It began with shock and awe and ended with a silent trickle across the border in the dead of night. As the 4th Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, arrived at their staging post in the sands of Kuwait, Sergeant Donald Wilms got out of his battle truck and high-fived friends in his platoon.
A few hours earlier, they had rumbled across the border, becoming the last combat unit of the United States to leave Iraq. “We knew we were going to make history,” he said. “The whole platoon is extremely proud of the difference they were able to make.”
Two trucks in front of him, Staff Sergeant Wiley Baker also had a sense of the moment. “Any time in a war, whether it be World War Two or Vietnam, the first and the last in are setting the agenda,” he said. “We were glad to be a part of it.” For the men and women of the division, seven years and five months of war in Iraq is over.
As soon as they had crossed the border after a threeday drive along the spine of central Iraq, US commanders announced that the overall American combat mission was also complete. It was 12 days earlier than the official end of operations — and with lingering doubts about the continuing US role in Iraq.
The soldiers had driven for about 18 hours along Route Tampa, the road the US army and marines had used to get to Baghdad in 2003. They had moved mostly at night to lessen the risk of roadside bombs and ambushes along the main highway south, a vast, flat thoroughfare built by Saddam Hussein to move armies.
As central Iraq convulsed in violence from 2005-2008, the highway became almost a no-go zone for civilians. Just before the final drive over the border, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Lawrence stood bathed in the glow of a lamp tower, readying his remaining charges in the gravel of a staging yard 200km north of the border. His young battalion was preparing for one last push out of a war that had left a disorientated nation grasping for its bearings.
As the engines of the 60 to 80 armoured fighting vehicles in the yard, known as Strykers, rumbled to life, Lawrence announced: “This is going to put the finishing touches on seven years here. What’s been achieved is going to echo throughout the region: prosperity, peace, truth and freedom, the works.” His inner court stood silent.
They had just finished a pre-departure run-down of the risks on the road ahead. There was a 10-man bomb-making team active between their staging point, the giant Camp Adder base on the outskirts of Nasireyah, and Basra in Iraq’s deep south. If they made it that far, the 80km run to Kuwait was plain sailing.
“I’ve got some fine people here and they’ve done God’s duty,” said Lawrence. “On our last tour here, we had 22 killed in action; this time we had 10 wounded and no one killed. It’s been a huge turnaround and a measure of the success of our mission.”
From the beginning of September, the US plans to implement “Operation New Dawn”, which seeks to change the relationship between the US and Iraq from that of master and servant to a partnership of equals. As the soldiers shut down their Strykers and rolled into their quarters in the sprawling tents of Camp Virginia base, near the American-run Ali al-Salem airfield outside Kuwait City, a further 56 000 US forces remained on Iraqi soil.
At least 6 000 will leave Iraq before September 1, with the rest phased out gradually between September 1 and December 31 next year. Nevertheless, US forces will continue to patrol with Iraqi counterparts in some of the country’s most restive areas, including Mosul, Diyyala and Kirkuk.
Yesterday, the 4th Stryker Brigade was milling around Camp Virginia, where a heatwave shimmered across a courtyard boasting Starbucks, a Taco Bell and a McDonald’s. The risk is that Operation New Dawn will be a false dawn, especially for an American public conditioned to premature claims, including George Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on a warship in 2003.
Lawrence insists otherwise. “I think we came here at the right time and for the right reasons,” he said. “Saddam was a bad man and he is no longer with us. This country has turned the corner. There are systems in place and institutions and the removal of Saddam was a good thing for the region.” Others seemed more circumspect.
“He’s a barrel-chested true believer,” said one officer of Lawrence. “We admire his passion but we don’t all think like him.” Iraq remains without a functioning government six months after the March 7 elections, the third since Baghdad fell. The US military says it is now the state department’s turn to take the lead on trying to form one. Some of Lawrence’s charges found it difficult to spell out what they achieved in Iraq.
Many seemed to take comfort from the fact that during the past 12 months they were shot at far less often than in 2005. “It’s a lot calmer now,” said Staff Sergeant Mike Poole, who had served in Iraq twice before. “There weren’t as many bullets flying or roadside bombs. But what it all means, that’s for others to decide.”
Down the road from the Strykers’ staging yard, Brigadier Mark Corson, the commanding general of the 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, whose job it is to move the remaining military hardware out of Iraq, was upbeat. “When we got here, it was definitely to deliver Iraq liberation. The place had some big-time challenges,” he said. “We gave Iraqis an opportunity to vote for an elected government and they rushed to do so in bigger numbers than Americans.”
As the Strykers rolled out of Camp Adder for the last time, they passed the 4 000-year-old Ziggurat of Ur, a temple built near the reputed birthplace of Abraham. Few US soldiers ever got the opportunity to visit the monolith, one of the oldest manmade structures in the world.
“I would have like to have understood its significance,” said one soldier. “But the security was too difficult to organise. If this place ever settles down, future generations can visit it.” —