Spanish troops find return bittersweet
BADAJOZ, Spain -- For centuries, Spanish conquerors have been coming home to this rugged, remote terrain near the border with Portugal. The gray stone castles and the towering cathedrals that dot the rocky countryside were built 500 years ago by native conquistadors returning triumphantly from the New World after plundering its riches.
Last week, Spanish soldiers hastily withdrawn from service in Iraq by the newly elected government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero returned to the sprawling military base here and a welcome-home ceremony. A sign at the base entrance read, "Todo por la patria," or "All for the Country."
But many of the soldiers said they were having a hard time mustering much pride about their homecoming, and they were anything but triumphant in their return to a country where the vast majority opposed the Iraq war. They certainly don't see themselves as conquerors, and they aren't returning with riches.
"It didn't really feel like that much of a homecoming for us. It felt more like a political celebration for Zapatero and those who never wanted us there in the first place," said Manuel Garcia, 31, a sergeant in a brigade that was among the entire Spanish contingent of 1,300 troops ordered home.
"We felt like a used car being passed from one owner to the next," said Felipe Collado, 30, also a sergeant in the Plus Ultra II brigade, which arrived home Wednesday to a ceremony attended by Zapatero, his defense minister, and top brass.
The soldiers returned to a nation still traumatized, and in many ways transformed, by the horrific March 11 train bombings by Islamic terrorists and the bitterly divisive national election held just three days after the attack.
In an upset victory that brought the war on terror and the war in Iraq into sharp focus, the Socialist Party leader Zapatero was swept into power, defeating the conservative party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who had supported the US-led invasion and sent troops as part of "the coalition of the willing."
Spaniards widely applauded Zapatero after he made good on his campaign pledge to pull out Spanish troops before June 30, when the US-led coalition is to cede power to Iraqis.
While all of the soldiers interviewed said they were relieved to be home and out of the harrowing dangers of serving in Iraq, most of them -- even some originally opposed to the war -- also expressed regret over Zapatero's decision. They said they were forced to abandon what they felt was a useful humanitarian mission. During their time on the ground, they said, they saw a profound need for international troops to stabilize the chaos and violence of postwar Iraq.
"We should have stayed and finished our mission," said Jose Francisco Casteneda, 29, who was among four sergeants who gathered at a local restaurant Thursday -- sharing newly developed snapshots of their time in Iraq. Each image rekindled all of the intensity and emotion of what they saw during their mission.
The soldiers ate medallions of steak smothered in a thick gravy of Roquefort cheese, a local dish several of them said they dreamed about while eating canned rations behind the sandbagged walls of their makeshift barracks near Najaf, Iraq.
Over coffee, the soldiers grumbled about what they viewed as the staged homecoming. They said that on the day they arrived, they were not given a rest but put through a training exercise for the ceremony the following morning. They said that many fellow soldiers, who had come back in the earlier wave of troop charters back home, were on vacations with their families when they were ordered back to base for the ceremony.
The TV footage of the ceremony shows Zapatero flashing a broad smile that political cartoonists love to lampoon. The soldiers said they couldn't hide their disappointment that the prime minister did not directly address them and left it to Defense Minister Jose Bono.
"A lot of us were wondering, 'Who is this parade for anyway?' " Collado asked.
Cesar Royo, 29, a communications specialist for the brigade who had just returned to his new bride, said he was among more than 90 percent of Spaniards who surveys suggest were against the US-led invasion and Aznar's decision to send troops to support the effort. But Royo also said he came away from his experience with a sense that the Spanish troops had something important to contribute, and he felt their mission was cut short in a way that smells of retreat and feels less than noble.
"America's reason for going to war was cynical," he said. "But when you are there on the ground, you see the poverty and people living in mud houses next to Saddam's palaces, [and] the work we were doing seems justified. It had valor."
Most Spaniards disagree that the war has valor.
Jesus Nunez, director of the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action, which is in Madrid, said: "This was a military mission camouflaged as a humanitarian mission. Sure, they were working in the schools, and in infrastructure projects, but let us understand that was just a tag-on. . . . The former government had an interest in making it look like the troops were there to give humanitarian aid, because they knew nobody welcomed the idea of Spain being in a war."
The mission, whatever its aim, was dramatically curtailed as the Iraqi insurgency increased its attacks on coalition troops.
On Feb. 4, a Spanish brigade commander was killed by a gunshot to the head in an ambush after helping train Iraqi police. His widow was given a posthumous medal at the ceremony at the base.
On April 4, the situation deteriorated further in Najaf, where the US military moved to arrest the defiant Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who remains at large. On April 8, a Spanish convoy was ambushed, and three soldiers were wounded.
The first week in March, orders came from Madrid for soldiers not to take unnecessary risks, leaving soldiers to assume Aznar feared casualties could cost him the March 14 election.
The soldiers were stunned March 11, when casualties mounted not in Iraq but on Madrid's major commuter line at rush hour, where a sequence of 10 bombs killed 191 people and wounded more than 2,000.
They were following developments on short-wave radios, as it became apparent that the attacks probably were carried out by Islamic militants punishing Spain for its involvement in Iraq. When Zapatero was ushered into power, the soldiers said, they knew their service was soon to come to an end.
The only Spanish troops still in Iraq are folding up their tents and packing military equipment. The final phase of their withdrawal is to be completed by the end of this week.
The Spanish pullout has left the coalition badly frayed. On the heels of the bloodiest month of occupation, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have also decided to withdraw. Poland, Thailand, Kazakhstan, and the Philippines have reminded Washington that their troop commitments are not open-ended.
The Spanish troops based in Badajoz come home to careers in the military that seem uncertain. All are part of the professional military established five years ago, when the country ended the mandatory draft.
In one of the new housing units where every street is named for a famous Spanish castle and where many military families live in the affordable units, Marco Antonio Torvisco, 29, a corporal in an infantry's tactical group, lives with his mother, Maria, who works at a local
Torvisco was among the three soldiers wounded April 8, which was Holy Thursday. For his mother, it made personal her feelings of opposition to the war, even though she says she remains proud of her son for "doing his job."
Torvisco, who suffered shrapnel wounds, said it was difficult for him to discuss his service.
"The great majority do not understand what we were doing there or what we went through," Torvisco said. "I think it was worth it to bring peace to a country at war, as we had helped to do in Kosovo and Afghanistan. But I also know that I won't be able to convince a lot of people in this country of that."
Correspondent Juliane von Reppert-Bismark contributed to this report.
