'There Are No Holidays In Iraq'
A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers and wounded another in Baghdad, the U.S. military said Sunday.
"Their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device at approximately 12:20 p.m. in east Baghdad" on Saturday, the military said. The soldiers were from the 89th Military Police Brigade.
A fourth soldier was killed in Diyala province, east of Baghdad, and another wounded. The military says they were assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.
At least 2,969 members of the U.S. military have died since the March 2003 start of the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.
It's a tough time for U.S. troops in Iraq whose mission continues even though it's Christmas Eve.
"Ever since I volunteered, I haven't been looking forward to it," said 27-year-old Pfc. John Alonzo from Lubbock, Texas. "My son wants to know why I can't be home for the holidays. He doesn't understand that I can't just quit."
Before dawn on Sunday, Alonzo and the rest of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment rolled through muddy, unpaved streets in a volatile corner of east Baghdad, hunting house-to-house for Shiite militia leaders and bomb-making materials.
As the sun came up over the city Sunday, a soldier sang "Silver Bells" while others smashed windows in a tall residential apartment building to get a better look at the street below. "It's Christmastime in the city," he crooned.
A mortar round landed in the area. Later, a rooftop sniper fired a single shot that penetrated the helmet of a U.S. soldier, grazing his head. The lightly injured soldier was treated at his base camp.
The troops will spend Christmas raiding another section of the city.
"It's hard. But we've still got work to do. The mission doesn't stop," said Alonzo, who left his job as a beer salesman and enlisted because the Army provided better health care benefits for his three small children, and money for his wife to finish college.
There are small signs of the season across Iraq, where thoughts of the friends and loved ones they miss weigh heavier than usual on the minds of U.S. troops. But for most, Christmas is just another day.
"In the back of your mind you think about it, but there are no holidays in Iraq," said Staff Sgt. Brandon Scott, a 35-year-old from Woodbridge, Va., and the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the Army's 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.
A 16-year veteran of the Army, Scott said he was spending his third Christmas in four years away from his four children. "We don't really have time for Christmas," he said.
But that doesn't mean there aren't gifts.
Care packages stuffed with cookies, candy canes and Christmas cards penned by children from coast to coast have flooded every U.S. military outpost across the country. Often sent by strangers looking to support the soldiers any way they can, there are more sweets than the troops can eat and enough bottles of shampoo and batteries, used paperbacks and cans of peanuts to get them through the next decade. A single package from California to Forward Operating Base Liberty in Baghdad contained no less than eight MP3 players.
Capt. Samuel Fuller, a 29-year-old Chicago native, said his wife arranged to send a small present for every member in his 72-soldier company.
"Our leadership is trying to pull guard shifts so that some of the soldiers can rest and call their families. Maybe smoke a cigar," Fuller said. "But it's hard to find time to relax."
Asked what he wanted for Christmas, Fuller's thoughts turned to roadside bombs known to soldiers as Improvised Explosive Devices.
"A day without IEDs. Definitely, that'd be the best," said Fuller, part of Company A of the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team's Special Troop Battalion, which spends its days searching for explosives on Baghdad's streets.
At an Army outpost in Ramadi, the most-dangerous city in insurgent-dominated Anbar province west of Baghdad, soldiers decorated a full-size artificial Christmas tree with mines, smoke grenades and machine gun rounds and stuck a massive knife on the top.
"You can go anywhere in Iraq," grinned Staff Sgt. Jeremy Gann, a 24-year-old from Dallas, Georgia, who is part of the 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment. "You won't find another Christmas tree like it."
He is right, but there are other, less violent signs of Christmas.
An inflatable snowman too tall for the low ceiling guards the hallway of the headquarters building at camp Liberty, and soldiers stuck a small pair of red-and-green, plastic reindeer antlers on the front of one of the Stryker vehicles they ride to missions.
Curled up in a camouflage sleeping bag on a green cot inside a former prison where some soldiers at Liberty sleep, 1st Lt. Sean McCaffrey put on a red Santa's cap and smiled.
"This probably won't be too good outside with the snipers," said McCaffrey, who affixed a small plastic Christmas tree to the cot of a neighbor.
On a recent patrol, Staff Sgt. Anthony Handly said he saw evidence of Baghdad's small Christian community.
"There was actually a store selling plastic Christmas trees," said Handly, 30, of Bellingham, Wash. "I guess someone in Baghdad is celebrating it."
McCaffrey and Handly are part of the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, just like Alonzo, who said his family purchased an artificial tree for the first time this year, because he wasn't around to pick out and decorate a live one.
"My daughter asked if they could just keep the tree up until I get home on leave in February," Alonzo said smiling. "We'll see if they do that."
In Other Developments:
Shortly after the suicide bomber attack, two roadside bombs exploded next to one another in Khanaqin, about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, close to the Iranian border, police said. The coordinated attacks wounded 18 civilians, some seriously.
In the south, at least five police have been killed in Samawah, where Shiite fighters attacked police headquarters and other government buildings with rocket-propelled grenades. Police have been battling the fighters since Friday.
Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, did not identify the gunmen in Samawah, but police said they belonged to a militia formed by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Allawi said he wants Arabs to send in troops to Iraq and to help set up an Iraqi "striking force" that would disarm the militias and other violent groups in the beleaguered nation.
The proposal indicates the secular politician's intention to stay a part of Iraq's mainstream politics despite his diminishing power base in the deeply sectarian society.
"We want to bring all the concerned parties and make them sit at one table and work together to end the Iraqi problem," Allawi told a group of Egyptian analysts and writers during a stop in Cairo late Saturday.
He said the current political process "has been buried."
Allawi said his proposal includes a conference that would bring together main Iraqi groups, Iraq's neighbors and other regional players to try to end the nearly four years violence that is tearing the country apart.
He said among suggestions he is making to Arab leaders is to have them help set up a "strong security, military and intelligence apparatus that would be able confront the militias."
The spirit of Christmas is still alive in Iraq, but it's tucked away behind the closed doors of Christian families, who represent about three percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Most of the fighting in Iraq involves Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but Christians have also become targets. Church bombings and other sectarian attacks spiked amid a wave of anti-Christian anger over comments by Pope Benedict XVI in September that seemed to link the prophet Muhammad's teachings to violence.
In October, a priest in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped by a group demanding that he retract the pope's statements. He was eventually found beheaded.
According to the United Nations, more than a million Iraqis have fled since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with about 3,000 people now leaving daily. About 40 percent of those leaving are Christian, the U.N. says.
Umm Salam, a 56-year-old widow and one of Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians, celebrates the holiday quietly with her children and grandchildren, as violence sweeps the country.
"It is very risky to go the church in our neighborhood, so we will have a party at home and some of our relatives will come to celebrate," she said. "They'll have to stay the night at our home due to the security situation and the curfew."
The evening church service was canceled for security reasons.
Umm Salam, who goes by her tribal name meaning "mother of Salam" out of fear she will be targeted if she reveals her Christian name, said Sunday she has no choice but to keep her religion a secret.
"We cannot show our happiness (about Christmas) to neighbors. But every single Iraqi has his own wounds, and life must go on," she said.
"Happiness is for the children when they will awake tomorrow and find their gifts near the tree," she said.
It wasn't always like this. Umm Salam's daughter, Um Mawj, recalls more peaceful times, when Christmas celebrations went on for days.
"We use to go to the clubs, and all the relatives and friends were there. Those years are unforgettable, but they have faded," the 38-year-old said.
Her brother used to own a liquor store in Baghdad, but converted it into a grocery store when other alcohol vendors were attacked by Islamic militiamen. He sells Christmas trees, Santa dolls and colored lights at this time of year, but business is not as good as it used to be, Wisam Wadie said.
"Violence has kidnapped our happiness and joy on this great occasion, and planted fears in our hearts," he said.