"I just have to take this call"

So you think you have trouble with cell phones in your classrooms or with your children. Over here, cell phones take on a whole new set of difficulties.

One of the greatest threats is the IED (improvised explosive device) and more recently the EFP (explosively formed projectile). These are nasty devices which have been developed by the insurgents to kill Coalition soldiers, but more importantly, to turn the American public against the war in Iraq by continuing to produce casualties on the battlefield. Al-Qaeda doesn’t want to stick around for the explosion so they have developed a whole series of remote detonation devices. And one of the most effective is the cell phone. They simply watch for a soldier to come passing by, call the phone that is wired into the explosive, and the circuit is complete, the soldiers have been hit, and the operative has escaped because he can call from such great distances.

Lately we have had an influx of female suicide bombers. The assassins have taken advantage of our respect for the Arabic culture in which we do not interact with Iraqi women, which also produces difficulty at checkpoints where we search. Just last week a checkpoint was attacked by a 16-18 year old girl who walked up to the gate crying. We have a natural inclination to want to console. What the guards failed to realize was she was crying because she had explosives strapped to her body and was ordered to walk up to the guards and if she did not her family would be killed. She did not detonate the device herself, it was remotely detonated by someone with a cell phone. I am sad to say this is not an isolated case.

And all of this leads me to today. The most trusted security people here are the Peruvian guards. If you want it safe, put a Peruvian at it. They are a very professional army. In the center of the green zone is a checkpoint in which you are inspected twice at least for your identity and your car is carefully inspected for explosives. This is a no nonsense place. There are lots of machine guns trained on you, and barriers to separate your engine from your car, if you attempt to ram the gate. The order of the place is, turn off your cell phone, and put it where it can plainly be seen, away from your hands. Make no quick moves. Do as you are told, and everyone will be safe. If you don’t know what to do, put your hands up where they can be seen and wait for the guard to give you the next set of instructions.

Today there was a standoff at this checkpoint. The Iraqi army was convoying through the checkpoint and the leader of the patrol was on “an important call” so he did not turn off his phone. The Peruvians responded appropriately with an escalation of force. Before you knew it, both the Peruvians and the Iraqis had all of their weapons “locked and loaded” with excited exchanges of yelling in Arabic and Spanish. Neither side was sure what the other was saying, but the guns were about to translate. It was a tense 10 minutes before the “international zone police” showed up to quell the bloodbath that was just one trigger pull away.

I can understand both sides. The Peruvians are not about to let a vehicle potentially loaded with explosives pull up with a detonator in the driver’s hand. Suicide bombers blow up checkpoints several times every week. From the Iraqi perspective, it is their country and they have to be upset by being told where they can go by soldiers from all over the world. It is a tense peace.

Fortunately, both armies had the discipline to hold their triggers. They settled the moment through diplomacy, though heated. These two groups of men, from different sides of the world, speaking unfamiliar dialects, both demonstrated the hope we all have for this war. In the end, they all went home tonight. No one was killed, and each man now realizes just how delicate of a peace we manage here.

A peace almost shattered, because a guy “just had to take that call.”