The Mood on the Street
BAGHDAD--The military has a well-honed tenet of counterinsurgency warfare: Only when ordinary people feel safe can the enemy be defeated. When neighborhoods are secure, residents are more likely to trust the government, turn against insurgents, and offer tips to the military. The first step in helping people feel more secure is to figure out where they do not feel safe. So in the battle to avert a slide into civil war, the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division has brought in a new weapon: the survey form.
Each day, American and Iraqi soldiers ask a series of five to seven questions to around 200 Iraqis in the uneasy neighborhoods throughout west Baghdad. Do they feel safety has improved with extra military forces in the area? What about Sunni and Shiite tensions? "We developed it as an instrument to determine if we're making progress or not," says Col. Jeffrey Snow, commander of the 10th Mountain's 1st Brigade. "It's not perfect, but a way to get after the perceptions."
Know nothing. Of course, getting the truth is easier said than done. Decades of living under a brutal dictatorship have taught Iraqis to watch what they say, although the threat of retribution now comes from insurgents and militias rather than from Saddam Hussein's enforcers. Lt. Alexandro Pedraza, a 10th Mountain platoon leader in a part of Baghdad the Americans call "Little Fallujah" because of its violent record, says dead bodies are regularly found on the streets, kidnappings are a daily occurrence, and attacks against U.S. patrols are common.
For all the Pentagon's bragging about how much intelligence gathering has improved, the response is often the same when Americans or Iraqi security forces ask people who is doing the killing: Residents shrug their shoulders and say, "terrorists." People usually blame foreigners, though hard evidence points to Iraqi perpetrators in 95 percent of attacks. In the sewage-strewn streets of the mixed Shiite and Sunni Hurriyah neighborhood, Lt. John Ford expresses his frustration with Iraqis he wants to help protect but who never seem to give him a straight answer. "They fear for their lives," Ford says. "They feel that if they tell us anything it could cause them or their family harm."
Nor do the Iraqis want to own up to the tensions that are leading to mass killings around the city. The vast majority of Iraqis in Baghdad, out of pride or wishful thinking, are not willing to admit there are sectarian differences between Sunnis and Shiites. So the answer to every question about sectarianism, whether it comes from a soldier or a journalist, is that everything is fine. In the courtyard of his Hurriyah home, one resident talks about how stable the area is and how well he and his neighbors get along. Then he admits that as soon as the visitors leave, his neighbors--both those loyal to the Shiite militias and those who sympathize with the Sunni insurgents--will question him. "I am afraid to speak with the Americans," he says, "because maybe the people will come later to kill me."
This story appears in the April 17, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
