Civilians and Savages

The offensive in Ramadi had yet to start, officially, but we were getting plenty of action.

One day, intel came in concerning insurgents planting IEDs along a certain highway. We went out there and put it under surveillance. We’d also hit the houses and watch for ambushes on convoys and American bases.

It’s true that it can be difficult to sort out civilians from insurgents in certain situations, but here the bad guys made it easy for us. UAVs would watch a road, for example, and when they saw someone planting a bomb, they could not only pinpoint the booby-trap but follow the insurgent back to his house. That gave us excellent intel on where the bad guys were.

Terrorists going to attack Americans would give themselves away by moving tactically against approaching convoys or when coming close to a base. They’d sneak around with their AKs ready—it was very easy to spot them.

They also learned to spot us. If we took over a house in a small hamlet, we would keep the family inside for safety. The people who lived nearby would know that if the family wasn’t outside by nine o’clock in the morning, there were Americans inside. That was an open invitation for any insurgent in the area to come and try to kill us.

It became so predictable, it seemed to happen according to a time schedule. Around about nine in the morning you’d have a firefight; things would slack off around midday. Then, around three or four in the afternoon, you’d have another. If the stakes weren’t life and death, it would have been funny.

And at the time, it was funny, in a perverse kind of way.

You didn’t know which direction they’d attack from, but the tactics were almost always the same. The insurgents would start out with automatic fire, pop off a bit here, pop off there. Then you’d get the RPGs, a flurry of fire; finally, they’d scatter and try to get away.

One day, we took out a group of insurgents a short distance from the hospital. We didn’t realize it at the time, but Army intel passed the word later on that the insurgent command had made a cell phone call to someone, asking for more mortarmen, because the team that had been hitting the hospital had just been killed.

Their replacements never showed up.

Shame. We would have killed them, too.

Everyone knows by now about Predators, the UAVs that supplied a lot of intelligence to American forces during the war. But what many don’t know is that we had our own backpack UAVs—small, man-launched aircraft about the size of an RC aircraft kids of all ages play with in the States.

They fit in a backpack. I never got to operate one, but they did seem kind of cool. The trickiest part—at least from what I could see—was the launch. You had to throw it pretty hard to get it airborne. The operator would rev the engine, then fling it into the air; it took a certain amount of skill.

Because they flew low and had relatively loud little engines, the backpack UAVs could be heard on the ground. They had a distinctive whine, and the Iraqis soon learned that the noise meant we were watching. They became cautious as soon as they heard it—which defeated the purpose.

Things got so heavy at some points that we had to take up two different radio bands, one to communicate with our TOC and one to use among the platoon. There was so much radio traffic back and forth that comms from the TOC would overrun us during contact.

When we first started going out, our CO told our top watch to wake him every time we got into a TIC—a military acronym that stands for “troops in contact,” or combat. Then we were getting in so much combat that he revised the order—we were only to notify him if we’d been in a TIC for an hour.

Then it was, only notify me if someone gets injured.

Shark Base was a haven during this time, a little oasis of rest and recreation. Not that it was very fancy. It had a stone floor, and the windows were blocked by sandbags. At first, our cots were practically touching, and the only homey touch was the banged-up footlockers. But we didn’t need much. We’d go out for three days, come back for a day. I’d sleep, then maybe play video games for the rest of the day, talk on the phone to back home, use the computer. Then it was time to gear up and go back out.

You had to be careful when you were talking on the phone. Operational security—OpSec, to use yet another military term—was critical. You couldn’t say anything to anyone that might give away what we were doing, or what we planned to do, or even specifically what we had done.

All of our conversations from the base were recorded. There was software that listened for key words; if enough came up, they’d pull the conversation, and you could very well get in trouble. At one point, somebody ran their mouth about an operation, and we all got cut off for a week. He was pretty humiliated, and of course we reamed him out. He felt appropriately remorseful.

Sometimes, the bad guys made it easy for us.

One day we went out and set up in a village near the main road. It was a good spot; we were able to get a few insurgents as they tried passing through the area on their way to attack the hospital.

All of a sudden, a bongo truck—a small work vehicle with a cab and a bed in the back where a business might carry equipment—careened from the road toward our house. Rather than equipment, the truck was carrying four gunmen in the back, who started shooting at us as the truck drove across the fortunately wide yard.

I shot the driver. The vehicle drifted to a halt. The passenger in the front hopped out and ran to the driver’s side. One of my buddies shot him before they could get going. We lit up the rest of the insurgents, killing them all.

A short while later, I spotted a dump truck heading down the main road. I didn’t think all that much about it, until it turned into the driveway of the house and started coming straight at us.

We’d already interviewed the owners of the house, and knew no one there drove a dump truck. And it was pretty obvious from his speed that he wasn’t there to pick up some dirt.

Tony shot the driver in the head. The vehicle veered off and crashed into another building nearby. A helo came in a short while later and blew up the truck. A Hellfire missile whooshed in, and the dump truck erupted: it had been filled with explosives.

Finally, a Plan

By early June, the Army had come up with a plan to take Ramadi back from the insurgents. In Fallujah, the Marines had worked systematically through the city, chasing and then pushing the insurgents out. Here, the insurgents were going to come to us.

The city itself was wedged between waterways and swampland. There was limited access by road. The Euphrates and the Habbaniyah canal bounded the city on the north and west; there was one bridge on either side near the northwestern tip. To the south and east, a lake, swamps, and a seasonal drainage canal helped form a natural barrier to the countryside.

The U.S. forces would come in from the perimeters of the city, the Marines from up north, and the Army on the other three sides. We would establish strongholds in various parts of the city, demonstrating that we were in control—and essentially daring the enemy to attack. When they did attack, we would fight back with everything we had. We’d set up more and more footholds, gradually extending control over the entire city.

The place was a mess. There was no functioning government, and it was beyond lawless. Foreigners entering the city were instant targets for killing or kidnapping, even if they were in armored convoys. But the place was a worse hell for ordinary Iraqis. Reports have estimated that there were more than twenty insurgent attacks against Iraqis every day. The easiest way to be killed in the city was to join the police force. Meanwhile, corruption was rife.

The Army analyzed the terrorist groups in the city and decided there were three different categories: hard-core Islamist fanatics, associated with al-Qaeda and similar groups; locals who were a little less fanatic though they still wanted to kill Americans; and opportunistic criminal gangs who were basically trying to make a living off the chaos.

The first group had to be eliminated because they would never give up; they would be our main focus in the coming campaign. The other two groups, though, might be persuaded to either leave, quit killing people, or work with the local tribal leadership. So, part of the Army plan would be to work with the tribal leadership to bring peace to the area. By all accounts, they had grown tired of the insurgents and the chaos they had brought, and wanted them gone.

The situation and plan were a lot more complicated than I can sum up. But to us on the ground, all of this was irrelevant. We didn’t give a damn about the nuances. What we saw, what we knew, was that many people wanted to kill us. And we fought back.

The Jundis

There was one way the overall plan did affect us, and not for the better.

The Ramadi offensive wasn’t supposed to be just about American troops. On the contrary, the new Iraqi army was supposed to be front and center in the effort to retake the city and make it safe.

The Iraqis were there. Front, no. Center—as a matter of fact, yes. But not quite in the way you’re thinking.

Before the assault began, we were ordered to help put an “Iraqi face on the war”—the term command and the media used for pretending that the Iraqis were actually taking the lead in making their country safe. We trained Iraqi units, and when feasible (though not necessarily desirable) took them with us on operations. We worked with three different groups; we called them all jundis, Arabic for soldiers, although, technically, some were police. No matter which force they were with, they were pathetic.

We had used a small group of scouts during our operations east of the city. When we went into Ramadi, we used SMPs—they were a type of special police. And then we had a third group of Iraqi soldiers that we used in villages outside of the city. During most operations, we would put them in the middle of our columns—Americans at the front, the Iraqis in the center, Americans at the rear. If we were inside a house, they would sit on the first floor, doing security and talking with the family, if there was one there.

As fighters went, they sucked. The brightest Iraqis, it seemed, were usually insurgents, fighting against us. I guess most of our jundis had their hearts in the right place. But as far as proficient military fighting went…

Let’s just say they were incompetent, if not outright dangerous.

One time a fellow SEAL named Brad and I were fixing to go into a house. We were standing outside the front door, with one of our jundis directly behind us. Somehow the jundi’s gun got jammed. Idiotically, he flicked off the safety and hit the trigger, causing a burst of rounds to blow right next to me.

I thought they’d come from the house. So did Brad. We started returning fire, dumping bullets through the door.

Then I heard all this shouting behind me. Someone was dragging an Iraqi whose gun had gone off—yes, the gunfire had come from us, not anyone inside the house. I’m sure the jundi was apologizing, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen, then or later.

Brad stopped firing and the SEAL who’d come up to get the door leaned back. I was still sorting out what the hell had happened when the door to the house popped open.

An elderly man appeared, hands trembling.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “There’s nothing here, nothing here.”

I doubt he realized how close it came to that being true.

Besides being particularly inept, a lot of jundis were just lazy. You’d tell them to do something and they’d reply, “Inshallah.”

Some people translate that as “God willing.” What it really means is “ain’t gonna happen.”

Most of the jundis wanted to be in the army to get a steady paycheck, but they didn’t want to fight, let alone die, for their country. For their tribe, maybe. The tribe, their extended family—that was where their true loyalty lay. And for most of them, what was going on in Ramadi had nothing to do with that.

I realize that a lot of the problem has to do with the screwed-up culture in Iraq. These people had been under a dictatorship for all their lives. Iraq as a country meant nothing to them, or at least nothing good. Most were happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein, very happy to be free people, but they didn’t understand what that really meant—the other things that come with being free.

The government wasn’t going to be running their lives anymore, but it also wasn’t going to be giving them food or anything else. It was a shock. And they were so backward in terms of education and technology that for Americans it often felt like being in the Stone Age.

You can feel sorry for them, but at the same time you don’t want these guys trying to run your war for you.

And giving them the tools they needed to progress is not what my job was all about. My job was killing, not teaching.

We went to great lengths to make them look good.

At one point during the campaign, a local official’s son was kidnapped. We got intel that he was being held at a house next to a local college. We went in at night, crashing through the gates and taking down a large building to use for the overwatch. While I watched from the roof of the building, some of my boys took down the house, freeing the hostage without any resistance.

Well, this was a big deal locally. So when it was photo op time, we called in our jundis. They got credit for the rescue, and we drifted into the background.

Silent professionals.

That sort of thing happened all across the theater. I’m sure there were plenty of stories back in the States about how much good the Iraqis were doing, and how we were training them. Those stories will probably fill the history books.

They’re bullshit. The reality was quite a bit different.

I think the whole idea of putting an Iraqi face on the war was garbage. If you want to win a war, you go in and win it. Then you can train people. Doing it in the middle of a battle is stupid. It was a miracle it didn’t fuck things up any worse than it did.

COP Iron

The thin dust from the dirt roads mixed with the stench of the river and city as we came up into the village. It was pitch-black, somewhere between night and morning. Our target was a two-story building in the center of a small village at the south side of Ramadi, separated from the main part of the city by a set of railroad tracks.

We moved into the house quickly. The people who lived there were shocked, obviously, and clearly wary. Yet they didn’t seem overly antagonistic, despite the hour. While our terps and jundis dealt with them, I went up to the roof and set up.

It was June 17, the start of the action in Ramadi. We had just taken the core of what would become COP Iron, the first stepping stone of our move into Ramadi. (COP stands for Command Observation Post.)

I eyed the village carefully. We’d been briefed to expect a hell of a fight, and everything we’d been through over the past few weeks in the east reinforced that. I knew Ramadi was going to be a hell of a lot worse than the countryside. I was tense, but ready.

With the house and nearby area secured, we called the Army in. Hearing the tanks coming in the distance, I scanned even more carefully through the scope. The bad guys could hear it, too. They’d be here any second.

The Army arrived with what looked like a million tanks. They took over the nearby houses, and then began building walls to form a compound around them.

No insurgents came. Taking the house, taking the village—it was a nonevent.

Looking around, I realized the area we had taken was both literally and figuratively on the other side of the tracks from the main city. Our area was where the poorer people lived, quite a statement for Iraq, which wasn’t exactly the Gold Coast. The owners and inhabitants of the hovels around us barely scratched out a living. They couldn’t care less about the insurgency. They couldn’t care even less about us.

Once the Army got settled, we bumped out about two hundred yards to protect the crews as they worked. We were still expecting a hell of a fight. But there wasn’t much action at all. The only interesting moment came in the morning, when a mentally handicapped kid was caught wandering around writing in a notebook. He looked like a spy, but we quickly realized he wasn’t right in the head and let him and his gibberish notes go.

We were all surprised by the calm. By noon, we were sitting there twiddling our thumbs. I won’t say we were disappointed but… it felt like a letdown after what we had been told.

This was the most dangerous city in Iraq?

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 741