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Calipari Shooting

Anger in Italy Simmers over US Attack in Iraq

By Alexander Smoltczyk in Rome

Italians are outraged at the killing of secret service agent Nicola Calipari at the hands of US troops in Iraq last week. Calipari has rapidly become a national hero, and relations between the two countries, close allies in Iraq, are suffering as never before since the war began.

For a moment, it seemed as though a handful of American soldiers manning a checkpoint in Iraq had been able to accomplish something that has so far eluded the terrorists: the unification of Italians against the United States. Following the tragic death of secret service agent Nicola Calipari, Italian leftists found themselves for the first time ever before the hated "Altar of the Fatherland," as the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele in Rome is known. Former neo-fascists sat side-by-side with Maoists. The neo-communist Fausto Bertinotti even went so far as to refer to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi aa a "good politician" after Berlusconi, in a fit of rage, summoned US Ambassador to Italy Melvin Sembler and demanded an explanation for Calipari's shooting. Gianni Letta, a member of Berlusconi's cabinet, summed up the nation's feeling at the Monday service. "You gave Italians their country back," he said to the dead Calipari.

Nicola Calipari has become a national hero. And Italy is a country that is in desperate need of heroes. It is a country that is unsettled, and one in which one of the governing parties demands the nation be split in two and the prime minister uses his office first and foremost to his own advantage. It is this country that, last Friday, discovered that there are still civil servants who do their duty -- indeed more than their duty -- to their dying breath.

And yet, even as Calipari was being put to rest, the controversy surrounding the Friday shooting -- which occurred as Calipari was escorting kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to freedom and was fired on by jittery American soldiers -- was receiving new life. Independent of the investigations currently looking into the incident, the wounded, traumatized Sgrena announced "I have always supported the civil resistance in Iraq. In war I can understand that excesses sometimes occur." She was referring to her own kidnapping.

In the meantime, she is no longer accusing the Americans of ambushing her car and of intentionally targeting her. "I never said that the Americans wanted to kill me," Sgrena explained Tuesday evening on television. "I only said that what happened had the dynamics of an ambush."

But while Sgrena is recanting, investigations into the incident are just getting underway. On Tuesday, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini went before parliament to announce the creation of a joint US-Italian investigative commission -- an Italian general is to help out American chief investigator Peter Vagjel. The primary question is still why the US patrol was not informed that the Italians were coming. CNN reported that the American patrol was on the road because the new US ambassador in Baghdad, John Negroponte, was expected. Fini has repeatedly claimed that Calipari made "all of the necessary contacts" with the Americans. Calipari did not, says Fini however, tell the American military who would be traveling in the car.

The first photos of the Toyota show that a number of rounds hit the front tires and the windshield -- but there are no indications of the "hail of bullets" Sgrena has spoken of. The engine block -- that part of approaching automobiles the American soldiers are taught to shoot at first -- appears, however, to be unharmed.

The important question of how fast the car was driving as it approached the checkpoint remains unclear. The US has claimed a speed of roughly 80 kilometers per hour. Fini said on Tuesday that the car was driving "no faster than 40 kilometers per hour. Nobody indicated that the car should stop."

The tragedy has forced a new debate about the rules of engagement for soldiers stationed at the checkpoints. John F. Burns, a veteran Iraq reporter for the New York Times has written of daily incidents in which Iraqi civilians or employees of Western firms have been fired upon at the checkpoints. "American soldiers operate under rules of engagement that give them authority to open fire whenever they have reason to believe that they or others in their unit may be at risk of suicide bombings or other insurgent attacks," Burns wrote earlier this week. On Tuesday, Gen. George Casey, the commander of the coalition troops in Iraq, announced he would overhaul the "rules of engagement" at the checkpoints.

Berlusconi was reportedly beside himself with anger when he learned about the death of his best official. Nicola Calipari and the prime minister were friendly with one another. It pained Berlusconi, sources said, "that the price of the flippancy displayed by someone (Sgrena) who moved through Iraq without any caution had to be paid by poor Calipari, someone who had nothing to do with it."

More painful yet, however, is the question of why Nicola Calipari had to operate behind the Americans' backs. Why did he have to complete the final phase of a highly dangerous endeavor in a normal rental car instead of ordering a helicopter from the Americans? And why did he take the risk of driving on Baghdad's most-dangerous street in full darkness instead of spending the night at the Italian embassy and waiting until the next morning?

His death has also thrown into question the policies the Italian government has used to deal with hostage-takers. In a report for the Italian daily Repubblica, Giuseppe d'Avanzo wrote of "collective hypocrisy" and accused his country of complicity in Calipari's death. "The Iraqi bandits know full well that Italy is a fragile country and is run on emotions that can easily be mobilized. We paid to get back Agliani, Cupertino and Stefio (kidnapped body guards). We paid to save both of the Simones (kidnapped aid workers). We paid in order to be able to give (the murdered) Fabrizio Quattrocchi a burial. The Italians pay. That's our maxim, and it's a catastrophe in a country where security for all Westerners is problematic."

Almost as soon as Sgrena fell into the hostage-takers hands, people in Rome were whispering of negotiations. And in the country of Berlusconi, the concept of negotiation is a simple one: agreeing on a price. Reports suggest that in this case, the price for Sgrena's freedom was between €6 and 8 million -- a sum that has neither been confirmed nor denied.

Whatever the final fee, several million euros in ransom money has made its way from Rome to the Iraqi resistance in recent months. And that gives the rebels a lot of spending power. With $1 million, rebels can by 16,660 grenade launchers on the Iraqi black market, a thousand mortars or 250 kilos of plastic explosives, a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said.

Sources inside Palazzo Chigi, Berlusconi's headquarters, report that the Italian prime minister has made an agreement with American ambassador that Rome won't negotiate with hostage-takers in the future. "It's no longer possible for the Iraqi guerrillas to go shopping for missiles in Dubai with special funds they have received from the Italian government," the Italian daily Corriere della Sera quoted an official as saying. And that, it seems, has been the political price for setting up a joint investigative committee -- Rome's war chest for paying off hostage-takers and rebels is being shut and will remain locked in the future. It didn't take long after Sgrena fell into the hostage-takers hands for the talk of negotiations to start in Rome. And in the land of Berlusconi, negotiations translate simply: they mean purchasing negotiations. Report suggest the country paid the terrorists between €6 and 8 million, a sum that has neither been confirmed nor denied.

Rome is also said to have paid off the Iraqi resistance in this manner, wiring several million euros in recent months. And that gives the rebels a lot of spending power. With $1 million, rebels can by 16,660 grenade launchers on the Iraqi black market, a thousand mortars or 250 kilos of plastic explosives, a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said.

Sources inside Palazzo Chigi, Berlusconi's headquarters, report that the Italian prime minister has made an agreement with American ambassador that Rome won't negotiate with hostage-takers in the future. "It's no longer possible for the Iraqi guerrillas to go shopping for missiles in Dubai with special funds they have received from the Italian government," the Italian daily Corriere della Sera quoted an official as saying. And that, it seems, has been the political price for setting up a joint investigative committee -- Rome's war chest for paying off hostage-takers and rebels is being shut and will remain locked in the future.