Two Sisters by Asne Seierstad

Author:Asne Seierstad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Who was in charge here?

The judge had released him. The head of the prison had protested. Who decided his fate?

The young fighters were only pawns. The guards locked the doors. The torturers abused whoever they were given. The executioners beheaded on command.

Without these young men, the system would fall apart. It required brutality. Barbarism was the surface, the external face. Behind the façade, there was a strict hierarchy, and behind the hierarchy lay a carefully devised plan: the formula for a reign of terror, a machinery of violence lubricated with blood.

Not far away, a little farther to the east, close to the border in the north, sat the mastermind behind the system that held Sadiq prisoner. Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was a lean man with a graying beard. He came across as polite and reserved, almost a little absentminded, but those who knew him were aware that he had an extraordinary memory and great logistical prowess.

In a small extension behind a house in the village of Tal Rifat in Aleppo province, beneath some boxes and a pile of blankets, lay a file of handwritten sheets: an organizational chart, pages of diagrams, and lists of names, along with instructions, guidelines, and a timetable. It was the blueprint of the Islamic State.

The man behind the plan had held one of the most trusted positions in Iraq’s intelligence service. On March 17, 2003, when President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein forty-eight hours to relinquish power over his “dying regime,” he also addressed Iraq’s military forces in an attempt to get them to lay down their arms: “It will be no defense to say, ‘I was just following orders.’”

Over a quarter of a million U.S. soldiers were on standby in Kuwait, ready to invade Iraq. On March 20, they rolled across the border. Progress through the desert was swift. Many Iraqi forces had quit their bases before the Americans arrived. After a three-week campaign, they reached Baghdad. It took only a couple of hours to take control of the city. The Americans secured the Oil Ministry with a line of tanks and tore down the statue of Saddam outside the hotel where the foreign journalists were staying. Regime change could hardly have been choreographed and packaged for broadcast any quicker. Before a month had passed, Baath rule in Iraq had collapsed. On May 1, George Bush declared, Mission Accomplished.

Toward the end of the year, on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit, the fallen dictator was found in his spider hole, six feet belowground, along with two rifles, a pistol, and $750,000 in cash.

“You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again,” George Bush said as images of the bearded, bloodied man were flashed around the world.

Saddam was finished. But his men were not.

Most of them were secular Sunni Muslims. Shifting alliances and the bargaining of loyalties were part and parcel of clan rule in Iraq. Many envisaged having a job under the new regime.

The Americans had other plans.

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