A Problem Province
Diyala province is a mess. A change in strategy in Washington may not be enough to make things right again
BAQUBAH, IRAQ-U.S. military officials here have little trouble knowing when al Qaeda is exerting its influence in this city that was, once upon a time, the lush, orange-growing capital of the Mideast. Sometimes it's the subtle signs: Tomatoes and cucumbers start disappearing from the market, deemed too sexually suggestive, soldiers here say, by the Sunni fundamentalist terrorists. On other occasions, it's more overt: "Graffiti that says, 'Long live al Qaeda,' and stupid stuff like that," explains a U.S. military officer based here in what is now the capital of Diyala province. Mostly, though, the pressure has been bold and deadly: the heads of rival Shiites, stuffed in fruit crates, and phone calls designed to intimidate schoolteachers from teaching or tellers from opening banks.
For this, there has been retaliation. Shiite militias have been called into Baqubah at the behest of beleaguered Shiites, often arriving from strongholds such as Baghdad's Sadr City to provide protection against a Sunni insurgency that has driven thousands of Shiite families from their homes. "The Shiites get pushed around by Sunnis, and JAM shows up," says the officer. JAM, or Jaish al-Mahdi, is also known as the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiery Shiite cleric from Sadr City-and his gunmen arrive well supplied.
U.S. military officials here say the geography of Diyala is what the Fulda Gap was to West Germany: a perfect avenue for infiltration. The province shares a porous 170-mile-long border with Shiite-led Iran-a border that allows trafficked arms from the country to flow through Diyala and, often, down into Baghdad.
Today, more than six months after the U.S. military killed al Qaeda strongman Abu Musab Zarqawi in a dense palm grove outside Baqubah-and turned security responsibilities over to the Iraqi Army-Diyala is second only to Baghdad in per capita crime and kidnappings. Once known as the nation's melting pot, a "little Iraq" with a mix of Sunnis and Shiites, Diyala today lies on a violent fault line where residents tend to agree on just one thing: It is land worth fighting for. The area sits on a tributary of the Tigris and boasts dates and pomegranates, untapped oil fields, and a plentiful water supply.
Sunnis make up the majority of the population of Diyala-55 percent compared with 30 percent Shiites. Yet in a province of 1.5 million that was once a popular retirement spot for many former Sunni Baathists, Shiites compose the majority of seated politicians-this, thanks to a Sunni boycott of elections two years ago. For similar reasons, security forces also are majority Shiite.
Now, as jockeying for control of the province continues between Sunnis and Shiites, the local police chief and an army commander-both Shiites-stand accused of using hit squads and mass arrests to wage a campaign of intimidation against the region's Sunni majority. It's not a pretty picture. Corruption, growing ethnic suspicion, intimidation, wanton killing: What's happening here provides a sobering window on the larger problems bedeviling both Iraqi authorities and American troops as they try to create a secure environment in a fledgling democracy. Late last week, President Bush chose new commanders to lead the war in Iraq. This week, he will announce a revamped strategy, likely to include an increase in troops and an economic incentives package. But the challenges of Diyala serve as a stark warning of just how tough it's going to be to right what's wrong in this beleaguered nation- where security is precarious and, for elected officials here, all too fleeting.
It was last year that Brig. Gen. Shakir Hulail Hussein al-Kaab, the Shiite commander of the area's 5th Iraqi Army Division, managed to enrage powerful Sunni sheiks here in a move that American military officials say haunts the province today: In mass sweeps, he rounded up hundreds of Sunnis who were later found to be innocent. In so doing, says a local official, "he drove the Sunnis into the arms of al Qaeda."
In the office of Col. David Sutherland, commander of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, two local Sunni leaders meet in the brigade's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Warhorse to raise their concerns. They have pulled out of Diyala's provincial council for the time being, pointing to the ongoing abuses they say the Sunnis are suffering at the hands of local police and Iraqi soldiers. They cite reports of soldiers destroying furniture and stealing jewelry in homes they raid, and torture by a Shakir subordinate nicknamed Colonel Cable, who has a reputation for beating prisoners on the soles of their feet-most likely, they add, at the police chief's behest. That chief, Ghassan al-Bawi, also a Shiite, "admitted that torture was going on," says a U.S. military official, "but he said they were only doing it to the bad guys."
Sutherland has brought the Sunni leaders here in the hopes of persuading them to rejoin the government. "We have more coverage on the holding facilities now," he reassures them. But they have other concerns. "When the Army was doing the raids in Sunni areas, they played cassette tapes-Shiite ceremonies on tape, songs of the Mahdi Army. This is the kind of army we're dealing with-very sectarian," says Hussein Abid al-Zubeidi, head of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party. Hussein is still a member of the provisional council, but he's now participating only behind the scenes.
General Shakir for his part contends that his soldiers are not targeting Sunnis-that there are simply few Shiites left to arrest. Some 8,000, he says, have been killed, displaced, or have fled. Sutherland sympathizes with Hussein. "The action of individual soldiers-in houses, showing disrespect-is unacceptable. The people became disgusted and disillusioned." Adds Sutherland of General Shakir: "His actions are indicative of his mental model. And his mental model needs to be changed."
Mind games. U.S. forces here are banking on an operation taking place even as Hussein and Sutherland speak to help change the minds of local Sunnis. It is "a very targeted mission," Sutherland explains to Hussein, to drive out Sunni terrorists in an overrun area outside of Baqubah that has not been touched by U.S. forces for three years. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers will then rush in aid in the form of blankets, water, and kerosene for local Sunnis in the area-classic counterinsurgency strategy honed by Sutherland in his years as an Army tactical instructor. Much hinges on the operation as al Qaeda continues its bid for the region: Recently, U.S. military officials here discovered an extensive network of tunnels and a cache of several trailer-size containers, stocked with rocket-propelled grenades, arms, American dollars, and over half a million rounds of ammunition. "It was more AK-47s than I've given the Iraqi police in the last four months," Sutherland says.
Following the clearing operation, Sutherland and Shakir, the Shiite general, meet with some 70 local Sunni sheiks from across the province, some from towns near the Iranian border. Many take the meeting as a chance to air complaints about the conduct of the police and Army. "The Army doesn't care about military orders," says one frustrated sheik. "They care about religious orders coming from Sadr. They are no better than hit squads."
As he speaks, several cars roll up a nearby gravel road, and the sheiks turn toward the commotion. It is just a food delivery for the kebab feast to follow the meeting, but this is a group ever wary of assassination attempts, and the sheiks are reflexively on guard.
The public relations push continues the next day, as U.S. forces urge General Shakir to go on Iraqi television and take part in a press conference, to put a local face on the clearing operation. But the result is, in the words of one U.S. military official, a disaster: General Shakir refuses to answer journalists' questions, saying he does not have authorization from the Ministry of Defense. Ra'ad Rashid al-Tamini, Diyala's governor, a fellow Shiite, is irate. "Today he embarrassed us," Ra'ad later tells Sutherland. "Ask him a simple question, and he should answer it." Sutherland brings Ra'ad a bowl of ice cream from the cafeteria at the government center and tries to reassure him. We'll take a video and show him what he looked like," Sutherland says. "We'll coach him."
Aches and pains. Yet despite the coaching, General Shakir continues to be a headache for U.S. forces. "I don't know whether he has a sectarian agenda, but he's definitely a buffoon," says one U.S. officer later that week, as some 180 detainees are brought into a local police station. It is, say Iraqi and American officials here, another mass roundup. As dozens of detainees sit blindfolded on the floor awaiting their hearings, an Iraqi judge sifts through the case files on his lap. He reads the first. "This one is dismissed," he says, turning to coalition forces in the room. "I've got an idea," he says. "The Iraqi Army goes into a raid, and they get one target they go for-not take some innocents."
Though none of this does much to help Sunni-Shiite relations in the province, the biggest overlooked threat to the area's fledgling government, according to officials here, has actually been the tenure of Ghassan, the Shiite police chief, who has been running his own militia. Last year, U.S. sources add, Ghassan put in a call for some 250 Shiite gunmen from Baghdad and promptly added them to his police rosters upon their arrival. "He said he was creating his own highway patrol," one senior U.S. military officer says. In reality, though, he says, it was Ghassan's "own personal hit squad" that set up checkpoints designed to intimidate local Sunnis. Coalition forces recently detained a group of Iraqi officers in his force who were holding citizens hostage, then selling them back for money. "Suddenly the whole force is bad in the eyes of the people because of his Shiite agenda," adds the officer.
Months after pleas from the provincial council and American officials, the Ministry of the Interior says it is putting through transfer orders for Ghassan. Military officials here hope that this will boost their ongoing efforts to bring Sunnis into the police force. Already, they say, there have been signs of more interest in joining. But the damage Ghassan has done will be difficult to repair. "He has destroyed the Iraqi police. The situation isn't good," says Col. Ali Saadon, in charge of recruiting at the station. In the meantime, politicians are increasingly reliant on their personal security details-what amount to small armies of guards. Recently, the forces of rival politicians have clashed in "company-level firefights," say officials here-complete with rocket-propelled grenades.
Hopes. Today, Governor Ra'ad says the expectations of his electorate are simple: "The people look to me for three things: security, services, and a return to the normal routine they used to live." Yet he knows that these goals are still a world away.
After previously serving as a war planner in Iraq, Sutherland, the American brigade commander, has returned to a country in which the biggest changes, he says, have been the growth of al Qaeda in the region and the increasing influence of Iran. Diyala has become a key proving ground for al Qaeda at a time some Shiites see as "a chance to get back at Sunnis who have been living the good life all these years," says a military official here.
U.S. commanders add that it will take far more than troops to fix these dynamics, which are in turn fueling a vicious cycle of violence. "I have been most surprised by all of the jockeying-for political, economic, military power," says Sutherland. That jockeying, so endemic to the rest of the country, should now prompt some tough reassessment in Washington, officials here say, as soldiers on the ground ramp up efforts to transition security forces to Iraqi control. "Diyala was the place that we said we're going to turn over to the Iraqis-and look what happened," says a top U.S. commander. "We need to think a lot more closely about what conditions need to be set before transitioning control. If we don't, it can create more opportunities for the enemy," he adds, "which is essentially what happened in Diyala."
The provincial council members meeting with Sutherland stress that they will not return to the government until both Ghassan and Shakir are gone. They are also calling for immediate provincial elections. Until those things happen, they say, they are caught between the militias, and between terrorists "who want to return us to the Dark Ages." And with each day their frustration grows as they mull over the question posed to Sutherland by one Sunni sheik: "Is this the democracy," he wondered, "that the coalition promised us?"
This story appears in the January 15, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.