Clouds of sand billowed around as our Humvee rolled across the desert for endless, uncomfortable hours, carefully following the tyre tracks of the vehicle in front to avoid landmines. Dust got into everything: noses, mouths, cameras, computers. The Americans don’t control the roads in western Iraq, so they travel in convoy across the desert, taking long detours and varying their routes to minimise attacks. The 80-mile journey west from the al-Asad airbase to al-Qaim took nine hours, as we stopped regularly to check for roadside bombs. One hit the truck four behind us; another was defused ahead. A few days later, on the way to Husaybah, up on the Syrian border, our convoy was delayed as the ordnance disposal team made safe two anti-tank mines buried in the sand at the only crossing place out of the wadi. The point was made: the insurgents are out there, and they know the Americans’ weak spots.
I am embedded for a week with the 3rd Battalion of the 6th US Marines, based in al-Qaim on the far western reaches of Iraq. Many left-wing journalists see embedding – travelling with the US military to report on their activities – as a crime against journalism, a surrender of independence. But the rules that prevent me from reporting US battle positions and plans, or naming US casualties before their families have been notified, can’t stop me from seeing that the Americans are running into the sand.
Our driver to Husaybah was Lance Corporal Lin Nguyen, whose father had been in the South Vietnamese national guard, abandoned – in his view – by the Americans, when the communists took the south in 1975. His father hadn’t told him that much about it, Nguyen said, just that it had taken him five years to escape. Nguyen saw no point of comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, except his mother’s lament that the family had known nothing but war. One generation on, he’s all-American.
“That’s where the bad guys are,” he said, as we approached the southern corner of Husaybah. “I don’t think there are any good guys in there at all.”
As the desert stretches on, the US presence seems stranger and stranger. What are they doing here? Trying to bring democracy, human rights and the American way to the smuggler towns on the Syrian border and the tribal belt along the Euphrates river seems like a pretty futile task. This is the kind of territory where imperialists or central governments aren’t welcome; even Saddam Hussein didn’t manage to achieve full control up here.
Colonel Stephen Davis, the most senior military officer in the area, spoke in movie metaphors and smoked fat cigars, but that didn’t prevent him from seeing beyond his own stereotype.
“It’s a cross between Apocalypse Now and Mad Max out here,” he said. “This is the wild, wild west.” I asked him if the Americans could win militarily, and what the people in western Iraq thought about it.”Winning is a western concept. For the US, it’s a football game – after 60 minutes, you win or you lose. It’s not like that here,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “This is not about hearts and minds – love’s got nothing to do with it. It’s to do with who ends up on top of the hill. Nothing’s permanent here except death. This is the Middle East.”
This view of the limits on American action in western Iraq had not filtered down to Captain Richard Pitchford at Camp Gannon, which occupies the north-west section of Husaybah. Insurgents clustered in the rest of the town take pot-shots at the camp, and the marines regularly respond with mortars, sniper rounds and air strikes. The morning we were there, the marines said they had spotted a pick-up truck dropping munitions to a house. A few hours later they targeted the building, first with mortars, then with rounds from a helicopter gunship. They had no way of knowing who was inside – civilians, insurgents, maybe no one at all. Sometime soon, the marines will destroy much of Husaybah, as they did Fallujah, in order to kill or drive out the insurgents and consolidate US control. The remaining civilians who have not yet fled will have to leave, or risk being inside their houses when the bombing starts in earnest.
“When the time comes, we’ll be able to completely rid the city of the insurgents,” said Captain Pitchford, as we looked out across a wasteland of broken buildings. Some had been destroyed by a massive truck bomb; the rest had been demolished by the Americans to make a buffer zone. “The important thing then will be building a relationship with the population afterwards, making sure that the insurgents can’t come back, that they don’t have an easy nest or home to come back to.” It did not seem to him to be an insuperable obstacle that the people might blame the Americans as much, if not more than, the insurgents for the devastation the war is having on their lives.
At least 8,000 people in this area are huddled in camps and relatives’ houses, where medical care and food is reportedly in short supply. The children have missed up to a year of school, and people fear it will be months before they can go home. I know this not because the marines have the information, but because an Iraqi woman who tried to get relief supplies to the displaced sent an e-mail describing the plight of families she had met near al-Qaim. Marine civil affairs teams do go out to distribute food, medicine and – inexplicably – Iraqi flags; but this is war, and both sides are mistrustful.
The Americans can hold on to this area as long as they are prepared to hunker down in houses and desert bases. When they hand over to the Iraqi military, the old tensions between local leaders and the forces of law and order from Baghdad will re-emerge. But this time it will be more bitter because the new Iraqi army is made up primarily of Shias from southern Iraq and Kurds from the north. To some here, they are almost as foreign as Americans.
As we sped along the road to Sudah, a small town where the marines have established a base, we suddenly stopped so the marines could force a landcruiser off the road. Such is their fear of suicide car bombs that they simply stop all traffic travelling along the same route. As the convoy started off again, I saw an old man with a beard, wearing a long, pale blue shirt standing by his vehicle. He had his hands in the air, and his face registered fear and bewilderment in equal measure, while the Humvees rolled past.
Lindsey Hilsum is international editor for Channel 4 News
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