Читать книгу Fallujah Awakens - Bill Ardolino - Страница 17

The war in Anbar province was complex. The Americans were fighting an enemy who ruthlessly intimidated civilians, wore no uniform, and operated under an effective camouflage of a culture and language exotic to them. Reacting to attacks, combing intelligence reports to plan raids, and conducting a census of the peninsula’s population to ferret out insurgents were reasonable tactics. These approaches had their limits, however, especially given their slow pace and the pressure growing in the United States to end the war, regardless of the terms. The Marines needed local help, quickly, and their meeting with Sheikh Aifan Sadoun Aifan al-Issawi, “Dark,” in late December offered a fresh opportunity to generate such support.

Whisnant and his military intelligence sergeant, Saint One, wanted a quick follow-up to their first meeting with Dark.¹ Together the two men drafted a report summarizing their initial impressions of the sheikh, whom they referred to as “Abu Sadoon”:

Abu Sadoon is a confident individual who claims he is tired of talking about accomplishing something for the [Albu Issa] tribe and is ready for actually doing something. He talked for approximately 30 minutes about previous meetings in Jordan and his contacts that he supposedly has with [other U.S. governmental agencies]. He stated that he came back to Iraq because it is in his heart to come back.

The main points of discussion centered on the following items:

—Abu Sadoon doesn’t believe [paramount sheikh] Khamis [Hasnawi Aifan al-Issawi] has the moral will to take on the current fight for his tribal area even with help from coalition forces. Sheikh Khamis is afraid and would rather just sit in his house and hope for self-preservation. He’s concerned that current [U.S.] contacts are just concerned in creating a relationship with the sheikhs and nothing further than that. Abu Sadoon related that he’s not interested in just eating kabob, dates and nuts with [Americans], he wants to accomplish security and safety in his area.

—Abu Sadoon offered to assist in any way possible in the intel fight of identifying the insurgents. Several insurgents were mentioned during this discussion[….] He then went on for approximately 10 minutes on how the insurgents use “nicknames” to fool [coalition forces]. [Whisnant] stated that his Marines were aware of this tactic and needed assistance in identifying the real insurgents because of … fake [ID cards] that have the incorrect name. Abu Sadoon said he would be willing personally or some of his trusted people would go along on … raids to [identify] residences of the real insurgents in the area. [He] turned the discussion to how a 3–6 month detainment undermines the entire process and doesn’t provide any hope or incentive for the average Iraqi to provide information on the insurgents.

Abu Sadoon has solid placement and access to the information provided by virtue of his family and social connections in the area. He is actively seeking [American] assistance in security matters because of the situation with his extended family and tribal members. He is also motivated by money and ego. He states that working “underground” is the best thing and it would make him proud to see his area secure and safe again.²

Before sending the report up the chain of command, Whisnant and Saint One sought the blessing of CWO-5 Jim Roussell. Nicknamed “the Wizard,” because of his status as the battalion’s resident counterinsurgency expert, Roussell had an unusual pedigree.³ The fifty-five-year-old had been mandatorily retired from the Corps in 2002 after thirty-seven years as an active duty and reserve Marine. Roussell had also been a cop for thirty-one years and held the rank of lieutenant in the Chicago Police Department. In 2004, the commander of 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment approached Roussell for advice on how to defeat an insurgency, before 2/24’s deployment to Mahmudiyah, Iraq.⁴ Roussell’s background in Marine infantry and intelligence, and his work in the Chicago Police Department’s gang unit, gave him an ideal skill set for tackling the Iraqi rebellion.

Many of Iraq’s insurgent cells resembled criminal enterprises as much as they did radically religious enemies. The sixteen- to thirty-year-old toughs at the core of the insurgency had a great deal in common with the Windy City’s gangbangers. Many viewed the pursuit of money and power as a goal accompanied by or merely cloaked in the stated ambition of achieving religious purity and the humiliating expulsion of the American infidels. Robbery, extortion, and kidnapping were tools of their trade.⁵ The indoctrination of insurgent recruits also shared striking parallels with U.S. gang initiations.

Common criminals, casual insurgents for hire, as well as some genuinely innocent men had been swept up in the mass detentions conducted by the U.S. military during the early stages of the war. Moderate Muslims and insurgent neophytes were both dumped into the general prisoner population, where they mixed with hardened criminals and hard-core Islamists preaching jihad. Much like in U.S. prisons, many of the newcomers in Iraq’s facilities joined one of these groups to survive, and once a member, death became the only easy way out. In addition, U.S.- and some Iraqi-run facilities tended to release individuals incarcerated for lesser crimes after only a few months. This created a destructive cycle of incarceration, (radical) ideological indoctrination, and then release. American detention facilities like Camp Bucca became incubators that unwittingly but continually refreshed the insurgency by churning out foot soldiers for violent jihad.⁶

Roussell’s experience on Chicago’s streets gave him perspective on how to take a run at the gangs in Iraq. He started working with the men of 2/24 by delivering pre-deployment briefings on developing sources and analyzing intelligence. He soon concluded that he had more to contribute, however, and actually joined the battalion on its deployment, as well as 1/24’s subsequent tour on Fallujah’s peninsula.⁷ Most men his age didn’t make plans that involved coming out of retirement from the Marines to bounce around insurgent strongholds in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, with its bomb-laden roads and angry fighters wielding rocket-propelled grenades. To have done that once and then volunteered for a subsequent tour to go back and “finish the job” earned the old cop unusual respect from the men with whom he served.⁸

Roussell’s contributions were wide-ranging. He discovered a weekly meeting held by the “real sheikhs” of Fallujah, as opposed to the “fake sheikhs” who’d posed as powerbrokers to claim U.S. business contracts. He had caught wind of the gathering while shooting the breeze with locals as he traveled a beat in and around the city. On a late December day, the bespectacled police officer simply showed up at the meeting and introduced himself; afterward he became a regular fixture at the gatherings. His age was an asset in his interactions with these men, who considered experience a prerequisite for respect. The relationships he developed with the sheikhs would prove crucial later, when he served as an intermediary in contentious exchanges between tribal leaders and Iraqi government politicians and security personnel.⁹

Roussell also instructed young Marines, many of whom routinely grumbled about restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) and pined for more straightforward ass-kicking. During the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004, after the city had been mostly evacuated of noncombatants, the ROE were liberal enough to be enthusiastically described by one Marine as “like setting a bunch of fat kids loose in a candy store.” The current fight, however, had been severely restrained to avoid counterproductive civilian casualties. It wasn’t so easy for the Americans to get shot at or blown up every day without wanting to “get some” in return. Most lusted after a stand-up fight, and Roussell understood where they were coming from. After all, he had been a young Marine once, with all the institutionally focused but prodigious aggression that entails. Many would never embrace counterinsurgency (COIN), but Roussell found that a history lesson could assuage some of the young men’s frustration and cynicism about the gentler aspects of the doctrine.

The older Marine explained that the Corps boasted a proud tradition of counterinsurgency. From pioneering combat action patrols with locals in Haiti and Nicaragua during the early part of the Banana Wars to the successful model of living among the population in Vietnam’s A Shau Valley, Marines had done COIN well; the mobility of the expeditionary service branch made them a natural fit for such operations. When he framed the patiently nuanced tactics as essential to earning the young Marines’ rightful place in hallowed Marine Corps history, he thought that a few of them took to their responsibilities with greater enthusiasm, even if their trigger fingers still itched.¹⁰

Roussell’s counsel also paid dividends with higher-ranking officers. Even experienced, senior personnel needed reminders to walk them back from aggressive doctrine that could be counterproductive if it inflamed local sentiment. The warrant officer’s influence was, however, finite. There were plenty of times he wanted to “yank [his] hair out of [his] head” as Marine leadership attempted to make counterinsurgency progress while pulling American forces back to large bases and prematurely handing over security responsibilities to unready Iraqi soldiers and cops in late 2006. He felt that American troops needed to stop kicking doors, start listening, and “play the game, not the clock” to cultivate the intelligence necessary to beat the rebellion.¹¹

Roussell’s ability to analyze local Iraqis was a resource that Whisnant and Saint One needed as they assessed Dark. The cop divided Iraqi partners into categories of “good bad guys” (GBGs) and “bad bad guys” (BBGs) to educate his fellow Americans, some of whom had trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of working with former insurgents and other questionable characters. BBGs were irreconcilable. They were wholly out for themselves and to kill Americans in their quest for religious purity, power, or both; they would eliminate anyone who got in their way. GBGs were also out for themselves, and they might never come to work hand-in-hand with the nascent Iraqi government or water any seeds of democracy, but they had interests that could align with U.S. interests. Their motivations and cultural sensibilities were a far cry from the idealized values of the Marine Corps, and many had even tried to kill Americans at some point in the war. But one could work with good bad guys. The hard truth was that the Americans needed to work with them. That was the nature of COIN.¹²

Roussell doubted the existence of straight up “good good guys.” It was his practical cop mentality. Every player, including every American, had an angle. You had to ascertain everyone’s motivation and match his or her interests with yours. One of the Wizard’s mantras was “something for something, nothing for nothing.” Another, less serious philosophy was “if their lips are moving, they’re lying.”¹³

Whisnant and Saint One’s meeting with Dark had intrigued Roussell. He wanted to see more such engagements. He told the two Marines that it was essential they leave no doubt about what they wanted and what they were willing to give in return. Roussell stressed, “We have to be careful to compare what we say, with what he thinks we mean. We have to be very clear.”¹⁴

On New Year’s Day 2007, Saint One and Whisnant met again with Dark, as well as with Sheikh Khamis Hasnawi Aifan al-Issawi. The elder, paramount sheikh’s presence conferred authority for Dark to work with the Americans on the tribe’s behalf. The encounter yielded more information, including a list of insurgents’ names and insight into growing splits among the Albu Issa subtribes. Dark also indicated that recent fighting had apparently ratcheted up after members of the Abu Hatim subtribe kidnapped two prominent leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq as part of the ongoing power struggle for the peninsula. Various sheikhs were bargaining for the release of the men in an attempt to douse the growing conflict, but Dark thought that the negotiations would backfire because the al Qaeda leadership would violate any settlement that secured the captives’ release and immediately retaliate with abandon. In addition to providing perspective on his tribe’s civil war, Dark repeated his offer of guides to accompany the Americans on night raids against high-value targets. Khamis was more hesitant about offering cooperation and observed the meeting coolly. He voiced skepticism about the Americans’ ability to protect his subtribe if he made an overt pledge of support.¹⁵

Roussell was consulted after the first two meetings, on December 26 and on New Year’s Day, but he wanted an opportunity to assess the sheikhs for himself. On January 6, Alpha Company conducted a helicopter-borne assault into the village of Abu Yousseff that would take them near Dark’s house in neighboring Albu Aifan. Roussell accompanied Saint One and Whisnant on the operation so he could visit both sheikhs afterward. It had rained on the day of the raids, which netted seventeen of twenty-seven targeted insurgents and several weapons caches. That night, Saint One, Whisnant, Roussell, an interpreter nicknamed “B. J.,” and Maj. Jim Hayes left the platoon’s ad hoc patrol base for the meeting. An alert march down a main road, followed by a slog through fields covered in thigh-high mud, delivered the Americans to Dark’s house.¹⁶

The men entered the residence, except Hayes, who remained outside to keep nervous watch. He did not trust these Iraqis, and he was a little alarmed by the small size of the American party. They were exposed. The Marine air officer was responsible for approving and vectoring requests for airstrikes from Marines in the field, so he had tagged along on the mission to get a firsthand look at the local topography. As the others were filtering into the house, Hayes called in his current coordinates to air controllers back at Camp Fallujah. If the worst looked likely—he’d seen videos of what happened to captured Americans—he would be able to call in a 500-pound bomb on their position. There was no way he was getting taken alive.¹⁷

The men who entered the house were welcomed with friendly greetings from Dark, who referred to both Whisnant and Saint One as “my brother” and to the elder Roussell as “my father.” The Marines didn’t explain Roussell’s presence or identity, but the young sheikh was perceptive.¹⁸ “I want to know why you are here,” Dark mused in English. “I think my brother [Whisnant] brought you to figure out who I am.”¹⁹ Sheikh Khamis’ greetings to the Americans were more restrained. The elderly man projected a regal aloofness that bespoke his position.

In the course of the two-hour meeting, the business facade projected by Dark and the Americans fell—a little. It was easy to like the talkative young sheikh, and the carefully crafted intrigue and formality of their initial meeting in December gave way to a few friendly jokes and more specific offers of cooperation. First, Saint One further assessed Aifan’s willingness to help and his knowledge of local insurgents by listing the names of high-value targets on whom the Americans had reliable information. Dark passed the test, verifying the identities of known BBGs. The Marines then showed the young sheikh pictures of the men they had caught on raids during the assault that day, and Dark expressed pleasure. He told them their targeting was accurate. He also chastised the Americans, however, for letting three others slip their cordon and escape. The Marines pressed for additional names and locations of insurgents, and Dark complied—with a few.

Khamis remained cordial but unsmiling, saying little as he sat and chain-smoked cigarettes. His quiet calm was characteristic foremost of his age as well as a paramount sheikh’s noble persona. But it was also a reflection of his refusal to enthusiastically choose sides in the war flaring between his Albu Aifan subtribe and members of subtribes affiliated with al Qaeda. His presence enabled him to observe, and it continued to show his hesitant endorsement of Dark’s leadership of a militia. But Khamis’ passivity seemed designed to preserve plausible deniability of direct involvement, should the younger sheikh’s campaign go poorly.²⁰

“I am not a politician,” he told the Marines through the interpreter. “I am not part of the army. I want no part of the government, in any way. I am just a sheikh.”²¹ In fact, the old sheikh agreed to accept emissaries from al Qaeda for months after this meeting; he stressed his neutrality to the insurgent representatives until a later event forced his hand.²²

Despite continuing to play both sides of the fence, Khamis had made a few small steps toward an alliance with the Americans by virtue of his vague promises and his appearances at meetings. Many in Fallujah had heard of the rise of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha and his battles with al Qaeda near the provincial capital of Ramadi, and knew about the young sheikh’s beneficial alliance with U.S. forces.²³ Competitive pride, coupled with the reality that Fallujah’s sheikhs could not hide out in exile forever, eventually drew them back home from Jordan and into a search for options to reestablish basic security and restore the traditional tribal order. The Americans represented one of the options that had grown more attractive as the “Persian Shia” (Iranians) solidified their political power in Baghdad through Shia Iraqi proxies, and al Qaeda in Iraq and other radical insurgent groups violently wore out their welcome in Sunni Anbar. Khamis legitimately disliked the takfiri insurgents, even if not with the outward intensity of his nephew Dark. He thought the radicals’ actions were “wrong,” and he resented them for forcing a violently conservative ideology on the “good Muslims” of his tribe.²⁴

Another political twist complicated the Americans’ hope to deal with Khamis as the ultimate authority of the tribe: Although the elder sheikh held titular and some de facto power as paramount sheikh, some Marines concluded that he was also something of a figurehead. In fact, Americans believed that Khamis’ uncle Sheikh Khaled Hasnawi and his older brother, Sheikh Taleb Hasnawi, were more significant leaders and ran the Albu Issa from behind the scenes. Sheikh Barakat Sadoun Aifan al-Issawi, an older brother of Dark’s who remained in exile, also held sway and had been a well-known insurgent earlier in the war. The Americans speculated that all of these men had passed on any claim to be paramount sheikh because the mantle came with a target on the wearer’s back. They were content to exert influence while holding a lesser title, making Khamis the most attractive target for assassination.²⁵

Though Dark showed deference toward the paramount sheikh during the meeting, he also aggressively prodded Khamis to cooperate with the Americans and support his development of the tribe’s militia. Khamis remained hesitant. He told the Americans that he feared his family members would find out about his meetings with them, and he continued to withhold his open cooperation. He and his nephew argued about the degree to which his tribe should be seen as a public ally of the Marines.²⁶ “We need to do this,” Dark said. “Let’s do this, it is the only way.”²⁷ The younger sheikh only bought his uncle’s tolerance by portraying initial efforts as “underground,” defensive in nature, and necessary to blunt al Qaeda and competing sheikhs’ power grab for control of the peninsula.²⁸

In turn, Dark demanded concrete promises of support from the Americans and asked them to set up a permanent base near his village. His people would require protection as they openly organized and declared war on the insurgents. Only with security sufficient to undermine the takfiris’ brutally effective intimidation campaigns could he build confidence in his small band of fighters and rally the men of his tribe.²⁹

“How long will you stay?” asked Dark.³⁰ It was an important question. The tactics and force dispositions of American units sometimes changed with the decisions of rotating commanders. Roussell considered this “playing the clock”—that is, based on a Marine unit’s six- or seven-month deployment—rather than “playing the game.” One unit’s forward operating base might be shuttered by the next at the discretion of a commander on the ground or direction from senior officers.³¹

In early January, just prior to President George W. Bush’s announcement of the “surge,” U.S. forces were still playing out a strategy of pulling back to let Iraqi security forces take the lead. In Fallujah’s case, as in many other areas, the effort was premature. Besides the fact that the Iraqi Army and police were operationally unready, the peninsula’s tribes considered the Iraqi security forces untrustworthy competitors. To many of the Sunnis of Anbar, the Iraqi Army units were Shia outsiders from Baghdad and the south of the country; the police were variously suspected of being sellouts, tools of the Iraqi government, the Americans, or competing tribes.³²

Khamis’ and Dark’s tribesmen did not yet have the manpower, weapons, or official permission to openly arm and defend themselves against any inevitable revenge for cooperating with Americans.³³ Retribution from al Qaeda was one of Dark’s and Khamis’ repeatedly expressed worries about an alliance. Dark knew that if he was going to stand up to the insurgency, he needed both license to fight and for Americans to agree to stay nearby and help protect his people.³⁴

Roussell was impressed with Dark’s enthusiasm for action, which was a rarity among sheikhs in the area. He also viewed the young sheikh as an opportunist who craved advancement and aggressively projected the image of a brave fighter, as epitomized by his frequent choice to wear a dark blue ammunition-carrying vest draped over “combat casual” clothes. In truth, Roussell judged Dark to be more of an organizer than a gunfighter, but organization was something the Albu Issa needed to marshal their forces against the radicals dedicated to insurgency. Organizers also lived longer; many day-to-day combatants, including two of the young toughs who made up the core of Dark’s security forces in those early days, wound up maimed or killed. It was a common price paid by the gunfighters of Iraq.³⁵

Dark had also formed equally perceptive opinions of the Americans. In a later interview with U.S. researchers, he summarized them in words that perfectly mirrored Roussell’s working philosophy: “We have a theory,” explained Dark. “The Americans don’t have continuous friendships. They always have their interests. Their relationships with people are based on how much benefit they can get from a person.”³⁶ In essence, he and his American counterparts varied little in their perception of the utilitarian nature of their new “friendship” with one another. Dark asked for the release of fellow tribesmen being held by the Americans, as well as for some cars, radios, and construction contracts to create jobs for his tribe. One of his requests continued to stand out in terms of repetition and forceful expression: his men needed weapons and the license to carry them.³⁷

Having received permission from their superiors prior to the meeting, Saint One and Whisnant were finally able to offer Dark something concrete. They asked him for a list of thirty trusted fighters who would be vetted for permits to openly carry weapons. In addition, other men in his village were granted the right to brandish rifles only, and only at checkpoints or while stationed on the rooftops of their houses. This would enable them to defend their homes while still differentiating them from insurgent fighters traveling through the area. After the meeting, Whisnant made a recommendation to higher command to fulfill most of Dark’s latest requests for cars, contracts, weapons, and ammunition. The major also agreed to stick around and protect his new allies: he directed his men to establish a new, permanent patrol base in an abandoned mansion near the village of Albu Aifan. Some of the Marines nicknamed it FOB [Forward Operating Base] Dark.

Saint One, Whisnant, and Roussell now dared to be optimistic. They thought they could “make this work.” If locals identified the bad guys and took ownership of the fight against insurgents, the bleak war for the peninsula could swing in favor of the Americans and their new Iraqi allies. The agreements of the two preceding weeks marked the start of a genuine working relationship.³⁸ Like many relationships, however, this one would be tested—severely and soon.