This page www.a-1-8.org: /Docs/activeunit/12-16rocky.php last modified on April 12, 2005 10:42 AM
| A-1-8 Chapter of the 4th Infantry Division |
Active Unit News
Johnson: Town grateful that Saddam gone and freedom at hand
Al Dujail one of many places being rebuilt with American help
December 16, 2003
AL DUJAIL, Iraq - It is Monday morning here, not quite a day since the Americans took Saddam Hussein, this tiny village's archenemy, into custody. The celebration is to start within a few hours, and we've been invited.
Al Dujail is one of hundreds of tiny towns where the rebuilding of Iraq is visibly taking place.
U.S. Command is pumping thousands of dollars into the village. Schools that were looted and gutted as American soldiers advanced into Baghdad are being restored. Iraqi police are being equipped. Even the local library is coming back to life with U.S. aid.
Al Dujail is also an extremely friendly town as far as U.S. troops are concerned. Rarely is there hostile gunfire or mortar attacks. Indeed, many of the troops here know many of the locals by name.
It is a Shiite town. It never had any love for Saddam Hussein.
The village is best known in Iraq for the 1982 attempt by some of its residents, with help from others from nearby Balad, to assassinate the dictator as he rode north along Highway 1 on Al Dujail's outskirts.
The gunfire they leveled missed its target that long ago day, the Iraqi dictator speeding off to safety. He and his henchmen would return, though.
With a vengeance.
Irreconcilable grief
We pull into the Al Dujail police station about 10 a.m. It is overcast and spitting rain, yet more than 100 village residents are lining the streets in front of the station.
A path is cleared, and we roll into the parking lot behind the station where more men are standing. They wail in irreconcilable grief.
In a pickup truck parked next to a rear wall, a coffin sits. It contains the body of a young local contractor employed frequently by the Americans in the rebuilding of schools.
The men carefully arrange the body and shift the blankets that will cover him. The truck bed is awash with blood.
"No pictures, please!" they shout in Arabic, through their tears.
The night before, the man and three other contractors were returning to Al Dujail when unknown men - "Ali Babas," or robbers - stopped them, took their U.S.-issued ID cards and money. Before leaving, they shot this man to death.
The crowd in the street will not be celebrating the capture of Saddam, as they had planned. Instead, they are mourning the loss of a fellow tribesman, a member of their family.
A man is dead, and the capture of the dictator pales. The war goes on.
This is, I am told, the Iraqi way.
Proud of a reopened school
U.S. soldiers want us to see the Al Haria School for Girls. It is among their greatest achievements here.
The school has been wonderfully restored in the months since the looting. The teachers once again have blackboards. The Americans have redone the bathrooms, provided new desks. Cartoon characters holding pencils adorn the newly painted walls.
The girls, ages 6 and 7, are outfitted in blue jumpers, along with the religious hijab scarves each student wears.
It is 11:45 a.m. and school is out. The school's headmistress, known only as Zahra, approaches.
"Kerosene heaters," she says softly. "The Americans must supply them. It will be very cold come January."
As we walk through the school, a middle-aged woman rushes up with her hand out. She is pleading. One of the soldiers says she is asking me for money, that the headmistress hasn't paid her yet.
The woman cleans the school. She begged so painfully.
Had I a penny on me - the soldiers had instructed we leave our money at the base - I'd have given it to her.
"Go away," a soldier barks at her.
The children of Al Haria rush into the muddy streets. The young boys, none older than 11, who stood outside as we went in, have mobbed Sgt. Meghan Fitzsimmons, 25, as if she were some Kevlar-coated Pied Piper. Now the girls crowd around, too.
"It's because I am a female, sir," Sgt. Fitzsimmons explains amid the din that surrounds her. "They don't see many American females here. I'm a novelty."
Council considers its fortunes
The Al Dujail City Council is in session when we enter its Spartan chambers.
Some 10 men, dressed in robes and headdress, stand as Capt. Ian Cromarty enters.
"Thank you, thank you," the men repeat over and over as they shake his hand.
Thank you, they repeat, for freeing us of Saddam Hussein.
"It was like a bad dream," says Council Secretary Hassan Ibrahim Hanza.
"Thank you to the coalition for releasing the people of Al Dujail from this criminal who has killed many of our people.
"He removed every farm from here and turned them to hell. We feel so much better now. We have everything to be thankful for, but especially the freedom of Iraq."
'Maybe . . . they will trust us'
The afternoon hour is late, a time most Iraqis retire to their homes for an hour or two of rest. Atop the Al Dujail police station is Sgt. William Motyka, who is in charge of the forces that live here around the clock.
He and his men have been mortared here, taken small-arms fire. He is hopeful, he says, Saddam's capture will ease the transition from the Americans to Iraqi self-rule. Still, such a thing will be difficult, he believes.
"Every day I heard from people here how the Americans and Saddam were working together," the sergeant says, rubbing his index fingers together the way the Iraqis do when they know something is not on the up and up.
"Maybe now they will trust us more and work with us. They are starting to realize we're not here to put them down, but to help them. I'm trying to tell them rebuilding this country is not up to us. It's up to them."
Mourning wall
We cannot leave Al Dujail without first visiting the wall. On it are photographs of the 500 or so people killed when a vengeful Saddam and his men returned to this village after the 1982 assassination attempt.
There are fathers and their sons on the wall. About a dozen children's pictures hang there. On the far end of the wall is a list of every resident here killed by the former regime.
The people come to the wall each day. They read the names, and they mourn afresh.
They remember.
Bill Johnson and photographer Todd Heisler are on assigment in Iraq.
Back to Active Unit Main News Page