My Share of the Task (78 page)

self-propelling cycle:
The Pentagon's August 2006 report “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” gave the following assessment of violence: “Since the last report, the core conflict in Iraq changed into a struggle between Sunni and Shi'a extremists seeking to control key areas in Baghdad, create or protect sectarian enclaves, divert economic resources, and impose their own respective political and religious agendas. Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife, with Sunni and Shi'a extremists each portraying themselves as the defenders of their respective sectarian groups. However, the Sunni Arab insurgence remains potent and viable, although its visibility has been overshadowed by the increase in sectarian violence.” Department of Defense, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” August 2006, 26.

previously mixed neighborhoods drained:
Between the late February Samarra mosque bombing and August of 2006, 22,977 families, or 137, 862 individuals, had been displaced (ibid.).

3,149 Iraqis died:
Michael O' Hanlon and Ian S. Livingston,
“Brookings Iraq Index,” Brookings Institution, December 21, 2006, 10.

1,855 Iraqi corpses:
Edward Wong and Damien Cave, “Iraqi Death Toll Rose Above 3,400 in July,”
New York Times
, August 15, 2006.

90 percent of them executed
:
DOD, “Measuring Stability,” 34.

CHAPTER 14: NETWORKED

On June 5, 2006:
Information about Ramadi and my recollection of this event were aided by interviews with members of the task force who served there and were on this operation.

O
nly one hundred policemen:
These figures, from May 2006, are from page 44 of Neil Smith and Sean MacFarland's paper recounting their campaign for Ramadi (“Anbar Awakens: The Tipping Point,”
Military Review
(March–April 2008).

insurgents operated undisturbed:
Ibid., 42.

insurgents
focused on the Americans:
Interview with task force member.

rates there were
extraordinarily high:
Mark Kukis, “The Most Dangerous Place in Iraq,”
Time
,
December 11, 2006.

five Marine and army
battalions:
Smith and MacFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 43.

third-tier sheikh:
Najim Abed Al-Jabouri and Sterling Jensen, “The Iraqi and AQI Roles in the Sunni Awakening,”
Prism
(December 2010), 12.

reimagined as his
guests:
Ibid., 15.

officially under way
:
Smith and MacFarland, “Anbar Awakens,” 48
.
The same event is recounted in
Al-Jabouri and Jensen, “The Iraqi and AQI Roles,” 11.

wrote to Nouri al-Maliki
:
Khalid Al-Ansary and Ali Adeeb, “Most Tribes in Anbar Agree to Unite Against Insurgents,”
New York Times
, September 18, 2006.

Iraqi government payroll:
Al-Jabouri and Jensen, “The Iraqi and AQI Roles,” 14–15.

did not like having an American tank:
Sheikh Sattar's attitude toward the tank, and the rotation of Iraqi and American models, was recounted in an interview with Sterling Jensen. It also appears in his article, written with Al-Jabouri (ibid.,13).

now a token of
power:
Sheikh Abdul Sattar was assassinated a year later, in September 2007, but not before he had served as a rallying point for the Sunni Awakening in Ramadi. His brother assumed his mantle as a leader of the Awakening.

my old friend Graeme Lamb:
Lamb took the title of Deputy Commanding General/Senior British Military Representative in MNF-I on September 7, 2006.

and declare a national position
:
My recollection of the early Awakening was confirmed by interviews with task force members and with Graeme. As the Awakening gathered steam and consolidated, Graeme noted in January 2007 that “a conference of tribal chiefs in Anbar ended with a pledge to support the national government's campaign against Al-Qaeda insurgents.” Graeme Lamb, “Dispatches from Baghdad: A Soldier's View on Iraq,” Ministry of Defense,
January 9, 2007.

created the “COIN academy”:
For details of the COIN Academy General Casey established, see Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S. Counterinsurgency Academy Giving Officers a New Mindset,”
Washington Post
,
February 21, 2006.

cited its teachers' precepts:
Lawrence F. Kaplan, “Letting Go,”
New Republic
, July 10, 2006.

Squeeze Chart:
Graeme's description that day would later that fall be visualized in a series of increasingly descriptive diagrams that we called “The Squeeze Chart.” While they underwent a number of iterations, the most lasting chart that summarized his concept was a Venn diagram, with three circles laterally spaced. The leftmost circle comprised Sunnis, the rightmost Shia. They did not overlap, but where their edges touched was at the center of the third circle, in the middle. This central circle represented those groups assisting, or not resisting, a legitimate Iraqi government.

permeated the rest of the Coalition:
This point is made in Mark Urban,
Task Force Black
(Abacus, 2011),
186.

terms helped us conceptualize:
While Ambassador Khalilzad described groups as “irreconcilables” that summer, General James Mattis gives credit to Graeme for meaningfully introducing these terms—and the attendant logic—into the Coalition's mindset.
Al-Anbar Awakening, vol. I
, 30.

“not an independent phenomenon”:
See book eight, chapter six of Carl von Clausewitz's great work
On War
for his extended treatment of this famous quote. Carl von Clausewitz,
On War
,
ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1984).

just shy of the most extreme:
If we wanted to excise violence from the system, Graeme's thinking went, we needed to approach the most violent groups that could realistically be approached. Cleaving the most radical irreconcilables away from the rest—by killing and capturing them and by separating them psychologically from the people—was key to breaking their hold on the other potentially reconcilable groups. “They will poison the people on the fence,” he said.

Iraqis were fleeing every month
:
Sabrina Tavernise, “Civilian Death Toll Reaches New High in Iraq, U.N. Says,”
New York Times
,
November 23, 2006.

perhaps at its
all-time low
:
On November 29, 2006, the
New York Times
published a memo written on November 8 by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. He wrote, “Despite Maliki's reassuring words . . . the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”

assaulting the
Ministry of Health:
Kirk Semple, “Sectarian Attack Is Worst in Baghdad Since Invasion,”
New York Times
,
November 24, 2006.

another
250 wounded:
Casualty figures are from Associated Press, “Death Toll in Sadr City Rises to 202 Iraqis,”
USA Today
, November 24, 2006.

hold that record for
long:
On August 15, 2007, four car bombs killed 250 and wounded 350. James Glanz, “Death Toll in Iraq Bombings Rises to 250,”
New York Times
,
August 15, 2007.

Ansar al-Sunnah's leadership:
Information on the ten captured leaders comes from an MNF-I press release: Multi-National Force–Iraq, “Capture of Terrorist Emirs Gives al-Qaida in Iraq Nowhere to Turn” (press release), December 6, 2006.

mess-hall tent in Mosul:
Ansar al-Sunnah was the biggest and most violent indigenous Iraqi insurgent group that had a pro–bin Laden ideology. Prior to the U.S. invasion, AAS had set up a Taliban-like enclave in the ungoverned parts of Kurdistan, banning music, dancing, and liquor, as reported, for example, by C. J. Chivers, “Kurds Face a Second Enemy: Islamic Fighters on Iraq Flank,”
New York Times
, January 13, 2003.

Kurdish leaders had reported:
Interview with task force member aware of intelligence on this matter.

merger between the two groups:
Bill Roggio, “A Zarqawi Letter and a Potential Merger with Ansar al-Sunnah,”
Long War Journal
,
September 21, 2006.

These were conversations
:
Details of these meetings with Abu Wail come from interviews with Graeme Lamb.

“you're a face of occupation”:
Interview with Graeme Lamb. Note that this quote from Abu Wail has elsewhere been incorrectly attributed to Abu Azzam (Fairweather,
A War of Choice
, 294). In fact, it came from the Ansar religious emir.

FSEC's first strategic release:
The timing of Abu Wail's release comes from interviews with members of FSEC.

“Annie, another Christmas apart”:
E-mail to Annie, December 25, 2006. Edited slightly for punctuation.

new strategy in Iraq:
George W. Bush,
Decision Points
(Crown, 2010), 377.

stretching back to the spring:
Peter D. Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,”
International Security
(Spring 2011), 101.

believed Al Shabab was
sheltering:
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross,
Bin Laden's Legacy: Why We're Still Losing the War on Terror
(John Wiley and Sons, 2011), 148.

Abu Taha al-Sudani
:
Bill Roggio, “U.S. Gunship Fires on Al Qaeda Leader and Operative in Somalia,”
Long War Journal
,
January 8, 2007.

“Succeeding in Iraq”:
George W. Bush, “President's Address to the Nation,” White House, January 10, 2007.

there were
four vectors:
Department of Defense,
“DOD News Briefing with Secretary Gates and Gen. Pace,” February 2, 2007.

explosively formed projectile IEDs:
In 2004 Iranian-backed Special Groups had introduced to Iraqi roads a deadly new device known as an explosively formed projectile, or EFP. For years, “shaped charges” had been used in high-tech weaponry to penetrate armor plating. In the late 1990s, however, insurgents in southern Lebanon had adapted the technology for use in portable roadside bombs against Israeli vehicles. The technology migrated from their source, Iran, to Iraq, and according to Rick Atkinson in the
Washington Post
(October 1, 2007)
the first EFP was detonated in May 2004 in Basra. By late 2006, the device was all too common and frighteningly lethal. The large number of EFPs was clear evidence of the extent of direct Iranian involvement in the conflict.

EFPs varied in size; most were about the size of a small oil drum or a five-gallon paint bucket, but they could be even smaller. Insurgents positioned them a few feet above the ground and aimed them to shoot laterally into the roadway. Once triggered, often by hidden infrared sensors, an explosive charge on the back of the drum forced a concave metal cone to be reshaped into a dartlike stream in the direction of the target. The dense molten stream, often the size of a bowling pin and traveling at twice the speed of a bullet, punctured inches of metal plating like water through snow. Inside the vehicle, the molten slug cut through legs and torsos, and its heat often lit the cab and the men inside on fire. Our heaviest armored vehicles were vulnerable and despite extensive countermeasures, in large numbers they were a potential game changer.

In the early evening:
One source claims the attack took place at 6:00
P.M.
(Mark Kukis, “An Ambush in Karbala,”
Time
, July 26, 2007). Another article times the event at 5:00
P.M.
, providing further details about the number and line of SUVs and the PJCC.
(Department of Defense, “Karbala Attackers Used U.S. Army–Styled Uniforms to Gain Access,” Armed Forces Press Service,
January 26, 2007).

wore U.S. Army uniforms:
Department of Defense, “Karbala Attackers Used U.S. Army–Styled Uniforms.”

roughly a dozen:
Ibid.

weapons through the
doors:
Kukis, “An Ambush in Karbala.” Details of this event draw on this article.

suspicions about their involvement:
Ibid.

neighboring province of Babil:
Borzou Daragahi, “Military Provides Details of Slain Soldiers' Abduction,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 27, 2007.

scrawled his name in the film:
Kukis, “An Ambush in Karbala.”

CHAPTER 15: THE LONG WAR

could avoid producing
antibodies:
Then-Major Ben Connable used this same terminology describing Abizaid's position in volume 1 of
Al-Anbar Awakening
.