did try to come through the woods, we could cut the fence and circle around any insurgents who penetrated the holiday camp and go on the offensive.

As soon as the fence had been cut we could penetrate the woods. This way they wouldn’t be able to hide behind the trees and pick us off. It was that or stay as sitting ducks, stuck in the trucks, or taking some sort of cover and firing at shadows in the dark. Neither option was attractive. We needed to be able to get into the tree line. In hindsight, we should have got some camouflage fatigues from the Americans and posted a few of the lads inside the woods in covert positions, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Anyway, here we were.

That was what we were all trained for. We’d all been in some of the most famous elite units and regiments in world – we could do this, surely. We certainly had the firepower and the training. If not, we were fucked. If we lost our stronghold on this place it could jeopardise the elections – just what the insurgents wanted – so we couldn’t let this happen. This was truly a hardcore job.

On the perimeter, near the woods, it was pretty nervy, so we made a plan: at night no one was allowed out of their positions on foot – you had to be driven or you had to get on the radio and give your precise location and the direction in which you were moving. If anyone was seen walking around at night they’d be slotted (taken out). The ballot-box guys we were looking after were told this and, to make sure none of them tried to wander about at night, we posted a sentry on their accommodation.

This had to be done and was totally for their own protection – mainly because a lot of them were fucking idiots, I thought. There was bound to be some numpty trying to leave the security of their accommodation for a midnight stroll at some time or another, and we needed to prevent this. I came to the conclusion that most of them were thieving bastards and certainly couldn’t be trusted. I’m not saying that all of them were bad, but there was certainly a bad element in the group.

We were pretty sure the insurgents would try to sabotage the elections at some point, so we could obviously take no chances, and, to make all matters worse for us, we were very vulnerable. All that separated us from the main highway through Mosul were 20 metres of woodland and a wire fence, which wasn’t even barbed.

This place, looking like an old holiday complex that would have been at one time a nice place to stay, was very eerie. It seemed that the Iraqi people could have had a lot of fun here but now it was a kind of ghost town. It was all very sad, but very educational for me, though, because as you looked through the chalets, which were remarkably well equipped, you could come to the conclusion that, possibly, these people had a good life before Saddam and even during his reign. However, this holiday camp had obviously been deserted since the end of the war, as it was pretty run down. I found it all quite depressing.

The first night on the job was the worst for me. Once we had set our defences up, we just waited for what we thought would be an imminent attack from the insurgents. I was sitting in one of our Toyotas outside the accommodation reading a book. I was guarding the ballot guys. We had guys everywhere, so I could chill out. My job was only to make sure none of them wandered out.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some movement. Someone was coming across the now heavily armed camp. Fuck! I felt a surge of adrenalin as I rolled out of the door of my truck and got into a fire position. Obviously, no one had picked up on it and this guy, who was approaching fast, looked far too tall to be an insurgent! It turned out he was one of
our
fucking guys! I couldn’t believe it. He came within a gnat’s arse of getting his head blown off! I actually had my safety catch off and my sights on his head before I realised it was one of our guys. He was (would you believe it?) looking for some food. I think it was for some of the soup we had on the go. I had to explain to him that we were on lockdown and I really had to bang it home to the lads that there was a real chance one of us could get killed or badly wounded if we wandered about at night.

The trouble was that some of the guys were fearless. They’d been through so much shit already that northern Iraq didn’t faze them any more. The fact that most of them were very religious didn’t help matters either, because, once they had finished their prayers in the morning, they believed that God was protecting them and nothing could harm them, that they were almost invincible – obviously nothing could be further from the truth.

After about ten cups of coffee and through a miraculously quiet night, dawn broke and I went to check on the guys – who were all fast asleep! For fuck’s sake – you could tell none of these guys were at all bothered about the situation we were in. Does that make them brave or stupid? You tell me. I gave them a bollocking and we got on with the job. If the insurgents got inside the camp we would be up shit creek. It would be a gun fight at the OK Corral for sure, and, with the darkness and staggered positions, we’d probably end up shooting a lot of our own guys.

Voters for the elections had to prove Iraqi citizenship and have been born before 31 December 1986. The elections were to be held on 15 December but this whole process could have gone on until March the following year if all didn’t go well. Iraqis living abroad were also allowed to vote as well and the International Office of Migration set up polling stations in fourteen countries that had a substantial expatriate Iraqi population.

A total of 280,303 Iraqi exiles in fourteen countries registered to vote; roughly one in four of those was eligible to do so. Sixty per cent of Iraq’s population are Shia Muslims, the rest are Sunni Muslims and Kurds. The election treated the whole country as one constituency. Political parties submitted lists of candidates and a certain number of names had to be a woman’s. Candidates had to be at least thirty years old to be eligible to stand for election.

Parties or groups with militias could not run for election and nor could current members of the armed forces. Also barred from standing were former Ba’ath Party members (the political instrument of Saddam Hussein’s rule). Still, it looked as though a hell of a lot of Iraqis were going to turn out and vote. We had a great deal of responsibility resting on our shoulders. If this went pear-shaped it wouldn’t be good.

After returning to the perimeter and trying to explain to the guys how important it was not to sleep on the job, and after double-checking everything was OK, we all got some breakfast. As there were no cooking facilities available for us, we were eating MRE rations heated on a simple cooker – these MREs aren’t bad, actually, and can be pretty varied. You can eat everything in them cold if you have to but they are definitely a lot nicer hot.

Once breakfast was finished, it was my turn to stand guard on the gate of the camp. We did this in pairs and tried to make the best of the limited cover we had. Still, it was pretty scary stuff. This morning I was there with my mate Dan. I took one of my guys’ M240 GPMGs and slung it around my neck along with a belt of two hundred rounds of 7.62mm ammo. This thing could bring down a house, and, if someone tried a drive-by attack or tried to rush the gate, it would stop them. Also, I still had my M16. Dan was carrying his slightly smaller-calibre automatic weapon M249, but it was still deadly effective.

It was only white expats who worked the gate and the simple reason for this was that the dark skins of the Gurkhas and Fijians could sometimes confuse the US military, or at the very least make them nervy (never a good idea). So this wasn’t a racial thing, simply that, if the US military saw a couple of dark-skinned guys, heavily armed and dressed in civilian clothing (as we all were), they might just get trigger-happy. So, to remove the risk to our guys, only the white expats would do the gate work at one of the two main entrances.

There was a big steel gate that we kept shut at all times, but had to open if an American patrol wanted to come in. The situation was quite intense because we were all very well aware that the threat of drive-by shootings was probable, so if the gates weren’t opened quickly enough for the American tanks and troop carriers, they would, most likely, have ploughed straight on through them – these guys didn’t like to stop for anything.

The ballot counters we were looking after were a right unruly bunch. They were constantly squabbling and fighting. It was not uncommon to see a fist fight. It made me wonder sometimes how the hell this country could ever sort itself out. Still, we were going great so far – no firefights, nothing – though I think the fact that we had American battle tanks trundling in and out on a regular basis had something to do with putting the insurgents off. However, if the insurgents wanted to, they could easily create an effective attack on our vulnerable camp. Fingers crossed that this wasn’t going to be the case.

The elections were now approaching, starting the next day in fact, and the transport trucks turned up midmorning to take the ballot counters to their stations. We piled them all onto the trucks, all of them still squabbling. This is when I thought it was most likely the insurgents would strike, because, for sure, one of these guys would have a connection to, or could actually be, an insurgent. The insurgents could be sneaky bastards at the best of times and I wouldn’t put it past them to try to infiltrate the group and strike from the inside. Our only defence, up to this point, was to keep constantly searching the counters on a regular basis for any kind of contraband, be it weapons, explosives or even knives.

Once the ballot guys left we had the camp to ourselves and we could all relax a little bit – have a bird bath and a shave maybe (the shower facilities weren’t working, so we were roughing it).

The elections had a huge response with around 80 per cent of the population turning out. A lot didn’t turn up because of the threat of violence, but it was still a good turnout, especially when you hear that only something like 61 per cent of the
British
population voted in the 2005 general election (and that was higher than in the 2001 election!).

We were now waiting in anticipation for the calls from the polling stations about any trouble, which we were sure was going to happen. Later that day, the calls started arriving – a lot of stations were attacked, but the overall picture was that the voting process was a success. People in northern Iraq really seemed to want change, and their huge turnout proved this. Change was evidently not going to be rapid in this country, though, and they are going to be shooting the crap out of each other for a long time to come. But we weren’t employed to be ethnic policemen. Kurd, Arab, Sunni, Shia, whatever – if anyone had a go at us we would retaliate; we were there to do a job. We weren’t ethnic social workers either. We’d seen violence on all sides. We’d driven past blown-up American Humvees with burning American body parts, which makes it hard not to pick sides or get angry, but we were mercenaries, pure and simple, and we just went where the money was.