BAGHDAD, 22 September 2003 — On the day that Baghdad fell, one-armed Iraqi war veteran Mohammed Khadim Hussein was buoyant with hope. The country’s hated dictator had vanished, and the US bombing was ending. So Khadim Hussein, who had taken refuge in the suburbs, piled a few relatives into his 1982 Toyota Corona to check on his home in the city center.
That afternoon, Marine Sgt. Miles Johnson and Pfc. Patrick Payne rode the last truck of a long military convoy arriving in Baghdad after the long push north. They were assigned to protect fellow Marines on what officers warned would be the most dangerous day of the war, as the convoy crawled through the crowded streets of Saddam Hussein’s capital. Their M-16s were locked and loaded; the two Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif., were eager for action.
The Iraqis came upon the tail end of the US convoy as they left the city center in the early spring twilight. Seconds later, Khadim Hussein and two passengers were dead, shot by Johnson and Payne.
The incident was noted and then largely forgotten in the chaos surrounding the fall of Baghdad on April 9. But it now stands as an omen of what was to come. Despite the US-led occupation, Iraqis and Americans here largely live parallel lives. When they do intersect, misunderstandings, disillusionment, suspicion and an imbalance of power often define their relations — and frequently result in violence.
Last month, a Marine Corps investigation concluded that there was no basis on which to charge Johnson or Payne. An executive officer said Johnson was “trigger-happy” and “overreacted,” but Marine Corps lawyers said the shooting was justified because the Marines’ belief that the Iraqis posed a threat was reasonable “given the conditions of war that existed at the moment.”
To many Iraqis, Americans seem remote, hostile, unpredictable and utterly ignorant of Iraqis’ language and customs. For Khadim Hussein, his 17-year-old son and two other companions, a busy highway they had safely driven just hours before suddenly was blocked by men with guns.
To many Americans, Iraqis are clannish, inscrutable strangers who fail to appreciate the Americans who fought and died to liberate them. Worse, they are potential assassins or human bombs. To the Marines in this case, whose columns had been attacked by snipers and car bombs on the way to Baghdad, Khadim Hussein was a man who foolishly went for a drive in a war zone.
The deaths have devastated Khadim Hussein’s extended family and left a legacy of anger and bitterness. A tight knot of Marines struggled with conflicting emotions — but the troops concluded that they performed a difficult mission exactly the way they were trained to. Although the US military does not keep track of civilian casualties, a survey of news accounts by the nonprofit group Iraqbodycount.org indicates that between 6,100 and 7,800 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the US military campaign since March. A Los Angeles Times survey of Baghdad-area hospitals in May estimated that at least 1,700 Iraqi civilians died and more than 8,000 were wounded in the battle for the capital.
More recent deaths include the shooting of a 14-year-old boy at a wedding ceremony Thursday and of five Baghdad residents at an unannounced army checkpoint in late July.
Erroneous shootings have fanned the anger toward US troops in Iraq. A member of the US-appointed Governing Council said last week that most Iraqis were discontented with the US-led forces because they “treat the Iraqi people with violence and contempt.” US casualties have mounted too amid the postwar insurgency. About 300 Americans have been killed and more than 1,200 wounded, according to the latest data. Many of the US casualties since May 1, the day President Bush declared major combat operations over, have been as a result of attacks on convoys.
Protecting their convoys continues to be one of the main problems facing US troops in Iraq. In a speech last month, Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said he believed Marines had suffered fewer casualties than army units since May 1 because they are more aggressive about convoy security.
In the days after the shooting, Johnson and Payne expressed mild remorse that civilians had been killed. But neither expressed second thoughts or recriminations.
A few days after the incident, in what fellow Marines viewed as a vote of confidence, Johnson was assigned to provide security for a senior officer on a mission outside the compound. Today, he is a close-combat instructor in the martial arts program at Camp Pendleton.
Payne, also back at Camp Pendleton, said he had no regrets about the shooting.
“Those people chose their own deaths,” he said. “I’m at inner peace with what I did. I had to protect my Marines.”
