The Checkpoint
Experience
By Annia Ciezadlo
15 March, 2005
The
Independent
It's
a common occurrence in Iraq: a car speeds towards an American checkpoint
or foot patrol; they fire warning shots; the car keeps moving. Soldiers
then shoot at the car. Sometimes the oncoming car is a foiled suicide-attacker.
Other times, the occupants are an unarmed family.
As the shooting
of the Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari, as he tried to deliver
journalist Giuliana Sgrena to safety, by US forces earlier this month
underlines, significant confusion surrounds the establishment and use
of checkpoints in Baghdad. While the US military claim that Calipari
was shot at for speeding through a temporary checkpoint, Sgrena has
repeatedly denied that such a set up even existed.
I'm not surprised
the event should have generated such conflicting viewpoints. As a foreign
journalist in Baghdad, I regularly have to travel through checkpoints,
and have often come close to being shot at in wildly confusing and terrifying
situations. I think that the regularity with which I have been targeted
is largely down to the fact that I look quite Middle Eastern, which,
I think, makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of a
typical Iraqi.
It is always surprising,
how slowly your sense of danger takes hold. You may see a couple of
soldiers standing by the side of the road as you drive around, but they're
such an ubiquitous sight in Baghdad that you don't think anything of
it. Most of the time, you don't even realise that you are at a checkpoint,
and then suddenly, you are surrounded by soldiers, screaming at you,
pointing their rifles and swivelling tank guns in your direction. And
if it's confusing for me - an English-speaker - what is it like for
Iraqis who don't speak English? I've often been in the car with an Iraqi
driver who steps on the gas. I understand why, it's a natural reaction.
If you were surrounded by angry soldiers, screaming at you to "get
out of here" in a language that you didn't understand - and you
were terrified to boot - you would probably try to drive away from the
situation, too.
Another problem
is that the US troops tend to have two-stage checkpoints. At the first,
there's usually a knot of Iraqi security forces standing by a sign that
says, in Arabic and English, "Stop or you will be shot". But
most of the time, the Iraqi forces will casually wave you through. A
driver, who might have slowed down for the first checkpoint, will then
accelerate to resume his normal speed, often without realising that
there is another American checkpoint several hundred yards past the
Iraqi one. Sometimes, a driver may even think that being waved through
the first checkpoint means that he's exempt from the second one.
I remember one terrifying
day when my Iraqi driver did just that. We got to a checkpoint manned
by Iraqi troops. Chatting and smoking, they waved us through without
a glance. Relieved, he stomped down on the acceleration, and we zoomed
up to about 50mph before I saw the second checkpoint up ahead. I screamed
at him to stop, my translator screamed, and the soldiers up ahead looked
as though they were getting ready to start shooting.
After I got my driver
to slow down and we cleared the second checkpoint, I made him stop the
car. My voice shaking with fear, I explained to him that having been
through a checkpoint it was imperative that he drive as slowly as possible
for at least five minutes. He turned to me, his face twisted with the
anguish of making me understand: "But Mrs Annia," he said,
"if you go slow, they notice you!"
This feeling is
a relic of the days of Saddam, when driving slowly past a government
building or installation was considered suspicious behaviour. Two years
ago, if you were caught idling past the wrong palace or ministry, you
might never have been seen again. I also remember parking outside a
ministry with an Iraqi driver, waiting to pick up a friend. After sitting
and staring at the building for about half an hour, waiting for our
friend to emerge, the driver shook his head. "If you even looked
at this building before, you'd get arrested," he said, his voice
full of disbelief. Before, he would speed past this building, gripping
the wheel, staring straight ahead, careful not to even turn his head.
After 35 years, Iraqis still speed up when they're driving past government
buildings - which, since the Americans took over a lot of them, tend
to be exactly where the checkpoints are.
Fear of insurgents
and kidnappers is another reason for accelerating - speeding up and
getting away from trouble can save your life. Many Iraqis know somebody
who has been shot at on the road, and a lot of people have survived
only because they accelerated. This fear comes into play at checkpoints
because US troops are often accompanied by a cordon of Iraqi security
forces - and a lot of the assassinations and kidnappings have been carried
out by Iraqi security forces, or people dressed in their uniforms. Often,
the Iraqi security forces are the first to be visible at checkpoints.
If they are angry-looking and you hear shots being fired, it becomes
easier to misread the situation and put the pedal to the metal.
American soldiers
have confided to me about their experiences. Some have had to shoot
people as they travelled through the checkpoints, and many others have
witnessed shootings. They are not supposed to talk about it, but they
do. I think that, often, the soldiers really need to talk about it.
They are traumatised. Despite the impressions that we may have of American
soldiers being trigger-happy kids, this set-up is not what they wanted
at all. The whole checkpoint experience is confusing and terrifying,
for them as well as for the Iraqis. Many of them have seen people getting
killed or injured, including friends of theirs. You can imagine what
it is like for them, wondering whether each car that approaches is a
normal Iraqi family or a suicide bomber. I wish that the American commanders
who set up these checkpoints could drive through them themselves, in
a civilian car, so that they could see what the experience is like for
civilians. But it wouldn't be the same: they already know what an American
checkpoint is, and how to act at one - which most Iraqis don't.
Is there a way to
do checkpoints right? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it seems that the whole
checkpoint experience perfectly encapsulates the contradictions and
miseries and misunderstandings of everyone's common experience in Iraq.
Annia Ciezadlo works
for the 'Christian Science Monitor'