My Share of the Task (41 page)

In typically laconic fashion, no one cheered or clapped. Age and rank still separated me from them. But in that moment, in the dark, I sensed I was as close as I would come to being a brother and friend with the men half visible around me.

“Feel good about what you've done, but you know, and I know, we
cannot
let up,” I said. “This is far from finished.”

They knew this. Indeed, no one in our task force believed killing Zarqawi would be the end of Al Qaeda in Iraq or the insurgency it leavened. But his ability, for more than two years, to evade us had given Zarqawi a dangerous aura and handicapped the Coalition's credibility.

His death was more than symbolically important. It was a trite reaction among some to point out that there were thousands of men ready to replace Zarqawi—or any leader we removed. It was of course true that the organization regained a leader: Within days of Zarqawi's death, Al Qaeda in Iraq announced that Abu Ayyub al-Masri would head the group. And yet there were not, in fact, thousands of “Zarqawis.” He was a peculiar leader. His mix of charisma, brutality, and clear-eyed persistence was never matched by al-Masri or al-Masri's successor. While Zarqawi's leadership style had opened rifts within the insurgent movement in Iraq, he also had the ability to keep the insurgency largely congealed. Al-Masri lacked the magnetism or deep connections to marshal the factions as coherently.

Given how badly Zarqawi's campaign of ethnic murder had eroded global support for Al Qaeda, it's likely that the Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan just hearing of Zarqawi's death that night were partially
relieved to see him go. Indeed, Zarqawi's final message—a four-hour-long anti-Shia screed recorded that spring but released four days before his death—again defied bin Laden and Zawahiri's desire that he attack Americans, and not so many Shia. “We will not have victory over the original infidels,” Zarqawi preached, unless “we
fight the apostate infidels simultaneously.” Some within our force made a convincing case that if we had not killed Zarqawi, he would have been retired from Iraq by bin Laden and given a top post in Al Qaeda's central leadership from which to project violence in the Levant. Indeed, before Zarqawi's death, Al Qaeda's senior leadership sought to salvage their project in Iraq by dispatching Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the Mosul-born operative who had helped broker the agreement between bin Laden and Zarqawi two years earlier. Our Afghanistan-based Task Force 328, however, monitored al-Iraqi as he grew restless in Waziristan, and when he set off for Iraq, Turkish authorities intercepted him on their soil and sent him back to Afghanistan, where he was detained.

And yet the more important, ironic point we understood even at the time of Zarqawi's death was that the success of his campaign in Iraq had made him, or any leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, less relevant. While he did not do so single-handedly, Zarqawi's focused sectarian killings helped inaugurate a system of violence that was, by the time he died, a
self-propelling cycle. The antigovernment Sunni insurgency was no longer the sole furnace of violence—the ethnic killing was—and Iraqis' fear of unbridled civil war was increasingly self-fulfilling. Across the Tigris from us, extremist Sunni and Shia factions contested Baghdad, while
previously mixed neighborhoods drained of one ethnic group or the other, with Shia often fleeing to the south and Sunnis to Anbar. We were halfway through June, during which
3,149 Iraqis died from the war's violence. That number would rise to more than 3,400 for July, when the coroner in Baghdad alone took in more than
1,855 Iraqi corpses,
90 percent of them executed. We had killed Zarqawi too late. He bequeathed Iraq a sectarian paranoia and an incipient civil war.

After I finished speaking in the backyard, I met individually with some of the men I knew well. I said good-bye and flew back to Balad, while the operators gathered inside the villa. There they lifted on their equipment—the thick canvas of the shoulder straps softened from years of use, the helmet padding carrying permanent indents—and went back out into the dark.

| CHAPTER 14 |

Networked

June 2006–June 2008

O
n June 5, 2006, two days before Zarqawi was killed, I went to Ramadi to go on a raid with the Rangers stationed there. I'd been there many times before, but Ramadi was now the worst city in Iraq. The Coalition and Iraqi government had largely ceded the city to the insurgency.
Only one hundred policemen showed up for daily work in a city of four hundred thousand—and most holed up in their stations. A stoic company of Marines held the only ground there—a patch of buildings at the city center surrounded on all sides by neighborhoods where
insurgents operated undisturbed. Absent a significant population of Shia they could target, the
insurgents focused on the Americans, and our conventional-force casualty
rates there were extraordinarily high.

The next twelve months would be the most difficult we faced in our long war in Iraq, yet TF 714 was more capable than ever to contribute to the fight. Because I was so focused on the task, I was happy I'd been extended for a fourth year in command. But I knew that meant Annie had been extended for a fourth year alone.

While Iraq was our main effort and highest priority, TF 714's role in what was then called the war on terror continued to mature and expand. I had the additional influence that came with my third star, and we had resources, from ISR aircraft to interrogators, that I'd only dreamed of in 2004. Across the embattled region, we continued to build a network that spanned more than two dozen countries at one point, with nodes ranging from full task forces capable of combat operations to single operators or intelligence analysts embedded in embassies.

While only two years earlier, in the summer of 2004, hitting the single Big Ben safe house in Fallujah had consumed most of our bandwidth, any given day during these final two years of command consisted of managing counterterrorist operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; engaging with VIP visitors to the task forces; strategically coordinating in theater, including visits to Baghdad to meet with General Casey and his replacement, General Petraeus; and holding VTCs with D.C. to continue stoking our interagency partnerships. In spite of our breadth, if we still had real problems to confront, it wasn't due to a lack of communication.

As I moved more frequently and more widely, I was naturally drawn to areas where we faced particularly tough fights or challenges. I aimed to assess invariably complex situations and to simply demonstrate my commitment. That summer, this led me to Ramadi. Although I went to Ramadi to show my support to a captain who, true to our decentralized culture, had made an on-the-spot decision suited to his situation, I encountered there a vision for part of TF 714's role in the next stage of the Iraq war.

Our operations in Ramadi fell to a company of Rangers led by then-Captain Doug P., operating under a commander of a TF 714 SEAL squadron who had charge of Anbar. Unlike a few years earlier, having Green operators, SEALs, and Rangers integrated so seamlessly was becoming commonplace.

On the day I'd accompany his force on an operation in Ramadi, I met Doug and some of the Rangers at their base, called “Shark Base,” before we went out. At their outpost, on the southern edge of the Euphrates, fumes from garbage and sewage, stewing in the 120-degree sunlight, drifted across the compound, which existed under a permanent haze of suspended dust. It was hard to find a clean mouthful of air. From their location north of the city, they had been running raids into areas the conventional commander had told Doug were off limits as enemy territory.

But the enemy quickly learned and left the city at night. The Rangers were breaching the correct houses, only to wade through the dark rooms and find empty cots. So Doug decided to start running daytime operations into the city. Rolling in broad daylight into the city across the main bridge leading in from the northwest, the Rangers quickly learned contact was inevitable. The only question being how nasty the firefight would be as they fought their way into insurgent strongholds. AQI seeded the few roads the Ranger convoys could use with IEDs, and time and again as they left the wire, a Stryker in the line would disappear in a fount of dust and black smoke. As the Rangers aggressively prosecuted operations, casualties mounted.

As they did, other parts of the task force openly questioned Doug's decision to assume the risk of daylight operations. Moving in the stark light of the Iraqi summer deprived his ground force of the speed, element of surprise, and cover of night that were hallowed tenets of our raids. It made close air support a less reliable option. But even with this added risk, I supported Doug's decision. As we'd done in the early stages of our campaign in the western Euphrates River valley a year earlier, it was essential that we do what we could until a stronger conventional force could retake Ramadi.

After a few weeks of watching the progress of Doug's operations and seeing the casualties, I decided to go out with them. When my aide called TF 16's Anbar headquarters and told them I wanted to go on a daytime operation with the Rangers in Ramadi, they initially thought he was joking. No, my aide said, he's serious. The Rangers could do the job without me, but I wanted them to know that I understood theirs was a perilous task and that I appreciated their courage.

At their base, as Rangers donned body armor and weapons for the operation, I spoke with Doug. He had an unlikely appearance for a Ranger commander. His lanky frame, thinning hair, and understated manner, however, overlaid a boiling energy that became apparent only after some time. When I asked him the purpose of the operation we were about to conduct, he paused as a slight smirk came across his face.

“I'm going to take a bite out of crime, sir,” Doug said drily. He was riffing on the tagline of McGruff, the cartoon hound featured in 1980s public service announcements aimed at kids. In the context of Ramadi, it was necessary gallows humor.

“Do it, Doug,” I said, chuckling.

Doug and his Ranger company weren't trying to solve the problem of Ramadi by themselves. But even though they were getting hurt on nearly every raid, the Rangers felt good about their impact on the otherwise unpressured insurgents. Just before I arrived, they had waged a four-hour gun battle and taken down a huge IED factory whose bomb makers were stunned to see Rangers burst through the door in what they thought was a safe haven deep in Ramadi.

We left the building and emerged into the courtyard, hot under the sun and filled with the loud, low gurgling of Stryker engines. After the last of the forty or so Rangers loaded their vehicles, we departed. We received a few shots on the way to the target, but nothing dramatic, before stopping outside a rural Iraqi version of a strip mall—three or four low, one-story buildings, with a patch of concrete in front where vehicles parked.

As the Rangers bounded out of the Strykers, I took my usual position toward the back, watching them set a perimeter and begin a search of the buildings. As always, I didn't insert myself into tactical decisions on the ground. It was their responsibility and, I felt, their right.

Instead, over the past three years, I had learned to carefully watch the operators at work: After years' worth of daily raids, their instinctive movements and mood often told me more about the situation than they could describe back at base.

The Rangers moved quickly and gathered a group of local men from inside and around the buildings on the concrete parking areas in the front. To ensure security, as they moved to identify each man, they had him lie on the pavement with his hands behind his head. One Iraqi was notably older than the others, and a young Ranger, without instruction, retrieved a white plastic chair for him from an automobile maintenance shop. As was normally the case, even in daytime, there were no women in the immediate area. But I saw a boy, probably about four years old, standing near one of the men, no doubt his father.

As the Rangers motioned for the men to lie down on the ground, I watched the boy. He stood quietly, as if confused, then, mimicking his father, the child lay down on the ground. He pressed one cheek flat against the pavement so that his face was turned toward his father and folded his small hands behind his head.

As I watched, I felt sick.

I could feel in my own limbs and chest the shame and fury that must have been coursing through the father, still lying motionless. Every ounce of him must have wanted to pop up, pull his son from the ground, stand him upright, and dust off the boy's clothes and cheek. To be laid on the ground in full view of his son was humiliating. For a proud man, to seemingly fail to protect that son from similar treatment was worse.

As I watched, I thought, not for the first time:
It would be easy for us to lose
.

The professionalism of the Rangers in the sweltering heat, paradoxically, suggested just how arduous our task was. As much as Doug and his Rangers were doing to keep the insurgents off balance, they couldn't change the dynamics in Ramadi simply through raids—which, even when done as professionally as they were on that day, could produce enmity in the population. Absent a campaign to protect the people, we could only hope the residents understood these raids were necessary. But even then, the targeting operations could not address the deeper structural sources of the violence that only a fuller-spectrum counterinsurgency effort could. Doug and his Rangers could help, but it was going to take much more.

*   *   *

W
ithin days of my Ramadi trip, Scott Miller brought an army colonel named Sean MacFarland to see me in the bunker at Balad. Sean was commanding the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division. Armed with ideas they had seen pacify Tal Afar under then-Colonel H. R. McMaster, MacFarland and his force—comprising
five Marine and army battalions—were to take charge of Ramadi. I'd heard good things about Sean but was anxious to judge for myself.

Sean's visit to our command was part of a concerted effort, on both sides of the fence, to lash our efforts tighter with conventional forces. It was working. Brigade commanders increasingly stopped through to see Scott, Mike Flynn, Kurt Fuller, and me. Conversely, I encouraged conventional flag officers and their commanders to embed for a day or two with our strike teams and to go on raids. Scott, meanwhile, established a weekly video teleconference with all the brigade commanders in Iraq. Far from its stereotype as an overly secretive unit running its own war, our task force, which was then hardwired to succeed through internal collaboration, worked hard to drive an all-of-military effort.

As Sean sat down, I took stock of the tall, soft-spoken cavalry officer. “I'm going to retake Ramadi,” he said quietly. “We're going to reoccupy the city itself.”

I was skeptical, not because of Sean, whom I liked immediately, but because a number of brigade commanders had tried and been unable to root out insurgents in places less violent than Ramadi. Yet his firmness struck me.

Sean explained he would not have his forces live concentrated in a large forward operating base, but he would nest them among the people in smaller combat outposts (COPs) spaced throughout the city. He spoke of the importance of standing up a police force drawn from local men. Keen to resuscitate a tribal uprising—undone six months earlier by dissension and a meticulous AQI assassination program—Sean knew he needed to provide American backing and protection to tribal leaders willing to band together against Al Qaeda.

“So this is going to take some time,” he said. He estimated around nine months.

“Sean, if it takes you that long, we've got a real problem,” I said. “You've got to get on that horse and ride.”

He did just that.

The full story of how Sean and his Iraqi partners turned Ramadi is theirs to tell. But on every idea Sean shared with me before arriving, he drove hard, and his team made them work. Like all counterinsurgency, it was slow, difficult, and deadly work.

Perhaps most important, Sean understood the indispensability of fielding a local police force that could target Al Qaeda, and the need for a strong Iraqi partner to lead the aggressive recruitment effort. The man Sean quickly identified as that partner—Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha—seemingly came out of central casting for a desert chieftain, with a thin face and falconlike eyes. Although he belonged to the powerful Albu Risha tribe of the Dulaim confederation, in the normal pecking order he was a
third-tier sheikh. But Ramadi was not normal—most of the local government and higher-ranking tribal leaders had fled the violence.

As was the case so often, Sattar was motivated by a number of frustrations. As he realized AQI was his real enemy, not the Americans, whom he
reimagined as his guests, pride motivated him to fight Al Qaeda. But so too did baser motives: He sat atop a number of lucrative criminal enterprises in Ramadi that were threatened by AQI incursions.

In any case, he was the partner Sean needed, and on September 9, Sheikh Abdul Sattar formally announced that the “Awakening” was
officially under way. Eight days later, on behalf of twenty-five of Anbar's thirty-one tribes, Sattar
wrote to Nouri al-Maliki requesting money to fund and arm his tribal coalition to fight Al Qaeda. Maliki had agreed (perhaps because Ramadi was uniformly Sunni and so he was confident armed locals could target only AQI and not Shiites) and the Ramadi police recruits soon went on the
Iraqi government payroll.

As the sheikh's movement was gaining momentum, our task force commander for Anbar, Commander Ethan,
*
came to see Sean.

In command of a TF 714 SEAL squadron after gutsy, distinguished tours in Afghanistan, Ethan was on the vanguard of a growing trend within our force to be better linked to the battlespace owners, and worked to incorporate—and sometimes subordinate—his targeting teams to the conventional commanders. Bald, with a thick beard that gave him a slightly messianic look well suited to his passionate approach to leadership, Ethan came to Ramadi keen to see the city holistically, beyond his aperture of direction-action raids.