Several
times a week, in every troublespot in Iraq, late-night raids are carried
out by American and Iraqi troops against the homes of suspected insurgents.
Raids take place at around 2 or 3 in the morning. The targets vary,
some are suspected makers of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's),
by far the number one killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Others are
suspected insurgents, who gather in small groups to ambush troops,
usually after an IED attack, then vanish, invariably protected by
local people. Almost always, the target houses are residential. Entry
is abrupt. A dozen soldiers line up on opposite sides of a door. One
soldier kicks it in, then he and his comrades stream in, yelling in
English and Arabic and quickly subduing the suspects. Their hands
are tied and secured by thick plastic bands, and they are made to
kneel, while the house is aggressively searched for any sign of contraband.
Meanwhile, the company or platoon commander, usually a captain, verifies
the identities of the captured men and interrogates them with the
help of an interpreter.
Interpreters come in several forms. A few, very few, are American
citizens of Arabic descent contracted by American companies. Many
other are Arabic-speaking Kurds, usually university-educated young
men who tend to hate Iraqis. The
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rest are Iraqis, mostly Shia, who are local
but often from a different neighborhood than they patrol. They almost
always wear black masks and sunglasses or baklavas to conceal their
identities.
If contraband is found, or the
answers from the captured Iraqis are deemed unacceptable, they are
blindfolded and led out of the house. The officer and interpreter
will go into the next room, where women and children are being watched
over, and explain to them that their husband, father, son is being
detained. At the news they nearly always leap up wailing, clawing
at themselves, tightly grasping their head in their hands, begging
for mercy or leniency. The man or men will be stuffed into a vehicle
and taken to a detention facility. Often he will be released in
a few days if there is not enough evidence at hand to hold him.
Other times he will be held in the American or Iraqi prison system
indefinitely. Perhaps 25 per cent of the raids I witnessed led to
the detention of suspected insurgents. The rest failed, victims
of bad intelligence or timing.
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