Putting a Human Face on the American Military Presence in Baghdad
"We don't like having to stop at Iraqi Army checkpoints because we might be shot," says one brother. Fear of the Iraqi Army, which is dominated by Shiites and run by the central Shiite-led government, is a nearly constant refrain from Sunni residents.
"The government is like a tailor who alone decides where to cut the cloth and what pieces to stitch together. There's no input from anyone else," says the eldest brother, slowly kicking at some colored Legos that his children have left on the carpet.
Soon they are telling Duke about how their children get sick from the sewage, how their mother has kidney stones because of the bad water, and how they can't go to the doctor because it's too far away and too dangerous to get there. What's more, the women can't go to government buildings because the Shiites running the facility won't allow women to enter unescorted. Some women, one brother says, have been killed.
They talk about politics, the end of a U.S. presence, about how Duke (or President Bush) would feel if the situation were reversed, if it was one of the three Iraqi brothers, clad in body armor and clutching a machine gun, sitting on an American couch. It's a moment of empathy that's rare in the routine patrols that the soldiers run daily through the city streets. One day, God and Allah willing, they all agree, Duke will host them at his house when no one has to carry a gun.
As the soldiers leave, after more than an hour of talking with the three Iraqis, Duke unfastens one of his Velcro pockets and removes a printed business card with a telephone number on the back. "That number goes directly to Americans, not the Iraqi Army," he says. "That means that if you call us and give us information, we can be sure that it remains anonymous. If you see someone bad planting bombs around here, give us a call, and that's something we might be able to do something about."
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