efore I relocated to Baghdad to participate in the reconstruction
effort, several friends said they didn't want to see me paraded on television in one of those natty orange boiler suits pleading for American and British troops to withdraw from Iraq with a rusty Swiss Army knife at my throat Not a very original joke and I was grateful for their concern, but this beheading thing has sown a disproportionate fear among otherwise rational people. Yes, it's extraordinarily dramatic and gruesome, hence the headlines all over the world that the terrorists so crave, but statistically it hardly figures. By my calculation, of the approximately 200,000 Coalition forces and foreign contractors working in Iraq, perhaps half a dozen have been beheaded, giving a ratio of something like three per 100,000. Unpleasant, certainly, and it concentrates the mind, but let's keep things in perspective. Baghdad has seen all this before, and on a much greater scale. When Tamerlane swept through in 1401, he put Baghdad, once known as Dar as Salam, the House of Peace, to the sword. Never mind a handful of carefully televised beheadings to terrify the world. After he'd finished flattening the city that for 500 years had been the centre of the Islamic world, the self-styled Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction, Marlowe's 'Scourge of God', had 120 of his trademark towers piled up around the devastated city. They contained 90,000 skulls. That's a proper massacre.
Qf course, if you're a modern jihadi, there's an obvious — and uncomfortable — parallel with Tamerlane. For all his talk of killing infidels, he butchered infinitely more Muslims than Christians, Jews or Hindus. As Gibbon observed in a characteristically thy aside: 'If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease ... perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order.' The same is true, on a smaller scale, of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, Muqtada al-Sadr and the rest of them, They kill far more Muslims than they do followers of other faiths. Are they just not very good at their jobs, or am I missing something here?
The combination of an acronym-rich environment with a militaty culture which likes to rename organisations and institutions on a regular basis makes life confusing. Over
the past few months the Mahdi Militia (MM) has become, successively, the Mahdi Army, Sadr's Army, Sadr's Militia and Muqtatia's Militia, My favourite acronym of the moment is what Americans would call a 'combo', not one acronym but two: MM IVCP, otherwise known as a Mahdi Militia Illegal Vehicle Checkpoint. A close second and third are two of my earlier choices, R3P (Rapid Recovery Response Programme) and ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude). I have never warmed to what is known locally as a VBIED. or a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device. Car bomb seems to encapsulate it rather better. There was an enormous one the morning I arrived: it killed 10 Iraqis and no infidels.
There is a view, particularly common among British many officers, both retired and serving, that the Americans haven't got a clue when it comes to soldiering. Their strategy in Iraq is misguided, runs the argument, their tactics inappropriate for the terrain and the culture. And when it comes to winning 'hearts and minds', at which the British consider themselves masters, the Americans are a washout. Fantastic equipment and mind-boggling technology, the critics concede (how could they not?), but as soldiers the Americans compare poorly pound-for-pound with their British counterparts. I heard all this in Afghanistan. All the kit, full of shit,' smirked the Brits, All the gear, no idea.'
T wonder if any of these desperately under1 funded British troops have ever spent any time with the US military's civil affairs teams, I have during the past month, and they are a terrific bunch of men and women. Reservists drawn from all the professions, from all the states of America, they apply themselves with extraordinary courage, professionalism, dedication and courtesy. And they do so to great effect, only their achievements rarely make it into the
international press. Schools have been refurbished, football pitches, orphanages and children's playgrounds constructed, sewage works repaired, district and neighbourhood advisory councils (inevitably DACs and NACs) initiated and funded, The British aren't doing it. Not because they're no good, but simply because they have neither the numbers nor the money to consider anything remotely as ambitious.
We may be standing side by side with our American cousins in the war on terror, but that doesn't mean we are speaking the same language. Not long after I arrived I was asked by a formidable southern lady, 'What are your deliverables?' which left me spluttering like a fool. Had she mistaken me for a pizza outlet? No, she just wanted to know what I could do for her. Definitising is the latest Baghdad buzzword, which I'm gratified to see is not even recognised by the American English dictionary in the latest version of Microsoft Word. I'm looking forward to a forthcoming Outreach Alignment Conference, where I intend to fully leverage all my synergies in a generally empowering way, retaining focus all the while as I interface (never talk) with colleagues in this strategic capacity-building programme. This afternoon I heard someone confess he didn't 'have visibility on' — i.e,,
didn't know a statistic he had been asked for. In another meeting a colleague was asked who the 'belly-button' was in a particular department, meaning the `go-to' person. My comfort levels had difficulty with that one, though I am taking proactive steps to adapt. As for politesse, there was a time when the English prided themselves on having the best manners in the world. In my view, the Americans displaced us some time ago, probably around the time we stopped calling people 'sir' and 'ma'am'.
Havingmissed the opportunity to launch Tamerlane in London, I am making do in Baghdad, the city he destroyed with such venom. Although the venue will be truly palatial — Saddam's old digs — the crowd will be less than royal, consisting for the most part of beer-swilling, shaven-headed young men with baggy cargo pants, goatees, pneumatic biceps and AK47s. I am hoping to see my New Best Friend, Samir al-Sumaidaie, Iraq's highly cultivated ambassador to the United Nations, but that has yet to be definitised.
Justin Marozzi's Tamerlane: Sword of Islam: Conqueror of the World is published by HalperCollins at 125.
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