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Features

Mean streets

In their attempt to separate the warring factions in Baghdad’s ever troubled Sadr City, the US introduced a policy straight from the Israeli playbook
Issue: Nov, 2009
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The mood in the pitch black, sweltering Bradley vehicle is tense. The troops of the US Army’s Steel Company prepare for the 20-minute ride to Sadr City and the latest nighttime mission to construct a concrete wall, a barrier stolen from Israel’s counter-terror playbook that is designed to prevent the Mahdi Army’s militias from firing their daily rounds of mortars and rockets into the Green Zone a few kilometres away. Erecting the series of four-metre high concrete blocks along the southern border of the main Jaysh al-Mahdi’s Sadr City centre of influence is extremely dangerous work; Steel Company is completely exposed to enemy fire, and hours earlier one soldier from the squad was on his way to a hospital in Germany having been shot in the stomach. The replacements in the Bradley know that in 20 minutes they will be standing exactly where he was hit, facing the same enemy fire.

Constructing the wall requires, at one end, soldiers to operate a crane to winch the concrete pillars into place and, at the other, others to scale a five-metre ladder, where they then unhook the barricades once they’re in place. Within minutes of our arrival, the dusty mix of concrete and sewage that constitutes al-Quds Street (or “Route Gold” in American Army parlance) is covered in spent brass casings from a freshly-discharged weapon. They add a slippery new dimension to the soldiers’ dash for cover when the snipers find their range. By the end of a 12-hour shift, the soldiers will have fired thousands of rounds of assault rifle and heavy machine gun ammunition, as well as more than a dozen shells from the tanks. On a typical day, they will also have cause to use anti-tank rockets from both launchers and helicopters.
 
Normal rules of engagement don’t seem to apply during the installation of the wall. There are few warning shots in what the soldiers call “The War for the Wall”, with opposing sniper fire often being met with barrages of small-arms and the 120mm high explosive rounds from the M1A1 tanks. Unlike the rest of Baghdad, where the prospect of civilian casualties dictates the response of American troops, they don’t afford their enemy a second without fire as they complete the wall. 
 
The policy stems from the lack of sufficient soldiers to properly secure the city. The construction of the wall has left a target that the militias usually only dream about: American troops with little cover in a static position that can easily be predicted from one hour to the next. “It’s like the movie Blackhawk Down except they know exactly where to find us from one hour to the next. We can only move a metre and a half at a time,” joked one soldier, referring to the length of each block of concrete. 
 
“The al-Mahdi guys can eat lunch, pray, take a nap and come back out knowing that we’ll only be 30 metres further down the road,” added a non-commissioned officer before unloading a clip of 5.56mm rounds into a suspected building, to cover the enlisted man scrambling up the ladder at the edge of the wall to unhook the segment. 
 
Throughout daylight hours, Sadr City’s now burned-out southern visage offers repeated attempts by snipers and RPG teams to stymie the construction process, turning a simple engineering operation conducted by half a dozen infantrymen supported by two tanks into full-speed firefights. “We try to continue working even when under fire,” explains Captain Todd Looney. “We cannot let them think that attacking us will halt the progress. If we do, they will attack us more and more.”
 
The construction continues 24 hours a day, but the danger from local militias is now so great that the company of combat engineers assigned to build the wall have refused to leave their armoured vehicles. Instead, they sit in the air-conditioned vehicles, eating and drinking while Steel Company do their job for them just a few metres away. This refusal has soured relations between the two units as the infantrymen try to dodge bullets while the engineers watch in terror from behind armoured windows. But refusing to halt work on the wall is critical, according to the officers.
 
The wall’s future is considerably less secure than it looks. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to oppose the presence of the wall in Sadr City for political reasons, and with 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament, Sadr’s movement commands massive popular support throughout Iraq’s increasingly bitter and disillusioned Shiite Muslim community. “Maliki isn’t happy for the obvious reasons,” one US officer confided in me on condition of anonymity. “The pictures of US troops building walls around Arab populations reminds everyone too much of the Israelis.”