Allies See POWs--and Find They’re Human

Some Americans have now met the enemy. And it has put a lump in their throats.

Sgt. Alan Jones, 37, an Army MP from Milwaukee, thought he recognized one of the enemy prisoners of war brought into a sprawling prisoner camp in the desert here. The prisoner, too, showed a flash of recognition.

“I know you,” the young Iraqi POW said, stepping forward. “Where have we met?”

It turned out that the prisoner had been studying engineering in Wheeling, Ill. Jones belonged to a Veterans of Foreign Wars post nearby.

The young Iraqi spoke again. He asked about the Super Bowl. He then told his story, one of bad luck. He had left the United States to visit his father in Iraq last summer and was drafted.

At the same compound, Lt. Donna Conrad, 23, of Hempstead, N.Y., took her first look at the enemy prisoners, scared boy-men. To her, pathetic.

“One guy was very young and very small. He looked like he wanted to cry,” Conrad said. “I wanted to cry, too. I had to remind myself that this was the enemy.”

Arabs in the anti-Iraq coalition also are finding it hard to resist a feeling of melancholy about this Iraqi enemy--fellow soldiers on the receiving end of a lopsided pummeling from the sky.

Capt. Ibrahim Hamed is commander of a Saudi reconnaissance unit on the leading edge of the coalition army. Sitting on a carpet, warmed by a pit of open coals, he spoke of the Iraqis coming across the border. They reach this Saudi outpost first.

Even as the ground rumbled from bombs falling to the north and flare-light flickered in the night, Hamed said he has come to understand how difficult it is for an enemy soldier to defect and how desperately some of them want to.

“I tell my people not to deal with them with weapons,” Hamed said. “Their hearts are broke already.”

Hamed has seen the defectors grow thinner over the weeks as Iraqi rations dry up. Iraqi soldiers, he said, no longer get five days off after five weeks in the front. The deserters usually cross the line according to a pattern: A combat engineer picks the way through the mines and Iraqi fortifications. Others follow single file.

As they near coalition lines, they shine a light on themselves to avoid being mistaken for a patrol. Many come carrying free-passage leaflets, dropped by the tens of thousands from coalition bombers and artillery shells. The Saudis signal safe passage with a green flag.

Some do not make it safely.

“Iraqi prisoners say there are many people dead in the desert, shot by the Iraqi military police,” said Hamed.

At the American-run POW camp, one of four on the front lines with a combined capacity of 100,000, reporters were given their first tour.

Salem Zafiri is a 27-year-old Kuwaiti working at the camp with a brigade of 6,000 American MPs from 27 states. He spent a month under the Iraqi occupation of his country before fleeing to Saudi Arabia and volunteering for the military. He believes his brother and other members of his family are being held behind by Iraq.

“When I am away from these prisoners, sometimes I hate them. But when I see them, it changes. They are human beings. I don’t want to kill them,” said Zafiri.

Generally, the prisoners arriving here are in better condition than early military reports indicated. They are thin. But doctors say they are healthy, in good physical shape and without lice. “As far as physical condition, they would not be just a pushover,” said Capt. Kenneth Smith, 33, of Ashland City, Tenn.

So far, with only a trickle of prisoners compared with the tens of thousands that might be here later, American and Saudi officers continue to present a picture of good, decent living for Iraqis who throw down their arms. The Saudis, for instance, promise to pay Iraqi prisoners six times the stipend required under the Geneva Conventions.

But more, the coalition promises the Iraqis their dignity. True, at least one English-speaking, Muslim prisoner complained that he found it insulting to submit to the authority of a female MP.

But camp commander Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Conlon III, of New York, said Iraqis will not be treated as criminals.

“They are soldiers of another nation. They have families, they have children, they have loved ones,” Conlon said. “War is an ugly thing, but we as soldiers don’t hate other soldiers.”

This story was assembled from pool reports and was cleared by military censors.