Inside one day's fierce battle in Iraq
In Baqubah, an attack of unexpected sophistication.
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An hour after his family left, Ibrahim phoned his brother in Baghdad. The family hadn't arrived. Another hour passed and still, no sign of them. Frantic, Ibrahim asked a friend to go with him to Baghdad. On the way, he passed the charred remains of a car. Ahead was a US tank. "Don't go there, or they will attack us," he warned. His friend turned back and again they passed the burned car. This time, Ibrahim noticed a cloth spread next to it.
Reaching Baghdad, Ibrahim rushed to greet his brother, whose face told him everything. "Please go to the [Baqubah] hospital," he asked his friend. After what seemed an eternity, his brother's phone rang. "Lateef," his friend said, "your family is here. You lost your family."
The evening call to prayer wafted from the mosque, and, as if on cue, Baqubah's residents reappeared on the streets. Vendors opened roadside stands and began selling watermelon and sodas. Children ran and laughed, fearlessly approaching hot, exhausted US troops to ask for candy and water. The police chief was escorted back to his station. Some 60 insurgents lay dead in Baqubah's streets; the rest slipped away down back alleys and through palm groves. Ibrahim went to the hospital, and was told that the cloth he had passed by on the road next to the burned car had covered the body of his wife, Saadia.
Fowler returned with his men to his base. He learned soon afterward that he was subject to an Army investigation into the death of Ibrahim's family.
Baqubah has seen no major flare-ups since late June, although a string of bombings has killed several people, perpetuating a climate of fear. US officers here and elsewhere in Iraq consider this a lull, with more spectacular attacks in the works.
Their long-run strategy is to shore up Iraqi security forces, while employing tens of thousands of young men, essentially outrecruiting the insurgents. Yet this requires money, now in short supply, and time.
This month, Army officials cleared Fowler and the military of any blame for the family's death, saying it resulted from the insurgents' attack. Indeed, insurgents and terrorists have killed hundreds of civilians. The Americans offered Ibrahim more than $5,000 to "express sorrow."
Fowler, the father of two and son of a Baptist pastor, is torn over the deaths. "I gave the order to engage, and I have to live with the fact for the rest of my life that I killed innocent people," he says quietly. But, he adds, "to the day I die, I will believe there was hostile intent or some ulterior motive that drove them to conduct themselves the way they did."
Ibrahim tells stories about his children, burying his bitterness with the hope that somehow their deaths will "serve humankind."
"I pray to God that this family will be the last victims in Iraq," he says, wiping away tears. "I don't want to punish the killer of my children. I want only to show him a film of Afnan reading her [prizewinning] poem, and to translate her words:"
"I would like to bring all the world into my small heart, and make all those who can make decisions agree with my opinion. I know sometimes they are like children, like me and Yousif, fighting about very small things." - Afnan.
