Hard-fought peace still fragile as Marines pack up

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer | Saturday, February 5, 2005 10:21 PM PST ∞

NAJAF, Iraq ---- On Thursday, the top U.S. general in Iraq flew in from his command post in Baghdad to this bustling American base outside the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, about 100 miles southwest of Baghdad, to deliver a message of thanks to the Marines.

Army Gen. George Casey, the commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, thanked the Marines of the Camp Pendleton-based 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit for handing the U.S. mission and the interim Iraqi government the first strategic victory in Iraq when they drove a radical militia out of Najaf's old city in a bloody and destructive battle in August.

He went on to thank them for ensuring a second strategic victory by preparing the region for last Sunday's historic election, in which more than 80 percent of registered voters voted without violence.

Peace and democracy, the general seemed to say, were the Americans' handiwork in Najaf, which is often cited as the premiere example of American success in Iraq.

Indeed, smiling in photos and showing off their new schools, the people of Najaf appear happy with the hard work of U.S. troops in the last few months. Judging by the absence of attacks against the Americans, residents of Najaf seem to have forgiven the destruction that happened in the heat of battle, seem all too happy to obey the American troops who force them off the roads, and seem determined to keep things quiet in the region as the political process plays out.

But beyond the smiling children in the news photographs and beneath Iraqis' outward appreciation for the work the Marines have done to rebuild the city, a resentment simmers among older Iraqis who say America abandoned them in decades past.

"America owed us this," Najafi election worker Ali Fakhur al Din said on election day after guiding a woman to a polling booth.

Repeating it in Arabic, others looked up and gave knowing smiles, even nods, glancing around the room in silent solidarity.

'America owed us this'

The election worker, Fakhur al Din, went on to explain what he meant.

Starting with President Reagan, he said his generation of Iraqi Shiites will not forget how successive U.S. administrations and generations of Americans stood by silently while they suffered at the hands of the Iraqi Baath regime.

No one heard their cry for democracy then, he said. Saddam Hussein killed communists, Iranians and jihadists, so he was America's friend.

Fakhur al Din recounted America's silence in the 1980s while Kurds were massacred in northern Iraq and while a generation of Shiite leaders was assassinated or imprisoned in the south.

Democracy in Iraq seemed unimportant to America then, he said.

What the Shiites of Najaf remember most, he said, are the massacres after the 1991 Gulf War ---- when former President Bush urged the Shiites to rise up against Saddam Hussein.

"Bush, the father, told us to fight," he said.

The Shiites rose up, exposing a generation of leaders and cadre who had conspired against the regime.

The Shiite leaders and tens of thousands of residents from southern cities disappeared in the systematic killing and mass imprisonment that followed the war.

While the mass graves that are now shown as examples of Saddam's savagery were being filled, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in the region were ordered to stand down, and most eventually went home as the killing continued.

"My sister, my brother, are under the ground," said Fakhur al Din, tears in his eyes as he pointed to a veiled woman voting behind one of the four cardboard ballot boxes in the room. "They very much support(ed) this process.

"America owed us this."

Marines left mark on city

The Marines here have worked hard to change the minds of Najafis like Fakhur al Din.

During the battle for the city in August, they fought a conventional fight with a cruel twist: they were ordered to wipe out the militia without harming Najaf's central Imam Ali Mosque, where the militants took cover and attacked the Marines with machine guns, rockets and mortars.

With disciplined fighting, the Marines narrowly avoided enraging the Islamic world by not significantly damaging the mosque. They fought the militia with their hands tied by world opinion, and lost seven Marines in the process.

Since then, the militia has not resurfaced, and Moqtada al Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose militia the Marines were fighting, is reported to be in the shadows trying to gain a foothold in a new elected Iraqi government ---- for now ---- instead of rearming his men.

The Marines also distinguished themselves by turning from warriors into humanitarians and teachers.

After the fighting, they immediately launched a peaceful effort, reaching out to residents to explain why they had to fight the militia and paying them on-the-spot cash for property and suffering.

Marines say they have shelled out about $20 million to rebuild schools, markets, police stations and other infrastructure. After a final payment Monday, they say they probably will have paid about $10 million to residents for damages and death.

They have helped train and equip about 10,000 members of Iraq's new security forces, including police, army, border patrol and facilities guards.

By election day, Najaf had enjoyed five straight months of peace and prosperity while other regions burned with insurgent-sown strife.

The Marines with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit will return home this month as heroes. They will get credit for doing all they could in the time they were here ---- some paying the ultimate price fighting for people they didn't even know.

Peace could be fleeting

But Marines and soldiers in Najaf are the first to caution that Najafis' cooperation could be temporary and peace could be fleeting.

They say they that while the children run to the road and greet convoys with smiles and waves, their parents usually remain in the background, ambivalent to their presence.

It will be a long time before the children call the shots in Iraq.

Najaf's Old City ---- the Shiite heart and soul of the region ---- remains off-limits to U.S. troops, lest they want to start a fight.

"Kufa don't like us," one Marine said of another important town in the Najaf region where the Marines say they are not welcome.

"They want us gone as bad as we want to be gone," said another troop.

Marines training the local Iraqi police and army say that many of the recruits are really militants for radical cleric Sadr, on loan only as long as Sadr says so.

"Maybe they'll actually be able to hit us when we come back to fight them next year," said one Marine sergeant while helping train police to use their assault rifles. He was only half-kidding.

Other Marines admit that even their best efforts at rebuilding a few dozen schools and doling out money for personal damages could never mask what was destroyed during the fighting in August nor fill what one Marine called the deep "well of need."They say the militia needs only to point out the hundreds of crumbling, war-torn buildings or display the dozens of civilian amputees to get things stirred up and force the Americans back into battle mode again.

Mixed feelings about future

Privately, many Marines also say they have little faith that the National Guard troops who recently arrived to replace them stand much chance of learning the nuances of Najaf quickly enough to keep the town quiet.

It's not their fault, the Marines say. The militia will test them.

Once the shooting starts again, they say, all bets are off and the Marines' work here could easily come undone.

As the 2,000-some Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit begin to leave Iraq, many openly say they expect to return to the country ---- if not Najaf ---- again next year in what military officials are already calling Operation Iraqi Freedom IV.

Most Marines say they hope for the best in Najaf, but shrug off questions about what could come next.

"That's way above my pay grade," they say.

They have a saying that they scribble on the walls of portable toilets across Iraq that perhaps sums up their ambivalence about the future: "We the willing, sent by the unknowing, do the impossible for the ungrateful." The saying may apply in Najaf, where so tenuous seems this first strategic victory in Iraq ---- the pacification of the south ---- and so uncertain is the second strategic victory ---- the character of a new government ----that a model city in post-invasion Iraq may be just a mirage in the desert for now.

There is an Arab saying that goes something like: at the narrow bridge, there are no brothers, there are no friends.

Postelection Iraq may soon present that narrow bridge where the Shiites say to the Americans: thank you, now go.

The next phase of the Shiites' own political project may be to protect their electoral gains by ousting the occupiers, arming themselves against the Sunni insurgency and girding for civil war.

In that case, Sadr and others may have a mandate to again take up arms.

Political history is deep, marches on

In light of Shiites' overwhelming turnout at the polls last Sunday, the freedom to vote may look to many Americans like a gift and an opportunity that America has granted them.

But the Shiites have had a long and sophisticated history of political maneuvering without America's hand ----- and often despite it.

For most of a century ---- under Ottoman administration, British imperialism, a puppet monarchy, Sunni Arab oppression and, most recently, American occupation ---- the Shiites have been debating, learning and developing the foundations of a modern Islamic state.

The role of the clerics in government was and remains the at the center of their debate.

As subjects, they have often taken their blows, chilled their resistance and cooperated with occupiers or tyrants for short-term gains; They know how to hold their tongues and hide their swords.

Their plodding patience in their political project is legendary. And whatever prize lay ahead has been paid over generations in blood.

The last five months of relative peace in southern Iraq, which have allowed Gen. Casey and other American leaders to chalk up two "strategic victories" for American forces, may actually be more of a tactical victory on the part of the Shiites than a real turning point in the war.

The clerics, Sadr's militia and the Shiites of southern Iraq all had everything to gain by the election and by the temporary protection granted by the American troops stationed nearby while the political process played out.

But if enough Shiites and Kurds believe that Americans owed them that protection against the Sunni insurgency and civil war until an election could be held, it could mean that the slate has now been wiped clean.

The capital that this generation of U.S. troops may believe they are stocking up among Iraqis by their sacrifice and hard work may actually just break even in the Kurdish and Shiite regions where U.S. leaders boast about creating stability.

And in some Iraqis' eyes, these young Marines and soldiers who fought for that stability may be paying a debt left by their fathers with their blood.

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at dmortenson@nctimes.com.

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