Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

On April 23, soldiers from the Eighty-second Airborne Division and Third Armored Calvary Regiment had rolled into the nearby city of Fallujah and set up camp inside government buildings and a school. On the evening of April 28, a crowd of about two hundred protesters defied a citywide curfew and gathered outside the school building, chanting and yelling at U.S. paratroopers inside. The Americans would later say that some in the crowd had brandished weapons, and shots were fired. In any case, the GIs opened up with a volley that killed seventeen demonstrators and wounded seventy. Investigators from Human Rights Watch later found no evidence of bullet damage to the school where the troops were staying. Iraqis were outraged, but Zaydan was among the tribal officials who counseled restraint. “We tried with all our might not to create problems with the Americans,” he would say years later. After gathering informally to discuss a solution, the heads of the major clans from central Anbar Province picked emissaries to meet with the U.S. commanders in Fallujah.