The Dungeon of Fallujah

Michael J. Totten is a journalist who actually goes to the places where the trouble is. He’s been to Iraq several times, and his stuff is incredibly interesting to read for it’s ability to get the opinion of the man on the street.

His latest offering is a no-holds-barred look at a certain Fallujah jail. It’s not pretty, but it holds plenty of his usual insights.

“Are there any insurgents in here?” I said.

“No,” Sergeant Dehaan said. “They’re kept in their own cell. They are way too dangerous to be left in here with these guys.”

I wasn’t sure it was wise for me to ask this, but there was no helping it: “Can I see them?” I said.

“Sure,” he said.

Before we went to see the insurgents, several more Iraqi Police officers joined us with weapons. The guard with the key unlocked the door. The Iraqis went in first and yelled at the prisoners. I gingerly followed and found myself in a smaller and equally crowded room jammed wall-to-wall with suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda. Nothing stood between me and them except the Iraqi cops and their guns.

“Salam Aleikum,” Sergeant Dehaan said to the prisoners as he stepped inside. Peace be upon you.

I refused to say that to them. Politeness has its limits.

It was darker in there. The men hadn’t shaved. They sat on the floor and squinted up at the police holding weapons. And they squinted at me. Unlike the suspected criminals in the previous room, none smiled or greeted us in any way. They did not seem curious. They looked at us as if we were bugs.

“They’re extremely violent,” Sergeant Dehaan said as though they weren’t sitting right there in front of us. He patted his rifle. “They’re treated the same as everyone else, but they have to be segregated.”

My skin tingled and I felt flashes of heat. These men would kill me if I met them anywhere else.

Not all Middle Eastern terrorists are alike. I have been inside Hezbollah’s headquarters south of Beirut. I brushed shoulders with Hamas leaders in the Palestinian parliament, although I was there to interview other people. Never once did I worry that the Lebanese or Palestinian terrorists would actually harm me. Al Qaeda is different. These guys are like Arabic Hannibal Lectors.

“Is it safe to be in here?” I said.

“Well,” Sergeant Dehaan said. “There’s five cops. And me.”

Last summer in Ramadi I met a handful of detainees who were suspected of being Al Qaeda. They looked like doofuses who couldn’t get a date or a job.

Most of the men in this room looked like they were perfectly willing to murder us all with their hands. I could see it in their eyes, in the sinister way some of them squinted at me, in the tightness of their jaw muscles. I wished I had a gun of my own.

Should we have even been standing there in the first place? More than 50 potential killers all but surrounded us. They sat on the floor, but some of them were less than three feet away.

“The nastiest ones are the little guys,” Sergeant Dehaan said. “The little rat-looking bastards. They’re the ones who have done the worst things to people.”

I’ve seen how cruel Iraqi kids can be when they fight over candy the Marines hand out to them. The little rat-looking insurgents most likely were mercilessly picked on as children. When they joined Al Qaeda their bottomless hatred was unleashed against Iraqis even more than it was unleashed on the Americans.

“We have to get out of here,” Sergeant Dehaan said. “The cops are getting nervous.”

He was right. They were. Their hands twitched. Their eyes darted rapidly around the room.

“Let’s go then,” I said. If the cops are nervous, I’m out of there.

We left and I shuddered. There would be no interview in that room.

“Human rights organizations would have a cow if they saw this place,” I said to Sergeant Dehaan. I felt little sympathy at the time. It was just an observation.

“Well, what should the Iraqis do?” Sergeant Dehaan said. “Let them go?”

“Of course not,” I said. “That would be idiotic. It’s just so….nasty in here. And people think Gitmo is bad.”