The end of Donald Trump’s presidency, like most of its term in office, is marked by controversy. Particularly criticized were the American president’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the election, his apparent apathy regarding the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic and the numerous pardons issued for some notorious figures. The president showed clemency to former officials sentenced in the investigation of Russia’s meddling with the US presidential election, the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor, as well as 4 former employees of a security outfit who 13 years ago were involved in a massacre in Baghdad. Trump’s pardoning of people close to him has sparked massive protests in the United States, backed in particular by Democratic politicians. The Blackwater Guard pardon also triggered a UN response. Taken a year after Trump pardoned a Navy Seal accused of war crimes during the military campaign against the Islamic State, the decision will only rekindle old resentments against the United States, dating back to the war in Iraq in the 2000s.
A failed call for peace and the early days of the insurrection
In 2003, in spring, I was crossing southern Iraq from Kuwait, headed to Basra. At the end of a battle that lasted approximately two weeks, British forces had taken the city, and by the time I was taking the trip, they were now in control of the entire region. Although Saddam’s Fedayeens – a militia who put up a stronger fight than the regular army - were said to still operate in the area, things were calm. Soldiers at the British security filters I passed on my way seemed pretty relaxed, and many of them had actually taken off their bulletproof vests.
The people hadn’t had much love for Saddam, despite the crushing personality cult of his term in office and some signs of devotion which at times bordered insanity, as you could see in recordings released by the Iraqi television before the war, depicting Fedayeens as they tore apart whole unskinned lambs with their teeth, shouting “b’il ruh, b’il dam, nafdik ia Saddam” (with our heart and blood we sacrifice ourselves [for you] Saddam). Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died in the war against Iran and in the Gulf war, and the embargo imposed on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait had left most of the population poverty-stricken, while Saddam was building palaces by the dozen and his henchmen were living in style, the spoils of oil-smuggling. On top of that, political opponents, Shiites and Kurds had been the targets of a bloody oppression. Perhaps the Iraqis hadn’t welcomed the Americans and their allies as a liberating force, but Saddam’s demise was definitely good news for many people, who after years without any prospects for a better life, finally saw a flicker of hope.
This was true not just for the Shiite south, which had risen against Saddam (the most powerful uprising had been repressed with bloodshed shortly after the end of the Gulf War, while the Americans who had chosen to back off after liberating Kuwait were watching from a safe distance). In April, 2003, just days after Basra fell into the hands of the Americans, Baghdad was captured too, and once the fighting was over, the US military didn’t put up with much resistance, the same as their British peers. Sometime later, when I reached Baghdad, I was told that in those early days the Americans could now stop in different areas of the city without having to stay combat ready at all times, keep their fingers on the trigger, for fear of an attack.
Then came a string of bad decisions. At the end of April, American forces shot dead a number of civilian protesters in Fallujah. In May, the US Governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, disbanded the army and the Iraqi secret service and laid off workers who were members of the Baath party. Hundreds of thousands of people were all of a sudden turned out in the street, without any source of income. There was now enough reason for an insurrection, and enough people willing to take up arms. The remnants of the old regime, which had already been building a resistance, along with jihadis led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared war on the Americans and their allies. A few months later, joining the resistance were Shiite combatants, some rallied by the populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, others inspired by Iran. As of 2004 in summer, Iraq had become one of the hottest spots on the planet. And not just the military were put in danger, but all foreigners, who risked getting killed or kidnapped – either for ransom or to serve the terrorists’ propaganda.
From farfetched rumors to war crimes: what amped up hostility against the Americans?
War was brewing, and along with it people’s hostility against the Americans and suspicion over their true intentions. All sorts of rumors and legends started being circulated, which some Iraqis took at face value, although they were borderline absurd. One such rumor, for instance, was that the Americans had used tactical nuclear warheads in the battle for Baghdad airport, which had been the bloodiest phase of the assault on Baghdad. A member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s organization at one point told me that Iraq had been invaded in order to prevent the return of Mahdi, a Messianic figure of Islam whom Shia Twelvers identify as the twelfth imam who has been living in occultation since the 10th century. This is supposedly why the Americans had chosen to build their bases close to Shia holy sites. Mistrust in the Americans had grown to such levels, that there were times, when a car bomb would go off, civilians who had witnessed the explosion refused to believe this was a terrorist attack, claiming that an American gunship or a drone had actually fired a missile. More often than not, there was some truth to these stories – the rumors about the nuclear weapons were probably linked to the fact that the Americans had been using depleted uranium munition. Places of worship – as well as archeological sites such as Ur or Babylon – saw an increased military presence, and gunships were constantly hovering above Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in order to monitor the movement of insurgent troops and provide air support to ground forces. Adding to these reports were older fixations of the former regime and myths widely spread in the Arab world, according to which the goal was to bring the country to its knees and suck its resources dry (oil in particular), or that America was playing into the hands of Israel, who feared a powerful Arab adversary (at the end of war with Iran, Iraq had the largest conventional army in the world). Another conspiracy putting the Americans in bed with the Israelis was actually invented a few years later, when rumors started to spread that America and Israel had actually invented and created the Islamic State.
Every now and then, the reality on the ground would confirm the rumors, at times actually exceeding them. The most famous case, which made headlines in 2004, is linked to the Abu Ghraib tortures, which were partly documented by the American military police guards who committed them. There were others as well. In 2005, US marines massacred 24 civilians in Haditha. In 2006, a few soldiers raped a girl in Mahmoudiyah and killed her and her family. All these incidents and others like them did nothing but confirm, in the eyes of some Iraqis, the dozens and hundreds of rumors that circulated in the public sphere. Together they created the perception of an actual US policy, which was at odds with Washington’s claim these were just “a few bad apples”. The perception was further strengthened by the relatively mild sentences handed out to US servicemen who were brought to court for their crimes, with the notable exception of the Mahmudiyah rape and killings, where the judges passed harsher sentences, including life in prison – although this sentence too was met with disgruntlement, as people had been calling for the death penalty.
The despicable contractor army and the Nisour Square massacre
Coalition soldiers were not the only foreign military force to arrive in Iraq after the fall of Saddam’s regime. Apart from them, there were tens of thousands of so-called security contractors or bodyguards, civilians hired to protect objectives and people. The American State Department, for instance, would hire such security contractors, along with powerful, wealthier media organizations, investors willing to do business in Iraq, as well as enterprises providing outsourced services for the American army, whose convoys crossed conflict areas, transporting necessary goods, from food and supplies to laundry, mess hall and maintenance workers. Many of these security contractors had served on a number of tours, some of them part of elite outfits such as the Foreign Legion, the brigades of Gurkhas of the British army or the US Special Forces. Whenever they left high-security areas, they looked intimidating – bulky men wearing bulletproof vests, at least one gun holstered on the leg and a semi in hand, wearing sunglasses and always on high alert. They moved around in armored SUV convoys, and would get highly aggressive in traffic, trying push forward and keep moving at all times, since they knew they were being targeted. They got out their car windows, pointing their guns at people and shouting at Iraqis to keep away (they were afraid of suicide bombers). They once actually opened fire on a crowd. Iraqis hated them more than regular servicemen, and this became transparent in March, 2004, when 4 contractors working for one of the biggest and most powerful security outfits at the time, Blackwater, were killed in Fallujah, and their bodies were desecrated. The incident led to the first battle for Fallujah between the American army and resistance fighters. Blackwater contractors guarding American diplomats were also involved in a serious incident in 2007 in Baghdad: without being attacked, they opened fire on the cars in Nisour Square, killing 14 civilians. Four Blackwater employees were tried and convicted in federal court and subsequently pardoned in late 2020 by President Donald Trump. The official White House statement said the four men had a long history of service to the nation, prior to working for Blackwater, one in the 82nd airborne division, two in the Marine Corps and one in the National Guard.
“Muslim lives don’t matter”
The United States became a major player in the Middle East after WWII. The region had been previously dominated by European colonial powers, which were not exactly popular in the postwar period, marked by anti-colonial and national rebirth movements. The Americans were able to fill in the void left by the Europeans in their wake, posing as friends and partners. The more they increased their support for Israel, a country with which Arab countries were at war, the more their reputation waned. Meanwhile, the United States also entered the crosshairs of Muslim extremists, who hated the American lifestyle and the influence it had on their societies. Yet overall, this was not a heightened hostility – with a few notable exceptions, like Iran after the Islamic Revolution (anti-American sentiment actually dated back to the 1953 coup orchestrated with help from the CIA) or Gaddafi’s Libya. For the first time in many years, the war in Iraq meant the Americans occupied an Arab and Muslim territory. It was not their first military intervention in the region. They had tried to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon, which ended after terrorist attacks attributed to Teheran-backed Islamist guerillas. American forces had also clashed with Libya and Iran in different occasion. The Untied States had been conducting military operations in the Gulf since 1991 (in fact, America’s military presence in Saudi Arabia was what infuriated Osama bin Laden, prompting Al-Qaeda’s jihad against the USA). They never had to govern a country before, which is what they did during the first part of the Iraqi campaign. The local population had never interacted with the American army that way before. Everything they had been told that far about the United States was the propaganda of regimes hostile to Washington – Saddam, Gaddafi – or jihadist organizations. The war in Iraq also provided a few facts. The people who thought America was evil now had clear-cut arguments and examples to persuade others.
The United States pulled back from Iraq in 2011. They returned just three years later, in 2014, this time to help Iraq, which was on the verge of collapse due to the Islamic State’s insurgency. America kept a much lower profile this time around, deploying only a few thousand military on the ground and focusing on air operations. A broader intervention on land would never have gathered support from the American people, which had heard enough of the problems in the Middle East. Besides, Iraqis would never have accepted it either. The USA’s limited military presence helped avoid most of the problems. There were certain tensions with the Iraqi Shiite militias, a few airstrikes the latter launched on military bases hosting US troops, as well as the storming of the US embassy in Baghdad in late 2019 by a crowd riled by Shiite militiamen. These tensions were further fueled by Iran, and Washington responded on January 3, 2020 by taking out Qassem Solimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who also coordinated Iraqi Shiite militias. After Soleimani’s assassination, an escalation of the conflict with Iraqi Shiite militias was avoided, but this doesn’t mean hostilities simply ceased. And actions such as pardoning the 4 former Blackwater employees are used by combatants and the people behind them to recall attention to the stories about the war in Iraq and the story about the United States defending criminals because it doesn’t consider them as such. Because “Muslim lives don’t matter”.
