TEN

EATING BEES

“Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez … issued orders that tactics like depriving prisoners of sleep, hooding them for long periods of time or forcing them into ‘stress positions’ to weaken their resistance to interrogation would no longer be allowed.”

—The New York Times, May 14, 2004

IF AIR FORCE colonel Nelson had evaluated the situation at Abu Ghraib at the end of April 2004, he could have described it as, if anything, even worse than it had been during the deployment of the 800th MPs. Human beings do, simply, get burned out by relentless stress and suffering. April 29 was Sergeant Major Vacho’s birthday. He’d just been given a cake when someone arrived with the grievous news that a soldier from another unit had put the muzzle of his sidearm into his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

Abu Ghraib continued to be “a troublesome arena even for a well-trained MP or MI (Military Intelligence) unit,” and the former field artillery guys now designated MPs (Dizl insisted on calling himself a FAMP) were still lacking formal training, though the on-the-job education had been vivid and relentless.

The war continued with no end in sight, and the detainees would remain in fixed and exposed camp facilities, at least until the soldiers of the Sixteenth could build them newer and safer dwelling places.

Meanwhile, the photographs proved such a potent recruiting tool that the ranks of the insurgency began to fill with foreign fighters, many of whom only decided to join the insurgency after the infamous photos hit the world stage. Ahmad al-Shayea, a Saudi citizen who traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency and later went on to speak out publicly against al-Qaeda, was one such person called to action by the Abu Ghraib photos:

Ahmad had to find the strength. He called the pictures of Abu Ghraib to mind. One of the Iraqis had said the hellish prison was not that far from them. He thought of all the young men like himself being held there, raped and beaten by the American Crusaders. He felt their pain in the pit of his stomach, his head pondering as if he too was hanging by his neck at Abu Ghraib. The jihadi told him the American Crusaders and Jews would not rest until they had killed every last Muslim.9

Abu Ghraib had been a previously neglected sideshow of Operation Iraqi Freedom. But it had now gained the attention of the international press as well as the United States government. In the aftermath of the revelations of prisoner abuse, the prison would receive a parade of visitors, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of the army, General Myers (then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Lieutenant-General Sanchez, General Ryder (then Provost Marshal for Iraq), Major General Miller, and delegations from the International Red Cross and Amnesty International.

These people would be accompanied by any number of other foreign and Iraqi dignitaries, reporters, photographers, and television crews. Everything the Sixteenth MP Battalion did or neglected to do was being scrutinized through the magnifying lens of the scandal.

In sharp contrast to his predecessor, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had no experience in detainee operations, Colonel David E. Quantock was full-time Army and held a degree in criminal justice. He had the right qualifications, and a serious, long-standing commitment to doing detainee operations properly.

One of the first things Quantock did was to clarify the role of military police at Abu Ghraib. Their sole task, for which everyone would be held strictly accountable, would be to provide safe and humane care to detainees. Again and again he repeated his message to anyone who asked (and quite a few who didn’t). His troops would provide for the care and control of detained persons while treating them with dignity and respect. Period. He backed up the rhetoric with effective leadership. He showed up, got his hands dirty, and made sure his men were taken care of.

“I would eat bees for that man,” Dizl said about Colonel Quantock.

Much, however, could not change. Quantock undoubtedly knew all about what a detainee facility should be like, but his troops, including much of the command staff, were still learning on the fly. Abu Ghraib remained at the mercy of its wartime geography, sandwiched between the hot zones of Baghdad and Fallujah.

In addition to missiles aimed deliberately at FOBAG, the inhabitants could easily become the collateral damage of nearby and unrelated firefights. For example, when a convoy on the highway was attacked, the soldiers in the convoy would return fire, and stray bullets from both sides would drop into the prison to ricochet off the concrete walls or go punching through an overflowing porta-potty. Plywood doors, the steel wall of a conex box, or the molded plastic side of a porta-potty provided no protection from flying projectiles. Nearly every surface bore decorative holes or chunks missing from concrete walls.

Meanwhile, until the Great Sorting was complete, detainees remained a mixed bag (young, innocent, terrorists, criminals) stuck with deplorable, dangerous living conditions, and they remained frustrated and hostile.

When the smoke had cleared, and the explosion that could have killed him hadn’t, Dizl’s memories and longings for the sweet, calm life he had lived in Maine with those he loved slid down a hole inside of him to be locked away in some safer place and wait for better days.

I am here, still alive at Abu Ghraib, he thought. What next?

Piss in the corners, Dizl advised himself after a few minutes of self-reflection.

Pissing in the corners is a colloquial term among prison guards. It means getting in with the prisoners, getting into things, sticking your nose (tactfully) into other people’s business, solving some problems, and creating a few for those who find themselves straying off a healthy path.

“It’s like being a waiter in a fine restaurant,” Dizl told Turtle with an expansive gesture.

Turtle looked dubiously at the tents, sagging dispiritedly from their tent poles, and at the trash.

“Seriously. A good waiter must be aware of every nook and cranny within his area of responsibility, and so must we.”

That a guard at Abu Ghraib could be likened to a waiter at Marcel’s would have seemed more unlikely, Turtle considered, except that it was precisely this experience that had allowed Dizl to manage the worms-in-the-beans incident.

“Roger that,” said Turtle.

From the Hawk’s Nest, Dizl had witnessed more than a few unpleasant Lord Of The Flies–style dramas among the detainees, and fellow guards reported similar incidents from their respective posts.

What to do? Improvise, adapt, and overcome, the age-old rule instructed. To this, Dizl added an adage gleaned from doing “custody and control” for the imprisoned citizens of Maine: Piss in the corners.

However, a Ganci tower guard, who saw all, was mandated to remain in the tower twelve hours a day, merely communicating—often without radios—all his observations to the mobile rovers on the ground, soldiers assigned to roam around the camp looking for trouble. Given that each enclosure held five to seven hundred detainees, with perhaps six or seven untrained MPs watching over them, there was no way to adequately police what happened inside the wire.

Perhaps it amounted to a Hail Mary pass, but Dizl had the sudden idea that if someone on the detainee side of the wire could be made to feel responsible for what was, in effect, public safety, the Americans might have a better shot at protecting everyone on the inside from the downright diabolical dangers intensifying on the other side of the wall.

So Dizl called for one of the rovers to cover his tower while Dizl went to summon Kathib, the self-appointed detainee czar of Ganci 7-1, who’d been running the place like a mobster and brazenly held court in a rat’s nest of a tent right in front of Dizl’s tower.

“Listen,” Dizl said, when Kathib, with lordly reluctance, appeared on the other side of the fence. Echoing Tex, Dizl outlined some of his thoughts about the risks that detainees and soldiers alike were facing there at Abu Ghraib, and about how the dangerous choices of some of Kathib’s people in Ganci 7-1 only put everyone in more danger.

“They are not my people!” Kathib protested.

“They are now,” said Dizl. “You must keep things on your side of the fence as peaceful and orderly as possible, given the circumstances.”

“Asweech! You are crazy!”

“Some say.”

“This is impossible!”

“You must do it,” said Dizl.

Back in his tower, Dizl didn’t entertain any illusions about the conversation he had just had with the Iraqi. Doubtless for Kathib, abusive master of all he surveyed within the wire, the sentiments of the American on the outside sounded like the speeches of adults in old Peanuts cartoons. Dizl’s humanitarian efforts were reduced to a few puffs on a wonky trombone. Still, it was a start.

“I’m hoping to make Kathib into what, in corrections terms, is known as a change agent,” Dizl admitted, when Turtle asked.

As it turned out later, Kathib persisted in being the wrong guy for the job.

Soon after letting Kathib know that he would be held personally responsible for what did or didn’t happen in the compound between the hours of noon and midnight, Dizl found himself in conversation with the Imam of the Ganci 7.

“I am not prepared to go through Kathib to get things done anymore,” Dizl told him. “If there are things the detainees need, or if I see something go wrong, and I want a person brought to the wire below my tower, this must happen, with or without Kathib,” he said.

“Yes,” the Imam agreed.

“And I will treat bullies, liars, and thieves appropriately,” Dizl continued. “This must be understood.”

“I understand,” the Imam said.

In the parlance of American prison culture, Kathib was “getting punked,” served notice that he wasn’t going be in control anymore. In fact, the thuggish Kathib was now Number One on Dizl’s watch list.

In elucidating the new regime for the assembled detainees, Dizl made a gesture, a visual analogy of a hawk grabbing a rat, as he navigated the language barrier between himself and the Iraqis.

The interpreter turned to his followers and said, “Ah, Shahein!”

“Shahein,” Dizl repeated. “Ayuh, that’s me, and Kathib is far (the rat)!”

After that, whenever Dizl spotted Kathib or one of his minions punching another detainee, stealing food or clothing, or engaging in any other bullying behavior, Dizl would give forth an osprey’s whistle and the detainees would respond by yelling, “Ahhhhhhhhh! Shahein!”

Being a businessman rather than an ideologue, the Ganci 4 compound chief, Hussein, was more willing than Kathib to make a pragmatic peace with the foreigners. As time went on, the relationship between the Mainers and the family group they called “Hussein’s Mafia” became one of mutual benefit. If other detainees were fighting, stealing, or breaking compound rules, Hussein’s relatives would turn in the perps and be rewarded with cigarettes, candy, and extra rations of food, which Hussein could then translate into even more peace and quiet.

The detainees were products of a far more authoritarian culture than the Mainers were used to, where dominance and force were expected and negotiation the resort of the weak. Compound leaders, like Kathib and Hussein, either commanded complete authority (whether by savvy or by fear), or they had none whatsoever. There seemed to be nothing in between.

The detainees were also, perforce, getting a sense of the Americans’ way of doing things. Most detainees arrived discouraged, fearful, and defeated. In time, they would generally respond to the food, shelter, clothing, protection, medical care, and (eventually) family visits with at least some measure of cooperation and even gratitude. But others—the foreign fighters most notably—seemed to prefer thinking of this dignified and respectful care as a sign that the Americans had somehow been bent to the jihadists’ will.

Removing a problem detainee from a crowded Ganci compound could take several days, because the best time to lay hands on them would be at Count. This took place three times per shift, though before the arrival of the 152nd, detainees were occasionally asked to perform the Count themselves. Unsurprisingly, the correct number would consistently be reported, though both malingering and escapes were common.

When it was Dizl’s turn to supervise Count, he would have a team leader remove the difficult person from the line. Then he would summon the Imam.

The Imam, with evident disgust, would ask Dizl what should be done with this man.

“Ask him what his mother would say about his actions?”

The Imam would do so, and the detainee would hang his head.

“Now ask him what he needs? Is he hungry? Does he need a new prayer rug?”

An Imam had his own power among the detainees. The disgust on his face and the virtuous, Gandalf-like power in his eyes would sear the soul of any believing Muslim. This approach was far more effective than removing and isolating the troublesome detainee, and the public spectacle extended the reach of the lesson throughout Ganci.

So the detainee, who was generally squatting on the ground, would be required to stand up and admit to his misbehavior. He would have to apologize to the Imam for the aggravation he had caused, while Dizl added corroborative details of time and place from his notes and occasionally sketches he had made of the action.

Dizl would appeal to their humanity instead of their animalistic fear. Why back an animal into a corner with violence to get it to change behavior when food and respect work better?

How did Dizl have the fortitude to take care of men who might have just killed his brothers-in-arms? According to him, his duty had nothing to do with their crimes. Dizl had worked in the Maine state prison guarding guys who had “raped kids to death.” It’s a job, it’s a discipline: create an environment of balance. It doesn’t take a lot of people to do so, just the right ones.

The Mainers began figuring out the system that they’d inherited: their infrastructure. An infrastructure where, in the past, detainees would be mere feet away from a water storage tank and the plumbing wouldn’t work. Before the Mainers, it seemed few units cared too much about following the basic humanistic procedures for taking care of prisoners of war.

So the soldiers found sustainable methods for detainees to have access to water, power, shelter, etc. The prisoners didn’t have to get treated special; they just needed to see that the Americans would try to give them livable conditions, that the Americans were willing to move away from the bad habits of their predecessors.

“We transcended miles of fence with a little humanity,” Dizl said.

He didn’t put them there; his duties were limited to taking care of the detainees.

Slowly, over time, a balance could be detected, a fragile but definite sense of order based on more than the power of the guards’ guns or the fear of the detainees.

As Skeletor intuited, the seeds might even have been sown during the terrible mass casualty attacks in April. After all those weeks of anxious anticipation, the blow had fallen, hard. It was a test.

By summer, there would be redemption. The April attacks got the attention of the generals and politicians and accelerated their plans for the new camp. It would have all the things that Ganci didn’t have: bandages, hammers, radios, and the other necessary tools for running a prison.

There would also be surgeons, shrinks, dentists, even a pediatrician the local families could bring their children to see. There would be preventive care, like vaccines and bomb shelters.

There would be a combat library and movies for the detainees, even air conditioning for their tents, which was nice, since the average daytime temperature hovered around 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the desert heat, anyone with any sense spent the hottest part of the day seeking shade. To this end, for example, the hand-sized desert palm spider had developed the unnerving habit of dashing toward anything that might cast a shadow, including an American soldier.

Stripping off one’s clothing presented itself as an obvious response to the intense heat. It was only with difficulty that the leadership could convince the men, especially the younger guys, to keep at least their underpants on when off-duty. There was a kid from Warren, Maine, whose dad had driven the school bus Dizl used to take to high school. He earned the moniker Roy-Roy-the-Naked-Boy because of his enthusiasm for nudity. The problem wasn’t solely aesthetic; it was a matter of keeping vulnerable parts out of harm’s way as much as possible.

Early in their deployment, a sniper bullet had buzzed past Huladog’s head as he passed the fuel point one night, whanging off the structure of a diesel tanker before tumbling off into the darkness, an excellent case in point for anyone still unconvinced that it was prudent to remain “armored up” at all times. Boots, body armor, and a helmet became mandatory for travel between the Mortar Café and the porta-potties. The inevitable result was that exhausted men, or men with small bladders, would pee in empty water bottles to be disposed of later. Tolerances of this practice varied from person to person, and quarrels about the number and age of these bottles and what was considered acceptable provided Abu Ghraib’s tenants with another diversion.

In the heat of the day, if you wanted to pick up or work with equipment that had been lying in the sun, it was advisable to wear gloves. Serious burns could result from something as simple as grabbing a hammer.

Incidentally, there would not be air conditioning for the troops’ living quarters. This engendered resentment in the ranks, naturally enough, as even a Texan would find the climate a challenge, and for Mainers accustomed to fresh, cool summers, the hot nights were a misery from which one woke feeling halfway mummified.

“But it’s a dry heat, isn’t it?” folks back home would invariably ask, and Dizl would sigh patiently and say, “Yes, Iraq is a desert. It’s a very dry heat.”

One day around the middle of May, Dizl had been tasked with gathering a work detail of young detainees. They’d been shipped new tents, ones adapted for the promised air conditioning, and the detainees would serve as labor along with Dizl and other soldiers. The Iraqi sun burned down on them as Dizl traveled across the now-familiar gritty ground, moving from guard tower to guard tower, seeking shade just like a spider.

Pausing to catch his breath, Dizl found himself sharing the shade of a tower with a dozen or so small brown sparrows. They were perched on a bit of wire at about eye-level. Dizl had watched a lot of birds during his forty years, but he had never seen birds actually pant before. Nor did they move when Dizl appeared, let alone fly away. Instead, they just looked at him, stunned into apathy by the relentless heat, beaks open, heaving breasts working the air in and out of their tiny avian lungs. Dizl could have picked them like apples.

A couple of hours later, Dizl and his work detail were panting, too, with the effort of hoisting a new tent upright. Dizl knocked the last tent peg into the sand and wiped his hands on his pant legs, leaving streaks that would rapidly dry back into dust and salt. Glancing idly to the right, along the lane that ran between adjacent enclosures, he was startled to see a man with a machine gun. The man was clad incongruously in a dark suit, mirror shades, and a necktie.

Secret squirrel, thought Dizl—a term for the various CIA, DoD, or other intelligence contractors—whereupon, by way of confirmation, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld stepped into view beside his bodyguard. The fierce sun glinted off the Secretary’s spectacles as he turned his head and looked down the lane toward Dizl and the Iraqi boys.

“Shit!” Dizl breathed.

The Iraqi boys looked at him enquiringly.

“Shahein?”

“Yalla shabob,” Dizl hissed. He pointed urgently at the tent they had just erected. “Yalla SHABOB! Get into the tent!”

The boys dove for cover, with Dizl right behind.

“What is it, Shahein?”

“Shhh! Lateesh! No talking!” Their brown eyes wide, they leaned toward him as he put his finger to his lips and widened his own pale eyes to emphasize the seriousness of the situation.

“Rumsfeld!” he hissed.

“Rumsfeld!” the boys looked at each other, eyebrows arced, mouthing the word, grinning their astonishment. “Rumsfeld?”

“Mushkalat! Trouble!” Dizl nodded portentously. With exaggerated stealth, he reached into the cargo pocket of his dusty fatigues and drew out a stash of Tootsie Pops kept handy for just such an emergency. So they sat there together, lollipops jammed between chapped lips, a forty-year-old private and ten young Iraqi detainees, huddled together beneath the canvas, hiding from Donald Rumsfeld.

9 Ken Ballen, Terrorists in Love(New York: Free Press, 2012).