U.S. hunt for Baath members humiliates, angers villagers

Deaths of teenager and two others spark talk of revenge

Washington Post
June 15, 2003
By Anthony Shadid

Along orange groves and orchards of figs and pears watered by the timeless churn of the Tigris River, Hashim Mohammed Aani often sat before a bird cage he built of scrap wood and a loose lattice of chicken coop wire.

A chubby 15-year-old with a mop of curly black hair and a face still rounded by adolescence, he was quiet, painfully shy. Awkward might be the better word, his family said. For hours every day, outside a house perched near the riverbank, the youngest of six children languidly watched his four canaries and nightingale. Even in silence, they said, the birds were his closest companions.

On Monday morning, after a harrowing raid into this town by U.S. troops that deployed gunships, armored vehicles and soldiers edgy with anticipation, the family found Aani's body, two gunshots to his stomach, next to a bale of hay and a rusted can of vegetable oil. With soldiers occupying a house nearby, his corpse lay undisturbed for hours under a searing sun.

Lt. Arthur Jimenez, who commanded a platoon of the 4th Infantry Division near the house, said he did not know the details of Hashim's death. But he feared the boy was unlucky. "That person," he said, "was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time."

By this weekend, the largest military operation since the war's end --one involving 4,000 troops -- had wound down in this prosperous village 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, with no U.S. soldiers killed and little resistance. But in the aftermath, Thuluya has become a town transformed.

With grief over the death of Hashim and two others, the Sunni Muslim population here speaks of revenge. Those sentiments are mixed with confusion. A vast majority belonged to the Baath Party and now worry about how far the United States will cast a net to root out its former members. Bound together by clan and tribe, many have been uneasy since the U.S. forces tapped informers from Thuluya. One of them wore a burlap bag over his head as he fingered residents for the troops to question, igniting vows of bloody vendettas.

"I think the future's going to be very dark," said Rahim Hamid Hammoud, 56, a soft-spoken judge, as he joined a long line in paying his respects to Hashim this week. "We're seeing each day become worse than the last."

The echoes of Apache helicopters and F-16, A-10 and AC-130 warplanes soon after midnight Monday woke the four families of Hashim's relatives and signaled the start of the military thrust, dubbed Operation Peninsula Strike. The goal was to find elements of resistance fighters who have been ambushing U.S. troops, the military said. Within minutes, armored vehicles plowed down the dirt road to the families' compound. Humvees and troop transports followed.

From the other direction, on the banks of the Tigris near a reed-shrouded island, soldiers hurried from camouflage boats. They ran up a hill, near a small garden of okra and green beans and past a patch of purple flowers known as "prophet's carpet."

"We came here ready to fight," Jimenez recalled.

At the sound of their arrival, Hashim's cousin, Asad Abdel-Karim Ibrahim, said he went outside the gate with his parents, brother and two sisters. In his arms was his 7-month-old niece, Amal. They raised a white head scarf, but soldiers apparently did not see it. Ibrahim was shot in the upper right arm. He dropped the baby, who started screaming. Days later, Ibrahim was still wearing a piece of soiled tape placed on his back by the soldiers that read: "15-year-old male, GSW [gunshot wound] @ arm."

"The Americans were shouting in English, and we didn't know what they were saying," he said.

Around the corner, residents said soldiers searched the house of Fadhil Midhas, 19. Mentally retarded, he started shouting when soldiers put tape over his mouth, fearful that he would suffocate. Women there tried to explain -- more with hand gestures than words -- and residents said soldiers finally splashed water over Midhas's face in an attempt to quiet him.

In the commotion, Hashim ran away, headed toward the thick groves behind his house. Relatives said he was unarmed.

"He was trying to hide," said his brother, Riyadh, who was detained for four days. "He didn't know what to do."

U.S. troops and residents say about 400 residents were arrested in the sweep. By week's end, residents said, all but 50 were released from a makeshift detention center at an abandoned air base known as Abu Hleij, seven miles to the north. At the entrance, guarded by two soldiers who said no one was available to comment, graffiti painted in English read, "Welcome to Camp Black Knight."

U.S. officials described Operation Peninsula Strike as the centerpiece of a newly aggressive military campaign in a region of northwestern Iraq dominated by Sunni Muslims, who have long played a leadership role in Iraq and were the backbone of ousted president Saddam Hussein's three-decade rule. Since the beginning of May, 11 U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been killed in action, many of them in sniper shootings, hit-and-run attacks and ambushes along the Sunni crescent, which stretches west along the Euphrates and north along the Tigris.

"We understand animosity can be a result, but as we get bad actors and the quality of life improves, people will understand what we're trying to do," a U.S. military spokesman said today.

In Thuluya, many residents complained that the entire town felt punished by the operation. In their conversations about the wadhaa, or situation, there was a hint of anxiety over their future. While Iraq's Shiite majority often looks to its clergy, and the Kurds in the north are represented by two parties with warm relations with the United States, Sunnis are, to a degree, disenfranchised, many falling back on tribes whose authority has risen over the past decade.

"They carried out the raid here because we're Sunni and because Saddam was Sunni," said Ibrahim Ali Hussein, 60, a farmer with a white scarf tied loosely over his head. "After this operation, we think 100 Saddams is better than the Americans."

"We're not criminals," added Hussein Hamoud Mohammed, 54, a veterinarian and Baath Party member. "If they don't come in peace, then we'll attack them with our fists and feet. We'll even bite them."

Residents of Thuluya make no secret of their ties to both the Baath Party and Hussein's government, though many insist membership does not make them complicit in attacks on Americans. Throughout his rule, Hussein was known for courting Sunnis who, like him, were poor and came from small towns along the Tigris like Thuluya at the expense of the wealthier and traditionally powerful Sunnis in Baghdad. The town prospered, and elegant villas bordered by manicured lawns are not uncommon. Some residents estimated that as many as 90 percent of the residents were party members; as many as 25 percent were employed by the army, government or intelligence services.

Some complain that the largest tribe in the city -- the Jabbour -- fell out of favor with Hussein after some of its members plotted a coup before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But sympathy for Hussein still runs deep.

"I'll tell you the truth, I liked him," said Hussein, the farmer.

Lounging on cushions over a cement floor, he said the Iraqi president guaranteed stability. In a phrase heard time and again in the Sunni region, he said only a strong leader could hold this fractious country together. He quoted a proverb: "He who is scared stays peaceful."

At the condolences for Hashim, residents -- some still holding tags attached to their clothing that designated them as prisoners of war --debated American intentions in the wake of the raid. Some said retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, the first civilian administrator, had promised that only the 55 most-wanted Baath Party loyalists would be targeted. Now, they feared, his successor, L. Paul Bremer III, had declared war on all party members, even the millions that had joined the party more for its patronage than its politics.

"Now all the people are hunted. All the people are being chased," said Hammoud, who worked as a judge for 30 years. "The condition to work in the government meant you should be in the Baath Party. The majority of Iraqis are in the Baath Party."

Over glasses of sweet, dark tea, he shook his head. He spoke in a lecturing tone, his years on the bench showing. "The rule is that someone is innocent until proven guilty," Hammoud said. "They're stomping all over our dignity."

As the men gathered in the room, smoking cigarettes, a helicopter rumbled overhead.

"It's better now," Hammoud said. "For a few days, I wouldn't have been able to hear you speak."

For four of those days, Hashim's uncle, Hashim Ibrahim Mohammed, was in custody. He described himself as a taxi driver and acknowledged that he was a Baath Party member, but insisted it was necessary to get his three children admitted to college. When soldiers entered his house after midnight, they put him on the ground, a boot on his back, and tied his hands with plastic handcuffs, he recalled. Tape was placed over his mouth and he was blindfolded. When he could see again, 12 hours later, he was at Abu Hleij, the airport.

Mohammed ticked off how many of his relatives were arrested -- 15 in all. Most were released by Friday.

Echoing other released prisoners, he said the questions in the interrogation were cast wide: Where is Saddam Hussein? Are senior party officials here? Who belongs to the Republican Guard, the military, the Fedayeen militia? Who has a lot of money in town?

Many residents said they felt humiliated. Mohammed slept outside on a graded spot near a bombed aircraft hangar, smashing two scorpions near his head. U.S. soldiers tossed military meals and bottles of water to the crowd. "They treated us like monkeys -- who's the first one who can jump up and catch the food," said Mohammed, who was captured by Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and kept as a prisoner for 11 years.

Resentment is still coursing through the village over the use of the informer. The fabric of Thuluya is stitched by tribal lineages. The Jabbour is the largest tribe but others are represented: the Khazraji, Ubaidi, Bujweri and Bufarraj. The informer, dressed in desert camouflage with a bag over his head, fingered prisoners on the first day of the operation, recalled Mohammed and others who said they saw the informer. Residents blamed the informer and five others, all from the Jabbour tribe, for providing the intelligence that led to the sweep.

Nearly all seemed to know the man's identity. They called him the "masked man," and children outside Hashim's house sang a limerick about him: "Masked man, your face is the face of the devil." The men of Hashim's family hesitated to say the man's name or declare his fate. They feared vendettas would ensue, that chaos would follow as tribes sought their own justice.

But one member of the Jabbour tribe whispered what would happen. "Of course, he'll be killed," he said, "but not yet."

Added another: "They'll rip him to pieces."

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