Wednesday, April 04, 2007 4:39 PM
Subject: [nmw] 「善意の施し」の米軍に子供ら投石：バグダッド
米軍はバグダッドで小学校に「善意の」施しをして回っている。サドルシティー
に近いある小学校に完全武装の装甲車で乗り付けたところ、子供たちの集団の投石
攻撃に遭った。
米軍が子供に投石されるのは珍しいことではない。しかし「貧乏人の地区では
石が飛んで来るが、この裕福な地区でこんなのは初めてだ。こんな子供たちに何
もやるもんか」と「被害」にあった米軍は興奮している。そこの校長にも文句を
言ったが、「最近の状況で子供たちが乱暴になりましてな。学校ではどうするこ
ともできん。ま、忍耐ですな」と皮肉な応対。
「子供たちに石を投げろと命令している大人がいる」と米軍の理解はそんなも
のだ。まもなく米軍全部が「石をもて追わるる」日が来る。
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Goodwill offering met with hail of stones
Soldiers in Baghdad vexed by rock reception at one school during
mission to help neighborhood
By Monte Morin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, April 4, 2007
BAGHDAD -- First Lt. Peter Friend was in a generous mood.
The 25-year-old Durham, N.C., native was tooling through east Baghdad’
s Baladiat neighborhood with a line of gun trucks Sunday, looking to
dispense reconstruction aid at every school he could find.
“We’re the new unit in charge of this area,” Friend told one school
principal after another. “This area has been very cooperative with
coalition forces, and we want to reward that by contributing to the
infrastructure.”
Like other platoon leaders in Company D, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry
Regiment, Friend was ordered to come up with five aid projects in his
sector ? reconstruction jobs that would warm the hearts and wallets of
local Iraqis. Schools were an obvious place to start in this
overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood on the outskirts of Sadr City.
The almost unanimous response that teachers gave Friend and other
platoon leaders was that they really needed electricity, water and
sewage. Gifts of computers would do no good unless they had the juice
to run them, and the city supplied only 60 minutes of power every five
hours. That was on a good day.
Friend and the other platoons pressed on though, promising to add new
generators, classrooms, chalkboards, walls and windows to a collection
of crowded, weather-worn school buildings.
But 2nd Platoon’s motorcade of generosity came to a sudden, tire-
squealing halt Sunday when students at one school started lobbing
stones at their Humvees.
The first fist-sized rock arced over the playground wall and bounced
off the roof of the lead vehicle. Other missiles followed.
Although the armor on a seven-ton Humvee is more than a match for rocks,
a well-placed stone could seriously injure ? or at least ring the bell
? of a turret gunner, who sits partially exposed in the gunner’s
hatch.
None of the gunners was injured Sunday, but soldiers fumed over the
hail of rocks. Part of this anger was historic. Roughly three months
ago a militant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the platoon and was
thought to have escaped into the same school.
Friend’s men piled out of their Humvees and swarmed on the school. As
a group of soldiers fanned out over the playground, Friend found the
school’s headmaster, a middle-aged man with a comb-over and paunch.
“We were going to come here and make improvements to this school,”
Friend told the headmaster, who sat at his desk. “But when we drove up
here, we started getting hit with a lot of rocks.”
The schoolmaster fired up a Miami cigarette and responded through an
interpreter. “Sometimes they don’t know how to treat the freedom. I’
m sorry,” he said with an anxious grin.
“I’m not sure we can come here and do projects if we get hit with
rocks like that,” Friend said.
“The situation during the last few years makes the kids do bad things
and the school can do nothing,” the headmaster said.
At this point, one of Friend’s men leaned through the doorway and
spoke excitedly.
“They’re still throwing rocks, sir,” the soldier said. “I wouldn’t
give them anything!”
With the situation worsening, Friend ended the visit.
“For the safety of your kids and for the safety of my soldiers, we’re
leaving,” Friend said and started for the door.
The headmaster stood at his desk and extended his right arm with the
tips of his fingers and thumb clasped tightly together ? an Arab hand
gesture signifying patience. “Stay,” he said in English. “You must
have a drink. Please, a drink.”
Friend was already out the door. Back in his Humvee, he shook his head.
“I don’t have a lot of patience for that,” the lieutenant said. “
They say they can’t control them. Well, I’ve been to a lot of schools
where they don’t throw rocks at us.”
Incidents of rock throwing were far more common in east Baghdad prior
to the new Baghdad security plan’s implementation two months ago, say
commanders with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.
Still, patrols will now encounter occasional stones, and soldiers say
they believe Mahdi Army militiamen have encouraged children to throw
the rocks, hoping that U.S. soldiers might overreact and shoot.
Friend said that Sunday wasn’t the first time he and his men had been
stoned, but it was the first time it happened in a relatively well-to-
do neighborhood like Baladiat. Rock throwers were more common in
poverty-stricken areas adjacent to the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr
City.
“That school we were just at, I’m kind of surprised,” Friend said. “
It’s an affluent neighborhood. It kind of concerns me a little.
Someone’s giving these kids that idea to throw rocks.”
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