Global Policy Forum

By Scott Peterson

With tears in his eyes, US Army paratrooper Richard Bohr knelt down in the Iraqi dust and kissed a handmade memorial stone, bidding farewell to a brother in the US Marine Corps who was killed in action on the spot April 10, the day after Baghdad fell to invading American troops.

Draped with a necklace and pendant imploring, "St. Michael Protect Us," the concrete memorial put in place by a US unit Friday morning measured two-by-three feet, and had been painted with a bright American flag, the Marine Corps shield, and the words "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

But within 30 minutes of the American troops leaving, this tribute to a brother was no more - a casualty of the deepening resentment toward US troops here, at the hands of Iraqis who increasingly see those troops not as liberating friends, but as an occupying enemy.

At first, after the waving Americans pulled away in their Humvees, curious Iraqis surrounded the memorial, with hands respectfully clasped behind their backs. They talked with displeasure of the American presence.

The necklace was quickly snatched up by a young boy. But just moments after a Western visitor began walking away, several children began to pelt the memorial with stones. Within moments, it was smashed to pieces.

"I broke it - it was me!" boasted Ahmad Amin, a seven-year-old wearing a worn 101 Dalmatians T-shirt. But why did he want to destroy it, he was asked: "Freedom!" he crowed, unaware of the irony. "I don't like America," Amin said. "They hurt us."

Amin says that his 12-year-old brother Mohamed had, in fact, been killed just a few strides away, after prayers on April 10, as he was leaving through the gates of the Abu Hanifa mosque. Mohamed died the same day that Gunnery Sergeant Jeffery Bohr died - possibly in the same incident.

"They hate the American flag-they consider it an offense to put a flag here," says Nagham Fadhel, a conservatively-dressed woman, an English-speaker who has found American soldiers to be friendly. "I consider [US troops] a liberation army, but many are ignorant, and now see them as the enemy."

One older Iraqi woman tried to shoo away the children as they vandalized the stone. But for many Iraqis, the swift destruction of such a sacred totem highlights a much deeper, growing unease at the US presence here, that has yet to deliver security, democracy, or even full-time electricity.

Instead, to many Iraqis the vision of America's role is marred by a string of incidents, like the shooting deaths of at least two unemployed Iraqi army officers at a demonstration on Wednesday, or recent operations to root out Saddam loyalists and guerrillas, who have killed 17 US troops in ambushes, drive-by shootings and grenade attacks since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1.

The incident coincided with a memorial service held by US soldiers in the same area of Baghdad Friday morning, for Private First Class Shawn Pahnke, who was killed by a sniper bullet last Monday. Fellow troops lined up to mourn, where PFC Pahnke's helmet had been placed on his rifle, stuck barrel down between sandbags.

Ms. Fadhel says that as much as she disliked the regime of Saddam Hussein, she could safely be out past 9:00 pm. Now, she says, any time after 6:00 pm is unsafe. Delays by the Washington-appointed administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, to create a new Iraqi government, adds to the resentment among Iraqis.

"If they don't establish a new Iraqi government by August, Iraqi people everywhere will attack them. They must know that it will result in a civil war," Fadhel says. "You will see bodies of Americans in the streets. They think we are silent, but we are agitated inside."

That agitation is increasingly boiling to the surface. Signs are sprouting that US troops - and the ineffective new US-led authority they have ushered in - are wearing out their welcome. Graffiti sprayed across one highway overpass reads: "Go home Americans." Spray-painted in red inside a downtown bus stop: "Go away, U.S.A."

That sentiment echoes on the streets. Iraqi officers demonstrating for pay-and against an across-the-board disbanding of the 400,000-strong Iraqi armed forces by Mr. Bremer - led to deaths at the presidential palace gates on Wednesday.

Officers say they were demonstrating peacefully, and that it was a handful of provocateurs who "infiltrated" the crowd and began throwing stones at a passing American convoy, sparking a soldier to fire live ammunition into the crowd.

Coalition military spokesman Col. Guy Shields says loss of life is "regrettable," but that US forces remain in a "combat zone." It is "unrealistic" for soldiers to carry different rifle magazines with live and plastic bullets, he said at a press conference on Thursday.

US troops are rarely trained for police work. But when they deployed briefly to Somalia in early 1995, to provide security for evacuating United Nations staff and troops, they expected protests and carried the latest anti-riot gear: "Bee-sting" hand grenades that sprayed hard rubber pellets, and nozzle goop-guns that blasted immobilizing glue.

Col. Shields said troops in Iraq that might face violent demonstrators carry no non-lethal crowd control devices, and that he was unaware of any requests by US commanders for such anti-riot gear.

That is a surprise to the family of Tariq Hussein al-Mashledani, a junior officer killed Wednesday. Under a mourning tent set up in a cramped alley, in Mr. Al-Mashledani's poor neighborhood, the talk is of how the US has wasted the goodwill felt by many Iraqis in the afterglow of the fall of Iraq's dictator.

"They speak of democracy and freedom, but we get exactly the opposite," says al-Mashledani's bearded brother, Aladin Hussein. "If [demonstrators] throw stones, do they shoot back? There are a lot of ways to disperse a crowd. If you must shoot, aim at the legs."

Al-Mashledani was taken by stretcher by US troops, and a copy of his medical report by a US military doctor - kept in a plastic bag by his brother - makes clear that he arrived alive "after receiving [two] gunshot wounds at assassin gate, apparently from US forces." The reports says he resisted attempts to help him.

But when family and friends retrieved the body, they say they inexplicably found a third wound - a wound that they say witnesses at the demonstration did not notice, when al-Mashledani was whisked away for treatment. What the family sees as a continuing uncertainty about what happened to their brother now clouds their view of the American presence.

"The US has proved to the Iraqi people that it is an occupation force that wants oil, to protect Israel, and to build big military bases in Iraq," says Mr. Hussein, who also worked in the Iraqi military. "Of course we wanted a change of regime, but not in this way, because we have gone from bad to worse. Then there was safety, and we knew when we would get our salary."

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