Mohsen wanted to get out but worried that his family would be targeted by military-intelligence operatives if he escaped. One sympathetic commander, sensing his distress, told him to be patient–they would escape together. The next day a B-52 hammered the ridge with seven bombs, injuring several of Mohsen’s friends. “The ground was shaking and the sound was incredible,” he says, jiggling his hands to simulate the impact. “After that, I knew I had to go. I didn’t want to die for Saddam.”
Mohsen and thousands of conscripts like him were supposed to be the first line of defense against an American invasion, while more elite divisions guarded Baghdad and the centers of power. Iraqi commanders used threats, beatings and even execution to make sure their dedication didn’t falter. One eyewitness interviewed by Human Rights Watch saw 10 deserters gathered in front of other units and shot by a colonel. “This is what happens to betrayers of our nation,” the colonel told the troops. The bodies were left on a nearby hillside as a reminder.
Many Iraqi soldiers saw escape as the only means to survive. One camp set up for Iraqi deserters in Kurdish territory holds several hundred bedraggled fighters. “A lot of soldiers left the front lines and went back to their home villages. Other ones took off their uniforms and went into any hiding place they could find,” says Dr. Khosrow Gul Mohammed, a senior Kurdish intelligence official. “That is why there wasn’t as much fighting as expected.”
The grunts of the Iraqi Army were drawn disproportionately from groups out of favor with Saddam: Shiites and, to a lesser extent, ethnic Kurds. The officer class, by contrast, was largely made up of Sunni Arabs, particularly those from Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. “Shiites were put on the front lines because they were seen as expendable,” says Eric Stover, an investigator for Human Rights Watch. “They were being used as cannon fodder.”
Mohsen, who had heard rumors that American soldiers or Kurdish guerrillas would kill him if he surrendered, decided to run anyway. After the first bombing, he packed a track suit in a bag and waited. Last week he slipped into Altun Kupri and managed to get a shared taxi toward Kurdish-held territory. As the taxi sped away from the front line, Mohsen realized that the two other passengers in the car were fellow deserters in civilian clothes. “It was a great day,” says Mohsen, who now lives in Kurdish military barracks, waiting for the war to end. “I never thought I would have this freedom.”
