Several times a week, in every troublespot in Iraq, late-night raids are carried out by American and Iraqi troops against the homes of suspected insurgents. Raids take place at around 2 or 3 in the morning. The targets vary, some are suspected makers of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s), by far the number one killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Others are suspected insurgents, who gather in small groups to ambush troops, usually after an IED attack, then vanish, invariably protected by local people. Almost always, the target houses are residential. Entry is abrupt. A dozen soldiers line up on opposite sides of a door. One soldier kicks it in, then he and his comrades stream in, yelling in English and Arabic and quickly subduing the suspects. Their hands are tied and secured by thick plastic bands, and they are made to kneel, while the house is aggressively searched for any sign of contraband. Meanwhile, the company or platoon commander, usually a captain, verifies the identities of the captured men and interrogates them with the help of an interpreter.
Interpreters come in several forms. A few, very few, are American citizens of Arabic descent contracted by American companies. Many other are Arabic-speaking Kurds, usually university-educated young men who tend to hate Iraqis. The rest are Iraqis, mostly Shia, who are local but often from a different neighborhood than they patrol. They almost always wear black masks and sunglasses or baklavas to conceal their identities.
If contraband is found, or the answers from the captured Iraqis are deemed unacceptable, they are blindfolded and led out of the house. The officer and interpreter will go into the next room, where women and children are being watched over, and explain to them that their husband, father, son is being detained. At the news they nearly always leap up wailing, clawing at themselves, tightly grasping their head in their hands, begging for mercy or leniency. The man or men will be stuffed into a vehicle and taken to a detention facility. Often he will be released in a few days if there is not enough evidence at hand to hold him. Other times he will be held in the American or Iraqi prison system indefinitely. Perhaps 25 per cent of the raids I witnessed led to the detention of suspected insurgents. The rest failed, victims of bad intelligence or timing.