The Great War for Civilisation (45 page)

Zulaika says she will never marry again. How does she see her life, we ask. “I am living just to raise my children, that is all. In my dreams, I dream about my children who died. In one dream, I dream that my husband says to me: ‘You didn't take care of the children as you promised. This is the reason why they died.'”

FOR SOME OF THE SOLDIERS in the Iraqi army—the perpetrators, not the victims—the memory of those chemical attacks will also remain with them for ever. It is now July 2004, almost a quarter of a century after the start of the Iran–Iraq war, sixteen years since the
Anfal
operation against the Kurds. Under the occupation of the Americans and its puppet government, Baghdad has become the most dangerous city on earth. Suicide bombings, executions, kidnappings are the heartbeats of the city. But I arrive at the little market garden behind Palestine Street to buy a fir tree for the balcony of my hotel room, something to keep me sane in the broiling heat of midsummer Iraq. The garden is a place of flowers and undergrowth and pot plants and it is ruled over by Jawad, a forty-four-year-old with a sharp scar on his forehead, but who knows he lives in
jenah
.
Jenah
means “heaven.”

But Jawad, I quickly discover, has also lived in hell. When I ask about the scar, he tells me that a piece of Iranian shell cut into his head during a bombardment on the Penjwin mountain during the Iran–Iraq War. He was a radio operator and spent thirteen years in the Iraqi army. “I lost almost all my friends,” he says, rubbing his hands together in a false gesture of dismissal. “What happened to us was quite terrible. And what happened to me. I can't remember the name of one of my dead friends—because the shell fragment in my head took my memory away.”

Not all his memory, however. Jawad moves silently through the trees, only the trickle of water from a fountain and the back-cloth sound of Baghdad's traffic disturbing his journey. A white ficus tree, perhaps? Very good for withstanding the heat. A green ficus tree? The only fir trees for sale are so deeply rooted, they would take an hour to dig up. All his life, Jawad has worked in the market garden, along with his father. The heat accentuates the smells so that the smallest rose is perfumed, white flowers turning into blossom.

Yes, Jawad survived the entire Iran–Iraq War. He loathed Saddam, he says, yet he fought for him for eight terrible years. “I was at Ahwaz, I was at the Karun River, in the Shamiran Mountains, in the
Anfal
operation, at Penjwin. I was a conscript and then a reservist but I refused to become an officer in case I had to stay in the army longer.” In my notebook, I put a line beside the word
Anfal
. Jawad had crossed the Iranian frontier in 1980. He had entered Khorramshahr and then, when Khorramshahr was surrounded, he had retreated out of the city at night.

“I first noticed the gas being used east of Amara. Our artillery were firing gas shells into the Iranians. I couldn't smell the gas but I soaked my scarf in water and held it to my nose. Because I was a radio operator, I had a lot of equipment round me that protected me from the gas. These were black days and we suffered a lot. After I was wounded, they insisted on sending me back to the front. I had a thirtyfive per cent disability and still they sent me back to the war.”

Jawad manoeuvres a dark green potted plant onto the path, waving his hands at the birds that spring from the undergrowth. If heaven really is a warm and comfortable garden, then Jawad lives in it. And the
Anfal
operation? I ask. Did he see the effects with his own eyes? Jawad raises his hands in an imploring, helpless way.

“We saw everything. Would you believe this, that when they started using the gas strange things happened? I saw the birds falling from the sky. I saw the little beans on the trees suddenly turning black. The leaves decayed in front of our eyes. I kept the towel round my face, just as I did near Amara.”

And bodies?

“Yes, so many of them. All civilians. They lay around the villages and on the hillsides in clumps, as if streets of people had gathered at the same place to die. Some were scattered, but there were many women who held children in their arms and they all lay there dead. What could I do? I could say nothing. We soldiers were too frightened even to discuss it. We just saw so many dead. And we were silent.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“War against War”
and the Fast Train to Paradise

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

—Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

IN THE HUSH OF THE CURTAINED front room, the two former Iraqi pilots and the man who had been second-in-command of Saddam Hussein's air force sat in front of me in silence. The pilots spoke the heavily accented French they had learned while training on their Mirage fighter-bombers at Cherbourg. I had asked them about the USS
Stark
. But why now? they wanted to know. Why, sixteen years after an Iraqi Mirage had fired two missiles at the American guided-missile frigate in the Gulf—incinerating thirty-seven of its crew—did I want to know why they had almost sunk the ship? Why not discuss the growing anarchy in Baghdad under American occupation? That very morning in 2003, a car bomb had exploded outside the gates of the American headquarters at Saddam's former Republican palace.

All three men feared that I was a spy, that I was trying to identify the pilot who killed the young American seamen more than a decade and a half ago. Why else would I ask if he was still alive? I told them I would never betray any human being, that I was a journalist—not an intelligence officer—that I would no more hand them over to the Americans than I would hand Americans over to them. I knew that senior Iraqi air force personnel had all remained in contact with each other after the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, that they now constituted an air force without aircraft. But I also suspected, correctly, that many of these men were now involved in the anti-occupation insurgency. I tried to explain that this was the one Iraqi air force mission that changed the Middle East. Their colleague's actions on 17 May 1987 had—through one of those grotesque double standards which only Washington seemed able to produce—brought Iran to its knees.

The ex-general looked at me for almost another minute without speaking. Then he gave what was almost a mundane operational report. “I saw him take off from Shuaiba,” he said. “It was a routine flight over the Gulf to hunt for Iranian ships. There was a ‘forbidden zone' from which we had excluded all ships and the
Stark
was in that zone. The pilot didn't know the Americans were there. He knew he had to destroy any shipping in the area—that's all. He saw a big ship on his radar screen and he fired his two missiles at it. He assumed it was Iranian. He never saw the actual target. We never make visual contact—that's how the system works. Then he turned to come home.”

Seventy kilometres north-east of Qatar, the American Perry-class frigate's radar had picked up the Iraqi Mirage F-1 as it flew low and slowly down the coast of Saudi Arabia towards Bahrain. But Captain Glenn Brindel and his crew were used to Iraqi jets flying over them. Iraqi aircraft, he was to tell journalists later, were “deemed friendly.” The green speck on the radar did not represent a threat. Because the
Stark
held a course almost directly towards the Iraqi Mirage, the frigate's superstructure blocked the anti-missile sensors and the Phalanx anti-missile battery which had the ability to pick up an incoming missile and fire automatically. But the system had anyway been switched to manual to avoid shooting down the wrong aircraft in the crowded Gulf. The captain would later claim that the detection systems were also malfunctioning. At 10:09 p.m., Brindel ordered a radio message to be sent to the pilot: “Unknown aircraft, this is U.S. navy warship on your 078 for twelve miles. Request you identify yourself.” There was no reply. A minute later, the aircraft banked towards the north and rose to 5,000 feet. The crew in the
Stark
's “combat information centre” failed to identify the two Exocet missiles with their 352-pound warheads which had detached themselves from the Mirage and were now racing towards them.

It was a lookout who first saw the rocket skimming the surface of the water towards the ship and telephoned Brindel. Two seconds later, the Exocet punched into the
Stark
at 600 mph and exploded in the forward crew's quarters, cremating several of the American seamen as they lay in their bunks. The second missile exploded thirty seconds later. More than a sixth of the frigate's crew were to die in less than a minute after the first Exocet spewed 120 pounds of burning solid missile fuel into the crew's sleeping quarters. The warhead failed to explode but smashed through seven bulkheads before coming to rest against the starboard hull plating. The second missile sent a fireball through the crew's quarters, its 3,500-degree burning fuel killing most of the thirty-seven victims, turning many of them to ash. The
Stark
filled with thick, toxic smoke, the temperature even in neighbouring compartments soaring to 1,500 degrees. Bunks, computers and bulkheads melted in the heat. One petty officer spent thirteen hours in a darkened magazine room spraying water on 36 missiles as a 2,000-degree fire raged only a bulkhead away. The ship burned for two days. Even after she was taken in tow, the fires kept reigniting.

Listing and flying the American flag at half-staff, the
Stark
was pulled towards Bahrain. Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger called the attack “indiscriminate.” The Iraqi pilot, he said, “apparently didn't care enough to find out what ship he was shooting at.” But there America's criticism of Iraq ended. Even before Saddam Hussein made his own unprecedented and contrite expression of remorse— and long before the U.S. Navy had begun its own three investigations into the attack—President Ronald Reagan decided to blame Iran. “We've never considered them hostile at all,” he said of the Iraqis. “They've never been in any way hostile.” The Gulf was an international waterway. “No country there has a right to try and close it off and take it for itself. And the villain in the piece is Iran. And so they're delighted with what has just happened.”
⁵⁴

Listening to Reagan's words, one might have thought that Iran had started the war by invading Iraq in 1980, that Iran had been using chemical weapons against Iraq, that Iran had initiated the maritime exclusion zone in 1984 which started the tanker war in the Gulf—of which the
Stark
was indirectly a victim. Iraq was responsible for each of these acts, but Iraq was deemed “friendly.” Only a few weeks before the near-sinking of the Stark, U.S. under-secretary Richard Murphy had himself visited Baghdad and praised Iraq's “bravery” in withstanding Iran, spraying its enemies with poison gas now a definition of Iraqi courage for Mr. Murphy. Reagan had rewarded the aggressor by accepting his excuses and referred to the nation that did not kill his countrymen as the “villain.” It was an interesting precedent. When Iraq almost sank an American frigate, Iran was to blame. When al-Qaeda attacked the United States fourteen years later, Iraq was to blame.

All that was left was for Saddam himself to offer his condolences to the families of the dead Americans. They were not long in coming. “Rest assured that the grief which you feel as a result of the loss of your sons is our grief, too,” the Iraqi leader wrote in a letter to the families of the dead, dated 22 May and printed on the stationery of Iraq's Washington embassy:

On the occasion of the funeral ceremony of the victims lost in the grievous and unintentional incident that has happened to the American frigate
Stark
, I would like to express to you . . . my condolences and feelings of grief. All the Iraqis and I feel most profoundly the sorrow of moments such as these. Since we have ourselves lost a great many of our dear ones in the war which has been raging now for seven years, while the Iranian government still persists in . . . rejecting our appeals and those of the international community for the establishment of a just and lasting peace.

Even now, Saddam had to add his own propaganda line, although it neatly dovetailed with Reagan's own distorted view of the conflict. Iran's “rejection” of appeals from the “international community” alluded to Iran's refusal to accept UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions which failed to demand punishment for the “aggressor” nation. Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard also said Reagan's vilification of Iran was because of its refusal “to go to the bargaining table.”
⁵⁵
Shipping officials in the Gulf always suspected that the Iraqis made their night-time attack on the
Stark
in the hope that the United States would believe an Iranian aircraft tried to destroy the frigate and would therefore retaliate against Tehran. In the event, they didn't need to waste their time with such conspiracy theories: America blamed Iran anyway. A few days later, Reagan called Iran “this barbarous country.”

Saddam compared the American relatives of the
Stark
to the families of Iraqis killed during his aggression against Iran, thus turning the U.S. Navy personnel into the surrogate dead of his own atrocious war. Saddam's plaintive call for a “just and lasting peace” was almost Arafat-like in its banality. The final American abasement came when Washington dispatched a full-scale U.S. Navy inquiry team under Rear Admiral David Rodgers to Baghdad, where they were told they would not be permitted to question the Iraqi pilot who fired the two Exocet missiles; nor did the Iraqis agree with the Americans that the
Stark
was outside Iraq's self-imposed “exclusion zone” when it was hit. The Americans said the vessel was at least 10 nautical miles outside, Iraq claimed it was at least 20 nautical miles inside. Weinberger's call to produce the Iraqi pilot was ignored. Captain Brindel of the
Stark
was relieved of his command, his weapons officer was reprimanded and left the navy, and his executive officer disciplined for “dereliction of duty.”

The Americans always assumed that the Iraqi pilot had been executed—hence Iraq's refusal to produce him—but the ex-deputy commander of the Iraqi air force insisted to me in Baghdad that this was untrue. “I saw him a few months ago,” he said. “Like me, he's out of work. But he obeyed all our rules. We were fighting a cruel enemy. It was a mistake. We weren't going to get rid of one of our senior pilots for the Americans. The Americans were inside our ‘forbidden zone.' We told them not to enter it again—and they obeyed.”

A visit by a group of U.S. senators to the melted-down crew quarters on the
Stark
was sufficient to set them off in a spasm of rage at the one country that had nothing to do with the American deaths. Republican Senator John Warner, a former secretary of the U.S. Navy, described Iran as “a belligerent that knows no rules, no morals.” Senator John Glenn was reduced to abusing Iran as “the sponsor of terrorism and the hijacker of airliners.” Thus Saddam's attack on the
Stark
was now bringing him untold benefits. Americans were talking as if they were themselves contemplating military action against Iran.

Reagan pretended that the Americans were in the Gulf as peacemakers. “Were a hostile power ever to dominate this strategic region and its resources,” he explained, “it would become a chokepoint for freedom—that of our allies and our own . . . That is why we maintain a naval presence there. Our aim is to prevent, not to provoke, wider conflict, to save the many lives that further conflict would cost us . . .” Most Americans knew, Reagan said, that “to retreat or withdraw would only repeat the improvident mistakes of the past and hand final victory to those who seek war, who make war.” The Iranians, needless to say—the victims of Iraq's aggression—were those “who seek war, who make war,” not “friendly” Iraq which had anyway been taken off the State Department's list of “international terrorist countries” in 1982, two years after its invasion of Iran and in the very year that Iran reported eleven Iraqi poison gas attacks against its forces. The truth was that the Stark—one of seven U.S. warships in the Gulf—was sailing under false pretences.

Iraq had placed its “exclusion zone” around Kharg Island in January 1984 because it was losing the land war it had initiated more than three years earlier; by attacking tankers lifting oil from Iran's Kharg Island terminal, Saddam hoped to strangle his antagonist economically. His aircraft henceforth fired at ships of any nationality that were moving to and from Iranian ports. Iran retaliated by targeting vessels trading with Iraq through the Arab Gulf states. Iraq's massive imports of arms for the war were transiting Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whose funding of Iraq's war effort was close to $404 billion; any ship trading with either nation was now threatened with Iranian air attack. Between 18 April 1984 and 18 May 1987—the day after the
Stark
was hit—227 ships had been attacked in the Gulf, 137 of them by Iraq and 90 by Iran; several had been struck by missiles and repeatedly repaired, and of the 227 total, 153 were oil tankers. Between May 1981 and 18 May 1987, 211 merchant seamen, most of them foreigners, were killed on these ships, of which 98 were on oil tankers; it was a tiny figure compared with the hundreds of thousands of combatants in the land war, but it internationalised the conflict—as both Iraq and Iran probably hoped that it would.

American warships were now ostensibly keeping the sea lanes open for international shipping, to prevent the Gulf becoming, in Reagan's odd term, a “chokepoint.” But U.S. vessels were not shielding Iranian tankers from Iraqi attack. Nor were they seeking to protect foreign oil tankers lifting Iranian oil for export at Kharg. America's mission in the Gulf was to protect only one side's ships— Iraq's—in the sea lanes. Already the Americans were proposing to escort Kuwaitiflagged tankers in the Gulf, which did not carry Iranian cargo. They carried Iraqi oil for export. Iraq might not be able to gain any victories in its land war with Iran, but with American help, as the Iranians realised at once, it could win the sea war. Reagan claimed that the United States was fighting “war against war” in the Gulf. In fact, Washington was fighting a war against Iran.