Peter van Agtmael

American Wars: On Patrol

A humvee leaves for a patrol from Camp Victory in Baghdad. Seen through the window are standard living quarters, surrounded by concrete blast walls. All the U.S. mega-bases in Iraq are built on a similar template, rows of blast walls surrounding trailers that go on for miles.
  
A screaming statue, a vestige of the Saddam-era, is viewed from a passing humvee in Amiriyah. In the foreground are pieces of trees used as impromptu barricades. They are guarded by local militias against the threat of incursions by the Shiite Mahdi Army. The streets, covered in garbage, are often almost devoid of people. Stores are shuttered, even in the middle of the day, and only a few kiosks remain open, selling essentials. Most people that find themselves on the street are exposed only because they have run out of an important supply, and move quickly and furtively. Nearly every day, the air is rent by the sounds of IED’s, carbombs and gunfire, as Amiriyah is traditionally one of the most dangerous stretches of land in Iraq for U.S. troops.
   
A boy gestures at a passing Humvee, the ubiquitous American military vehicle in Iraq. Concrete barriers topped with barbed wire are common sites in Baghdad, ringing every base and most government buildings, as well as hotels and private neighborhoods, checkpoints and markets. Most adults ignore the passing humvees, or give them spiteful, angry gazes. The children’s reaction is mixed. The youngest often wave and smile, excited to see the lumbering ordinance, unaware of its threat. The older children generally imitate the parents, gesturing angrily and often throwing rocks at the armored doors or the gunner, a provocative move so commonplace that the soldiers rarely even bother stopping anymore.
     
  
Raymond Henry, 21, of Anaheim, California, watches a group of Iraqi boys playing basketball while his commander meets with the principal of a school to inquire about donating school supplies. A few weeks later, Raymond was killed by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) while on another routine patrol through the city of Mosul. Three other soldiers were wounded in the same blast. He had been in Iraq for two months. It was the first death for Charlie Company of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, which still had ten months remaining in Iraq. Raymond joined the army in the hopes that it would help his chances at becoming a firefighter. He had been a standout basketball player in high school, and taught kids in a summer league. He was tall and strong, but gentle and known for his near constant smile. Raymond died an only child.
  
A young man on a motorcycle is stopped for suspicious behavior in Rawah, a violent Sunni town in Anbar Province, near the Syrian border. The teenager had scowled angrily at the passing column of U.S. Stryker armored vehicles, a gesture considered hostile by one of the gunners who shouted for the convoy to stop. He then leapt out of the gunners hatch, weapon pointed at the head of the Iraqi and yelled at him in English to lie on the ground. The teenager, numbed by fear and incomprehension, stood shaking with his arms thrust high into the air, and was shoved to the ground by the cursing soldier in order to be searched for weapons and contraband. Nothing was discovered on his person, but the commander of the American unit decided to investigate further, and demanded to be taken to the young man’s house. The house, a simple stucco structure with few possessions or hiding places, came up empty of contraband, and the after further questioning the young man was released.
  
Two teenage boys, one of whom has an American flag stitched into his sweater, watch as American patrol passes at dusk. Three years after the invasion, passing patrols would receive a limited range of responses from Iraqis. Sometimes there would be a studied lack of acknowledgement, or perhaps an angry scowl and shouted words, or just a cryptic, masked expression. Only in Kurdish areas or occasionally among children hoping for candy or soccer balls would U.S. soldiers receive smiles or waves. The patrol had progressed the same way as most others. Gunshots early on led to a frantic, frustrated search for the gunmen, who quickly melted back into the population. From there a tip was given about a weapons cache buried in an abandoned yard, but a search turned up nothing. The remaining hours of the patrol concluded in a wary walk through the old town of Mosul, the soldiers scanning all possible points of attack and occasionally engaging the local populace with questions regarding their needs and frustrations, which were always many and un-resolvable with the tools the Americans had on hand.
     
  
Specialist Lucas Yaminishi holds up the shoe of a victim of a suicide bombing in a café in Mosul. The attack left nine people dead and 23 wounded. It happened at the Abu-Ali restaurant early on a sunny winter morning, as policemen were gathering for tea and breakfast. The bomber walked into the busy restaurant, wrapped in a vest filled with explosives and lined with improvised projectiles, the bustling crowd ensuring his anonymity. Stepping into the center of the cramped room, he blew himself up, and in an instant the café changed from the serenity of a refuge from the war to a blood-bath, the ceiling hanging, power wires dangling, the walls sprayed with blood and the floor with possessions, body parts, and food. The Iraqi police responded quickly, evacuating the wounded to three local hospitals and collecting the remains. A U.S. patrol came upon the scene and wandered numbly through the restaurant they had passed many times before on patrol, cursing their enemy for its inhumanity. The smell of cordite and blood lingered in the heavy air, and the streets were empty except for a few curious bystanders who stared at the gaping hole in the otherwise quiet block. The patrol moved to the hospital to check the status of the victims. Ali, the owner, an affable and enthusiastic man, lay shriveled on one of the beds, his head completely swaddled in bandages but for a his nose and lips, which were still covered in blood. He did not survive the day.
   
  
     
  
Dawn breaks over a village in Eastern Afghanistan occupied by U.S. soldiers searching for a man suspected of launching rockets at a nearby American base. The previous night, as the soldiers approached, the village dogs began barking, and by the time soldiers arrived the suspect was long gone.