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Posted: Apr. 10, 2003
Capital chaos
On the streets in Baghdad, mainly soldiers and looters
BY KIT R. ROANE

Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Iraq.

Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

BAGHDAD–Much of Iraq's capital remained edgy and ghostlike on Thursday, with stores shuttered and most civilians staying indoors. For the most part, those on the move were either marines patrolling new sections of town or looters toting away as much as they could carry on their backs and in cars.

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For now, the looters have seemed content to steal from government buildings, military bases, and the shops and homes of Baath Party bureaucrats. But many Iraqis said they feared the lawlessness will spread unless the marines do more to bring a sense of normalcy back to the city. "Security is very bad, we are not safe, and people are taking what they want," said Daniel Mussa, 42, as he went outside with his wife to look at the marines around the Palestine Hotel. "We have no electricity, no water, no hospital. In Basra, the British are bringing police and water and making hospital [function]. They are better than the Americans."

While Iraqis asked the marines to do more, they were at the same time concerned the American force would stay long past its welcome. Rebuilding the infrastructure and protecting Baghdad's citizens are fine, but an occupation lasting more than six months would be seen as too long for most of the capital's residents. "I want the United States to build me a home," said Saleem al Nagaf, a 43-year-old laborer. "But I am afraid they will stay and take our oil." Dia Hussein, 26, a barber, agreed, saying that only the future will tell whether "Bush is a liar or a helper, a colonizer or a liberator."

"But if he brings us liberation, America will be the first country in the world to do so in this way," he added, noting that many Iraqis remain angry at the United States for civilian casualties. "I do not thank the Americans because they have killed the civilian people," he said.

Some Iraqis remain steadfastly against the American occupation, claiming that it was possible only because the Iraqi Army lacked the food necessary to survive. Otherwise, the Marines would have never made it to the Iraqi capital, said Ali Haidury, 34, a former captain in the Iraqi Army. "We don't like America or the Saddam regime," he said.

The question for Iraq now is what will emerge from this occupation. For most Iraqis, the dream is of democracy, of free elections with representation from all its sometimes discordant groups. But not everyone is convinced anything will really change. Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the exiled Iraqi National Congress who was recently brought back into Iraq by the Americans, is seen as an outsider who "has not suffered," said one Iraqi. And there are few other candidates, with Iraqis distrustful of the leaders who remain.

In the end, many feel as Abas Adres does. A worker in a leather factory, the 41-year-old Baghdad resident saw Iraq's future as bleak as its recent past. Adres stood near the decapitated head of a statue of Saddam in the city's center, watching those in passing cars sometimes stop to spit on it or give it a kick. "The last president stole from the country," he said, looking down at the head, "and the next one will do the same."

Posted: Apr. 9, 2003
Jubilation and tragedy in Baghdad
Partying in the streets, but also death, as Iraqis marked the end of Saddam's regime

BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Iraq.

Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

BAGHDAD–The Marines rolled into the center of Baghdad on Wednesday, marking the occasion by pulling down a large statue of Saddam Hussein with an armored assault vehicle, to the cheers of a large crowd in the Iraqi capital. After the statue fell, citizens swooped down upon it, spitting on Saddam's face and beating it with sledgehammers, shoes, and whatever else was handy. "We are all very happy because we want peace," said Ali Imam, who watched the display while holding hands with his son Hussein. "We want to finish war here and go back to work and be able to get food."

Lt. Col. Bryan P. McCoy, the Marine commander who brought his soldiers to this spot after fighting his way from the Kuwaiti desert, looked on and smiled. But asked what he was thinking as the statue fell, he stiffened and looked to the ground: "It's a great day for the Iraqi people, but I'm thinking about my men who died along the way." Lt. Col. McCoy lost one marine to machine-gun fire and two others to a mortar round in the days leading up to his arrival in Baghdad. "I'm thinking there's still work to be done," he added, before attempting to begin setting up security in the capital.

But the Iraqis in his midst would not let him go, asking to have pictures taken with him and having him sign Iraqi bills with Saddam's picture on them. Nearby, other Iraqi men shook hands with his marines, some giving them flowers, which they wore in notches on their flack jackets or on their helmets.

But while most Iraqis expressed glee at the Marine arrival, others were more cautious. "We are not happy because Americans have come here, and we are not sad because the evil regime is dead," said Munawar al Zubadi. "We do not know yet if the Americans are here to help or to just take our oil."

There was also a smattering of protest, with one vocal peace activist from England screaming names at the marines and calling them, among other things, murderers and pigs. Another group of Arab men held up a sign that said in big block letters, "Human Shields." Around this was written GO HOME, YOU U.S. WANKERS.

This bothered the marines little, however. "If she wants to protest, that's her right," said Lance Cpl. Mick Whittington, 22, of Chicago, speaking of the woman who was calling the marines names. "It feels good to free the Iraqis and bring down a dictator." Cpl. Dustin Laderdorf, 18, of Oroville, Calif., looked around in disbelief. Only moments before entering the city center, he had been looking for snipers firing at the marines as they made their way into town. "It's about time we got here, because we were putting up with a lot of bull and cheated death a bunch to make it," he said. "All the other places were ghost towns, nothing but gunshots and C4 exploding."

Although the marines entered the city center with little if any resistance, there were civilian casualties. And it was unclear if they were shot in crossfire or merely shot at by scared and fidgety marines. Geert Van Moorter, a physician with Medical Aid for the Third World, a Belgian humanitarian organization, said that his hospital sent an ambulance out to take two patients to another facility but that it limped back moments later strafed by dozens of rounds of machine-gun fire that its driver said was from American guns. Two people in the ambulance died, a third picked up on the road seemed likely to die, and both the driver and co-driver were in serious condition from the shooting, Van Moorter said. He said the ambulance was followed into the emergency bay by a city bus, which was also strafed with gunfire and held about seven wounded civilians.

Other cars continued to make their way to the hospital as the day passed, all with civilians injured or killed by Marine gunfire, the doctor said. Noting that the hospital was out of nearly all necessary surgical equipment, he added: "There was blood everywhere, but I could do nothing but stroke their heads and tell them it would be OK."

"This," he said, was "another phase of the liberation."

Posted: Apr. 6, 2003
At Baghdad’s gates
Under fire, Marines find advancing slow... and dangerous
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Iraq.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

BAGHDAD–Marine forces drew themselves up to the gates of Baghdad on Sunday, coming under sporadic fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades as they searched and cleared the route to a canal that acts as the final southwestern barrier to the Iraqi capital. Soldiers with the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, had hoped to enter the city and take another objective, but came under heavier fire as they approached the two bridges that span the canal.

One of the bridges had been partially damaged by Iraqi troops attempting to disable it with explosives. These troops also booby-trapped much of the rest of the bridge. The Marines were unable to cross the second bridge because it was unsound and needed to be buttressed by engineers before large vehicles could pass. This work was hampered by a larger force of Iraqi regular and irregular troops on the other side and the need to continue securing the area after any United States forces passed through.

To reach the bridges, Marines had to secure a large stretch of road banked by military facilities and scientific centers, the latter of which are believed to be former sites of chemical and biological weapons research, Marine officers said. Although the fighting was sporadic, it was also intense at times, with Marines having to call in close air support for F-15s and other Air Force aircraft. The day was also punctuated by the whistle of rounds from howitzers and the thump of mortar rounds being sent into pockets of Iraqi resistance. The radios crackled with orders for squads to protect flanks and move forward to search inside buildings for snipers and stragglers from the Iraqi retreat. At least once, a commander could be heard yelling "cease fire, cease fire" apparently when mortar rounds began to fall too close to Marine squads moving to the bridges.

As the squads moved, tension was high, with leaders disciplining their troops on the spot when they failed to provide enough cover protection for those advancing in front of them or when they became disoriented and failed to advance to the most secure position. "Move, move, move," was the most common command as these small groups made their way toward the bridge, a look of adrenaline- pumping fear often the first response before the soldiers advanced, running as fast as their legs could carry them in their Kevlar vests and chemical warfare protective suits as they sweated in the 106 degree heat and prayed they would make it across both open alleys and boulevards.

Sometimes they would reach their goal, only to be called back to secure a rear area, cursing under their breath at this junior commander or that one. "Ours is an idiot, if you haven't noticed," said one weary lance corporal, as he caught his breath before sprinting back from where he had just come. "I can't wait to get home," said another, asking if the reporter who had been running back and forth with them was "having fun yet." Even though fire was light, no area seemed safe to these men, who, once in position, scanned windows and rooftops for any sign of enemy life. More often than not, they found only frightened civilians, but even these were hard to come by.

The fight has continued into the early evening here, with a large ammo dump on the other side of the canal, next to the possibly usable bridge, being blown up and apparently several of the Iraqi soldiers on the other side next to it were killed. The Iraqis don't dig their ammo into the ground so it can be an easy target. They also dig traditional fighting holes which, while deep, have not been deep enough, Marines said.

U.S. News & World Report

April 21, 2003

In the Line of Fire

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: TARGET: IRAQ; Vol. 134 , No. 13; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 1346 words

DATELINE: Baghdad

HIGHLIGHT: On an Iraqi bridge, tragedy and, after, time to reflect;



BAGHDAD--Look at the range chart. Turn the dial. Warning shot. Bang. "That got his attention," says Cpl. Doug Carrington, easing back his bolt. Carrington's fire has saved one more Iraqi civilian by scaring him off. A few moments later, another Iraqi civilian walks toward the tangle of cars ahead, sees the bodies and the blood in the road, and takes off. "The evolution of man," says Carrington. "Not a shot fired."
A Marine sniper, Carrington this day is to act as an early-warning system for civilians driving toward nervous young marines. The irony is not lost on Carrington's colleagues. "Protecting innocent civilians from marines is certainly a first," says one, barking orders again into the radio, telling marines on the ground to stand down. "We've got it," he says. "Hold your fire."
Carrington has had only about an hour's sleep, but his hands are steady, his distance calculations precise. He wishes there were a translator team on the ground, or some way to warn civilians approaching the marines' positions. But that's not happening, at least not yet. The translators' vehicle, with the loudspeaker on the top, is stuck somewhere in the rear. No one seems to know quite when it will arrive.
The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines has just crossed the Nahrdiyala Canal, 300 yards to his south. Finally, they are in Baghdad. But the marines are jumpy. There have been reports of car bombs. Every Iraqi vehicle, it seems, could be a threat. The sounds of gunfire, even that of other marines, seems a license to shoot. And shoot many do.
The bodies that litter the road are those of Iraqis shelled or shot during the marines' bombardment and occupation of this small strip of dusty streets and desert palm groves. They are the casualties of the Marine Corps's prevailing doctrine--survival, no matter the consequences. Two marines were killed earlier when their armored assault vehicle was struck by an artillery round. The official word came down that it was enemy fire, although at the time many marines who survived suspected the fire was friendly.
Killing field. The result, either way, was a seemingly willful "fog of war," characterized by heavy, sometimes indiscriminate shooting. If it moved, it pretty much died. Reconnaissance by fire was the order of the day. As the marines moved on foot over the bridge, heavy machine gun fire cleared the way, whether there were any incoming rounds or not. As they ran through the streets and palm groves, they fired ahead, possibly at movement, possibly at little more than the rustle of leaves. They tossed grenades over the walls of homes, then went in to see who was inside. Tough call, some said, but this is war. Perhaps, but other marines were so disturbed by the actions they complained to the top brass. "It went up the chain of command," says one, "and they were definitely made aware of it."
There is no mistaking the carnage. On the bridge, the body of a teenage boy lies crumpled on its side, his book bag still slung across his shoulder. The body of a man is splayed out a few feet away. Across the bridge, an old man's body is draped over the wheel of his delivery van. A charred corpse sits in a small passenger car. No weapons were apparent near any of the bodies. These Iraqis died before the marines crossed the river, but other deaths would soon follow.
In just 30 minutes, seven people would be killed on the road going south toward the bridge. It started when a blue passenger van approached. Although a commander shouted for the marines at the side of the road to wait for snipers to fire warning shots, several did not, riddling the van with bullets and stopping it in its tracks. It didn't seem to make much of an impression. Next came a white car, which was also fired upon before it vanished down a side street. Moments later, it was a taxi, then a small pickup. Marines fired on both.
Out of answers. Since the war began, the marines had been forced to deal with suicide bombers and Iraqi prisoners who opened fire after faking surrender. Why take the chance? "If some civilian is dumb enough to drive into our positions," one said, that was his problem. The marines had not established a visible checkpoint at the bridge or put up makeshift signs ordering cars to turn back. The marines never approached the bullet-riddled vehicles to see who was inside or determine if anyone was still alive. "I'm not willing to lose a marine life to do that," said Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, asked afterward if anything could be done to prevent civilian casualties in the future. "That doesn't condone indiscriminate fire. We run a tight battalion here, and we do not want to spill innocent blood." There are few options, McCoy noted, "when you are fighting a war in a city of 5 million people and the enemy is using our hesitation against us."
One option was Carrington, the sniper. When he took up his post near the bridge, fire was controlled and at least eight civilians were saved. Another solution appeared the following morning, when the translator team was sent out in its loudspeaker vehicle to tell Iraqis to stay in their homes.
There was also time, finally, to check out the vehicles that had been shot a day earlier. Remarkably, a middle-aged Iraqi woman and her husband were alive inside the blue van--alive but terrified. The woman's toe had been shot off; the man's cheekbone had been broken by shrapnel. The corpses of two relatives were crumpled together in the front seat; the sister of the man with the broken cheekbone lay dead next to him in the back seat. At their feet were the foodstuffs they had packed for what they'd hoped was a trip to safety. The marines helped the husband and wife into an armored assault vehicle, then scoured the other vehicles for weapons. They found just one, an AK-47 assault rifle in the back of the pickup truck. All of the other cars appeared to have held civilians fleeing the Iraqi capital.
Young and scared. Afterward, some marines blamed the Iraqi regime, noting that the enemy's unfair tactics put Iraqi civilians at risk. That has been amply documented, but some marines also blamed their colleagues, saying some were too green, too nervous--a danger not only to Iraqi civilians but American soldiers. A medic recalled screaming at some marines as the number of Iraqi dead on the bridge increased: "What are you guys doing out there?" These marines, the medic said, responded with shrugs. Even so, several others were near tears after they pulled a healthy 8-year-old girl from the ruins of yet another car--a black Mercedes they had fired on as it approached the bridge.
After they entered the heart of Baghdad, the marines were greeted with cheers by excited Iraqis. But despite what McCoy said would be the use of more "precision fire," still more civilians were killed, according to Geert Van Moorter, a physician with Medical Aid for the Third World, a Belgian humanitarian organization. He looked tired as he walked past the Marine positions near the Sheraton hotel and entered its darkened lobby. An ambulance sent out to take two patients from his hospital to another medical facility had limped back, he said, after it was hit by dozens of rounds of machine gun fire its driver said was from American guns. Two people in the ambulance died, and a third picked up on the road seemed likely to die. The driver and codriver were in serious condition. The ambulance was followed into the emergency bay by a city bus, which had been struck by gunfire and held about seven wounded civilians.
As the day passed, more cars made their way to the hospital. All, Van Moorter said, carried Iraqi civilians injured or killed by marine gunfire. Noting that the hospital was out of nearly all necessary surgical equipment, he added: "There was blood everywhere, but I could do nothing but stroke their heads and tell them it would be OK." This, he said, was "another phase of the liberation." And, he added, he couldn't wait for it to end.

LOAD-DATE: April 15, 2003

U.S. News & World Report

April 14, 2003

"This One's Pretty Nasty"

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: TARGET: IRAQ; FROM THE FRONT; Vol. 134 , No. 12; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 868 words

DATELINE: South Of Baghdad

HIGHLIGHT: ;

"Can't you smell that?" the marine asks, about to gag. I can't smell a thing, even myself, though I know for a fact I smell awful. The marine points up the hill. Dead bodies have been hard to come by on this journey, a testament to the long-range war-fighting tactics of the U.S. military. Here's one, though, a blackened, headless corpse, arms outstretched as if clutching the dusty air.
The marines have reburied the corpse twice already, but the dogs are hungry. One sniffs the air, loping back and forth a few yards away. This time, the marines use sandbags, piling them on top of the corpse, a thoughtful, though probably futile effort to prevent further disturbance of the Iraqi soldier's remains.
This is one of the first dead bodies many of these marines have seen close up. One takes a picture, something perhaps to discuss at the bar when he gets home. Others gaze at it quizzically. "I've seen three so far," says another marine, tossing a sandbag on the corpse. "But this one's pretty nasty."
So far, the invasion of Iraq has provided few points of reference for these marines. It isn't like the movies-- bloody and close. And they're taking few casualties, so D-Day and Iwo Jima don't fit the bill either. What they know is "the fog of war"--colleagues run over by an armored vehicle, a tank plunging into a river in the night, friendly fire. In hushed tones, they talk about their fear of being accidentally killed by one of their own. "Not the way a marine wants to go out," says one.
Nor is it the sort of war most had imagined before joining the marines. "I expected to get shot at a lot more," says Cpl. Daniel Wells, 23, of Brazoria, Texas. He signed up to pay for college at East Texas Baptist University. "The worst thing for us is the slow days," he says, "because you then begin to think about home a bit."
War as concept, what shells and bullets leave behind. And each marine seems to have a slightly different one. A marine shot at in a friendly-fire incident a few days before--something many marines worry about because of the itchy triggers behind them. After days of running firefights, he thinks he might stay in past his four-year hitch, but not because he likes killing. "I just like the camaraderie," he says, "and the ability to teach others what I know." A comrade says it's all about protecting your fellow marines, "and killing all those suckers so we can go home." Others agree heartily. Says a corporal named Karl, 23, from Seymour, Wis.: "Yeah, it's time to go punch that mare in the mouth."
The marines talk of "waxing" and "leveling" the enemy, of "getting one." The descriptions are at once graphic and clinical, the distance between the marines and the Iraqis rendering the battlefield from a perspective not unlike that of television. Except, of course, when a rocket-propelled grenade whizzes past their heads and automatic weapons fire ding-a-lings the cabs of their armored vehicles. Even then, though--or at least afterward--there is a certain detachment. "In contact" is the euphemism of choice here for having been in battle. Between contacts, there is the grim banality of waiting. "The flies getting to you?" one marine asks another. "Yeah," comes the reply. "They were awful on our last mission--we were right next to a dump and all these bodies."
These soldiers have been instructed to avoid creating civilian casualties and ordered by their commander, Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy, to treat all Iraqis "with respect." But the biggest impact on some soldiers has been seeing Iraqi prisoners. "When I first came here," says Cpl. Frederich Ellis, 21, "I was all rough with them, maybe even kicked a few. But then I started hearing what these prisoners were saying to our translators, about how they had to fight or Saddam would kill their families. . . . I started giving them food and water. I realized that there was a bigger purpose here--to free these people."
This is tricky business. Most of the men under McCoy's command had never seen combat before Iraq. Their success in Iraq, he says, depends on their ability not only to fight but to be able to flip the switch and turn off the warrior. "No better friend and no worse enemy is the point we're trying to get across," McCoy says. This is not just polite rhetoric, buffed and polished for a reporter. McCoy has just lost one of his marines in a close gun battle with Iraqi forces. A warrior, he has every right to be aggressive, but aggression, he tells his men, isn't all this war is about. Treating Iraqi prisoners badly, he warns, "only stiffens the resolve of those you're fighting." And, he adds, "It's not the Christian thing to do."
The meaning of war isn't exactly the kind of thing most 18- or 19-year-old Americans spend much time thinking about. But Pfc. Shawn Rogers, 19, has recently begun to think about it a lot. "All these guys are trying to be badasses," he says. "The really badass marines are the ones who know how to fight when they have to but also know when they need to put down their guns. We aren't here to conquer; we are here to help, and if we kick these guys when they are down, that's just what Saddam has told them we'll do."

Posted: Apr. 8, 2003
Wrong time, wrong place
The civilian toll mounts in an unruly city
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Iraq.


Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

BAGHDAD–Marine Cpl. Doug Carrington is an unlikely savior. But as he aimed his sniper rifle down the road on the outskirts of Baghdad, he was saving lives one shot at a time. Look at the range chart. Turn the dial. Warning shot. Bang. "That got his attention," said Carrington, pulling back his bolt. Another Iraqi civilian had been sent scurrying backward, saved from death by a sniper bullet placed just so.

It is one of the oddities of this war, perhaps the oddest sight yet as this war draws toward a close: a Marine sniper protecting Iraqi civilians from a squad of nervous, possibly trigger-happy marines just down the road. But with every marine life considered sacred and amid rumors of car bombs, this is the reality of the moment. It was impossible not to hope, even pray that each car coming down the road understood what Carrington's small, violent benevolence meant. Go back; don't take a left or a right; don't freak out and punch the gas. Just slowly, very slowly, back the car up if you want to live to see another day. Yes, it is a lot for a scared Iraqi civilian to process while under fire and fleeing God knows what. So it was amazing when some made the connection. When they did, some of us cheered. I told Carrington he was the hero of my day. He blushed. "That's the first time anybody's called me that," he added sheepishly.

Those civilians who hadn't figured out what lay ahead, or hadn't been given the chance, littered the road ahead and behind. Carrington had not been there to save them. These were the unlucky, the ones who tried to flee the day before, or in the morning, when the marines of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines crossed the Nahrdiyala Canal, their last barrier into Baghdad.

Marines ran across the bridge over the canal on foot, squads sprinting under Marine cover fire from small arms and machine guns. Then they fanned out to the left and the right, knocking down doors and firing into the distance. They were here to secure the route into Baghdad and they didn't want to take any more casualties; a mortar round had just landed on one of their armored assault vehicles, killing two. Marines grumbled that it appeared to be friendly fire from the mortars they had been unleashing on the other side of the canal. But that mattered little once the marines crossed the canal. Everyone was coming back from this mission alive. If it moved, pretty much it died.

The fog of war was thick and encompassing. Things would only get worse the farther we advanced. It might cost a marine life to believe what was apparent: The Iraqi troops had moved on long ago. Better safe than sorry. Better a civilian casualty than a marine. First squad, second squad, third squad, across the bridge, possibly into the jaws of death. The mortar round that hit the Marine armored assault vehicle had left marines angry and bitter. Marines–even those who said it was friendly fire that had killed their comrades–mumbled under their breath about how that's what they get "for waiting" to cross the canal and secure the area. Others were near tears, or so clenched their jaws that they seemed to be chewing on their teeth.

Our small group of journalists moved with them, swarming close like flies, not wanting to be killed by Iraqis or mistaken for them as we roamed with the troops, in this house, then that, across this field. Hunker down. Dig in. The orders came as quickly as the rifle and machine gun fire, this a cacophony of discordant sound. Helicopters hovered overhead while jets screamed like thunder.

At 300 yards into Baghdad they, and we, drew an arbitrary front line, while other marines continued to clear the houses to the rear, breaking down doors and firing at what moved. Little did except for a blue van, and it soon stopped, cut down by automatic weapons fire as it drove toward the bridge. (Incredibly, it wasn't until the next morning that a terrified middle-age woman covered in a chador and her wounded husband emerged from the van, walking unsteadily toward the marines. Inside, the man's sister lay dead, the food packed for their trip to safety at her feet with the flies. The corpses of two other family members were crumpled together in the front seat.)

"Hold your fire, hold your fire, wait for the snipers to fire their warning shots!" the commander on the ground had screamed when the van was hit. But it was too late. Just as it was for the taxi that ended up stopped a few feet back, its occupants also shot dead. No one in the cars was waving a white flag, but they weren't doing much else either. In only one vehicle was a weapon found–an AK-47 resting in the bed of a pickup truck–Marines later admitted, long after the other cars and the commuter bus had piled up behind. But at the time, what was in the car mattered little. In the span of 30 minutes, seven unfortunate Iraqi civilians were shot dead here. "If some civilian is dumb enough to drive into our positions," that's not our problem, said one soldier.

In a way, you understood why the Iraqis on this road had to die–rumor had been passing down that Iraqi zealots might have used two ambulances for suicide missions. These things had happened at least twice before. So, the order was given to fire at any ambulance that drove toward Marine positions and did not stop with a warning shot. Why not other vehicles as well? And in some cases, why wait?

But in other ways these small obliterations of life made no sense at all; most Iraqi civilians coming toward the soldiers would not have been able to see them hiding behind beams and walls till it was too late to matter. Why no checkpoint just up from the position? Why no sign telling civilians to stop ahead? Where was the translator team with its bullhorns explaining what was going on? After several hours of watching the cars drive into death, much seemed possible.

I lay back behind a concrete wall with the soldiers, watching these cars shot to smithereens, then lay down on the ground and began to think about the teenager I passed when I ran across the bridge. I redrew him in my mind, crumpled quietly to the side, his book bag still slung across his shoulder. I added the other man splayed out a few feet forward, and the old man slung over the wheel of his delivery vehicle just across the bridge. Then inserted the burned-out remains of another person just behind, and the "running man" down the road, his blackened body seemingly frozen in flight from his incinerated car.

By the next morning, some marines had covered his head with a cloth, a small act of humanity that almost righted the fact that his legs now had been run over by what appeared to have been a heavy car. Around me, marines complained that the Iraqi tactics put innocent civilians into harm's way. This was true. Saddam's regime left them little more than chattel to be slaughtered.

But some marines also agreed that their young fearful warriors might just not be being careful enough. Nor caring enough, I thought. I was told the story of how some marines had cared for an 8-year-old girl pulled from another car after her parents were killed by Marine gunfire. I also recalled how soldiers who took cigarettes and sodas from a bombed store left money in an empty MRE [meal ready to eat] package for everything they took.

These were the images we all wanted. But a few feet away, they were being scarred by other marines. They took pictures of bodies, ogled, and talked in nervous little laughs as they looked for souvenirs. They opened doors of vehicles so bodies fell to the ground. I remembered one who had told me how a marine had used a Leatherman tool to pull the watch off a dead Iraqi a few days back. I had thought it bad form at the time but said nothing as he happily recounted the tale. I also stayed quiet now as another marine came to show me his latest trophy. "Take a look; he was shot right in the head," the marine said, smiling. Inside was an Iraqi helmet covered with flies, and a bit of the soldier's skull still left intact. "What will you do with it?" I asked. "Put it in a zip-lock bag, then dry it out when I get home," he replied. This soldier had not been here during the Marine advance, had experienced no danger whatsoever, but it mattered little to him.

The sniper, the savior, now seemed very far back, too far behind the line. I looked back toward his perch, hoping for a warning shot. But I saw no protection, for anyone at all.

Now, when marines come to use my satellite phone, I have a simple request. It used to be a trade for an MRE. Now all I want is for them to make me proud to be an American. Most often they know what I mean and shake their heads at some of what they have themselves seen. It is clear, none of us wants this to be the story of the Marines.

Posted: Apr. 3, 2003
The battle of Kut
Marines take on Iraq's Republican Guard
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Iraq.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

KUT, Iraq–As the U.S. military advanced toward Baghdad across a swath of central Iraq, forces of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines probed and then overran several Republican Guard positions in and around Kut on Thursday, destroying seven T-55 and T-62 tanks and killing 30 Iraqi soldiers. Three marines were also wounded in the attack, which began early Thursday and lasted much of the day. It was a continuation of other operations already taken by these marines in several smaller cities to the west, reflecting what commanding officer Lt. Col. B.P McCoy has said would be an ongoing mantra of "taking the fight to them" and "letting them know we're here."

At Kut, southeast of the capital, the marines began the offensive with heavy shelling from howitzers and mortar rounds, as well as airstrikes. Ground forces were then sent in, fanning out along the edges of the city and penetrating about 4 miles inside into areas known to contain Republican Guard forces and local militias. As the day wore on, the troop radios cracked with requests and orders. "We'll start getting on your right flank and start helping out," said one. "Ready to go forward and clear," said anther, as tanks and troops in armored assault vehicles moved father into town, shelling military facilities and running from building to building, conducting searches.

Gunfire could be heard sporadically throughout the area but the main battle took place on the outskirts of town in a palm grove. There, Marine Abrams tanks came under fire from Iraqi tanks and troops, some of them conducting "suicide missions," said the marines, recalling how two Iraqi soldiers ran up to an Abrams and fired an rocket-propelled grenade, which bounced off. "They're long on courage, but short on smarts," said one marine as he headed off to check on another section of the city.

The three marines wounded in the operation were hit by snipers and evacuated aboard Chinook helicopters, which circled into the landing zone like great lumbering birds, then plopped down under a cloud of red smoke from flares and to the rat-a-tat of the ongoing battles nearby. All of the wounded marines were expected to survive, said Navy medic Anush Sarabakhsh, 29, of Palos Verdes, Calif.

Marines joked with one marine being treated for a gunshot wound to the upper chest that he had walked into a Purple Heart; though blood continued to drip down from the packing of his wound, the marine smiled and gave a thumbs up. Sarabakhsh had also treated one of the Iraqi wounded, noting that it was the first time he had treated a enemy combatant "and it was a little weird."

"You certainly don't have the same feeling for them but you work on them just as hard," he said. "It was tough though, having just seen what had happed to some of our marines."

The marines also took several prisoners, roughly moving at least two of them from one armored assault vehicle to another before moving them out of the city. One of the prisoners appeared to have been wounded in several places by shrapnel.

The marines pulled back around 4:30 p.m., with the order for "air to drop whatever they got to cover our disengagement." With that, as the tanks pulled back, howitzers and mortars again pounded selected sites in the city.

The road from the town was awash with refugees, mostly men and young boys, fleeing Baghdad with only what they could carry. A few elderly women in black chadors walked with large boxes of bottled water or bags of goods on their heads, while other refugees held suitcases on their shoulders or dragged them behind. Some said they were headed to the southern city of Basra, though many only repeated that they were leaving Baghdad. Few had any transportation except their feet, although two boys were able to hitch a ride on their donkey.

March 31, 2003

Helping If They Can

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane; Richard J. Newman

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; TARGET: IRAQ; Vol. 134 , No. 10; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 1317 words

DATELINE: Kuwait City, Kuwait

HIGHLIGHT: After the war, will a humanitarian crisis be averted?;



KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT--It took months to move the 250,000 troops and tons of equipment into position for the attack that began last week; it's not easy organizing a war. But it's not easy preparing for what follows, either. Already, despite the Bush administration's assurances, some military officials and aid organizations are concerned about what might happen once the shooting stops. While battlefield success seems assured, says one U.S. military official, "millions of refugees and a humanitarian disaster could wreck the result."
The size of the problem in Iraq could dwarf other humanitarian crises, like the flood of civilians out of Kosovo in 1999. The United Nations estimates any invasion will ultimately create up to 1.5 million refugees and displace another 2 million Iraqis within the country. The conflict has already disrupted a joint U.N.-Iraqi program that buys food with oil revenues and feeds 60 percent of the nation's population. Displaced, hungry, and sick, refugees may flood border areas with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, jamming the roads needed to bring in aid and exacerbating ethnic tensions. This doesn't even take into account the nightmare scenario: Saddam Hussein's using chemical or biological weapons against his own people.
The U.S. government, through the Agency for International Development and the work of 60 military civil affairs officers, will provide the first line of defense against a crisis, following closely behind the advancing troops. Their job is to smooth a transition to normalcy by helping restore power and water and by providing displaced Iraqis with both food rations and shelter materials.
Bush administration officials say they've tried hard to limit damage at water and electric plants and other facilities that might disrupt the delivery of food and medicine. U.S. officials are working on other fronts too, they say, providing more than $ 24 million to international agencies for pre-positioning supplies in the region; another $ 56 million is slated to be released through USAID. Ron Adams, deputy director of the Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, noted in a February briefing that the government had also pre-positioned enough relief supplies--like water and medicines--to serve about 1 million people and had on hand 2.9 million humanitarian rations, enough to feed those people for three days.
But the 2.9 million food packets may be stunningly inadequate if there's a long-term breakdown of Iraq's oil-for-food program, which feeds more than 16 million Iraqis daily, says Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International. Early last week, the U.N. suspended the program it has run with Iraqi officials, but late in the week U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was asking the Security Council for authority to restart the program under complete U.N. control. "We have to get serious here," adds Charny, charging that the Bush administration has been vague on its plans. "So far, all we've gotten is stonewalling from the administration on the one hand and assurances that everything is OK on the other." Bush administration officials deny they have kept aid organizations out of the loop.
Power play. Washington infighting could further retard the process. USAID traditionally oversees relief efforts and has been preparing for months. But in January, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld persuaded President Bush to create a new Pentagon office, headed by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to oversee all aspects of postwar Iraq. That has caused grumbling among relief experts, who feel Rumsfeld may be more concerned with getting troops home than with aiding Iraqis. And there are questions about the Pentagon's expertise. One Pentagon official downplayed concerns about waterborne contaminants by saying that most Iraqis drink bottled water--an alarming misapprehension, according to relief agencies.
The logistics of delivering help in Iraq may also be uniquely challenging. The Pentagon has said that it plans to deal with humanitarian issues in Iraq just as it did in Afghanistan, but aid officials warn that such a strategy may not be practical. Aid groups were already working in Afghanistan before the invasion of U.S. forces there, and an aid infrastructure existed. In Iraq, only the International Red Cross, World Health Organization, and UNICEF have any presence. Because Saddam has used the warehouses involved in the sprawling oil-for-food program to hide weapons, aid officials worry they could become targets of American missiles, thereby disrupting the system.
The military plan, while sensitive to "collateral damage," may nonetheless fail to anticipate some critical civilian needs. Iraq's electric power grid is likely to be damaged, which could cause a cascading series of problems, since the country's water and sewage systems need electricity to run. And refugee groups may be planning to deliver food to Iraq on the same roads military forces will use to march on Baghdad. That could be a mess if Saddam destroys bridges between Kuwait and Baghdad and the military has to replace them with single-lane structures that will create bottlenecks.
Aid organizations say they are concerned because it will be up to U.S. and British forces to meet the needs of refugees until the United Nations and aid organizations decide Iraq is safe enough for their workers to enter--and that could be months. Longer, if the worst occurs. "The nightmare scenario is the use of chemical and biological weapons by Saddam Hussein, which could kill thousands of Iraqi civilians," notes Arthur Helton, senior fellow for refugee studies and preventive action at the Council on Foreign Relations. "No one is prepared to deal with such . . . consequences."
Even if that doesn't happen, there isn't a lot of slack in the system. The United Nations has been given less than $ 40 million of the $ 123 million it told donor countries would be needed for assistance in the first three months after the conflict; late last week, U.N. officials said they would launch an urgent appeal for $ 1 billion in new money. Officials estimate that 16 million Iraqis may go hungry, more than 3 million of them homeless, but the World Food Program has enough food in place to feed only 2 million people for one month. "We aren't even prepared for the first few weeks of action," says Antonia Paradela, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has purchased enough plastic sheeting, mattresses, and other items to meet the needs of only 300,000 refugees. "We have the possibility of a very large catastrophe," says Enda Savage, the senior UNHCR official in Kuwait. And there are other problems, too. Kuwait has no infrastructure in place to stage large food deliveries into Iraq, and the flood of journalists and military personnel into the region has created shortages of cargo and water trucks.
Exasperated aid officials also say the lack of specificity in U.S. plans has left them scrambling. The military has refused to even declassify or privately explain where it expects to set up refugee centers in Iraq, which leaves aid groups guessing about where to put supplies. The need for operational secrecy may explain some of the Pentagon's reticence, but Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon consultant and wargaming expert, believes the brass could do a better job of incorporating relief priorities into the war plan.
More disturbing is the notion that administration representatives just may not see this as their issue. "It's as if they don't think this will be their problem," says one British military official. An aid officer in Kuwait added that "the assumption seems to be that somehow, miraculously, this will all come together without any help or any money." And that could be a dangerous assumption, indeed.

Posted: March 29, 2003
Nervous laughter, thoughts of home
Soldiers of the 4th Marines fend off fear and boredom with smokes, jokes, and MREs
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.
Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

CENTRAL IRAQ–There is a lot of humor in the foxholes. But it isn't the sort a civilian would understand. It's doubtful a near miss by an enemy sniper would bring a smile or a laugh to those standing nearby in a different setting–on a New York City street corner, for instance. But things are different here, in the dirt, and in danger. You take whatever laughs you can, and even nervous laughter has its place.

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Out here on the main route supply (MRS), it's the absurdity of life that keeps men smiling, the thoughts of a place back home that keeps them dug in tight and looking to the end. Bathroom humor is funny, perhaps the most humorous subject a marine can muster. There is no bathroom, after all, and how else do you deal with the danger of working the line?

What's not funny: the thought of running out of smokes or dip. The meals ready to eat (MRE) are nutritious and every soldier looks forward to a pack with some Skittles or Charms. But this isn't the real fuel for many marines, and they don't want to hear about what's bad for their health. They know what gets them through the day. "They say smoking kills, but cigarettes are a real morale booster out here," says Pfc. Joshua Holden, 19, of Alba, Mo. "Iraq is not the place you want to quit." He pulls another Marlboro out of the pack as the marines at his machine-gun position nod in agreement, then return to scanning the horizon for signs of enemy approach. Lance Cpl. Douglas Osborne, 21, of Muncie, Ind., whispers that he is already out of smokes: "I've got to keep bumming off these guys," he says. "They're not too happy about it."

For the first moment they can remember, the sky is clear blue. It's a beautiful if disconcerting sight after days of 70 mph winds, vicious sandstorms, and sudden rains. The harshness of the trail can still be mapped on the faces of these soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, a mix of brownish-red mud and white dust caked around their eyes and in their ears, and blotched about on their cheeks. They think they look like bad pop stars and call out to one another: "Hey, Boy George."

Although the elements have been a trial for these soldiers, it's the waiting that really wears them down. They're getting plenty of sleep right now, the marines say–at least five or six hours most days. But the time awake is full of dread. Much of life is now a waiting game, with hours a day spent cleaning and recleaning their weapons. Dirt finds its way into every crevice; rust appears on barrels almost every morning. "Busy" is guard duty, where the body stands almost still but the mind races. Guarding the road carries the most stress, with some nights so dark the marines can barely see their hands in front of their faces. "At night you start seeing shadows and you're on edge," says Osborne.

"You don't know if the enemy is there or not," he adds, noting that a sudden cry of "Gas! Gas! Gas!" last night didn't help his nerves.

Thoughts of home–and making it home–keep marines centered on the job at hand. It's about all they have now since letters are not reaching this far down the line anymore. They talk about their families and what they will do after Iraq. Osborne will get a drink. After all, he had the misfortune to turn 21 in Kuwait earlier this month–a country so devoid of alcohol even reporters found it nearly impossible to forage a drink. Holden says he'll be looking for a big, fat steak. "Hey, aren't you going to have a shower first?" asks Lance Cpl. Nicholas Whittington, 22. "I'll shower and call my folks after the steak," Holden replies as Whittington laughs. But Holden isn't kidding.

Holden is as certain about this as he is about going home. The thought of not reaching that goal is not an option, despite the likelihood that their battle will be taken to Baghdad and the Republican Guard. All of them say there will be Marine casualties, but none think it might be them. "Everyone knows it's not going to be easy," says Whittington.

But that's why they send in the marines, adds Holden. "Our military is too superior. They've got T-55 tanks that were built in the 1950s that are no match for our Abrams. They can't even fire their main cannon without stopping," says Holden, who joined the military "to make a difference" and joined the Marines "because they are the baddest of the bad."

Other marines begin to come up and down the line, handing out today's MREs. Meatloaf with gravy for one, chicken with noodles for another. Nobody wants the franks–"wieners of death," they're called. All of these marines have plans for the future. Some want to finish here to begin life anew. "When I get back I'll be starting my life, going to college and becoming a lawyer," says Cpl. Markos Eugenios, 22, of Los Gatos, Calif.

As they eat, the marines think about what might improve Iraq in the end. Everyone agrees that getting rid of Saddam Hussein would be a plus. But there is more to do. "More hills would be nice," says Holden. Then Corporal Eugenios hit the perfect note. "Trees," he says. "This place would be great if we just had some trees." The Marines all agree.

U.S. News & World Report

April 7, 2003

An Uneasy Ride With A Pigeon

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; FROM THE FRONT; TARGET: IRAQ; Vol. 134 , No. 11; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 642 words

HIGHLIGHT: On Main Route Supply

A drive devoid of color or life has become utterly desolate. All is brown, land delineated from sky only by subtle shades. We are like shadows passing through hell, guarded from obliteration by a row of Marine tanks slipping on and off the road, their turrets scouring the horizon at the slightest hint of enemy movement. No camels venture here, only a lost dog in search of scraps. We have not been attacked, but every sand dune seems a menace.
In that way, journalists are not unlike the marines. When we first came to Iraq, the approach of smiling Iraqis seemed a welcome sight. Food might be given to a village elder to distribute, hands were shaken. Iraqi dinars were accepted as souvenirs. But now the marines avoid contact. To do otherwise is dangerous. Iraqi irregular forces, many calling themselves Fedayeen Saddam, have ambushed marines during fake surrenders. "We now treat all the Iraqis we meet with respect but also with distance," says a Marine lieutenant. "We've had our hand bitten too many times." Iraqis who tried to surrender to us in the first days of the war seemed only an odd juxtaposition to our role here; now we, too, wonder if they might throw a grenade.
Marine tanks in front of and behind my rental car protect this desert road so supplies can get to the front, and they protect us, as well. Every day seems a guess, a new spool of a slow-mo movie, leaving us wondering, like the marines, what lies ahead, what behind? Even the present seems a mystery sometimes. "Do you know where we are?" asks Lance Cpl. Joel Ruiz. He is 22, from Houston. He wants desperately to make a phone call to his wife back home.
Time is meaningless, unless it is measured in kilometers traveled toward Baghdad--the ultimate goal. "There is Zulu time, regular time, and the sun," says Cpl. Daniel Kannheiser, 22, of Toms River, N.J. "But there is no distinction between days other than how far we push forward."
Forward--always forward. Stepping back prolongs the agony, and it is dangerous, besides. In front are Iraqi troops. In back, paramilitaries harass convoys, taking potshots with rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades. The attacks aren't constant--just unexpected and scary as hell. The feeling that death is possible is palpable.
More often now, as we roll down the road toward Baghdad, the marines are going "tactical"--taking the fight to the enemy.
Down the road, the fight is returned--in spades. Mortars and howitzers fire. There are Iraqi troops on the left, and, possibly, the right. In the middle are the marines' fuel, food, water, ammunition. "We've got to give it back," says Maj. Martin Wetterauer, 35, from Baton Rouge, La. "Keep them on their toes."
Everyone sleeps in flak jackets, helmets at the ready. The night heaves. The growl of personnel carriers and tanks is constant. Mortars and .50-caliber machine guns split the darkness. My chem-bio suit, gloves, and booties are stuffed into a small backpack with one MRE--food enough for maybe three days, if I'm careful. As Baghdad approaches, worries heighten. There's a Fox vehicle nearby, ready to warn us of any chemical or biological agent hazard. But we're taking no chances. We ride with a pigeon in a cage, a different kind of early-warning system. The bird has no name. The marines don't want to get too attached to it.
Bliss is a day without sandstorms, or with a semblance of a toilet. We talk about the Marine latrine made out of an old box with two wooden seats. But that was at our last camp. On the road, modesty has vanished. "Man, I'm glad the flies have gone," says a marine, as we sit back to back. In the distance, marines are eating. Others clean their weapons. Some, without the luxury of a wood box, squat in the dirt, a ring of toilet paper around their hands. No way they're about to sit down.

U.S. News & World Report

April 2, 2003

Thinking about war: Marines ponder the lessons of death-and life-in Iraq

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: WEB EXCLUSIVE; CONFLICT WITH IRAQ; FRONTLINE REPORT

LENGTH: 1246 words

HIGHLIGHT: Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



NEAR DIWANIYAH, Iraq-"Can't you smell that," the marine asked, about to gag. I couldn't, really couldn't smell anything, even myself, though I knew for a fact that I did smell awful. The marine was pointing past me up the hill, near the unfinished Highway 80, an oddity in itself, turning to nothing but packed sand and dunes every few kilometers, as if to constantly remind us of the hardship ahead.
Dead bodies have been hard to come by on this journey, a testament to the long-range, almost antiseptic fighting conducted by the U.S. military; why get close when you can kill so well from afar? (Even the infantry here can kill at 1,000 yards.) But here was one, right by the side of the road, a headless blackened corpse sticking out of a burlap bag, arms outstretched and clutching the dusty air. There had been a wristwatch once, the marine said, but now it was gone. And it was doubtful much else would be left in the coming days.
The marines had reburied him twice already, but the dogs remained hungry. One sniffed the air, looping about on our edges, waiting for another meal. This time sandbags were brought after a few shovelfuls of dirt were splashed on his remains to rechristen the site. A team of marines filed in to drop them down-a bunker against further disturbance of his remains.
For many of these men, it was one of the first dead bodies they had seen close up, even now. One took a picture, a memento of his life here, something perhaps to discuss at the bar when he got home. Others gazed at it quizzically--so that's what it looks like. "I've seen three so far, but this one's pretty nasty," said another marine, throwing his sandbag on the corpse.
So far, the invasion of Iraq has met few reference points for these Marines. This isn't like the movies--bloody and close. And they are taking few casualties, so D-Day and Iwo Jima don't fit the bill. What they know is "the fog of war"; being run over by an armored assault vehicle or a tank running into a river in the night, or being shot by friendly fire; those are the immediate and real concerns. In hushed tones, they talk about their fear of being accidentally killed by one of their own: "Not the way a marine wants to go out," said one. More loudly many wonder why the war imagined in childhood has yet to materialize. "I expected to get shot at a lot more," noted Cpl. Daniel Wells, 23, of Brazoria, Texas, who joined the Marines to pay for college at East Texas Baptist University. "The worst thing for us is the slow days, because you then begin to think about home a bit."
War is a concept, what shells and bullets leave behind. These are afterthoughts at best. Blank stares are the norm. "That's a really good question, and a hard one," said one corporal from Baltimore, who thought for quite a while about the query before giving up with a shrug. He was a likely target when asking because friends said this marine was himself shot at in a friendly fire incident a few days before. The Marine said he had joined the armed services so he'd have enough military experience to one day become a state trooper. He had never really thought he'd end up killing people. But now he said he might stay in past his four-year hitch. Not because he liked killing: "I just like the camaraderie and the ability to teach others what I know," he said, popping up behind me as I asked the question of other marines-saying he hoped their answer might help him formulate one of his own. It didn't really. The best answer coming from a fellow marine who said he just thought about being accurate, to protect his fellow marines, "and kill all those suckers so we can go home."
Others called out in agreement. "Yea, it's time to go punch that mare in the mouth," said a corporal named Karl, a 23-year-old from Seymour, Wis. Another yelled that it was time to finish the job "and get the hell out of Dodge City." No one in this group of soldiers, or others met over the course of several days, would answer the real question. War had changed them little, because even at infantry range, its effect on their lives was distant. Instead, they talked in terms of "waxing," "leveling," and "getting one," sometimes describing operations graphically but also clinically, like they were watching it on TV. Even those who go out on scouting missions and get up close and personal-rocket-propelled grenades whizzing by their heads, automatic weapons rounds ding-a-linging on the cab-remain Rambos at heart. "The flies getting to you?" asks one. "Yeah, they were awful on our last mission. We were right next to a dump and all these bodies."
These soldiers have been told now to avoid creating civilian casualties-which, by all appearances they have done quite well. And they have been pressed by their commander to treat all Iraqis "with respect." But they have also been instilled with the mentality to "kill, kill, kill," admitted one marine, adding that some of his fellow soldiers scared him more than the Iraqis because "they're all hot about getting a kill, it will probably end up being me when they accidentally let off a round." It was getting dark now and it brought some much-needed candor. The Marine's buddies nodded as they looked around to see if anyone was listening, then voiced similar complaints. All had recently been "in contact," the favored euphemism here for battle. Some of them admitted that they too had once been cavalier, but seeing Iraqi prisoners had brought them back to earth.
For a while, Cpl. Frederich Ellis, 21, didn't say a word. Then he wouldn't stop talking. "I was like that when I first came here, I was all rough with them, maybe even kicked a few," said the young man from Florida. "But then I started hearing what these prisoners were saying to our translators, about how they had to fight or Saddam would kill their families." He talked of seeing captured prisoners plead with the marines not to kill them, prisoners of war as young as 13 pulled out of foxholes and Iraqi officers breaking down in tears, saying their capture would lead to their family's execution by regime diehards. "I changed," he said, eyes coming up again. "I started giving them food and water. I realized that there was a bigger purpose here, to free these people."
"I wish," he added, "that all the guys at the front line could talk to these EPW's [enemy prisoners of war], too." What war means is not the sort of question many 18- or 19-year-old men have to think about. But when at war, it seems odd that people his age haven't been doing more soul-searching, said Pfc. Shawn Rogers, 19. He had waited a minute before he spoke. But he had thought long and hard about the question and said what many marines didn't understand was that the only way to win this war was to maintain the sense of humanity once instilled in them long ago at home. "All these guys are trying to be bad asses. The really badass Marines are the ones who know how to fight when they have to but also know when they need to put down their guns," said Rogers, of Owinsville, Miss. "We aren't here to conquer, we are here to help, and if we kick these guys when they are down, that's just what Saddam has told them we'll do."
"I've really thought about this," he said, adding that he received no exhilaration from shooting or killing. That was just the job. Entering a town and seeing all these guys come out and cheer, that, he said "is the best feeling in the world."

Posted: Mar. 26, 2003
Slow crawl
Sandstorm and enemy fire complicate marines' advance toward Baghdad
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

NORTH OF AN NASIRIYAH, IRAQ–The marines continued their slow crawl toward Baghdad on Wednesday after a fierce, blinding sandstorm stopped their convoys for more than 12 hours during the night and mortar rounds coming in at the edges of the unfinished roadway slowed travel during the day. "They've got 60's and 82's [millimeter mortars]," said Maj. Martin Wetterauer, 35, of Baton Rogue La., the operations officer of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. He directed some of his men to set up defensive rifle and mortar positions around the road and told the rest to get their things in order. The men, he said, did "a good job keeping everybody together and not getting anyone lost. It was unreal out there. I don't know how we did it."

But while the sandstorms have faded, Iraqi irregular forces are still a concern–and becoming more so as the marines move closer toward Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers in civilian clothing have conducted ambushes and used civilians as human shields during fighting over the last several days. "The only way we can tell who these guys are is they're usually clean-shaven, don't smell, and wear new black boots," said Cpl. Qualesi Hernandez, 26, of Puerto Rico, "and that they won't look at you in the eye."

To turn the tables a bit, Wetterauer said that the marines would begin sending out squads into the desert for protection and to hit would-be attackers. "That way, we can start taking it to him, going after his caches, keep him on his toes," Wetterauer said. He added that while it is important to always respect one's enemy, so as not to become complacent, "these rogue forces, we certainly don't respect."

As he spoke, the BBC was reporting renewed clashes between Army troops and Republican Guard elements south of Baghdad, as well as continuing skirmishes in the southern areas of the country. And Iraqi attacks near An Nasiriyah, which still remained lawless, continued to weigh heavily on some marines. Their brethren had been ambushed and killed, and their bodies displayed on television; others had been captured and interrogated while the world watched. For some marines, the war was no longer a job. "I didn't take this personally till the ambush," said Lance Cpl. Buck Flowers, 22, of Dallas. "I know they were just trying to drop our morale, but what they did just really made me mad."

Many marines expected the Iraqi army to put up little resistance, at least at the beginning. Some soldiers have surrendered. "We even had one take off his helmet and spit in it, saying, 'I hate Saddam. I hate Saddam,' " noted Cpl. Cody Jordan, 24, of Fort Myers, Fla. But the surrenders are far fewer than many marines had hoped, while the ambushes have added greatly to their worries. "Baghdad," said Hernandez, "is going to be bloody."

The Iraqis are fighting with tanks that can't shoot while they are moving. The marines' Abrams tanks actually shoot better when they are on the go, marines say. Iraqi surface to surface missiles are generally no match for the defensive American Patriot missiles, and the antiartillery on the marines' troop transports can follow, track, and intercept incoming rounds before they ever touch the ground. Even the BBC noted the seeming impossibility of an Iraqi defeat of U.S. forces, telling one Iraqi official during an interview that the struggle, in the end, seemed futile for the Iraqis, asking why bother with such stiff resistance. The Iraqi official would have none of it, saying that the Iraqi forces were fighting "courageously" and discounting the thought of defeat.

While disagreeing with the Iraqis' view of the outcome, Flowers conceded that the Iraqi soldiers they've come up against "certainly got b---s, because you know they're going to lose, but they are still putting up a fight."

In the end, many marines say they understand why many Iraqis are not welcoming them in with open arms. "If somebody comes in your backyard, you're going to fight him," says Lance Cpl. Hugo Murillo, 20, of Brownsville, Tex. "I don't care if he's a good guy or a bad guy." He added that as far as he was concerned, the Iraqis fighting against him and his fellow marines in the desert "are just doing their job, just like we are." And when it is over, Murillo said, his feelings would not change. "A guy could blow my leg off. But two seconds later, if he gave up, I'd still give him a cigarette."

Posted: Mar. 24, 2003
Returning fire
Marines face combat for the first time
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

NORTHWEST OF NASIRIYAH, IRAQ–War is lumbering toward Baghdad on the heels of teenagers, who are more inquisitive than afraid. They are experiencing history firsthand and watching in awe as the mass of their combined power pushes forward one dusty mile at a time.

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When the mortar rounds first started coming in, Cpl. Matt Motzger, 22, of Washington State "just thought, 'are they aiming at us?' " He was outside Nasiriyah, 230 miles southeast of Baghdad, where marines would engage in two bloody battles that took the lives of marines. In the end, coalition forces would choose to go around the city instead of take it, a move that will be repeated up the line until they reach the heart of their mission, Baghdad, and the man they seek to depose, Saddam Hussein.

But confronting combat with a real enemy is new to many of these men. And it is not always coming when or how they imagine. "Nobody was expecting it. The shells came in while many of the guys were doing hygiene, shaving, washing, and stuff," Motzger added. "It didn't feel like I thought it would, combat. Luckily, we train so much it was just 'muscle memory.' " Fire was called in. The mortar went silent. No one was injured.

But one shell, even one like this one–a 100-yard miss–can get men to thinking. Add to that news of surrendering Iraqis opening fire and friendly towns turning dangerous hours after they've been passed through. Thought out here doesn't follow the regular circuit, though. It's not just about wives, girlfriends, children, and home. It's about gear: Will it work next time? About the marine next to you: Will he hold up? And about keeping sane through maintaining distance from the apparent. "We were like schoolboys," said one marine about the shelling, adding that they talked about it as though they had survived a dare in high school. Some retreated to their youth in other ways–they suddenly asked the marine next to them for a smoke.

In the end, it is all about survival. No one expects the often-unfinished letter sent home before deployment to be his last. Motzger, for one, is already planning for how he'll tell his friends about his travels past the biblically significant Euphrates River, right near the ancient town said to be the birthplace of Abraham. He hadn't listened to much about this in school, he admits. But now he was paying attention. Every place he has been and will be during this war is punched into his global positioning system, "so I can put it on a map, and say I was here."

U.S. News & World Report

March 31, 2003

What War Looks Like

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; TARGET: IRAQ; COVER PACKAGE; REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK; Vol. 134 , No. 10; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 1328 words

DATELINE: Safwan, Iraq

HIGHLIGHT: Anxiety, anguish, and a bit of theater of the absurd;



SAFWAN, IRAQ--The man was pleading, running in a shuffle as if his sandals were about to fall off. He waved his hands in the air, but not to surrender. He wanted me to help him, to take my white rental car and perform a miracle--he thought I could save his sister. But she was already dead. This was as obvious to him as the war that took her life. But it was unfathomable, too. "Please, please, save her," he said. "My sister is dead."
The man scared me at first, and I studied him warily. There was no way I could help. I'm not a doctor, nor a saint. I didn't even have enough room in my car to carry his sister's body to a makeshift grave. I decided to bring the man to the scene I had first stopped the car to see after making my way through the border crossing into southern Iraq, on Route 80. The road goes to Safwan. It was the first Iraqi town on the other side of the border, and, as far as I could tell, the first one to fall to coalition force.
I pointed and began walking. There were two marines ahead, one scanning the horizon for signs of the enemy, pistol at the ready, the other bent over a young boy injured in the bombing (photo). The boy's mother sat next to him, weeping and wearing a black chador that covered everything but her eyes. The boy's father stood over him, wearing a bright white robe that contrasted sharply with the dull gray and creams of desert town nearby. The boy looked up at me. He appeared to have suffered injuries to his head and feet. But he seemed calm, alert. I thought for a moment how nice it was to be alive.
Dead and defeated. But perhaps I had made a mistake encouraging a meeting between the marines and the man with the dead sister. The man started to run toward one of the marines, yelling, and the marine leveled his sidearm at the man's torso. "Get down, get down!" he yelled, gesturing for the man--and maybe me--to lie prone on the asphalt. The man complied, but I continued forward, pleading for the man to stop, to stay on the ground, as I yelled to the marine to tell him what had happened.
The marines were waiting for a security detail to help them. One had driven over a land mine with his tank, which sat on the side of Route 80, a little lopsided, like a cheap fixer-upper in a used-car lot. No one had been injured in the blast. But the delay had turned the marines into caretakers for Safwan's injured and guards of its surrendering troops. A few dozen Iraqis sat well off to the other side of the road, many with their hands behind their backs, waiting to be told what to do. The marines had reached sensory overload. The one with the pistol told the grief-stricken man on the roadway to retrieve his sister's body. The man ran off, but not before looking longingly at my car. It occurred to me that I could help him, but I stood by instead, not wanting to leave the safety of the road. Soon, I thought, the dead, the wounded, and the defeated would all be under the care of these marines.
I would have stayed to find out how things unfolded, but there wasn't time. I saw a Kuwaiti policeman racing toward us. For the past four days, as I sought any way into Iraq, the Kuwaiti cops had been the bane of my existence. I yelled to alert the two photographers traveling with me, David Butow and Wesley Bocxe. Five minutes earlier, the same policeman had tried to force me back to Kuwait City as I watched the marines mop up some Iraqi resistance. There were about 100 Iraqi troops, spread out over a few miles, and they had been shelling and sniping at the marines all night. This, obviously, wasn't the way the first hours of the war were supposed to go; the plan had been for the Iraqis to give up. Cpl. Eric Pedraza, 22, of Belgrade, Mont., is a member of a weapons company of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. "We expected to just march through . . . to Safwan and do our stuff," he said. "They did a good job sneaking in during the sandstorm. Makes us wonder what else they've got up their sleeve."
The marines dropped mortar rounds on the area, and Cobra gunships fired missiles. Over the din, loudspeakers broadcast a weird, repetitive mantra. It was an invitation to surrender. The loudspeaker, it turned out, was mounted on a Marine humvee. But for a while, the marines manning this sand berm in the desert thought the invitation in Arabic might be directed at them, and it made them mad. "They're going to get leveled in about 15 minutes," said Cpl. Josh Longoria, of Mansfield, Texas. On one of the mortar rounds, he scribbled a message: "To Saddam, here's some food for thought. You're an idiot." He signed the shell, "Big Tex, with love." The Kuwaiti policeman was also allowed to sign a shell. After much wrangling with the marines, he let me go.
But not without a warning. If he saw me again, the cop said, he would take me back to Kuwait. The Marine colonel in charge didn't think that was a bad idea at all. "Nonembedded media is supposed to stay in Kuwait," he said, before threatening to have his marines disable my little rental car in some gruesome fashion if I ran into them again.
Rocky road. We decided to push on but found ourselves stopped on the highway to Basra by a column of armored personnel carriers and humvees; the road hadn't been cleared ahead. The troops were waiting. Worried about land mines and not wanting to move past the front, we headed back to Safwan, where several cars full of other journalists who had managed to make it across the border were congregating. Everyone felt lucky to be there after traveling through marshes and desert to avoid the Kuwaiti police checkpoints along the 80-kilometer road to the border from Kuwait City. Some, like me, had spent days hiding in farm shacks near the demilitarized zone. Iraq, from the little we had seen so far, seemed a disheveled but strangely wondrous place. Iraqis crowded around the American marines, shaking their hands and saying "Hi." Some wanted smokes, others cash. At a gas station, they took turns filling up for free, then forcing foreigners to pay, jets of gasoline shooting out of the tank each time. Iraqi gas is leaded. Kuwaiti vehicles use unleaded. The price was high--and going higher by the minute.
This was the joyous view of liberated Iraqis promised by the Pentagon, a snapshot that replaced the troubling images from earlier in the day. And it would get better. Saddam Hussein was being brought down this day, at least figuratively, by the Americans. As the Iraqis crowded around, the marines attached towlines to the front of one of their humvees and began tearing down a big metal billboard of Saddam wearing an army uniform. The activity was being directed by Maj. David "Bull" Gurfein, 37, of Great Neck, N.Y. A Harvard business school graduate who worked for a while on Wall Street, he had re-upped with the Marines after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Before Iraq, Gurfein spent 7 1/2 months in Afghanistan. At the wheel of one of the humvees was Sgt. Darin Smiley, 26, a reservist from Dallas, who was a Christian camp director back home. "It feels good to do something for this country that needed to be done for a long time," he said. "It feels good to finish the job."
Gurfein agreed, but his thoughts were closer to home. "Some things are worth fighting for," he said, "and America is one of them." Night began to fall, and I sat in my little rental with my laptop. Deadlines. Stories to file.
The next morning, we made another run at Basra, following U.S. marines, then British forces, looping left around oil burning in trenches, then right, around some scattered pockets of resistance. We finally turned back, fearing the road ahead might be mined. Everything seemed in flux except the Iraqis. Most simply went about their business, tending sheep, washing, eking out a living. Some waved to us. But many had adopted a new form of greeting--a dirty white flag, hands in the air. Surrender.

Posted: Mar. 4, 2003
Media War
The shooting that precedes the shooting
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

KUWAIT–If you looked at all the footage being shot in Kuwait these days, you would be hard-pressed to think peace still reined in the region. Over and over again, as if in some endless loop, run not only the theme but details of war: pictures and video feeds of howitzers firing, gunners gunning, and tanks rolling as if to battle. It's a curious byproduct of waiting for war that simulation–for both reporters and soldiers alike–seems almost as good after a few months of cooling one's jets in the field. Back home, it looks so real, and it sells like hotcakes.

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But like a forest lost for the focus on its trees, the reality behind these gritty scenes leaves much to be desired. On Tuesday, for instance, dozens of reporters awoke at the crack of dawn to drive about 50 miles into the desert to see British troops in action. The Brits didn't disappoint either, pulling together one of their combat engineer regiments for a show of how they would quickly breach an Iraqi line. British mine clearers streamed forth, waving mine detectors in front of them and poking and prodding the ground with slender picks. A minibulldozer followed after being given the all-clear, making quick work of a massive sand barrier. Then the rest of the British team drove on through on their heavily-armed Land Rovers, a 50-cal at the ready.

Impressive. But, well, not everybody got the shot. "Could you do it again," asked one photographer. "Are you going again?" asked another. The Brits were happy to oblige the voracious media beast, which perhaps tired of taping the same scenes at American camps, had been hammering them for weeks now for access to the British troops. Suddenly, a pure and simple example of how war is conducted had become a "meta" event. The British military press liasons urged each other to get shots of the photographers photographing the British troops. The photographers kept filming the "re-do." And what was at least a slightly organic happening had become a manufactured scene.

It was good, yes. In fact it was great for an otherwise lazy Tuesday that might have been spent lunching at the $250-a-night Hilton resort or complaining about the service at at other such five-star lodgings in Kuwait. But it was also confusing. "Is that shot a set-up?" asked one reporter running to get some footage of "that shot." "No," I said, but to be honest I really wasn't sure. I bent down and took the picture. Didn't want to miss it. Behind me, reporters and TV crews were piling into the Military Range Rovers to get action shots of the gunners as they roamed across the barren desert, painting the scene of what it just might be like were there really a war.

But of course, in a real war, there wouldn't be a television cameraman sitting on the hood of the Range Rover filming into the gunner's eyes, and screwing up the shot of the photographer who had jumped in the back for his own piece of the action. "Excuse me, you're in my shot," the photographer could be heard saying. "This sort of defeats the purpose," he added, exasperated as the Range Rover began to loop again around the camp. But the TV cameraman just kept on filming. From the sidelines, his compatriot yelled to the photographer why: "Hey, look, he doesn't speak English." Over the loop around the site, neither man budged. Then it occurred to me: Maybe this is what this war will be like after all.

U.S. News & World Report

March 10, 2003

Dug In Far From Home

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; Vol. 134 , No. 7; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 768 words

DATELINE: Kuwait, Near The Iraqi Border

HIGHLIGHT: How the men in one Marine artillery unit sharpen their skills and pass the long days waiting for war;



KUWAIT, NEAR THE IRAQI BORDER--They say they are growing wise here in the desert, where the ground shakes with the thunder of heavy artillery and the sky screams with the passing of low-flying jets. But if so, it is wisdom of a certain sort. For the marines of Fox artillery battery, day and night blend with the repetition of the mission, time measured in the seconds it takes to load, fire, and dig in.
Experts they are becoming, every last one of them, a shovelful at a time. "The worst is when you dig a big hole and then have to fill it, and then they take you back to the same place to dig another one," says Lance Cpl. Chris Secondino, 19, of Branford, Conn., wiping away the dirt caked on his brow from his last firing exercise as a howitzer gunner. "I tell you what, I can certainly dig a good hole now."
So it goes for these men of the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division, nicknamed the "Cannon Cockers." First this patch of land, then that one. Moving at night, lights off to avoid detection. Hauling the shells and powder out. Load. Fire. Digging in. Waiting. Thinking about the fury of their shells, were they to find flesh in Iraq. "It must be like D-Day over there when our shells hit," says one.
It is a scene repeated with many variations across the vast Kuwaiti desert, where American troops are massed awaiting orders to advance into Iraq. Out here, rumors spread faster than truth: Iraqi spies are trying to infiltrate bases; an elite Iraqi guard has tried to kill Saddam Hussein with a rocket-propelled grenade. And the truth can bring men down. The word that thousands are protesting the war casts a pall. Heads lowered, the men pick at the dirt with their fingers and wonder why people don't understand. "Don't they know we're here defending people who don't have the ability to defend themselves?" asks Lance Cpl. Lance Harmon, 24, of Boston.
Letters from home. This is not something they reckoned on, and it's not the sort of thing they hear about in those few cherished letters from family and friends. Mail from home "is the most important thing these men can receive," says Sgt. Jason Schaffer, 26, of Detroit. The leader of Gun 4's crew, he is both father figure and friend. He is also probably the biggest recipient of letters: six from his wife, Beth; a Valentine's Day card "signed" by his two children, Baily, 4, and Jacob, 2; and a tracing of their hands on a piece of paper. A letter or an occasional picture "is what you live for out here," says Schaffer, known as "Beachhead" to his crew. The letters are especially important to him: Jacob, who has Down syndrome, recently underwent his fifth operation to repair heart defects. The youngster is on his second pacemaker; the first burned out and now hangs from a chain around Schaffer's neck--his good-luck charm and a reminder of home.
Secondino has been waiting for letters for more than three weeks, about as long as he's been waiting to get to a base where he can take a real shower. It has become a running joke: Does Secondino really have a mother? For now, he makes do reading other men's letters. From wives, girlfriends, parents, or children; he isn't picky. He likes the pictures, too. "Hey, she's hot," he says, looking at a photo of Sgt. John "Duce" DeMatteo's girlfriend--or at least one of the seven women Duce claims are currently writing him. "Watch it, Secondino," Duce fires back.
Not all letters will bring happy news from family back at Camp Pendleton, Calif., especially for some of the men of Fox battery who rushed to marry before heading off to war. "Many of these guys are young and their wives are young," says one experienced sergeant. "Back home they party all the time, and while they are gone their wives and girlfriends keep partying. They meet people. They move on." The sergeants know that Dear John letters are bad for morale. Makes for sluggish gunners.
The radio crackles with the voice of Gunnery Sgt. Richard Jefferson yelling. But the men of Gun 4 can't hear what he's saying. Time to field-clean the radio. Bang. Bang. Up and down on the hard-packed earth. Now, clear as a bell. This time it isn't firing coordinates but one of the sergeant's famous songs. "Don't forget about my cannon cockers, cuz they'll light you up like a firecracker," Jefferson yodels. "Before you know it, we'll be coming home, drinking beer and p- - -ing foam." Home seems a figment now, less tangible than the grit of the desert. This is real, says Jefferson, who at 36 has spent half his life a marine; this is "where the rubber meets the road."

U.S. News & World Report

March 6, 2003

Ready for the worst?

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: WEB EXCLUSIVE

LENGTH: 679 words

HIGHLIGHT: A new-style field hospital built to weather chemical and biological weapons



CAMP IDAIRI, KUWAIT--There was a time not so long ago that the siren scream presaging any chemical or biological attack would have sent doctors and nurses scurrying to grab their gas masks, hazmat suits, and thick rubber gloves. But not anymore.
Here, about an hour's drive into the desert near the Iraqi border, rests a new military hospital unlike any that have ever been previously deployed. Needing less than 15 minutes' notice of any possible chemical or biological attack, the 86th Combat Area Support Hospital can be sealed and pressurized against the threat by powerful air generators that will keep clean air flowing into its emergency rooms. This would enable medical personnel to continue saving lives without donning cumbersome protective gear.
The hospital can hold up to 296 patients and can conduct up to eight operations simultaneously. Although patients would still have to be decontaminated before being brought inside, the new safe-house design of the hospital is an important achievement, says Maj. Steven Toft, 44, the hospital's chief executive officer, noting that ''you lose a lot of capability and can lose lives when you are forced to wear all that [protective] gear." Picture surgeons attempting to perform delicate operations on soldiers shot, dismembered, or near death while wearing heavy-gauge rubber gloves and vision-impairing gas masks. ''Before, we had to wear all this stuff to do the job," he adds. ''We would have never been able to be this effective in the past."
The trick will be staying ready, because if there is no notice the hospital will have to conduct work the old-fashioned way. But doctors here say the unit will likely often run in pressurized mode as a precaution, and the repetition of drills has made its staff nimble in dealing with such a threat. ''This is a whole new dimension for us to deal with, but we all have great confidence that we are up to the challenge," says Maj. Kathleen Groom, a radiologist at the hospital, as she looks over an X-ray of one soldier's fractured arm.
The hospital, which from the inside looks like the inside of a cavernous moon-walk or Habitrail of connected rooms, has never had a real-world test. And Major Groom added that her family remained skeptical and concerned because the threat of a chemical or biological attack is something they have never had to deal with before. ''When you have a loved one over here, 1,000 miles away in a hostile environment, it's hard for family not to worry," she said.
For now, the medical staff is dealing with more predicable problems. Concern about how any war will shake out in Iraq and depression about being so far from home are some of the chief maladies affecting soldiers out here in the desert, according to Capt. Mark Reinhardt, 34, the hospital's head nurse. Doctors have seen their share of broken bones and even a few gunshot wounds--live-fire exercises, after all, use real bullets. And the hospital has even been visited by one soldier who was bitten in the behind by something, or someone. ''We still don't know what," says Reinhardt.
But so far, many of the hundred or so soldiers who come here each day have been more in need of someone to talk to than someone to operate on them. ''They miss their families and are facing the unknown," explains Captain Reinhardt.
Soldiers are coming to the hospital in increasing numbers to discuss psychological issues. And both fear and frustration have become staples of the scribes jotting their thoughts on the port-a-potties outside--full of prayers to Jesus and some questions, like, ''How many here think this deployment is a joke?"
The hospital's ability to withstand chemical attacks will be unlikely to dull these quiet concerns as time continues to drift. War, if it comes, will bring its own horrifying dimension. ''When you see your buddy blown up beside you, it is a big deal," says Captain Reinhardt. In the end, ''the psychological issues, the post-traumatic disorder and the like, will become the biggest issue we face here."

Posted: Feb. 15, 2003
Sheltered from the storm?
As U.S. military forces mass in the desert, Kuwaitis go on with their lives
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.
Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

KUWAIT CITY–At 16, Amer Shawaf is too young to remember much about the last time war came to town, and, as war again looms nearby, his immediate concern is finding the latest P. Diddy CD at the new, glitzy Virgin Megastore. "Why should I be afraid with all the American soldiers in the desert to protect us?" asks Shawaf, sporting baggy khaki pants, a two-sizes-too-large T-shirt, and a "No Fear" baseball cap that rides sideways on his head to emulate an inner-city rap artist.
"No Fear" pretty well captures the mood in this oil-gifted, ultra-affluent Persian Gulf nation. The ugliness of war may be around the corner, but for now, Kuwait City seems, well, normal. Yes, Kuwaiti military troops have set up posts along Kuwait Bay, training the guns of Bradley fighting vehicles out over the placid waters. Kuwait's newspapers also make note daily of the busy preparation going on here and in the United States for Saddam Hussein's bloody downfall.
What's surprising is that the anxiety level isn't higher, given that Saddam's missiles, possibly with chemical warheads, may be within striking distance and his agents or sympathizers could be moving undetected. The Bradleys are few and far between, and the soldiers mainly seem to be hanging out and catching rays. Kuwait's expensive restaurants still fill with well-heeled residents. The hotels of Kuwait City still attract a multitude of Asian businessmen hoping to do deals. And construction of new hotels, malls, and mosques continues unabated. This January, Kuwait's airport registered a 5 percent increase in traffic compared with a year ago, and import-export airfreight rose 36 percent, with more than nine tenths of the goods coming into Kuwait.

So many people wanted to visit the new Virgin Megastore here one recent day that consumers backed up traffic for half a mile on Gulf Road–a six-lane monster that snakes around this tiny emirate's sandy coast. For now, the only colonel that seems to be on Kuwaitis' minds is the one who heralds the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain; its downtown outlet continues to snarl traffic.

OK, a few people are concerned that Saddam might unleash a chemical or biological apocalypse on Kuwait. But these worrywarts tend to be Americans, and even this group of fragile souls–only a few who say they will be leaving–note that the main concern is not with President Bush's "evildoer," Saddam. It is the idea of terrorists taking potshots at them as they head out for a snack at T.G.I. Friday's or Applebee's, or take in a movie at the cinema. "What takes place internally is much more of a worry than the war," said Don Auchey, an American project engineer, as his wife, Hala, and his 19-month-old daughter tried out perfumes at the Dior counter in one of Kuwait's malls. He added that even though two American schools have extended holidays through the likely conflict dates, the family has no plans to leave. Most of his friends plan to stay as well.

The main pressure to leave the country comes from family at home, said Al Wright, a 34-year-old teacher, who lounged away Friday afternoon (Kuwait's version of our Saturday) watching Lord of the Rings with his 4-year-old son, Adam, in a glassed-in room at the Virgin Megastore. "They only hear one side, the hype on the news," he said.

Some of the problem may be that while Kuwait's newspapers shout that war is near, they also underplay the danger. One recent Kuwait Civil Defense fact sheet, published in the Arab Times, told readers that "wet towels . . . provide suitable protection" from inhaled chemical weapons. It added: "Some say it is necessary to have certain medicines and vaccines. We stress and warn that it is very dangerous to believe so."

So many Kuwaitis, like Amer Shawaf, feel sheltered by American military muscle. Might it be better for Kuwait to defend itself? Amer's cousin, Nafa, 19, answered quickly. The young don't want to join the military, and most get out of military service even when it is required. "Only the strong should be in the Army"–a term he used several times as a substitute for "Americans"–"I am afraid to go into the Army. I don't want to die."

Posted: Mar. 13, 2003
Kuwait's troubled domestic relations
Philippine house maids flee abusive employers

BY JULIAN E. BARNES AND KIT R. ROANE
Julian E. Barnes, a U.S. News senior editor, is reporting from Camp Arifjan, the Army's logistical hub, where thousands of reservists and active-duty soldiers provide support for combat troops in the field.
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT–Huddled in the basement of the Philippine Embassy here are 248 women desperate to leave this country on the eve of war. It is not the threat of Scud missiles or gas attacks that has driven these Filipinos to the safety of their embassy, rather a more mundane and everyday terror. The women have all fled the Kuwaiti homes where they worked as domestic servants. Some have not been paid. Others report being overworked, physically assaulted, or raped. So many of these women appear at the embassy every day that there is a special sign-in book at the front desk, bluntly labeled "Runaway House Maids."

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In recent weeks, Americans and British officials have talked about a potential invasion of Iraq as a war of liberation. They promise to remake the country, replacing the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein with a democratic government. But 12 years after the United States liberated Kuwait, this country is much the same as it was before. Women cannot vote, the parliament wields little real power, and a debilitating culture of privilege and entitlement pervades Kuwaiti life.


(Kit R. Roane for USN&WR)
Nothing lays the inequities of life in Kuwait more plain that the treatment of the country's 1.2 million guest workers. It is something that visitors to the country notice right away, especially the American service members. Sgt. 1st Class Charlie Cox has visited Kuwaitis in their winter desert tents and has had long talks with residents while patrolling the border of Camp Arifjan in the southern desert. "The Kuwaitis are great," he said. "There is just one thing. They treat their help horribly."

Few groups of workers are more sought after–and treated worse–than Philippine housemaids. Bangladesh, India, and other countries refuse to allow their citizens to work as maids in Kuwait. So the jobs fall to the Filipinos. There are 60,000 Filipinos legally working in Kuwait, about 65 percent serving as domestic workers. But theirs is the hardest of lots, with more than 1000 Philippine maids running away every year, complaining of abuse.

Kuwaiti labor laws do not extend to domestic workers, and a 1996 parliamentary initiative to tighten controls and improve conditions went nowhere. That means a Philippine maid's only recourse is laws passed by the Philippines governing how its overseas workers should be treated. The laws give the Philippine government some leverage with Kuwaiti authorities because it could block workers from coming here. The Philippine diplomats say the Kuwaiti government has helped resolve some disputes and has pressured employers to pay at least partial back wages.


(Kit R. Roane for USN&WR)
Tina Lundy works for a Philippine placement agency for maids While her job is recruiting these workers, much of her time over the past nine years has been spent protecting them from abusive employers and making sure they are paid. "I am almost giving up; there are too many problems," says Lundy, who is Philippine.

Philippine maids are supposed to get a day off, but they end up working seven days a week because few employers allow their servants to leave the house unescorted. Many Kuwaitis lock their maids inside their homes and confiscate their passports. "It is very common," says Angelo Jimenez, the labor attaché at the Philippine Embassy. "Employers say they take it for safekeeping, but it is actually a way to impose control."

The standard contract stipulates that Philippine maids will be paid 60 Kuwaiti dinars, equivalent to $180, a month. But market rates have fallen, and the embassy says the maids can realistically expect only 45 dinars, about $135. Many of the women huddled in the embassy say their employers refused to pay them even that. When brought to task, Lundy says, these Kuwaiti employers insist they do not pay because the maids do not work. She usually responds by simply holding up the maid's hands, showing the hard calluses and chemical burns. "I said I do not believe she is not working," Lundy recently told one recalcitrant employer. "She is working too hard."

These cases rarely end up going to trial, and jail sentences are rare for employers who abuse their workers. "Foreign-born domestic employes have the right to sue their employers for abuse, but few do so fearing judicial bias and deportation," says a U.S. State Department report on Kuwaiti labor abuses. Instead, the Philippine diplomats work with the Kuwaiti government to obtain a portion of payment for the lost wages before the maid is deported. In Kuwait, it is the abused maids who must fear the legal system.

The police blotter provided to Kuwaiti newspapers by the government contains a daily roundup of maids being charged with "attempted suicide." But embassy officials say when overworked maids injure themselves while jumping from windows, they are trying to escape, not kill themselves. The newspapers sometimes note these diametrically opposed views with little irony, saying flatly that a maid was charged with attempted suicide after a "vain attempt to 'run away.'"

The message is clear to domestic workers like Cancel May, 24, who recently escaped from her employer, saying she was repeatedly beaten and sexually molested by two members of her employer's family. She ran away to the Philippine Embassy after being ordered out on an errand. She says she knew her only hope was to find the embassy. "If I had had to jump to get away, I...would have," she says. "No one was going to help me, and I was hit too much to stay."

Maids are not the only ones who need to fear the Kuwaiti legal system. Critics contend that the difficulty Kuwaitis have with accepting responsibility for the bad actions of their compatriots has been exemplified by the ongoing trial of several other Philippine workers here in a case of murder. In October 2001, an assailant shot Mary Jean Bitos, a Filipino, and her husband, a Canadian named Luc Ethier. Ethier was killed, and Bitos grievously wounded. Kuwaiti police initially arrested a suspected Kuwaiti terrorist whom Bitos had identified. But prosecutors dropped the charges because, according to critics of the government, they were reluctant to acknowledge the terrorist link. It was much easier-and less messy-to lay the blame on the Filipinos, critics of the government say. So a Philippine man was charged with the murder, and four other Filipinos, including Bitos, were charged as accomplices.

After allegedly being tortured in jail, the five confessed and were convicted in a lower court. An appellate court overturned the ruling. But such cases die hard. The Kuwaiti Cassation Court is expected to deliver a final verdict April 1. Benoit Rivard, Ethier's friend, has been helping with the Filipinos' defense for the past year. "They are considered cheap labor. They don't have any money and are easy to pick on," Rivard says of Kuwaiti attitudes to Filipinos. "They are referred to as a rubbish people."

For now, Bitos and the other accused Filipinos are living in the Philippine Embassy along with the escaped housemaids. Embassy officials are hopeful that the five will be able to return home soon. But the problem of the domestic servants seems likely to remain. Economic desperation in poor regions of the Philippines drives women to come to Kuwait, says Jimenez. Across his desk he spreads out overhead slides detailing complaints of abuse, rape, and withheld wages. "We do have a lot of problems," he sighs. "This is one of the most challenging posts for a labor attaché." Jimenez said the Philippine government has thought about forbidding citizens from taking maid jobs, but if a ban were imposed, the work would go underground and the government would have a harder time protecting its people. So it is better to make the work legal and fight for women who have been abused.

Noria Angeles, the 21-year-old daughter of unemployed farmers from an impoverished province of the Philippines, worked for two years cleaning house and taking care of her employer's four children but never got paid. A few months ago, at the urging of a friend, Angeles says she insisted on seeing her money. Her employer refused to show her a bank statement or give her a check. Angeles says she was locked in the house and able to flee only when her employer inadvertently left the key in the lock. "I heard Kuwait was a beautiful country and Arabs were a beautiful people," she says, now safely ensconced in the Philippine Embassy. "But now I realize they are not."

Posted: Mar. 31, 2003
Taking charge
Marines go in ready to fight, but find mainly friendly civilians in three towns
BY KIT R. ROANE
Kit R. Roane, a U.S. News senior editor and veteran foreign correspondent, is a roving correspondent from his base in Kuwait.



Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the frontline.

NEAR AD DIWANIYAH, IRAQ–During a two-day operation using tanks and armored assault vehicles, the Marines have cleared Iraqi forces and irregulars out of three relatively small but important towns to the east of Ad Diwaniyah, according to Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy, a commanding officer with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines.

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The predominately Shiite towns of Hajif, Afak, and Al Budayr, all in the Al Quadisiyah province, are important to the U.S. forces because they fell with relative ease and also because they help open up an eastward road that connects the two main Marine supply routes heading north in west and central Iraq. "We needed this road for lateral communication and supply," McCoy said following the engagement.

The towns were cleared of Iraqi forces by early Monday morning after a few brief skirmishes and follow-up patrols, with McCoy's tanks and armored assault vehicles coming under attack by predominately nonuniformed soldiers firing small arms. McCoy said that they only encountered real resistance in Afak, the largest town, with around 25,000 residents. The other two towns, each containing fewer than 6,000 people, came under Marine control bloodlessly. He said the heaviest weapon used by the Iraqi forces appeared to have been 50-caliber machine guns during the fight for Afak. About 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 23 prisoners taken, he said, noting that his marines suffered no casualties or wounds. "We went in there heavy enough to fight for communication and heavy enough to get out," he said.

His troops also cleared a Baath Party headquarters in Al Budayr. "We did a cordon and a sweep and caught them trying to get out the back door," McCoy said, adding that several important documents were also retrieved containing names of officials. He declined to go into further detail about the documents.

After entering the towns, with what was described as a show of "violence supremacy" to quickly disable any enemy force, McCoy said translators and civil affairs officers were quickly sent out to explain to the townspeople that the troops were not there to hurt them and to let them know "that America is here to stay as long as you need us." He added that his troops have been trained to avoid offending Iraqis they meet–for example, by not speaking to or looking at any women they come across. They have been told to be "respectful and courteous, but not friendly," he said, adding that while many in the towns remained a bit reserved, when things died down, his troops were met by large crowds of well-wishers, including children.

Unlike the crowds that have developed when U.S. forces entered some other Iraqi towns, these were not hiding gunmen. "I had my crap detector out, looking to see whether they were a real crowd or a rent-a-crowd," McCoy said. "But you could tell because there were lots of children," he added. "It was a good day's work.

Helping If They Can
After the war, will a humanitarian crisis be averted?
By Kit R. Roane
Posted 3/23/03

KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT--It took months to move the 250,000 troops and tons of equipment into position for the attack that began last week; it's not easy organizing a war. But it's not easy preparing for what follows, either. Already, despite the Bush administration's assurances, some military officials and aid organizations are concerned about what might happen once the shooting stops. While battlefield success seems assured, says one U.S. military official, "millions of refugees and a humanitarian disaster could wreck the result."
Related News

* Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the front line.

The size of the problem in Iraq could dwarf other humanitarian crises, like the flood of civilians out of Kosovo in 1999. The United Nations estimates any invasion will ultimately create up to 1.5 million refugees and displace another 2 million Iraqis within the country. The conflict has already disrupted a joint U.N.-Iraqi program that buys food with oil revenues and feeds 60 percent of the nation's population. Displaced, hungry, and sick, refugees may flood border areas with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, jamming the roads needed to bring in aid and exacerbating ethnic tensions. This doesn't even take into account the nightmare scenario: Saddam Hussein's using chemical or biological weapons against his own people.

The U.S. government, through the Agency for International Development and the work of 60 military civil affairs officers, will provide the first line of defense against a crisis, following closely behind the advancing troops. Their job is to smooth a transition to normalcy by helping restore power and water and by providing displaced Iraqis with both food rations and shelter materials.

Bush administration officials say they've tried hard to limit damage at water and electric plants and other facilities that might disrupt the delivery of food and medicine. U.S. officials are working on other fronts too, they say, providing more than $24 million to international agencies for pre-positioning supplies in the region; another $56 million is slated to be released through USAID. Ron Adams, deputy director of the Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, noted in a February briefing that the government had also pre-positioned enough relief supplies--like water and medicines--to serve about 1 million people and had on hand 2.9 million humanitarian rations, enough to feed those people for three days.

But the 2.9 million food packets may be stunningly inadequate if there's a long-term breakdown of Iraq's oil-for-food program, which feeds more than 16 million Iraqis daily, says Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International. Early last week, the U.N. suspended the program it has run with Iraqi officials, but late in the week U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was asking the Security Council for authority to restart the program under complete U.N. control. "We have to get serious here," adds Charny, charging that the Bush administration has been vague on its plans. "So far, all we've gotten is stonewalling from the administration on the one hand and assurances that everything is OK on the other." Bush administration officials deny they have kept aid organizations out of the loop.

Power play. Washington infighting could further retard the process. USAID traditionally oversees relief efforts and has been preparing for months. But in January, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld persuaded President Bush to create a new Pentagon office, headed by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to oversee all aspects of postwar Iraq. That has caused grumbling among relief experts, who feel Rumsfeld may be more concerned with getting troops home than with aiding Iraqis. And there are questions about the Pentagon's expertise. One Pentagon official downplayed concerns about waterborne contaminants by saying that most Iraqis drink bottled water--an alarming misapprehension, according to relief agencies.

The logistics of delivering help in Iraq may also be uniquely challenging. The Pentagon has said that it plans to deal with humanitarian issues in Iraq just as it did in Afghanistan, but aid officials warn that such a strategy may not be practical. Aid groups were already working in Afghanistan before the invasion of U.S. forces there, and an aid infrastructure existed. In Iraq, only the International Red Cross, World Health Organization, and UNICEF have any presence. Because Saddam has used the warehouses involved in the sprawling oil-for-food program to hide weapons, aid officials worry they could become targets of American missiles, thereby disrupting the system.
Related News

* Conflict with Iraq: Background information and reports from the front line.

The military plan, while sensitive to "collateral damage," may nonetheless fail to anticipate some critical civilian needs. Iraq's electric power grid is likely to be damaged, which could cause a cascading series of problems, since the country's water and sewage systems need electricity to run. And refugee groups may be planning to deliver food to Iraq on the same roads military forces will use to march on Baghdad. That could be a mess if Saddam destroys bridges between Kuwait and Baghdad and the military has to replace them with single-lane structures that will create bottlenecks.

Aid organizations say they are concerned because it will be up to U.S. and British forces to meet the needs of refugees until the United Nations and aid organizations decide Iraq is safe enough for their workers to enter--and that could be months. Longer, if the worst occurs. "The nightmare scenario is the use of chemical and biological weapons by Saddam Hussein, which could kill thousands of Iraqi civilians," notes Arthur Helton, senior fellow for refugee studies and preventive action at the Council on Foreign Relations. "No one is prepared to deal with such . . . consequences."

Even if that doesn't happen, there isn't a lot of slack in the system. The United Nations has been given less than $40 million of the $123 million it told donor countries would be needed for assistance in the first three months after the conflict; late last week, U.N. officials said they would launch an urgent appeal for $1 billion in new money. Officials estimate that 16 million Iraqis may go hungry, more than 3 million of them homeless, but the World Food Program has enough food in place to feed only 2 million people for one month. "We aren't even prepared for the first few weeks of action," says Antonia Paradela, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has purchased enough plastic sheeting, mattresses, and other items to meet the needs of only 300,000 refugees. "We have the possibility of a very large catastrophe," says Enda Savage, the senior UNHCR official in Kuwait. And there are other problems, too. Kuwait has no infrastructure in place to stage large food deliveries into Iraq, and the flood of journalists and military personnel into the region has created shortages of cargo and water trucks.

Exasperated aid officials also say the lack of specificity in U.S. plans has left them scrambling. The military has refused to even declassify or privately explain where it expects to set up refugee centers in Iraq, which leaves aid groups guessing about where to put supplies. The need for operational secrecy may explain some of the Pentagon's reticence, but Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon consultant and wargaming expert, believes the brass could do a better job of incorporating relief priorities into the war plan.

More disturbing is the notion that administration representatives just may not see this as their issue. "It's as if they don't think this will be their problem," says one British military official. An aid officer in Kuwait added that "the assumption seems to be that somehow, miraculously, this will all come together without any help or any money." And that could be a dangerous assumption, indeed.

With Richard J. Newman

U.S. News & World Report

December 24, 2001 December 24, 2001

For Special Forces, a time to remember

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; SIDEBAR; Vol. 131 , No. 26; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 587 words

DATELINE: Kabul, Afghanistan

HIGHLIGHT: Fallen Brothers;



KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--The soldiers unfurled the flag silently, each hand bringing out another star, another piece of a stripe. As they began to hoist it high overhead, two men held a sign naming three fallen comrades. Another grasped their group colors, a green flag with embroidered streamers, commemorating their many campaigns. Behind them, the seal of the United States of America gleamed in the morning sun, high above the American Embassy's entrance of shattered glass and stone. Buried under their feet lay a piece of twisted metal, a relic and a remembrance of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, brought to remind them of why they were sent to fight in this distant land.
No one spoke, except to order a salute, and minutes passed before the silence broke. "It's about time," said Frank, looking at the Stars and Stripes high overhead, the pink contrails from two B-52 bombers a scrim against the backdrop of the pale blue sky of a December morning. "It's about time."
The American flag hadn't been raised over the U.S. Embassy here since 1989. Yet this was not the official raising. That would come later in the week, with all the pomp and circumstance that was lacking on this cold morning. These men had come for something more solemn, a moment to recall their three brothers from the 5th Special Forces Group killed by a misplaced American bomb just days before.
Master Sgt. Jefferson Donald Davis, 39; Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Henry Petithory, 32; and Staff Sgt. Brian Cody Prosser, 28, were having their due, the letters spelling their names carefully cut out and pasted on the back of a map of Kabul. "In Memory of . . ." was held high for all to see, although there was no eulogy, only the presence of about a dozen friends. And that was enough, everyone agreed.
When it was done, the soldiers of the 5th Group stood looking up at the flag. Their noses were red from the cold, and they rubbed their gloved hands to stop them from tingling. Eleven minutes later the flag came down.
"Time warp." A few hours later, the Special Forces soldiers stood by calmly in their street clothes and half-grown beards, as the Marine guards took up their positions securing the embassy. Inside the embassy garage, four Volkswagen Foxes from 1986 sat in perfect condition under car covers. Behind them were several compartments containing the former ambassador's personal effects, his cherry-wood desk and old veneer Trinitron television waiting to be dusted off and returned to use. Dortmunder beer sat in the open refrigerator, while U.S.News & World Report and Newsweek waited to be read just where they had been left in 1989, a Picture of Ronald Reagan smiling up at the marines as they walked on by. Baseball mitts and soccer balls were there, ready for a game, while laundry piles sat waiting to go. It was like going back into "a time warp," said Army Maj. Vic Harris, who arrived with a State Department advance team to see what had been left of the embassy after its partial ransacking by Taliban supporters two months ago.
Much work still must be done before the embassy is fully operational again. But for many of the soldiers now taking charge, the most important task was done. The Marines were again in possession of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and the United States was here to stay. "We pulled out of here, and the Afghan people felt abandoned," said Sgt. Brent Conover, a Marine squad leader from Burlington, N.J. "We are redeeming ourselves now." -K.R.R.

U.S. News & World Report

December 17, 2001 December 17, 2001

Strangers in a strange land

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; Vol. 131 , No. 25; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 829 words

DATELINE: Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan

HIGHLIGHT: American soldiers hold their ground, carrying guns--and memories of home;



BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN--The fire in the old oil barrel flickers, illuminating the dirty faces of tired soldiers back from patrol. The troops are starved--not for food but for news from home and the familiar touch of those left behind. Some are fathers, some husbands. Each is somebody's son. All are strangers in a strange, harsh land. They watch old Afghan men hired to help clean the base, as lonely children beg for money and scraps of food. Only a few feet from their perimeter positions, ragtag groups of young Afghans mill about with guns. The power balance here is a delicate dance.
Many of these American soldiers are members of the 10th Mountain Division. They left Fort Drum in upstate New York for Uzbekistan several months ago; last month, they became some of the first U.S. troops on Afghan soil. Their mission: to protect Bagram air base, the country's only functional airfield, and turn its runway into a conduit for much-needed aid. Danger mixes with the drudgery of life away from home. No one complains, but the pride of serving in the war against terrorism is tinged with melancholy. They talk bravely about getting into the fight. But the conversation always ends with more thoughts of the family and friends waiting for them back home.
Brownies--and complaints. Almost all carry a talisman or two, held tight like a memory. The name of his 3-month-old baby, "GAGE," runs down Luke's arm in blocky letters. The 24-year-old sergeant (the Pentagon forbids disclosing last names) was so rushed to finish the tattoo that it was still wet with blood as he flew off to Afghanistan. Hidden in Matt's breast pocket rests a small Bible in a silver case engraved with Exodus 33:14: "My presence shall go with thee." It got Matt's father through Vietnam, and the 26-year-old specialist from Northern California hopes that its protection will work here, too. Scott, a 34-year-old former Special Forces major assigned to civil affairs, holds his family pictures in the latest letter from home and dangles his Citadel ring from his Ranger watchband. The inscription says it all: "What a strange trip it's been."
The Army brings together a curious bunch of folks, reflecting America's diversity as they pull together to accomplish their mission. But they must be a tight unit to do so, and the bonds are made on the patrols and around the fire cans, sharing care packages of brownies from home and complaints about less-seasoned officers and latrine details. Luke was sent to the Army recruiter the day he told his mother, an Army officer, that he didn't know what he should do. Ethan left a job making $ 80,000 working on computers to make half that and "see the world." Joe, from New Orleans, recalls how he ran out of money on his football scholarship. Joining the Army, he says, was "something to do and a way to stay out of trouble." Sipping hot cocoa from a blackened, fire-heated steel mug, he says he likes the security of being a soldier, but his favorite memory remains further in the past. "Opening day, freshman year at the University of Texas, Memorial Stadium," he says with a smile. "Now that was a glorious day."
Letters home. Accomplishment for these soldiers comes in dribs and drabs. Most of the broken-down Soviet MiGs that filled the air-base hangars have been carted off to a nearby field; civil affairs officers have been nailing together frames for windows and preparing the warehouses for the massive aid shipments to come. At least one outhouse with a sit-down toilet has been constructed. Trust is also building, adds Scott, noting that he knew things were on the right path the day his greeting with the local Afghan man in charge "turned from the limp fish to a strong, pumping handshake."
But much remains to be done. The control tower still has no instrumentation-- and no windows. Unexploded military ordnance is found daily on the base, and necessary equipment--things as simple as nails--remains in short supply. Sleep is a luxury, with six hours a blessing for soldiers swinging between construction work, patrols, and guard duty day and night. Cleaning their guns always wins over washing down their bodies. Writing letters to home cuts into whatever free moments they have. Jeremy, 21, has seen his 9-month-old son for only two months of the child's life. So, instead of bedding down with his automatic rifle, he sits up in the muggy room he shares with 16 others, penning a series of questions to his wife. He met Elizabeth six years ago in their high school cafeteria when he went in for a soda. Four years later, he married her. "I'm just trying to make her feel better about the situation," he says.
As much as the letter is for his wife, it also brings Jeremy some peace of mind. Mail gets written but can take weeks or months to get out. Holding a stray puppy adopted by the soldiers at the base, Matt adds that "when you're a million miles from home," comfort comes where it may.

U.S. News & World Report

December 10, 2001 December 10, 2001

Suffer the children

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; Vol. 131 , No. 24; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 891 words

DATELINE: Kabul, Afghanistan

HIGHLIGHT: In Afghanistan's hospitals, the littlest victims of war face daunting odds, but miracles do happen;



KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--Mohammad Daud leans against the wall inside the Indira Gandhi Hospital for children, waiting for his daughter to die. The doctors swarming about the intensive care unit could treat the meningitis that's causing the hemorrhaging in her brain and the sepsis that hollows the tiny, limp body resting in her mother's arms. But Daud has failed his little girl in too basic a way for the doctors to intercede. The 41-year-old manual laborer is jobless, and even though he has sold every appliance in his house, there is not enough money for the medicine that could ensure little Diba a life. "Maybe God will help me," Daud says, raising a hand toward heaven. "But if not, she will surely die." The doctors nod.
For Afghanistan's poor--and nearly everyone here is--a trip to the hospital is often a fruitless and dispiriting journey. The country's hospital system is a shambles. After decades of war, it struggles under burdens far beyond its limited capabilities. Malnutrition, disease, and injuries from land mines--these top the list of Afghan health woes. Afghans get little help without paying for it first.
That's true even for the Indira Gandhi Hospital, perhaps the best public hospital in the country and the only full-service facility to deal with children's needs. When the war allows, patients come from as far away as Herat, a full day's drive to the west. But until their families can scrape up the necessary funds, children lie listlessly in beds here waiting for treatment. They stare blankly into their mothers' eyes or cry themselves to sleep. "Many times we pay from our pockets to buy the medicine for these children; we do have a conscience," said Mujeeb, a doctor who works in the intensive care unit. "But there is only so much we can do with so little."
It is, perhaps, a miracle then that just 15 percent of the children who come to this hospital die here. Many others die later, though, after their wounds become infected and their parents cannot pay for antibiotics.
Still, that hospital care is available at all in Afghanistan is something of a miracle. Surgeries, even in emergencies, are often delayed while doctors try to find forceps and scalpels. Many days there is no electricity, so pots of water boiled by wood or gas must substitute for sterilization machines. Film for X-rays is a luxury. Heat is intermittent, even in the dead of winter. Doctors work for months without being paid. How long has it been for the doctors at the children's hospital? Four months, the doctors agree; to get by, they support themselves by working in private clinics during off hours.
So, without money, the children at Indira Gandhi wait. Children like Taib. The frail 10-year-old, suffering from a testicular trauma, complains of pain. While his uncle runs around Kabul trying to borrow money for the anesthetics and drugs needed for surgery, Taib lies on a gurney. A doctor stands nearby. "The patient has to bring the drugs because we have nothing for the surgery," says Massood, a doctor who has worked at the hospital for two years. "All we can do is wait."
Blocked aid. The new government has promised salaries for the hospital's workers. One day, it says, it will also provide oil to run the hospital's generator. For now, though, there is nothing. And, ironically, the hospital has become an unintended casualty of the U.S. war on terrorism. An Arab charity, the Al Rashid Trust, built a new surgery ward for the hospital. Now that the trust has been added to a list of groups banned as suspected fundraisers for terrorism, however, the new wing sits empty. Humanitarian aid might help, but donors can be fickle. Aid organizations donate some medicine to the hospital and provide orthopedic limbs for amputees. But there are many diseases plaguing Afghans that aid organizations seem less willing to tackle. Tuberculosis, meningitis, and life-threatening intestinal diseases (caused by Afghanistan's unreliable water supply) don't seem to attract donations in the West the way photographs of children with limbs blown off by land mines do.
The picture isn't completely bleak, though. Two months ago, a boy named Salim, 10, was maimed by an explosion blamed on a bomb dropped by an American warplane. The onetime forward on a Kabul soccer team lost one leg up to his shin; his other foot was badly mangled. Today Salim is progressing rapidly, being swirled around the spartan hospital corridors in a wheelchair by a friend as he waits to be airlifted to Germany. An aid organization there has pledged to fix Salim up with orthopedic limbs. One day, Salim says, "I will be an engineer."
Salim's story, sadly, is the rare exception. Not far from his hospital room, Shaima sits in a room praying over her 18-month-old daughter. The toddler lies motionless in her lap, her brain hemorrhaging after she was pushed off the roof of her home by a rambunctious nephew. "I don't have much money to buy medicine," Shaima says, recounting how her brother had died of cancer just a week before. She talks about what a good man he was, hardworking and peaceful. Then she talks about how she wishes there was a treatment for the dreaded disease. The doctors standing nearby are not shocked. In Afghanistan, the doctors say, the idea of treating cancer exists only in dreams.

U.S. News & World Report

December 3, 2001 December 3, 2001

Afghan women find new hope

BYLINE: By Kit R. Roane; Ilana Ozernoy

SECTION: NATION & WORLD; Vol. 131 , No. 23; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 1363 words

DATELINE: Kabul, Afghanistan

HIGHLIGHT: Shedding their burkas, they still face many hurdles to education, jobs, and freedom;



KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--Nellufar sits delicately in the sparsely furnished tea room of her home, first tugging on her gold earrings, then pushing back the sparkling headband that peaks from under her light gray chador. Just 20, she is shy, unaccustomed to the company of strangers, and made uneasy by her own uncovered face. She fidgets even though her mother is near and must be coaxed to talk about the "dark future" she is just now escaping.
Nellufar's unease is both palpable and easily understood. Under the Taliban, she did not talk to men who were not her family members, and she didn't go outside without first shrouding herself like a ghost. Her life was to be a perplexingly simple one of anonymity and ceaseless, drudging toil. "I was to be just a useless object of our society," Nellufar says, "to be illiterate and hopeless."
Nellufar has not gone to college because it was not allowed by the Taliban. Having spent most of the past six years in her home--where she was secretly schooled by her college-educated mother--Nellufar has few female friends. And the burka, the head-to-toe covering that once represented the sum total of an Afghan woman to Western eyes, is still worn for trips outside. "When the Taliban left, I was so happy I wanted to walk out and throw off my burka," Nellufar says. "But it seemed maybe that this was not a permanent happiness, so I resisted." Now, however, the burka no longer shrouds her spirit. She speaks directly and a smile lights up her face. "I will go to university now. I will be a surgeon," she says. "I am again optimistic about my future and that a community of women will be there again to greet me."
If Afghanistan's women represent anything these days, it is hope despite the odds. While the burka remains a wardrobe staple, many women here have begun to assert themselves again in this male-dominated society that has known little but unending war over the past two decades. At the newly reopened television station, two female anchors now deliver the news to the country. Female doctors and nurses have returned to work at hospitals. Teachers are badgering principals to reopen girls' schools--barred by the Taliban--when the winter recess ends.
In the once cosmopolitan city of Kabul, a few women have cast off the burka for the more comfortable and revealing chador, while makeup can be spied through the netting that covers others' eyes. In the streets, high heels and painted toes abound. A beauty parlor has reopened, as has a female bathhouse. And most women now refuse to sit quietly at the back of the city bus. Even women who have never held jobs, like Fazela, 35, are talking openly about going to work. "Any job will do," Fazela says, taking a break from making Afghanistan's traditional flat bread for Ramadan. And if her husband did not allow it? "I'd get one anyway."
A place in the sun. The push for change is visible everywhere here. Afghanistan's women don't have time to think about "the kind of liberated life of an American woman," says Saraya Parlika, who led a small group of Kabul women in a demonstration for their rights. But the struggle, Parlika explains, is not so much about ideals as it is about the harsh realities of life here. Women "must concentrate on finding a job that provides," Parlika says. "It's not about the burka. It is about women demanding their basic human rights."
How far these rights will go is still anybody's guess. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that the United States was committed to ensuring that the women of Afghanistan not only "regain their place in the sun" but also "have a place in their future government." But Afghanistan's de facto government, the Northern Alliance, has made little movement in this direction. Asked if women would hold any appointments in a new government, the Northern Alliance's acting foreign minister, Abdullah, allowed that "it would be preferable."
The Northern Alliance has stated its support for women returning to the workforce and for girls to school. But there is little indication that a woman's rights to self-determination and self-expression will reach the level gained during Afghanistan's communist days. Then girls often went to school with boys, miniskirts graced the campus of Kabul University during the summers, and women worked as teachers, doctors, and government bureaucrats. "We believe there is freedom in limitations," says Hashmatullah Moslih, an aid to the foreign ministry. He fully supports the return of women to work and to school. But Moslih says he is also fond of the burka--and he believes most Muslim women are too. "A return to the communist days of short skirts and women seeking attention from boys at the university, of the university being a matchmaking place," Moslih says, "we would like to see that not happen."
Some of the men who congregate on the streets of Kabul draw the line farther back. Muslims believe the first follower of Islam was a woman, Mohammed's wife, as was Islam's first martyr. And in speaking of the respect they have for women, male Muslims in Afghanistan sometimes note that "Heaven lies at the feet of your mother." But in this country, many women still cower at the feet of their men, turning their back to any passing males. In the bazaar, some women are pushed and prodded by their spouses, treated like so much chattel.
For every liberated Afghan, like Mohammad Asgher, 42, there is a foil. "I want my wife to work again," he says, noting that he's also trying to convince her that it's safe to take off the burka again. But others in his group would have nothing of it. Majid, 28, said his wife should work only if he needed the extra money. And he would consider allowing her to take a job only if all the other women in the city were already working. And what of the burka? "If all the other women do," Majid says, "then she can take it off."
That may happen sooner than later. Nurull Haq, who sells burkas in a Kabul bazaar, is going out of business. In his stall, 30 blue burkas hang on the walls, but his accounting books show he hasn't sold a single one the past month. "When the Taliban was in power," Haq says, "business was good. I used to sell 10 to 12 burkas a day. When America started bombing, people thought it was the end for the Taliban, and I couldn't even sell one burka a day. And I haven't sold any burkas since the Taliban left."
Haq isn't too upset, however, having once modeled a burka for a customer and feeling its constraint. "I felt caged like an animal," he says, noting that he would rather apply for a job with the new government than sell burkas again.
Giggles. Haq's loss has been Zahed's gain. His cosmetic store in the bazaar is abuzz with activity these days. "Network" perfume is flying off the shelves, as are the dark red lipstick applicators that line his counters and the "cream bleach" he sells to hide unwanted hair. Many of Zahed's products now have pictures of women's faces on them, something that under the Taliban would have landed him in jail. Sariah, 22, and Shakila, 15, giggle at him under their blue burkas. "They will come off after school starts," promises Sariah, who once studied to be a tailor. "There is no ministry of vice and virtue to beat us anymore."
Many stands were made under threat of such a beating during the Taliban's rule. Afghans recall the story of one woman who had her lips cut off for wearing lipstick, and fathers and brothers who were imprisoned and tortured when their wives were found teaching neighborhood girls at their home. But that's all in the past now, says Nellufar's mother, Haqela Wafa, who secretly taught 10 students in her home during the Taliban's time. Now she's waiting eagerly for her former principal to call her back to school. "I want to enlighten the minds of my students about the advancement of the world," she says. "We are not where we need to be as women now."
Still, a little progress is a little progress. "After having all your rights taken away," says Nellufar's mother, "it seems an improvement when it is only a few that are taken from you again."