TIME: Chasing the
Ghosts
Monday, September 26, 2005
With doubts about Iraq growing at home, U.S.
forces are struggling to put down an elusive and
inexhaustible enemy. Michael Ware reports on the
state of the counterinsurgency from the front lines
of the biggest battle of the
year
By
MICHAEL WARE
The troops call it Route Barracuda, a patch of
terrorist territory in the northern Iraqi town of
Tall 'Afar, where thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces
have converged for the biggest battle in nearly a
year. On this sweaty September afternoon, the
neighborhood is living up to its name. A squad of
U.S. commandos enters an abandoned house and clambers
up to the roof. The 2-foot lip doesn't give much
cover from the bullets raining down on them from
insurgent gunmen firing from a building 200 yards to
the north. Rounds flying at supersonic speed crack
inches from the troops' ears. "Get down, goddammit,"
a Green Beret hollers to his Iraqi counterparts. On
their bellies, two weapons sergeants start loading an
84-mm M-3 antitank recoilless rifle. "They got guns,"
says a commando shouldering a rocket launcher. "Let's
f_______ do this." He kneels, exposing himself
without any choice, takes aim and fires. Whump. The
top of the insurgents' building blossoms black smoke.
Over the cacophony of machine-gun fire and
explosions, the leader of the commando team bellows
to his men that the insurgents have spotted them.
"Displace, displace--they got our position!" he
yells, as the troops vacate the open rooftop in a
stooped sprint.
The offensive in Tall 'Afar, which wound down last
week, was this year's Fallujah--a mass assault
involving 7,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and hundreds
of Bradleys, battle tanks, artillery pieces, all
combined with AC-130 Spectre gunships, F-16 fighter
jets and attack helicopters. Unlike the Fallujah
battle, Tall 'Afar raged mostly unseen, with accounts
of the fighting limited largely to the reports of
U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, who declared
that the onslaught had succeeded in driving out the
bands of rebels--local units commanded by al-Qaeda
kingpin Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi--from their latest safe
haven. But almost as soon as the offensive ended, the
cycle of mayhem started anew: two days after the
capture of al-Qaeda's stronghold in Tall 'Afar,
al-Zarqawi unleashed a retaliatory wave of 11 suicide
bombings in Baghdad, killing more than 150 people in
the deadliest day of attacks in the capital since the
start of the war. Iraq's Defense Minister, Sadoun
Dulaimi, responded to the attacks by telling
reporters, "I think what is happening is the last
breath of the terrorists"--an assessment that even
some U.S. commanders found unduly upbeat after yet
another bloody week. "We have not broken the back of
the insurgency," says a high-ranking U.S. officer.
"The insurgency is like a cell-phone system. You shut
down one node, another somewhere else comes online to
replace it."
Two and a half years since the U.S. invasion, nine
months after the election of a government in Baghdad
and weeks before millions of Iraqis will vote on a
constitution that threatens to further split the
country, this is the reality of the beleaguered U.S.
mission in Iraq: a never-ending fight against a
seemingly inexhaustible enemy emboldened by the U.S.
presence, the measure of success as elusive as the
insurgents themselves. For months, the intractability
of the fighting and Iraq's momentum toward civil war
have caused a gradual but still manageable erosion in
public support for the Bush Administration's
stick-it-out strategy, which depends on training
Iraqis in sufficient numbers to take over combat
duties and allow U.S. troops to begin pulling out.
Senior U.S. officials say it could take a decade to
quell the insurgency, with successful withdrawal
years away. But the devastation caused by Hurricane
Katrina and the massive price tag for rebuilding the
Gulf Coast have ratcheted up the sense of urgency
among lawmakers and some Administration officials
about finding an exit strategy. In a TIME poll taken
10 days after the hurricane, 57% said they
disapproved of President Bush's handling of the war;
61% said they supported cutting Iraq spending to pay
for hurricane relief. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita
downplays those figures, asking, "What is it worth to
avoid another 9/11?" But privately, Pentagon
officials acknowledge that the reservoir of public
faith in the war effort is running dangerously low.
"The issue of American staying power is forefront in
our minds," says a military officer. "Everything has
costs."
With the public increasingly unwilling to pay those
costs, the U.S. faces hard questions. Can political
success still be salvaged from an unwinnable military
fight after the series of failures that have marked
the U.S. enterprise in Iraq? How can the U.S. extract
itself without compounding the damage done to U.S.
interests in the region? After a month in the
al-Qaeda-dominated Syrian border region, TIME spent
10 days on the front lines of the war, having lived
with U.S. and Iraqi troops as they prepared for the
battle of Tall 'Afar, one of al-Zarqawi's biggest
strongholds and, intelligence officers say, a place
where he was detected in recent weeks. Waiting for
the Americans were hundreds of hardened local
fighters, small bands of foreign zealots and, in the
notorious Sarai quarter of the city, a labyrinth of
medieval alleyways laced with booby traps and
roadside bombs. Two weeks after the start of the
offensive, the military claimed more than 200
insurgents killed. But field commanders and top
intelligence officers acknowledge that the U.S. is no
closer to subduing the insurgents and the threat they
pose to Iraq's stability. Although dozens of
al-Zarqawi's fighters may have died in Tall 'Afar,
the U.S. and Iraqi forces were unable to prevent
others from getting away. In its tempo, ferocity and
politically compromised outcome, the story of Tall
'Afar stands as a parable of the dangers, dilemmas
and frustrations that still haunt the U.S. in Iraq.
Despite the temporary tactical gains made by the
U.S.'s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the battle
refreshes doubts about whether anything resembling
victory in this war can still be achieved.
Nestled close to Syria, Tall 'Afar is at the center
of a vast border region rife with smuggling and
anti-American sentiment. After the U.S. invasion, it
became a gateway for foreign fighters entering Iraq.
In time, homegrown insurgent cells came under the
control of al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia
organization, which transformed the city into a
training and command base for foreign jihadis and a
hideout for al-Zarqawi and his deputies. After the
fall of Fallujah, the town became a propaganda tool
for the resistance, with attacks on U.S. forces in
the city featured heavily in the "top 10 attacks"
videos circulated among insurgent groups. For
civilians, especially the Shi'ite minority, the city
became a prison under insurgent rule. Al-Zarqawi's
shock troops commandeered buses, schools and
businesses for military purposes, evicting
uncooperative families and selling their furniture.
Insurgent videos and residents' accounts detail how
anyone deemed to be collaborating with U.S. forces
was executed, often publicly. "The enemy has taken
good people who have worked with us out into the
street and cut their heads off," armored
reconnaissance troop commander Captain Jesse Sellars
told his replacements coming into western Tall 'Afar.
Although U.S. officers had known for months about the
atrocities taking place in Tall 'Afar, they were
powerless to do anything about them. Stretched thin
fighting rebels in places like al-Qaim and Mosul, the
military dedicated just a single infantry battalion
to an area twice the size of Connecticut. In May,
however, more than 4,000 troops of the 3rd Armored
Cavalry Regiment, a unit with a unique combination of
tanks, Bradleys and helicopters that is back for its
second tour in Iraq, were hastily rerouted from the
south to the Tall 'Afar region, where they began
disrupting the insurgents' supply lines and safe
havens. They paid a price: two platoons alone saw a
third of their 50-odd soldiers killed or wounded in
less than four months, and hardy Abrams tanks and
Bradley vehicles burned in the streets. "A day can go
from good to bad in a heartbeat in there," says
reconnaissance helicopter pilot Captain Matthew
Junko. And so last month the regiment's commander,
Colonel H.R. McMaster, told his troops what he had
been itching to say all along: it was time to take
back Tall 'Afar.
The order for the main force to move comes on Sept.
2. That day, in an armored squadron pushing into the
city from the north and the south, Grim Troop's Blue
Platoon, dubbed the Dragoons, enters from the
southeast along an artery code-named Route Corvette,
into a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood. Within 30
minutes, they come under sniper fire. A three-man
sniper team from the Elite Iraqi Counterterrorism
Task Force (akin to the U.S. Delta Force), with a
pair of U.S. special-forces liaisons, takes positions
in front of the platoon, scanning for muzzle flashes,
as an Abrams tank 50 yards up Corvette fires its
120-mm cannon at an insurgent mortar team, followed
by a burst of .50-cal. machine-gun fire. A helicopter
swoops ahead, firing a Hellfire missile at the
insurgent position to help clear Blue Platoon's path.
The helicopters kill at least a dozen insurgents by
firing missiles into safe houses. At day's end Blue
Platoon pulls out of the city to a rendezvous point
in the desert, but fresh intelligence suggests the
insurgents are displaying their mettle and have
fallen back into well-defended positions. This enemy
is not a rabble.
The Dragoons re-enter Tall 'Afar at 6 a.m. the next
day, linking up with two Iraqi army infantry
companies of Kurdish peshmerga and the U.S.
special-force teams attached to them. The mission is
to begin "draining the pond," as U.S. officers call
it--clearing civilians from what is about to become a
battlefield so that the insurgents could not blend
back into the fold. The scenes are heart wrenching:
the Kurds burst into houses as families gather for
breakfast, ordering them at gunpoint onto the street
with only the possessions and provisions they can
grab in a few seconds. Women wail, and children cling
to their mothers' sides, as they head to temporary
camps on the city's fringe. Although explosions can
be heard in the distance, the town takes on an eerie
silence. "The city has never been this quiet," says a
U.S. special-forces officer. "They're either getting
ready, or they've left." Captain Brian Oman, the
leader of the Dragoons, wonders if the homegrown "bad
guys" are going to put down their weapons and sneak
out with the civilians. "We'll be fighting them again
in a week," he says.
It doesn't take that long. In the morning, the U.S.
and Kurdish special forces begin moving north, toward
Sarai, through the stone-paved alleyways. Within
minutes, they are ambushed. The U.S. commanders rush
machine-gun teams to the rooftops to pour out
suppressing fire as the others advance below,
clearing houses as they go. Anguished families come
rushing out, caught in the cross fire and herded by
the soldiers to the relative safety of the edge of
town. A little girl cups her ears with her hands and
wails each time firing breaks out. A 5-year-old boy
gingerly waves a white flag. Insurgents duck and
weave across housetops a few blocks away, trading
fire as they withdraw back into their nest in the
Sarai neighborhood.
The Green Berets pursue them onto Route Barracuda.
Fire fights rage from one side of the street to the
other, the combatants as close as 55 yards apart.
Bradleys from Red Platoon pull forward, pounding the
enemy firing positions; then the insurgents shift
buildings and fire from new locations. Only after an
Apache attack helicopter sends missiles into two
insurgent buildings does the firing stop.
But the next day begins with a blistering fire fight.
With the insurgents sniping at the soldiers on the
front lines, the U.S. troops blast the area with
cannon fire, obliterating nearby shops and houses
from where gunmen had been shooting just moments
before. The fighting is so close, you could throw
rocks and hit the man trying to kill you. Buildings
erupt in smoke and flames. F-16 fighter jets roar
overhead. "We got people moving around on rooftops in
the vicinity of the mosque," the Green Beret team
sergeant reports on radio. Six Hellfire missiles come
barreling in, detonating 80 yards away and showering
rubble onto the troops' helmets. Pulling out, the
Renegade Troop Apache pilot calls merrily to the team
sergeant on the ground, "Stay safe, and kill some bad
guys."
The insurgents withdraw, only to resurface in a
flanking movement from the west, trying to snipe at
Green Berets looking to the east, sparking another
long fire fight. When things quiet down, it isn't for
long. Although the U.S. inflicts heavy punishment on
al-Zarqawi's men, the Americans also absorb losses.
During a raid by Delta Force operators of Task Force
145 in western Tall 'Afar, insurgents put up fierce
resistance at a house believed to be sheltering one
of the city's top al-Qaeda operatives. Eight Delta
men are wounded, two so seriously that an AC-130
Spectre gunship has to give a medevac covering fire
to get the wounded to a combat-hospital operating
theater in time to save them. Elsewhere, an
improvised explosive device detonates under a Bradley
fighting vehicle, blowing off its lid and killing a
young medic who, though based in the rear, had
volunteered to enter the fighting fray. A few feet
forward, the toll would have been worse, killing the
Bradley commander and his gunner. "This is a war of
inches," says a shaken U.S. officer.
Across Iraq, the prize for the U.S. remains a
clear-cut outcome, some indication that the U.S. is
doing anything more than playing whack-a-mole with
the insurgents. In Tall 'Afar, the U.S. and Iraqi
troops awake on the morning of Sept. 6 to the sound
of messages being broadcast over loudspeakers
instructing civilians to leave. At mid-morning,
families begin to emerge across Route Barracuda
waving sad little white flags. As a family shuffles
past, a Green Beret weapons sergeant bellows for them
to be stopped. "Who's that red-headed guy?" he asks.
The men are sifted out, five identified as
suspicious. Flashes of defiance and anger raise
suspicions. "Hey, flex-cuff 'em," orders a Green
Beret. Chemical swabs read positive for explosives on
two of the men. Masked informants identify three--all
brothers--as snipers, the other two as a
rocket-propelled-grenade team. Across the
battlefield, insurgents attempting to slip out of
Sarai mix with civilians. Five dressed as women are
snared, one with fake breasts. Others force children
to hold their hands as though they are family. Some
are caught; others are not. An intelligence officer
says al-Qaeda is slipping to the east and behind them
to the south, and "somehow--we don't know
how"--cutting through the screen line to deploy to
the west.
The two-day grace for civilians to evacuate stretches
to a four-day standstill, as Iraqi Prime Minister
Ibrahim al-Jafaari orders a tactical "pause." With
his nation divided along sectarian lines over the
Tall 'Afar operation, al-Jafaari insists on
assurances from military commanders that the battle
will be a decisive success. The wait leaves the
troops embittered, their momentum lost to what they
see as political calculations. "This is turning into
a goat f___," bemoans an angry Green Beret. By the
time al-Jaafari approves the dreaded assault into
al-Qaeda's heartland, it fizzles. Not a hostile shot
is fired, not a single enemy fighter is found. Safe
houses and weapons caches are empty, cleansed like an
operating room. Only one blackened corpse, left
rotting for days, is found. "They've even removed
their dead," said a Green Beret, not really believing
it himself.
What did Tall 'Afar accomplish? At best, the picture
is mixed. McMaster did succeed in driving the
insurgents out, denying al-Qaeda its Tall 'Afar base
and disrupting its networks. Intelligence picked up
in Tall 'Afar led to the arrest last week of Abu
Fatima, al-Qaeda's military emir in Mosul. The cost
in U.S. lives was minimal: only four died in the two
weeks of fighting since Sept. 2. At the same time,
many of the insurgents who had holed up in the city
got away because of the indecision of Iraqi political
leaders. And while the Pentagon hailed the operation
for displaying the improved mettle of the U.S.-backed
Iraqi forces, the operation showed that deep
sectarian and ethnic schisms still exist among the
Iraqi troops. It's not hard to find commanders who
fear they are training troops for a civil war. "I
don't know if we're going to be able to prevent
what's coming," says a front-line U.S. lieutenant
colonel.
With the war wrapped into so many political knots in
Baghdad and Washington and the insurgents proving so
resilient, the fight in Tall 'Afar, as in Iraq, is
far from over. On the ground in the deserted city,
the U.S. is pouring money into reconstruction in a
bid to win local opinion. But there is every reason
to believe the violence will return and the U.S. will
be forced to fight there again--with the insurgents
betting that the Americans will lose a bit more of
their will and support each time they go back. In a
house overrun during the battle, a newspaper sits in
a living room, its pages brimming with pictures of a
U.S. assault in the city. Dated Sept. 2-10, the
report could have been an account of this month's
battle, but it isn't. It is already a year old.
--With
reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington