Mutiny in the Ranks

Neophyte Iraqi soldiers refused to follow U.S. orders only to find themselves stripped of their jobs—and their uniforms.

<snip>The Iraqi soldiers were brought to Shulla, an impoverished community where adrenaline-charged Shiite militants were angry about the detention of one of Sadr’s top aides. Zubaidy said that his U.S. officers ordered Iraqi soldiers to open fire on the angry crowd in Shulla. “The American officers hysterically ordered us to shoot the 'traitors',” he recalls, “We were not asked beforehand to go fight our people in Shulla. If we had been….we would have resigned at the camp right away.”

Many Iraqi soldiers refused to fire, abandoned their weapons and fled from the scene, says Zubaidy. Another soldier from the battalion, Hamid Tamimi from Dijeil district in Salahuddin province, says some Iraqi troops even turned against the Americans and opened fire on U.S. personnel while chanting slogans and songs glorifying Sadr and his late father. A number of Iraqi soldiers did stay by the side of the Americans, Tamimi says, mostly from Kurdish militias. But most soldiers from Iraq’s predominately Shiite southern cities fought against the Americans, he alleges.

A number of residents in Shulla, some of whom took up arms against U.S. troops, have similar accounts. Hayder al-Maliki, 26, received minor wounds in the leg and the scalp from U.S. gunfire. He alleges that he witnessed American personnel open fire on Iraqi soldiers they refused to fight alongside the U.S. and sided with pro-Sadr forces. “In the beginning the Americans tried to push the Iraqi army into the fight. But when many of them declined, the Americans started to shoot at them”—and even incited other Iraqi soldiers to “shoot their friends in the army,” he says. His account could not be independently confirmed.

Iraqi officers and soldiers assigned as guards at the Taji military complex reported that members of the 2nd Battalion who’d been deployed on the mission returned later that day in two groups. Some came back in cars with American personnel, weapons hanging on their shoulders. A second group arrived on foot, without weapons, according to Ra’ad Ahmed, a recruit who guards one of the gates of the camp.

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