by Derek Farwell
Columnist
This past weekend I was watching TV and I flipped across the Military Channel and saw a short segment of television show about an Army unit and the time they served in Iraq. I didn’t watch it for long as I am not really interested in watching television shows about Iraq, but they were talking specifically about the Al Qaida fighters and terrorists that were in Iraq. I watched for a few minutes because the people that I fought against while deployed were a very complex topic that I wanted to understand, but was never able, and still can’t comprehend. A lot of the shows or documentaries I’ve ever watched portray these people as crazy, bearded, rabid, blood thirsty monsters that plot evil all day and sit in rooms cleaning their guns and listening to Middle Eastern music. In my experience this is far from reality. In absolutely no way am I trying to defend, justify, or sympathize with that group of people as they are responsible for the most horrendous and unimaginable actions that I’ve ever seen, but they are a fascinating bunch.
As a combat infantryman I was on the front lines of the fighting in Iraq when I was deployed. We walked through their neighborhoods; we fought, killed, captured, and interrogated Al Qaida fighters. They were not monsters, or foaming from the mouth, in fact, in most cases they were younger men, with young wives and young children. Often times we acted as a police force, we would get orders to conduct a raid to arrest and detain a confirmed bad guy, or high value target (HVT). We would get information that a certain individual was up to no good and we were to go get them. We would typically conduct these raids in the middle of the night in hopes that the target as well as the other bad guys would be sleeping so as to minimize the chances of being distracted from our mission by being ambushed or caught up in a different fight. The vast majority of the time this worked. We would do a tactical entrance and clearing of the house, room by room, floor by floor until we found who we were looking for. We were very proficient at this, and often times weren’t known about until we kicked open the bedroom door to find the target sleeping. It was always necessary to not think of the enemy as a person because when it was necessary to shoot and kill them, you can’t think of them as people. It was difficult to do this during these raids because once a person was located and captured in their house it became a little hectic. The guys wife would be screaming and the kids would be crying as we covered his face, zip-tied his hands behind his back and hauled him off in the middle of the night.
The Al Qaida fighters that we encountered were feared by the people in that area. They were exceptionally violent, and very bold in their actions. They did not discriminate when it came to imposing their will on innocent civilians and they would kidnap, torture, or kill anybody; men, women, or children. They would set up and execute very bold ambushes, so before I ever personally encountered or talked to one of them I also had this idea of what they would look like and act like, but I was wrong. On multiple occasions when we detained a terrorist they were the exact opposite of what I was expecting. They would be small and frail looking people who would sit zip-tied on the ground and crying. It was a far cry from the tough and bold bad guys who had no problem killing innocent people.
Like I said, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my interactions with terrorists. How someone can end up in that situation, and how someone can be so evil that they are able to spend their days terrorizing people, and then go home and have some sort of normal family life is beyond me, but I’ve spent a lot of time trying to learn. That question is one of those things that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand, but the more I think about it the more I think it’s probably a good thing that my mind isn’t able to comprehend it.
drfarwell@hotmail.com