Iraq  

Tim Pritchard                                               It was dawn in Nasyrya

  It was dawn on March 23, 2003 when Marines from Task Force Tarawa approached the town of Nasiriya in southern Iraq. They had been assigned a routine manoeuvre, taking two key bridges to open up a route to Baghdad. Nasiriya was a predominantly Shiite town that had rebelled against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. US intelligence suggested that as soon as the Americans rolled into town, the city’s defenders would lay down their weapons and, as one Marine commander expressed it, “put flowers in our gun barrels, hold up their babies for us to kiss and give us the keys to the city”.

But when Task Force Tarawa’s lead units reached the outskirts they came across the burned out remnants of several vehicles of the US Army’s 507th Maintenance Company. A captain in the 507th told wide-eyed Marine commanders how his convoy had taken a wrong turn at night, driven into Nasiriya and been attacked by Iraqi fighters. Several US soldiers were still missing, including a young army private, Jessica Lynch.

It was her fate that attracted attention in the days following. But it’s what happened to Task Force Tarawa that is most instructive about the nature of the Iraq war and about what life would be like once coalition forces got to Baghdad.

As marine units moved into Nasiriya they were attacked by massed numbers of Iraqi fighters. To the surprise of Marines on the ground, few of the Iraqi combatants seemed to be wearing military uniforms. Many were dressed in the distinctive black pajamas worn by Shiite Muslims, and much of the gunfire came from dwellings flying black flags, denoting them as Shiite homes. And yet the Shiites were supposed to be on the Americans’ side.

What’s more, as the Marines were drawn into a raging battle in the city center, more and more people came out of ordinary homes to take up arms. One group of young Marines, separated from their unit and forced to commandeer a house, found themselves under attack for several hours from what appeared to be armed civilians. They had been expecting to fight Iraqi soldiers. Instead they found themselves shooting at old men, women, even children.

Of course, there were Sunni-led Fedayeen troops and foreign fighters who fought that day. But some who picked up weapons were also civilians intent on defending homes against foreign invaders. The potent and complex mix of insurgency — Sunni and Shiite militants, civilians and foreign fighters — that causes such chaos in Iraq today was already apparent during the battle of Nasiriya.

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