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IRAQ
NOTEBOOK
Lessons of
crass destruction
By Paul Belden
BAGHDAD - Here's something I learned on Sunday:
There's a particular etiquette involved in trying to
escape by foot from a field that's overflowing with
unexploded ordnance of every size and shape - all the
way from ordinary hand grenades and rocket rounds
lurking in the shrapnel underfoot to moon-shot-sized
missiles lying awry on a destroyed flatbed truck - and
whose farther end you notice has just been set on fire
by a looter.
You can't run much faster than the
others in your near vicinity; they'll think you're not
looking where you're putting your feet and hurl abuse at
you for endangering the entire group. On the other hand,
you can't fall too far behind the others either because
if you think anyone is going to sit in the car waiting
for your slow ass to show up when the whole neighborhood
could go up at any second, you deserve to go up with it.
So the only thing you can do is dance along at a
semi-panicky skip that is at once neither too hasty nor
too cautious, until you finally reach the field's edge
and are able to allow panic to engulf you completely as
you leap into your hired Chevy Suburban and shout
encouragement at your driver who is laying fat black
tracks on the asphalt as you fishtail away from the
ticking bombs in the rear-view mirror.
The other
thing I learned is that none of the weapons or the
ammunition in this field - a captured weapons/ammunition
dump located in a former Iraqi army base across from a
slum on the northern outskirts of Baghdad - is likely
finished killing, despite the fact that it already blew
up on Saturday, killing six Iraqis.
That
explosion occurred at about seven in the morning, when
locals say somebody fired a flare gun into the field and
the whole thing went off like a massive pinwheel,
throwing off rockets and bombs in every direction and
destroying rows of houses as far as half a mile away. At
the time of the blast, I had been asleep in a
fourth-floor bedroom about seven kilometers away, and
the blast wave caused the building I was in to crack
like a whip, with a sudden sway-and-snap motion that had
me sitting up in bed, rubbing my eyes and wondering what
the hell that was.
The field continued
burning and shooting off rockets throughout the day and
into the night, and everybody blamed the Americans. They
had a point, of course - there were no guards or gates
at the site, which was just a big open field, partly
surrounded by a wall, filled to the brim with weapons
and rockets and warheads of every sort.
By the
time I arrived the day after, the shrapnel was crunching
underfoot like shredded steel confetti, and there were
still no guards of any sort to be seen. The epicenter of
the blast was apparent - a sinkhole in the middle of the
field about 15 yards both wide and deep that was
surrounded by a low circular earthen ridge about 40
yards or so from the crater's lip. Except for the color
of the ground and the fact that there were so many bombs
still laying around, it looked a lot like a moonscape.
Looters were crawling all over the place.
Weapons remain one of the most prized items for sale in
any of Baghdad's many and increasing outdoor markets for
stolen goods, and the thieves were picking over the
place like children on an Easter-egg hunt. One fat Iraqi
man whose house had been destroyed in the previous day's
blast kept getting into arguments with people who
thought that his house was now fair game. A lot of the
looters were smoking, too - including one child whom I
saw peering into an empty plastic petrol container.
It was dangerous as hell - for everyone
concerned.
Then, at about mid-morning, it got
even more dangerous. A fast-moving tracked US Army
vehicle came speeding down the highway and, as it turned
into a gravel road abutting one side of the ammo field,
the looters began running across the field, from the
soldiers' side to the other, trying to escape. People
were blowing their horns and shouting warnings, and it
was at this point that the group I was with - a mixed
bag of locals, drivers, writers and photographers -
noticed that somebody had set the field on fire, and the
etiquette lesson ensued.
After we had driven
about a mile down the road at high speed, we realized
that the field hadn't blown up in our rear-view mirror,
so we followed our natural journalistic curiosity and
went back to find out what had happened with the
soldiers and the looters.
By the time we
returned, the fire was out, so we drove slowly and
cautiously down the side gravel road the soldiers had
taken. We found them behind a warehouse interrogating
three Iraqi men who were sitting on the ground
handcuffed. It wasn't much of an interrogation, since
none of the men spoke English, and none of the soldiers
spoke Arabic, but one wasn't really needed. The men were
sitting with their backs to a beat-up old clunker from
whose trunk one of the soldiers was pulling stacks of
black machine guns and wooden-stocked RPGs.
"Aha! What have we here?!" he shouted at the
men, and the sick and sad look on their faces was all
the reply he needed. "Gotcha, don't I!"
I asked
the soldier what was up, and he explained that they
didn't have enough troops to guard the ammo dump, but
they were making random sweeps to try to keep a lid on
the looting. "They're taking these weapons to use them
against our forces," he said, not very happy about it.
"But look - you saw that we're being fair. We're only
arresting people we catch with weapons. Everybody else
we're chasing away even though we know they'll be right
back about 10 minutes after we're gone." The caught
looters, he said, would be taken to what he called an
"EPW camp", meaning they were now "enemy prisoners of
war". The soldier brought out a stack of green hoods,
and the men looked even sicker and sadder, if that was
possible.
Just before the hood went over one
man's head, the guy started shouting "Mees-TAH!
Mees-TAH!" Now, anyone who has spent any time in Baghdad
knows that this is exactly the word - same sound, same
intonation - that the kids who can't speak English use
to get your attention when they want to sell you a candy
bar or a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of whiskey.
The soldier looked over and grinned, and I knew
why. "He wants to sell you one of those RPGs," I said.
"Not to-DAY!" the soldier shouted. "Not to-DAY!
Come over here, you. Stand up." And he began bundling
the now-blinded men into the personnel carrier. It was
all very efficient.
But all you have to do is
look around to realize that Baghdad remains a giant
outdoor market for weapons, and that no army controls it
to any significant extent. Not today. And probably not
tomorrow, either.
Earlier articles in this
series:
Oh
no, not again
Apr 23
Freedom
unbound, and out of control
Apr 22
All
according to the notebook
Apr 19
Suddenly,
a war without a border
Apr 18
A
lady with real attitude
Apr 18
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