Tower of the Sun: Stories From the Middle East and North Africa (17 page)

Much of the world supports the Palestinian cause, partly because they’ve been stateless for decades but also because Palestinian leaders, both religious and secular, have waged relentless campaigns of terrorism. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say. Few would take an interest in the Palestinians if they acted like Druze.

Hardly anyone yearns to return the Druze of the Golan to Syria. Even they come across as only half interested. If they were passionate, though, and if they mass-murdered Israelis, their cause may well get traction on university campuses, in activist circles and perhaps even in the White House. Terrorism works, at least up to a point. If the Druze adhered more closely to the regional mainstream instead of to their own local mainstream, they might resort to terrorism themselves, but they don’t.

The Alawites are a little bit different. Most who live in Ghajar enthusiastically took Israeli citizenship as soon as it was offered. They seem to think it makes them safer. Those who live in Syria enthusiastically embrace the Sunni cause of “resistance,” and they do it for the same reason. It’s safer that way.

The war between Syria and Israel will last a long time, for the rest of Assad’s life, more likely than not.

Chapter Six

On the Hunt in Baghdad

Baghdad, 2008

If your men conduct any raids,” I said to Captain Todd Looney at Combat Outpost Ford on the outskirts of Sadr City, Baghdad, “I want to go.”

“We might have something come up,” he said. “If so, I’ll get you out there.”

Less than an hour later Haji Jawad, one of the most dangerous terrorist leaders in all of Iraq was spotted holding a meeting at a house in the area. An arrest warrant had already been issued by the government of Iraq, and Captain Looney’s company was the closest to his location. They would be the ones to go get him.

“Do you still have room for me?” I said.

“Get your gear,” Captain Looney said.

Last time I was in Baghdad, in the summer of 2007, I was told that most suspects surrender the instant they realize their house is surrounded. Fighting would be suicidal, and most terror cell leaders do not seek martyrdom. But the guy we were after was far more vicious and crazy than average.

“Is he the kind of guy who might shoot at us during a raid?” I said to Captain Clint Rusch in the Tactical Operations Center.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “He’s definitely the kind of guy who will shoot at us. He’s a really bad dude. A few weeks ago he and his men lobbed huge bombs at a JSS in the area and almost destroyed it, then called up the commander and asked how was his morning. And he said if we didn’t stop chasing him, he’d start wearing a suicide vest wherever he goes.

The tip-off came in over the phone late at night when the terrorist leader’s meeting was almost scheduled to be finished. By the time everyone had their gear and was ready to go, we had seventeen minutes or less to drive across a portion of Sadr City and break down the door before the meeting was over.

We ran to the Humvees.

“Go with Sergeant Gonzales,” Captain Looney said to me. “When we dismount, catch up to me and stay on me.” He looked angry all of a sudden, but mostly he was just being serious. Any of us might be killed in less than an hour.

Our convoy of Humvees roared down Baghdad’s streets in the dark without headlights. I checked my watch. No time to waste. We had eleven minutes to catch the bastard before his meeting was scheduled to end. Hopefully he and his pals were on “Arab time” and would hang out and drink tea for a while before heading out.

Almost every house we drove past was dark. Few streetlights worked. It was hard to believe I was in the middle of a city of millions. Iraq’s electrical grid is still in terrible shape. Baghdad is only marginally better lit than the countryside. It produces perhaps only one or two percent as much ambient light after dark as cities in normal countries. Baghdad at night from the air looks more like a constellation of Christmas lights than, say, the brightly lit circuit board of Los Angeles.

The Humvee in front of mine suddenly stopped. Our driver slammed on his brakes.

“Dismount!” Sergeant Gonzales said from the passenger seat in the front.

Here we go
.

I got out of the Humvee. Even hopped up on adrenaline it’s impossible to throw those doors open quickly. They weigh hundreds of pounds because they’re up-armored with several inches of steel.

Every soldier could see better than I could. They all had night-vision goggles. I had to rely on my eyes in a near-pitch black corner of a dark city. It takes thirty minutes for a man’s eyes to adjust to darkness, and we had left the brightly lit interior of the base less than ten minutes before.

Sergeant Gonzales motioned for me to follow him alongside a wall toward an opening that led into the neighborhood. I stepped in a deep puddle of mud. At least I hoped it was mud. Sewage still runs in the streets in much of Baghdad, and we were in one of the most decrepit parts of the city. But I hardly cared
what
had just splashed up onto my pant legs. Any second now I might be shot at or worse.

One at a time we poured through the hole in the wall. Every single house on the other side of that wall was cloaked in darkness. I had no idea which house we were about to storm into, but the soldiers knew and I followed them up to the gate.

The gate was locked. One of the soldiers--I couldn’t tell anyone apart in the dark--kicked the gate with everything he had. Twice. And it did not open.

“Goddamn it!” Captain Todd Looney said.

He pulled out an enormous hammer and swung it hard against the front of the gate.

BANG.

The gate merely shook.

BANG.

The metal gate shuddered, but it did not break.

BANG.

Everyone in the neighborhood must have heard us by then.

If a meeting were still going on in that house, they knew we were coming. I kept as close to the wall as I could in case we fot shot at. No one inside the house would be able to hit me as long as I didn’t back up into the street.

Taking the house would be much more dangerous now, but the soldiers brought flashbang grenades. Flashbangs stun and blind everyone in a room for up to ten seconds. All the soldiers had to do was toss one of those babies into a room ahead of them. Ten seconds is an eternity in room-to-room combat. American soldiers can do whatever they want in a room full of terrorists in less than two seconds.

BANG.

The hammer came down on the gate once again, but it still didn’t break. We would have to climb over the wall.

“Keep busting it open while we’re climbing the wall!” Captain Looney said.

BANG.

The wall was about seven feet high and made of cement. Most of us couldn’t get over it without some kind of boost. I’m not used to throwing myself over walls taller than I am, and the soldiers were weighed down with 80 pounds of armor and gear. Someone crouched on all four and let everyone else use his back as a step ladder. That effectively knocked two feet off the height of the wall. It’s easy to climb five feet.

“Keep going over!” the captain said. “Keep going over!”

The gate was locked from the inside. Those on the other side desperately tried to unlock it, to no avail.

“Bolt cutters coming over!” somebody yelled and tossed a pair of cutters over the gate. They came prepared.

And yet still the gate did not open. We had wasted almost a minute while making one hell of a racket.

I felt useless just standing there and trying mostly in vain to take photographs in the dark. What was I supposed to be doing? I’m not trained for kinetic raids. I didn’t know the procedure.

So I selected a soldier at random and asked. “Is everyone going over the wall? Do I need to go over, too?”

At that point I was ready to take orders from even a private.

“Yes, sir,” he said, whoever he was. “You need to go over.”

Can’t say I was thrilled about that. Unless they got that gate opened, I’d be pinned in the tight enclosed courtyard in front of a suspected terrorist’s nest. There would be no running away if something happened. But that was preferable to being left all alone on the street in front of that house while the soldiers--my
de facto
bodyguards--were inside and over the wall.

One of the soldiers who had gone over the wall ahead of me kicked in the front door of the house with his boot. The sounds of smashing glass and twisting metal surely alerted anyone in the house who somehow might not have heard the banging on the gate with the hammer.

If the target inside were indeed wearing a suicide vest, this was most likely when he would martyr himself and take some of us with him. I waited a moment before climbing onto the wall. I had cover from an explosion as long as I stayed where I was. But I didn’t hear anything

The soldier crouching in the mud was waiting for me to use his back as a step ladder onto the wall. So I planted my muddy boot in the small of his back. Not that it mattered. He was plenty filthy already. I had five more feet of wall to clear, and for an absurd moment I worried that I might humiliate myself by not being able to make it over the top. That was ridiculous. It was only five feet, and besides--I had so much adrenaline in my body I could have thrown a car.

As soon as I pulled myself onto the wall I realized that every single one of us climbed up in the wrong place. Climbing straight over would have put us in the neighbor’s yard. I had to shimmy along the top of the wall several feet so I could drop down in the courtyard of the house we were raiding. I could barely see, and I was terribly exposed.

Yes, he’s the kind of guy who will shoot at us.

I was more exposed at that moment than anyone while crawling along the top of that wall.

Get down, get down!

I dropped into the courtyard of the target house.

“Top floor’s clear!” I heard someone yell from inside.

No one had fired a shot yet. No one had exploded a suicide vest.

Then the gate broke open and five more soldiers poured through.

Lights were on in the house when I ran inside. The front door had been violently kicked off its hinges. It leaned up against the couch in the living room.

Shards of glass crunched under my feet. Mud and nasty muck from outside was tracked all over the carpets inside--and this is a culture where almost everyone takes off their shoes before stepping inside. We might very well be in a terrorist leader’s house, but a small part of me still felt bad about the mud and the door.

My digital voice recorder was turned on and inside my pocket. It recorded everything, but I have no idea who said what.

“Where’s the terp at?”

Terp
is short for
interpreter
. Our interpreter, Eddie, was an Iraqi from Baghdad who had spent the last several decades in San Diego, California.

“They’ve over there at the next house.”

“Go! Go! Next house! Let’s go!”

“Out! Out the gate!”

Every soldier in the house ran out the gate. I followed. The house we had just hit was empty. No one was sure exactly which house in a row of three Haji Jawad was supposed to be in. So we went house to house.

Some poor bastards would soon return home from wherever they were to find their door broken down, mud all over their carpets, and no explanation.

We ran to the next house and had no trouble unlatching the gate. Each soldier took up position. I stood near the front door and away from the windows. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and I could sort of see.

“Hit it,” someone said. “Go right fucking in there.”

A soldier kicked the door in with all his might. It crumpled like an empty 7-Up can. Glass shattered. A woman inside screamed. Soldiers streamed into the house.

Someone flicked on the lights.

The woman in the front room screamed again and put her hands on her head. Small children ran behind her for protection.

“Get down! Get down!”

She looked at me in wide-eyed animal terror as if she had just seen Godzilla, and she said something to me in Arabic that I did not understand.

“La etkellem Arabie,” I said.
I don’t speak Arabic
.

I wanted to say “it’s okay,” but it was not okay. I had no more an idea what was about to happen than she did.

“Go upstairs,” said one of the soldiers.

“Hey, you, in there,” said another to the woman who had just spoken to me. “Get in there.”

They were rounding up all the women and children into one room and all the men into another.

“Get in there now!”

Two soldiers led three Iraqi men down the stairs. The men looked frightened and disoriented, but much less so than the women and children. Two were turned around and flex-cuffed.

The Americans were
not
fucking around. Odds were high that we were in a terrorist’s nest and still might be shot at any moment from any direction.

The one Iraqi man who had not yet been flex-cuffed spoke to me calmly in Arabic.

“I am a police officer,” he said. “I have a badge.”

I understood him perfectly well, but I nevertheless told him I didn’t speak Arabic. He needed to explain himself to somebody else.

Men were taken into the front room of the house. Women and children were herded into the back.

Then the power went out and the house plunged into absolute darkness.

Eddie, our interpreter, screamed at these Iraqis in a rage that I had never heard from him. He sounded like he was prepared to beat any and all of them any second. His voice demanded instant obedience. While it was possible he spoke to them this way for effect, I suspect his anger at the mass-murderers who had car-bombed his home town for years was totally genuine.

Flashlights came on and I could see again.

Captain Looney stood before the Iraqi man who had told me he was a police officer and asked whether he knew anything about Haji Jawad.

“I’ve never heard of him,” the supposed police officer said.

“Hey!” Captain Looney said. “Everybody knows who he is. Saying you’ve never heard of him is like saying you’ve never heard of Moqtada al Sadr.”