Goings on at Taji
A site manager for another contractor here maintains a blog and this was a recent post. We heard it happened but we just assumed it was due to insurgent fueding. Turns out it was just about the dollars. You can see the extent that the rule of law and value of human life is absent.
No Deliveries from the Quarry
Since the killings two weeks ago in Taji Village when seventeen men, most of whom were truck drivers who hauled gravel from nearby quarries, were dragged from their homes at four in the morning and shot, it has been no surprise that no one wants to drive a dump truck to the base. It must have been a horrible scene as news reports described ” blood on the ground, shell casings, and coalition-style zip ties (cheap handcuffs)” discovered with the bodies of the murdered. Witnesses said gunman driving new trucks and a van, identifying themselves as the “Volcano Brigade”, and dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms and masks killed the men and ransacked the homes. The bodies were taken away by the Iraqi Police.
On that day, one hundred and sixty people died from shootings and car bombs in Baghdad and the surrounding area which included our neighboring village of Taji. One of the bombs killed over a hundred in the northern part of Baghdad where day laborers gathered to get work from contractors. Witnesses said a van pulled in and the driver signaled that he needed workers but as men crowded around, it exploded. It was a bloody scene. The numbers of dead that day overshadowed news of the seventeen executed twenty kilometers to the north.
Ten days after the Taji incident, facts began to emerge that revealed a troublesome local problem. There are three quarries in the area and one of them, twelve kilometers north of us, had been attempting to resume gravel shipments. The gravel business is very lucrative here because Americans pay top price for hundreds of truckloads per week. Base projects had fallen behind schedule as stockpiles were depleted and when we inquired, locals reported that trucks were being stopped in a village ten kilometers away and forced to dump their loads beside the highway. If the trucks didn’t stop, the villagers would shoot the truck’s tires. The Army sent a helicopter over the site and confirmed the existence of dumped gravel.
It turned out that the executions were not the work of terrorists instead they were the result of two quarreling tribes who owned rival quarries. A tribal leader was among the seventeen executed and his tribe included most of the villagers who were stopping trucks, determined not to let the other tribe pass until the gunmen were identified. It was a bloody feud about money and revenge. I don’t know how it was resolved but a few days later the Army intervened to open the roads again to gravel trucks. Trucks started coming in today. Two hundred eighty were scheduled but less than one fifty arrived. We don’t know where it came from. Driving a truck in this area is a dangerous business.
No Deliveries from the Quarry
Since the killings two weeks ago in Taji Village when seventeen men, most of whom were truck drivers who hauled gravel from nearby quarries, were dragged from their homes at four in the morning and shot, it has been no surprise that no one wants to drive a dump truck to the base. It must have been a horrible scene as news reports described ” blood on the ground, shell casings, and coalition-style zip ties (cheap handcuffs)” discovered with the bodies of the murdered. Witnesses said gunman driving new trucks and a van, identifying themselves as the “Volcano Brigade”, and dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms and masks killed the men and ransacked the homes. The bodies were taken away by the Iraqi Police.
On that day, one hundred and sixty people died from shootings and car bombs in Baghdad and the surrounding area which included our neighboring village of Taji. One of the bombs killed over a hundred in the northern part of Baghdad where day laborers gathered to get work from contractors. Witnesses said a van pulled in and the driver signaled that he needed workers but as men crowded around, it exploded. It was a bloody scene. The numbers of dead that day overshadowed news of the seventeen executed twenty kilometers to the north.
Ten days after the Taji incident, facts began to emerge that revealed a troublesome local problem. There are three quarries in the area and one of them, twelve kilometers north of us, had been attempting to resume gravel shipments. The gravel business is very lucrative here because Americans pay top price for hundreds of truckloads per week. Base projects had fallen behind schedule as stockpiles were depleted and when we inquired, locals reported that trucks were being stopped in a village ten kilometers away and forced to dump their loads beside the highway. If the trucks didn’t stop, the villagers would shoot the truck’s tires. The Army sent a helicopter over the site and confirmed the existence of dumped gravel.
It turned out that the executions were not the work of terrorists instead they were the result of two quarreling tribes who owned rival quarries. A tribal leader was among the seventeen executed and his tribe included most of the villagers who were stopping trucks, determined not to let the other tribe pass until the gunmen were identified. It was a bloody feud about money and revenge. I don’t know how it was resolved but a few days later the Army intervened to open the roads again to gravel trucks. Trucks started coming in today. Two hundred eighty were scheduled but less than one fifty arrived. We don’t know where it came from. Driving a truck in this area is a dangerous business.
posted by BC at 10:03 PM
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