From the Battlegrounds: Dexter Filkins on 'The Forever War'
Within days, Abu Marwa and his buddies in the Thunder cell had tracked down the Syrian [Al-Qaeda] gunmen. Within a couple of weeks, they devised an intricate ambush. In their beige Opel sedan, the Syrians regularly drove a desolate stretch of road. ... As soon as the Syrians pulled over, the insurgents shot them dead.AND SO IT GOES in Dexter Filkins' masterpiece of battlefield reporting, "The Forever War.""When my uncle was killed, I promised my aunt that I would avenge his death," he said. She had answered, Abu Marwa said, by repeating an Arabic saying that is often invoked and rarely acted upon: Ashrab min Dambum, I will drink their blood.
After they killed the Syrians, Abu Marwa took their kafiyas and brought them to his aunt, proof that revenge had been taken. She accepted them with gratitude. And then Abu Marwa presented her with a vial of the killers' blood.
"She drank the blood of the Syrians," Abu Marwa said, still seated in the couch, in the darkness.
Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, devotes sections of his book to vivid descriptions of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and downtown Manhattan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The bulk of "War," though, takes place in Iraq, where Filkins effectively wields unvarnished, understated writing to convey an unceasing barrage of indelible scenes.
Filkins watches the looting of Baghdad, listens to "Hells Bells" with Marines as "bullets poured without direction and without end" in Fallujah, goes on the front lines with the Mahdi Army, races around the country with Ahmed Chalabi as he acts like a gangster chieftain, offers a long look at the intricacies of American reconstruction projects, goes inside failing children's hospitals and is repeatedly nearly car-bombed, kidnapped or torn apart by crowds.
As the excerpt above suggests, one can certainly see the seeds of the Sunni Awakening in "The Forever War," but one can also see just about anything one wishes in the horrific kaleidoscope, as the vignettes that comprise the book are contradictory and clashing — which is to say that they are balanced and ring of truth — and Filkins devotes a great deal of time to quoting both Iraqis and Americans who hold see the occupation positively as well as to those who make comments such as, "We will make the Americans leave this country on their knees. Just you watch."
Express spoke with Filkins, who will appear at Politics & Prose on Sept. 30, about his initial impressions of General Petraeus, embedding, the CPA and more.
» EXPRESS: A really striking aspect of the book is the personal bravery you exhibit throughout it. Do you see yourself as brave?
» FILKINS: [Laughs] I thank you for that. No, not really. I was just trying to figure out what was going on there and the violence was just something that had to be dealt with if we were going to figure out what was going on. So, no.
Actually, I think of myself as being pretty careful, even though I've been in the middle of some chaotic situations. There's a lot of things that I don't do and a lot of things that I didn't do. There's a lot of roads I didn't go down and a lot of people that I didn't meet because I decided it was a bad idea, that it was too risky. I was trying to be pretty careful.
» EXPRESS: People who read about you jogging along the Tigris might feel differently.
» FILKINS: That's a good point [laughs]. I don't think that was brave as much as it was reckless. I should say this: The stretch of the Tigris river that I used to run down — it was about 5 miles, up and back — was remarkably safe. It was probably the only place in all of Iraq, outside of Kurdistan, where I could have attempted that. The Green Zone was on the other side of the Tigris, there was an Iraqi Army checkpoint at one end of my route, so it wasn't as lunatic as probably it sounded, but it was still pretty reckless. I'll agree with you on that one.
» EXPRESS: This book shows that you were granted great access by the American military. You were told "no" infrequently.
» FILKINS: Well, yeah. Embedding is pretty simple: You just show up and you go around with a military unit, come what may. In the early days of the war — 2003, 2004 — I didn't embed very much, if at all. It was only later, when the situation became very dangerous to reporters, that we started embedding with military units — frankly, to go to places to which we could no longer go [alone]. For example, in 2003 I could drive all over the Sunni Triangle. I couldn't do that anymore by the middle of 2004, by myself. Hence the embed.
It's not so much access. I mean, the military, generally, they're pretty good about access. "You wanna go on a foot patrol? Get ready to go. You want to go with the frontline unit during the attack? Put your flak jacket on." The principal limitation of embedding is it becomes difficult to talk to civilians.
» EXPRESS: One really striking part of the book comes when the American military searches a hospital they think is a terrorist hotbed and then the Iraqi Army comes in afterward — and you end up taking a nap with them. And then you read a press release saying the Iraqis led the operation. That's really telling.
» FILKINS: I wrote that scene literally the way it happened, literally. I didn't see that press release for a long time after [laughs]. "Iraqi-led" — I suppose it's possible that there was some door they went in first. But that was basically an American operation and the Marines didn't have, frankly, a lot of respect for the Iraqi forces. That's changed a lot in the past couple years. But, yeah, I was disappointed when I saw that press release.
» EXPRESS: Was that the kind of thing you saw frequently, where what the government or military was saying was totally at odds with what you were seeing?
» FILKINS: Not as often as you might think. It depended on the circumstances. For example, in the early days of the occupation, yes. In the early days of the war — '03, '04, when the CPA was there — a lot of American civilians on the ground were just denying reality. I mean, they just were. I'd be in the Sunni Triangle or in Baghdad, literally watching the society unravel, and I'd go to a press conference in the Green Zone and all they could tell me was how wonderful it was. And that happened a lot.
But I should say that in my general experience with the military, you get it pretty straight. They don't have a huge interest in lying to you, so they don't. Of course, it varies, but for the most part, my experience with them was pretty positive.
» EXPRESS: In your book, you discuss General Petraeus well before he became the hero he is today. Was he an unusually impressive figure from the first times you met him?
» FILKINS: I mean, I know Petraeus. I had many, many dealings with him. Yes, he was always very impressive. He's extremely intelligent and he's very, very sophisticated. It was immediately apparent to anybody who met him. In 2003 and 2004, he was far ahead of the curve, of anyone else, in approaching the problem of stabilizing Iraq. He just figured it out — figured out the rights things to do and the things that work — a lot faster than anybody else. And so the strategy and the things that the Americans are doing in 2008, Petraeus was largely doing in 2003. ... He rose through the ranks and became a four-star general and the commanding general in Iraq because of the strength of his ideas and his strategy and his sophistication.
» EXPRESS: Your book is so bleak. There's little optimism. Were you surprised by the decline in violence that we've seen? And do you see your book as somewhat anachronistic because it does not reflect the current situation in Iraq?
» FILKINS: Well, I did not set out to write a book about dates and times and policy and what went right and what went wrong. I wanted to capture, in a very visceral and emotional way, the time that I lived in — beginning in 1998 in Afghanistan, all the way to when I left Iraq in late 2006. That was a moment in time and these were the things that I saw.
War is an extraordinary human experience and I wanted to boil these moments down to their essence. I wanted to show people what it felt like on the ground.
» EXPRESS: So, were you shocked by the decline in violence?
» FILKINS: I was surprised, absolutely. I think everybody is. I'm thrilled to see it. It's wonderful to see life come back in the streets and people walking around again. It's pretty dramatic. I just got back from Iraq and there's parts of Iraq that I literally didn't recognize.
I thought that the social fabric in Iraq was too shredded to be put together again. I was surprised and very happy to see that Iraqis have been able to step back from that. Is that permanent? I think it's very, very fragile.
» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Tue., Sept. 30, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness-UDC)
Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photo courtesy Knopf
Print
Addison Road