Kuwait Diary

From the Washington Post

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A12


BAGHDAD, April 27 -- Many hours before dawn today, someone improvised a torch in the dark interior of the Al Qadisiyah State Establishment. Others in the looting party followed suit. According to Ali Hussein, 22, who said he had been nearby, it was strictly an accident when smoldering wood set the warehouse alight.

Fortunately for the hundreds of young men inside, this factory south of Baghdad made weapons, not ammunition. No one died when it burned. Unfortunately for U.S. Central Command, countless small arms vanished into the night.

The sacking of Al Qadisiyah, which continued this morning as the wreckage smoked, also may have been a setback for arms control of another sort. U.S. forces hunting for evidence of concealed weapons of mass destruction are taking more interest in places such as this, which was once operated by Iraq's directorate of military industrialization. Al Qadisiyah was not prominent among hundreds of similar sites, but weapons hunters are broadening their search, they have said, because searches of locations on their "Tier 1" list have not produced results.

But this site garnered the attention of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the team of civilian and military scientists who form the nucleus of the U.S. search for nonconventional arms. Al Qadisiyah was about to become the task force headquarters -- home base for the "mobile exploitation teams" that range around Baghdad, and further afield, in pursuit of weapons leads.

Until pressing north to Mosul recently, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus made the site his main command post for the 101st Airborne Division. It had a perimeter wall with strong points for guards, six stories of offices next to the warehouse and a sheltered position half a mile from a major highway.

A half-shredded mural of Saddam Hussein still bears a graffito from the division's soldiers -- "Airborne" on the bottom, and "I Love Bush" at the top. But the orderly compound Petraeus left behind is now a hulk.

For reasons that are not clear, the previous tenants moved out before their replacements arrived. Beginning Saturday afternoon, for the first time in its existence, the munitions factory had no guards.

Ali Jamil, another young man who witnessed the looting, said boys and men in their teens and twenties poured into Al Qadisiyah as the word spread. Some took office furnishings and equipment, but most focused on weapons. They took what they could carry, or brought carts. One man is said to have backed in a truck.

"They took the rifles so they can sell them," Jamil said. "They can get 150,000 dinars for one rifle," or about $83 at today's unofficial exchange rate.

Among the many products of this plant was a presentation set of highly decorated 9mm pistols. Today the grounds were scattered with blue velvet cases, but not one of the pistols -- made for Baath Party dignitaries -- was left.

"All the rifles, all the pistols, are gone," said Kadem Hatem, a classmate of Jamil's in technical school.

The headquarters of the 2nd Battalion, 70th Armored Regiment, a detached unit of the 1st Armored Division, is barely half a mile north, but commanders apparently did not learn quickly about the looting. Not until early afternoon today did U.S. ground forces intercede.

Capt. Jim Phillips, the regiment's intelligence officer, was among the first to reach the warehouse. With two enlisted soldiers he ran into a scene of smoking machinery and a miasma of dust, shafts of light slanting down through a broken roof. Weapons and their components covered a factory floor the size of two or three football fields.

Burned but not consumed, the plant had assemblies for rocket-propelled grenades, 60mm and 82mm mortars and small antiaircraft guns. There were ammunition cases, bayonets, AK-47 automatic rifles and thousands of their distinctive banana-shaped magazines.

Streaming among these wares, like shoppers in a ghoulish arcade, were about 500 young men.

"We started screaming and yelling 'Get out of here!' " Phillips said. "They just ignored us."

Phillips ordered each soldier to fire three fast warning shots at something that would not ricochet. He aimed his own three rounds at sandbags lining a machine that makes base plates for mortars. He even used a looted weapon, of sorts -- an AK-47 confiscated recently at a checkpoint.

"All three of us popped off, and they were hauling out of there," Phillips said. That did not last. Platoons from 2-70 Armor and the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment skirmished all afternoon with crowds of young men who gathered and faded at the perimeter. At least twice, U.S. forces donned gas masks and threw smoke grenades. "We hope they think it's a chemical gas and get the hell out of here," said a sergeant who did not want to give his name. "Even putting the masks on is a deterrent."

When three teenagers were caught scaling a wall, Phillips bound them and sat them near the gate.

"We'll let Huey, Duey and Luey here go after an hour," he told Staff Sgt. Steven Hunt. "I just want everyone to see them."

That did not have the intended effect. The crowd outside milled closer. Frustrated, Phillips called for an interpreter. He told the interpreter to tell the captives that he was letting them go. They should tell their friends that the Americans were beginning to worry they would have to shoot someone. The bonds were cut, the teens ran out, and in a few minutes the crowd melted away.

Touring the warehouse soon afterward, he said the looters wanted what they could sell but that more dangerous goods had been at hand.

"Back there all the parts of 82 and 60mm mortars are all laid out," he said, pointing. "All you have to do is take one of these, take one of these, take one of these, and go out and shoot at the Americans."

Back outside, looking up at the burned-out windows of the office next door, Phillips shook his head.

"I was here when it was Division Main for the 101st," he said. "It was pristine."

He did not know who the next tenants were supposed to be, and the 75th Exploitation Task Force had no way of knowing what had happened here today.

"Whoever it is," Phillips said, "they're going to hate it here."