My Share of the Task (45 page)

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hat spring, two new TF 714 people had joined Graeme's reconciliation cell. In February, John Christian—the Green colonel who had earlier commanded TF 16, including during its push into the western Euphrates River valley—returned to Iraq. With considerable time in Iraq since the summer of 2003, and trained as a foreign area officer, he was well suited for the task. He now came to work on a movement he'd seen the early glimmers of firsthand on the upper Euphrates, where the Albu Mahal had turned, unsuccessfully, on Al Qaeda in Iraq in the summer of 2005.

Having John Christian on the cell was crucial to me. He had commanded in the same squadron that had picked up many of the guys now being considered for release, and he could pose the problem to colleagues in stark terms. “I've done the math,” John would say, “and it's going to take us two hundred and forty-seven years to kill them all.” Reconciliation was the alternative. While most in the task force quickly grasped the logic, stomachs turned when it came to actually freeing terrorists. John's history of shared sacrifice gave the project essential credibility.

John came to me that spring as he started work with Graeme.

“You know, sir,” he said, “this involves meeting with a lot of generals. I don't like talking to generals or dealing with their offices.”

“Neither do I, John,” I joked.

So John proposed bringing on an experienced Department of Defense civilian, Anne Meree, who had impressed me when I had met her two years earlier and—to Graeme's marvel—was able to get just about anyone in D.C. on the phone. With the addition of John and Anne Meree, the team—which also included an SAS officer, picked by Graeme, and an American intelligence representative—became, in Graeme's words, four blokes and a bird. The cell was small and, during the crescendo of the war, demanded improvisation. Their office was a small plywood cube accessed by a flimsy molded-wood door, which sat like an island in the middle of the ballroom on the east side of the embassy. Every morning, the team gathered in Graeme's office and combined the intelligence reports from their respective organizations—TF 714, the Coalition, and the British and American intelligence agencies.

Between these meetings, whenever he could manage a moment free, Graeme stole away from his office and went to the area across from the MNF-I headquarters in the Green Zone, where, behind tall blast walls, lay the combat support hospital. Called “the cash” from its acronym, it was the Coalition's main emergency room. Helicopters descended and departed throughout the day and night as nurses and medics waited on the edges of the helipad poised with stretchers. Inside, its hallways were filled with the injured, beneath blankets and clear plastic tubing that snaked around them like vines. Graeme spent time with the young medics and staff, men and women with thousand-yard stares. Their long days and nights were spent taking in the ruined frames of young people who had come to Iraq in the peak of their physical fitness. Graeme met men and women with everything to live for who arrived at the hospital, quite literally, in bits.

Graeme carried that emotional weight into the room each time he sat down across from men whose groups were fighting our own. These meetings were not negotiations—no rewards were offered. Graeme tried instead to slowly forge a mutual respect—even a contemptuous one—based upon an understanding of the other's character and motivations and a recognition that both men were trying to do right by their clans. This meant getting beyond the bluster of who could outlast the other, whose force had more men and limbs to sacrifice in the contest.

In the case of Ansar, FSEC
sought to convince its leadership of the truth from the Coalition's perspective. First, the Coalition was not there to convert them to Christianity, as they had feared. Second, Ansar would be better off the further they were from Al Qaeda, which had shown a disregard for Iraqi aspirations and a contempt for Iraqi life. Third, AQI was one of the main reasons that the Coalition remained in Iraq. Finally, in the sectarian war AQI continued to provoke, the Iranian-backed militias—or “Safavids,” as the Sunni insurgents sneeringly called them—were going to win, and the Sunnis faced potential slaughter. The sooner AQI was neutralized, the better it would be for Iraqi Sunnis and the quicker Ansar would see the Coalition leave.

Ansar would not turn and fight with the Coalition. But leaders who had seen the light might lead the group to downgrade from an AQI-allied jihadist force to another insurgent organization with political demands. Short of that, these leaders could sow doubt and discord.

Graeme's discussions had already showed promise, and given greater latitude by Petraeus, the reconciliation cell pressed hard on other fronts. Graeme expanded his efforts wider than the Ansar leadership. Among others, Graeme contacted and vetted Abu Azzam, a former Sunni insurgent leader who wanted to partner with the Iraqi government; by July, Azzam had
twenty-three hundred men patrolling the streets of Abu Ghraib city. Graeme met that winter and spring with the mayor of Sadr City, Rahim al-Daraji, working to check the sectarian killing emanating from the slum and seeking to win safe passage for Coalition forces to enter in advance of the surge campaign to control Baghdad that summer. Their talks were cut short when
Daraji was ambushed on March 15, 2007, near Habibiyah Square in Baghdad, leaving the Sadr City police chief dead and the mayor riddled with shrapnel.

The Ansar efforts, meanwhile, continued to show promise. So it fell to John Christian to meet with a particularly unsavory leader of Ansar captured the previous November. An avowed enemy of our task force, Abu Mustafa was a founding member of Ansar and the
leader of its operations in Iraq. Most notorious, he masterminded the suicide attack two years earlier on the mess tent in FOB Marez that had killed an operative from our task force. John flew regularly to Camp Cropper, where he met with Mustafa—a big, smelly man with a large head, thick mustache, and bulbous nose. And yet in spite of everything unseemly about this man, FSEC became convinced that Abu Mustafa, like Abu Wail, believed and could in turn convince a core mass of AAS that AQI's program would ultimately spell disaster for Iraqi Sunnis. Thus, FSEC worked to prevent a potential merger of the two groups.

Because Petraeus, as MNF-I commander, had the sole authority to release prisoners, FSEC would need to present its case to him at our weekly meetings. It would be a difficult decision.

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s I had done with Casey, I flew down to Baghdad every Friday that I was in Iraq to meet with General Petraeus and the other senior commanders. Part of the battle for Baghdad had already been fought, without the Coalition. By the spring of 2007, Shia militias methodically pushing westward had ethnically
cleansed many of the neighborhoods. Flags of different colors flapped on rooftops of different neighborhoods. In an attempt to stem the violence, long lines of tall blast barriers segmented neighborhoods as the Coalition walled off the city into a honeycomb of cement-encircled enclaves to immobilize the roving militias and cars packed to the brim with bombs. The city felt like it was slowly dying.

Upon arrival at Camp Victory, we drove to the Water Palace, headquarters of both MNF-I and its subordinate command Multi-National Corps–Iraq, or MNC-I. Al Faw was an imposing marble structure perched in the middle of a turquoise man-made lake. As we passed armed guards and entered the cool, cavernous foyer of polished marble floors, I often had images of General Allenby in Cairo, a soldier on the edge of the empire.

As George Casey had done, Dave met with key subordinates for an informal lunch discussion. Around a rectangular table with Dave at the head sat his deputy, Graeme Lamb; his senior enlisted adviser, Command Sergeant Major Marvin Hill; three-star operational commanders Ray Odierno leading MNC-I, Jim Dubik at the Multi-National Security Transition Comamand–Iraq, and me at TF 714; and the key one- and two-star generals responsible for contracting, public affairs, engineering, detainee operations, and other functions. The talk was all business, but unscripted. It was an important time to bring busy leaders together.

As was evident in our weekly meetings, one facet of Dave Petraeus's genius was to scan an often-cluttered field, recognize a good thing or an able commander, and throw his personal energy and hunger and the brunt of his organization behind it. He scrambled to capitalize on the emerging Awakening movement, creating the Sons of Iraq program and
giving Graeme greater latitude. In a campaign where demonstrable progress was essential, Dave's ability to create or harness energy was indispensable.

After lunch, a group of us moved the short distance across the massive inner hall to Dave's office. There we'd provide a detailed update on TF 714's operations and current read of the fight. I'd typically bring my operations officer, Kurt Fuller, my intel chief, Mike Flynn or his replacement Gregg Potter, as well as one or two key leaders from TF 16. I wanted Petraeus to interact directly with my team often to build as much confidence as possible in our effort.

Beginning in the spring of 2007, at the conclusion of our TF 714 update we would conduct a second meeting to discuss the work of FSEC. Graeme and his team would provide an update and then propose potential prisoner releases—including, in late March, Abu Mustafa, the Iraqi emir of Ansar. These were difficult decisions, and each of us came into the room from a different vantage of the fight, and with different baggage.

Although he had undisputed bona fides, being a Brit handicapped Graeme. As America was surging, it became clear that Gordon Brown's new administration in London was anxious to withdraw. To some, the Brits appeared to have lost Basra by the start of 2007. By the time Graeme left his post in July,
Whitehall had ordered the bases in Basra to be packed up, and the last British convoy from the south departed
to the airport in September. In this light, the reconciliation Graeme was pushing could have appeared more like a British-concocted scheme to save face, rather than what it was—a vital component of an aggressive surge.

But not being an American also bore advantages. Although officially the deputy commander, as a Brit, Graeme could maneuver with less concern over American sensitivities or internal politics. His nationality allowed him to say and do things that few Americans could have, and that was invaluable for the effort.

In the discussions, although committed to the process, Ray Odierno harbored serious concerns about the strategic releases. He had been leading the day-to-day battle since December and was the one writing stacks of condolence letters to families of the fallen that spring, when fighting claimed 81 Americans in March. The number of envelopes waiting on his desk would increase that summer, as 104 Americans died in April and 126 in May. More than 600 were
wounded each of these months. In one discussion, Ray objected to the release of men like Abu Mustafa, who had American and British
blood on their hands.

“Yeah,” Graeme responded, “tell me one man in this room that doesn't have blood on his hands. We're drenched in the damn stuff.”

In between these meetings, Graeme, Anne Meree, John Christian, and the other members of their team met weekly with Ray's trusted staff. Graeme had a powerful ally in Emma Sky, Ray's political adviser. A brilliant Brit who had started as a bitter critic of the war, Emma became nearly inseparable from her boss, Ray, during his time commanding in Iraq. It was a testament to Ray that he kept close and relied on such an outsider whose unvarnished critiques of the Coalition's campaign could be uncomfortable but necessary antidotes to the too-often insular world of military high command.

But even as FSEC made its case, Graeme instructed the team
never to sugarcoat or obscure the crimes of the men they proposed releasing. So when it came time to propose releasing Abu Mustafa, John laid out all the details of his crimes in their presentation at the Friday meeting at the Water Palace: among others, masterminding the deaths of twenty-two Americans and twelve Nepalese construction workers, one of whom was beheaded.

Dave's style took into account the emotions these releases could rile. When it came
time for a decision, he turned to his right. “Ray, what do you think?” Ray would give his piece. “Stan?” I would give mine. And so it happened for Abu Mustafa. With our accession, Dave approved his release.

Five months after the release of Abu Wail, the religious emir, we saw him resurface on the outside. On May 2, 2007, three insurgent groups announced that they had come together under a new breakaway coalition, the
Jihad and Reform Front (JRF). Although intensely anti-American, the group's announcement set it in opposition to AQI, explicitly declaring its goal
to avoid killing innocents. In addition to the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahedeen Army, the faction included a new group called the Sharia Committee of Ansar al-Sunnah—
led by Abu Wail. Reports indicated that Abu Wail had sought to lead Ansar into this new coalition, but only
a faction came with him. Abu Wail's actions earned him the ire of Ansar's members, who accused him of
collaborating with the United States. Soon thereafter, AQI began to
target the leaders of the new Jihad and Reform Front. Some reports indicated that JRF, as it
clashed with AQI, petered out. Others saw it survive, continuing to cause
dissension within Ansar's ranks.

All of these measures had a half-life, and creating a durable competitor to AQI was not the goal. Instead, when the U.S.-led Coalition had everything on the table, Graeme looked for a way to nudge the dynamics in our direction, to create a spurt of momentum in our favor. Doing so would add to the momentum gathering elsewhere, through the quiet work of the CIA, enterprising Marine commanders in Anbar, and then–Brigadier General John Allen, who deftly negotiated deals with Iraqi sheikhs who were residing in Jordan.

At the end of July, two months after Abu Wail's faction appeared on the Internet, Graeme's tour ended and he returned to Scotland. It's unclear whether either Abu Wail or Abu Mustafa survived the war.