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Magazine
IN CONVERSATION
‘Complacency can kill in a war zone’
SARAH HIDDLESTON
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Arjuna Gupta reflects on his experiences as a member of the U.S. army in Iraq.
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A bridge between cultures: Arjuna atLSA Anaconda, Iraq.
Arjuna Gupta was 20 when he went to fight for the U.S. in Iraq in September 2004. Within a year of his move from Chennai to Seattle and after just six months of boot camp, Private Gupta, Taskforce Chinook,181 Support Battalion, was deployed to LSA An
aconda, Iraq. His task: to help train Iraqi forces to combat terror in the new era of democratic freedom the Bush administration envisioned for the country.
For the Telugu boy brought up in Tamil Nadu, the U.S. army hadn’t been a part of the American dream. His goal was college, but the $9,000 international student fee he was charged, even though he had a green card, was a bridge too far.
“I worked odd jobs, painted houses, sold subscriptions door-to-door for the Seattle Times. Then I met someone in the army who advertised the fact that the army is a good way to pay for college. It seemed a good proposition at the time. I jumped at it.”
Off to Iraq
When he went into training, the invasion of Iraq had just begun. “I knew that sometime or later I would go,” he says. “But,” he admits, “I was having such a ball, I didn’t really think about it.”
Logistics Support Area Anaconda, 68km north of Baghdad, is the biggest U.S. base in Iraq. As Arjuna quickly learned, this made it a target. “The first day we arrived, three friends and I went to the P-EX (post exchange) to buy supplies… We heard this siren and we were like eh, whatever.” Someone spotted them and pulled them inside a concrete shelter.
“We were waiting and waiting. Suddenly we heard this thud. The shockwaves were so intense that they went right through my body; I could literally feel my organs shake. It had landed right outside the post exchange. Two people died. That was our welcome. We learned our lesson: complacency can kill in a war zone.”
Once a citizen of country where a myriad of cultures rub shoulders every day, Arjuna found he had talents that separated him from the other men in his unit: the power of empathy and the capacity to communicate across cultures and languages.
“Most people had never been to a foreign country in their lives. Some had never been out of their states. For a lot of Americans, it was a totally alien experience.” Even simple things were misinterpreted. “This (shows palm, fingers pointed up) means wait in America. But, in Iraqi, this means wait (places all four fingers on the thumb, palm down, fingers pointed upwards like the symbol of a lotus bud). An American soldier won’t know this; it’s something you have to pick up.”
Army training in language and culture was rudimentary: how to say hello, goodbye, thank you and a one-pager on the 6,000 year history of one of the cradles of civilisation. “Everything’s done on the crunch. There’s not enough infrastructure. That’s one area that the army has recognised it needs to work on.”
Unsavoury results
With Iraqi interpreter Ahmed Al jaboori and staff seargeant David Karle.
Stereotyping, he found, was one unsavoury result: Iraqis became Hajjis, religious oddities who prayed five times a day. The other was suspicion, which could lead to mistakes that cost lives or undeserved cruelty. His unit heard about the assaults at Abu Ghraib and other misdeeds. Though Arjuna sticks by the conviction that the conflict is governed by the Geneva Convention, he knows it wasn’t always followed. “It’s there to be upheld. Some follow it, some don’t; it happens. It’s very intense being at war in a country where you are cut away from everyone you love. Your endurance, stamina, mental capacity and physical balance are tested. A lot of people can balance these, some can’t. Some snap.”
The special nature of his unit meant that Arjuna never witnessed the perpetration of cruelty. “Our unit dealt only with training Iraqis. I supported the trainers, all of whom had infantry backgrounds.” Regular duties included ensuring ammunition and equipment supplies, taking soldiers for medical check ups, training alongside them to build confidence, improving marksmanship, going on mounted and food patrols, training them on how to cordon areas and safeguard villages.
But there was a lot of mutual mistrust. “It’s a very impoverished country. For many of them, training with us was just a way of earning money. So they’d come during the day, train, go back and shoot rockets at us at night… You couldn’t tell who. You just had to go on good faith.”
The combination of a large cache of available weaponry on base and rocket attacks at night made U.S. commanders easily agitated. He found himself diffusing potentially explosive situations between bullish Americans and sometimes bewildered, oft-offended Iraqis with increasing regularity. The few raids he accompanied Iraqi forces on, he didn’t enjoy. He is at pains to clarify that it was not a part of his unit’s regular duties. “It was never pretty. Middle Eastern culture really respects the privacy of the home. If someone barges into your house and orders you to put your head on the ground; it’s a slap in the face… it’s a huge insult. You make them more bitter.”
Close bonds
Unlike his American counterparts and, perhaps, as he says, because Indian and Middle Eastern cultures are similar, Arjuna developed close bonds with the Iraqis he worked with. Unforgettable moments included soccer, traditional dancing, Ramzan fasting and witnessing the 2005 elections. “The Iraqis looked at me like a brother. I never had to fear for my life with them.”
He was even initiated into a neighbouring village tribe — Al Jaboori. Three Jaboori translators — Ahmed, Faraj, and Haithan — became his closest friends. “I promised them that once the conflict was over, I would come back as a civilian and actually get to feel the country for myself, on my own terms.”
Arjuna says that he avoided feeling any conflict between what he felt was right and what he had to do by focussing on getting the job done and coming home safe. “I knew I couldn’t change what had happened to the country. We couldn’t go back; we were too deep in. I never let that affect me… I knew I had a job to do. Your unit depends on you, your country depends on you; you can’t go out and be mixed up.”
But when push came to shove, he found the best way to deal with it was simply to remove emotion from the equation.
On learning he was deploying to Iraq: “No room for emotion.” On pledging allegiance to a flag that represented a country he had spent less than a year in: “No space for emotion.” Reflecting on the anti-war and anti-Bush sentiment raging in the U.S. and throughout the world while he was in service: “I didn’t let my emotions bother me too much.”
But emotions sometimes spill over. Without the safety net of their unit to fall back on, Arjuna and his brothers-in-arms found it difficult when they returned to the U.S. “A lot of people have come home and killed their wives. Some people have not been able to cope with society again. For myself, if somebody dropped something, I’d jump. It took me a long time to get used to the idea that I could just get into the car, go to the store and not fear for my life. I feel I learned the true value of freedom — being somewhere where the next minute is guaranteed.”
Evaluating the role of the U.S. army and their progress in Iraq, things appear less clear cut for him now. “I’ve seen the schools, colleges and hospitals that have come up since the U.S. went to Iraq. The area we were in never had proper facilities before.” But volunteering after hours the local hospital, where he translated Hindi, Telugu and Tamil for Americans subcontracting Indians as truck drivers, he saw “a lot of grisly stuff, accidents after landmines, people dying in front of my eyes. That’s difficult to watch and not be affected by. It’s very conflicting, you’re there to do your duty but you see all the evil that comes out of it.”
Arjuna never killed a man, quite a feat in a war zone. But he did lose a lot of friends, both American and Iraqi. One of his best friends was killed in an ambush when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device that was strung across a road. “It chilled everyone. It’s very bad for morale... It’s… difficult to deal with losses.”
Troop withdrawal
With children outside Camp Anaconda.
Arjuna is ambivalent about troop withdrawal. “The U.S. went against every convention by going there in the first place. They disobeyed the UN completely,” he says. “But the country has gone to hell. There are hundreds dying each day. There’s not enough space to fit bodies. Their own people are killing each other…
“There’s nothing normal about life there. It’s completely shattered. I met lots of Iraqis who wished that Saddam Hussein was alive, who bitterly hated the fact that Americans were dictating terms on their soil. I’ve met the opposite who are thankful that Saddam was taken away and that democracy was given a chance. A lot of job opportunities have been created but a lot has been lost. I still don’t know.”
Arjuna was awarded a medal by his unit for extraordinary conduct in the field of combat for acting as a bridge for American and Iraqi forces.
Promoted to the rank of Specialist, Arjuna is now in college, his fees covered by the army, studying for a B.A. in International Relations. “There is another way” he says firmly, “It’s always better to use diplomacy first.”
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