Urban Violence

Looking skyward on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Called to a 12-year old boy, gunshot in the chest. Lights and sirens, moving through traffic as quickly as we can; arriving we find three fire engines, four police cars, and fifty some-odd people gathered around on the grass. In the stairwell lies a young African-American boy in a puddle of his own blood. Firemen are viciously pumping on his tiny chest, sweat pouring down their faces. A hole the size of his little fist is evident on the left side of his chest. No pulses, or breaths; pupils are dilated and non-reactive. It seems futile but we work him as hard as we can. He's pronounced in the ER within moments of arrival.

Urban violence was something that I was never exposed to both as a youth and even later as an adult. It's reality is stark and obscene, and you don't know wether to cry or scream as you stare at it's aftermath. You're angry at everyone involved, even the victim himself draws your ire.

Early Morning Baghdad

Baghdad is having a bad morning today. As I sit here watching the sun rise in the eastern sky working on my first cup of coffee there have been several near-by explosions, punctuating the post-dawn stillness. Smoke rises in the distance somewhere between the buildings, marking the location of the carnage. Out there amid the cityscape someone has lost a husband or a daughter, a young girl walking to school or a man heading out to work. They will not be coming home tonight; all that knew them, their lives have been violently changed forever. I continue to work on my coffee pretending to be stoic, part of me trying in vain to empathize, another part thankful that I cannot.

Bully

One of the many street dogs that roam the neighborhood. They're all harmless and spend their days lounging around in the sand or in the shade not bothering anyone.

Driving out of the compound yesterday I watched in horror as a young Iraqi man raised a 2-foot piece of black rubber hose above his head and violently brought it down onto one the the street dogs that populate the neighborhood. If the dog hadn't leaped out of the way he certainly would have hit the dog. The man stood there and laughed as he raised the hose again for another try.

I was greatly tempted to halt the car, get out, and give the man a bit of his own medicine. In retrospect I wish that I had, but we kept moving as we had a client in the car with us. I bit my lip knowing that I had made the best decision for the client in the back of the car, and fought back my rage against the bully with the hose. The next time I'm not so sure that I can be as controlled.

I used the incident as a teaching point to one of our Iraqi counterparts, explaining to him how Americans, and other westerns, hate injustice and loath bullies. It's in our nature to stick up for the down-trodden, and oppressed. I went so far as to use the Special Forces motto De Oppresso Liber as an example. All of this was new to him and I think difficult to understand, as the Arab mentality is to loath weakness of any kind. This is what allowed the man to mistreat the complacent dog sleeping in the street; it made him feel strong to pick on the weak. I wonder how strong he would have felt if I had stopped and "had a chat" with him?

Counter-Insurgency 101

I was asked yesterday what I thought was the greatest factor reducing the violence in Iraq over the last several months. The question caught me off guard a bit because I have never really given it any thought.

After a pause I reverted back to Counter-Insurgency 101 and gave my answer. The U.S surge made it clear to the radical Islamists that victory would not be forthcoming anytime soon. The Coalition applied a full-court press with great adeptness utilizing it's advantages and minimizing those of its enemy. It became clear that an insurgent victory was a long way off and it's ranks began to fraction under the steady pressure of the Coalition's war fighting and intelligence operations.

The Coalition sent a tacit or otherwise message to the insurgency that it was not going to be allowed to win, no matter what; it had hit its high-water mark and will be continually pushed back and marginalized if the insurgents continued to violently struggle. The best course of action, like in countless insurgencies before it, would be to sue for peace and consolidate what gains it had made before those too were whittled away. This, in my opinion, is what has lead to the marked drop in violence over the past several months.

Certainly the violence continues, but for the most part, they are outliers; uncoordinated attacks against targets of opportunity by small groups of fighters that didn't get the memo. It will soon be the Iraqi's sole job to mop up these factions and hold onto the gains. The Coalition will remain in the background to ensure that the homeostasis remains. Should the Coalition draw down too quickly, however, then the insurgency may see an opportunity for victory after all and press the fight anew.

Car Bombs Over Dinner

A little Iraqi girls stares into the camera.

We’re getting car-bombed this evening. So far there have been no less than three massive explosions within the course of twenty minutes, all within a quarter mile of the villa. The windows have been shaken, doors rattled, and dinner conversations abruptly stopped. “Wow, that was a pretty good thump”. It all serves as a poignant reminder as to where we are, and the dangers that lurk closer than we believe. Sometimes we forget.

When It's Time To Go Home

The littlest soccer player; retreats from the pitch dominated by bigger kids and heads alone towards the empty playground. This is a very sad photo for me, maybe because he's about the same age as my son.

Late morning, much of the bureau is still in bed having stayed up late keeping with the U.S. news cycle. KaaaWhomp! The windows of the villa shake within their frames, one of my indicators that the explosion was either very large or sufficiently close enough to be of interest. Within moments the radio comes alive with the heavily accented voice of the guard supervisor trying to tell us what he can see or what the guards on their posts have observed. Back and forth, Arabic-English-Arabic, reports and speculation come across the airwave.

Once on the roof I squint my eyes trying to adjust to the intense light, scanning the cityscape for smoke. Guards continue to speculate in adrenaline-fuled Arabic as one of the others attempts to translate. The recruiting station for the Iraqi National Guard was just hit with a car bomb, less than a half of a mile away. Undoubtedly people are dead and injured, screaming in the streets for help, shocked that this has happened to them. Children are maimed, torn from their parents, lives have been taken or altered forever.

Returning to the kitchen to grab another cup of coffee, my attention turns to what's on TV in the living room. Strange place this is.

Closing The Barn Door

Standing post in the morning sun

An old, wooden horse-drawn cart blew up on the busy city streets of Baghdad the other day. Someone planted explosives under the decrepit cart, drove it through the city, got off and walked away, detonating the cart remotely. Several nearby vehicles and people were injured, the only fatality that I'm aware of was the horse. The Government of Iraq has now prohibited horse-drawn carts from the city streets, literally closing the barn door after... If this wasn't so tragic it would be comical.

Kaawhumph!!

A car bomb went off about 300 meters from the villa last night, rattling windows and shaking the walls. Nighttime explosions are a rarity with most coming in the early morning during rush hour.

The explosion was abruptly followed by the Minister of Interior’s militia firing its weapons, at what I have no idea. This is the biggest threat in one of these incidents, catching a stray round from some idiot with an AK. The shooting went on for about five minutes and it’s not hard to imagine that they were firing at themselves in the darkened, smoke filled streets.

Closer To God?

Old bicycle outside a roadside shop.

Several near-by explosions, car bombs detonating, ruptured this morning’s calm. We were warned about an increased level of violence during the month of Ramadan. It seems odd doesn’t it, the more revered the holiday the more violence it begets? I will never understand how someone can deeply believe that by killing and maiming innocents that he is somehow becoming closer to his god.

Think Long And Hard

Muslim prayer rug hung up in concertina wire

I listened carefully to President Bush’s speech yesterday, as did everyone else in the bureau. While he mentioned it several times I don’t think that the President communicated very well the foreseen results of the inevitable U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.

When the United States soon leaves Iraq this country will cease to exist. The government will fold almost immediately and a sectarian war will ignite claiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives over the next decade. This is something that almost everyone that I’ve met in Iraq agrees upon wholeheartedly regardless of where they stand on the current struggle.

Sectarian warlords sponsored by Iraq’s so-called neighbors will carve up Iraq and biblical scale genocide will ensue. The West will have squandered its last, best hope of achieving some modicum of stability in the region.

At home thhe American public will politically bury its head in the sands of isolationism and pray to God that the violence does not come to the United States. It will come; and come and come and there will be nothing that any government agency can do about it. Jack Bauer does not exist, and the septic violence will spill out from the Middle East and flow right into the heart of the United States and its allies.

To return to the Middle East and aggressively root out the cancer of radical Islam e.g., terrorism will take an exponentially larger military force a much, much longer time and cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of U.S. lives.

Americans might want to think long and hard about banging the politically popular tambourine of “withdrawal at all cost”. There will be a cost; and it will be globally catastrophic.

Mansur Hotel Bombed

The Mansur Hotel was bombed an hour ago by a suicide vest bomber who detonated himself inside the lobby while a Sunni Arab tribal conference was taking place. Initial reports indicate that seven people are dead and the entire lobby is completely destroyed.

Through the Looking Glass

Normally we do our live shots from a position on the roof looking out across the city skyline. In the background is a very picturesque mosque and some palm trees, all very Baghdad-like.

Today, because of an active sniper threat, we had to move the position down to the relative safety of the villa garden. It’s still very nice, but doesn’t afford the great skyline shot that the viewers have grown accustom to.

It’s been a very active day today. Following the bombing of the Samarra mosque the city instituted a curfew in an attempt to head off Shi’a reprisals. Active firefights broke out throughout the city, one just a little too close for my liking. Reports flowed in from Iraqi sources that mosques were being burned and the retaliative murders had begun. At one point it seemed as if we were caught (stranded?) in the middle of an all or nothing civil war. Iraqis remembered well the last time this mosque was attacked. People were pulled off buses and shot in the street by angry mobs; thousands of innocents lost their lives.

Pending Doom

Two minarets of the much-revered Shi’ite mosque in Samarra were badly damaged this morning in an attack. This was the same mosque that was attacked and terribly damaged last year, which sparked a wave of sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Baghdad will implement a curfew starting at 3:00 p.m. local time, just slightly more than one hour from now. The entire city is bracing itself for the inevitable reprisals by the Shi’a faithful.

The atmosphere reminds me the hurricane warnings that we used to get in Miami. People knew something potentially bad was heading their way and would begin to take the preplanned steps to protect themselves. It’s a mood of anxiousness coupled with pending doom.