TIME: Behind the Chaotic
Battle Lines in Iraq
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
In a murky Baghdad firefight, U.S. forces appear
to have been caught between Sunni insurgents and
Shi'ite death squads
By
MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
When Baghdad's notorious Adhamiya district exploded
in vicious gun battles last week, few were really
surprised. The area, rich with former army,
intelligence and secret police officers from Saddam's
regime, had been trumpeted by the U.S. military as a
former insurgent hot spot brought under control -- a
success story in the effort to hand over more of the
responsibilities for keeping order to the Iraqis. Yet
most on the ground knew that beneath the suburb's
surface, trouble still brewed. U.S. military
intelligence believed the town was still being used
by the Ba'ath insurgents as a command headquarters
and logistics base, and American officers suspected
that Iraqi commanders they're allied with had struck
an accord with the guerrilla leadership, promising
not to interfere as long as their troops were not
attacked.
But all that came apart in the early hours of April
17 when a two-day firefight between local insurgents
on one side and Iraqi soldiers and American GIs on
the other broke out. Though the encounter was
minimized by top U.S. military officials, the battle
appears to have been a more serious outbreak of
sectarian violence, between well-organized units of
the insurgency and what military sources suspect was
a Shi'ite death squad linked to the U.S.-backed Iraqi
government.
The basic facts of the battle are not in dispute.
Some time between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on April 17 a
well-known Iraqi army checkpoint at a prominent
Adhamiya intersection came under intense fire from
insurgent forces in the town. Other Iraqi units
responded and a blazing battle ensued. American
advisors from a Military Transition Team (MiTT) with
the 101st Airborne, embedded within the battalion
under attack, were called out and were soon fighting
for their lives. A coalition quick-reaction force was
summoned.
Though the severity of the battle was played down by
official U.S. military spokesmen, officers on the
ground tell a different story. "It lasted for about
seven hours after we arrived, so the enemy was pretty
determined. They did not just fade away," says the
MiTT team chief Major Chuck Markos, whose men were
hit with flurries of rocket propelled grenades and
small arms fire. "It was significant." The exchanges
lasted until shortly before lunch. By mid-day, the
district was boarded up, bereft of traffic or life,
but quiet. The next morning at about 6 a.m.,
hostilities started again, with several more hours of
fighting before quiet finally returned. By week's
end, the scene was tense but trouble free. Cars are
back on the street, but many shops remain closed.
The question is exactly what triggered this battle
and who fought it. Sunni community leaders claim that
local residents grabbed whatever weapons they had to
defend their homes from a sectarian attack by Shi'ite
militias in government uniforms. They say night
guards, akin to an armed neighborhood watch, fired
back at roaming gunmen strafing them as they stood
watch. However, American officers say the men they
ended up fighting weren't mere homeowners. They used
the fire and movement techniques of trained soldiers.
"These guys who stood and fought were not just
neighborhood types," says Markos, a steely artillery
officer from Chattanooga, Tenn. Intelligence officer
Capt. Joshua Brandon notes that "a lot of [insurgent]
command and logistics comes out of here" and that,
along with posters for the locals who died in the
fight, "we see lists of martyrs who were not local
residents."
One of those insurgent fighters confirmed these
suspicions in a clandestine interview with TIME. Abu
Marwan, an insurgent footsoldier from the Ansar
al-Sunnah network, said that once the fighting broke
out, his cell, along with those from other guerrilla
groups, was brought in from surrounding quarters as
reinforcements. Adhamiya is a safe haven for any
number of anti-American organizations, which share
intelligence and weapons and coordinate their
activities. According to insurgent sources, the
groups agreed that only sparing attacks would be
launched locally so as not to attract U.S. attention.
American brigade commander Col. Thomas Vail says the
district's concentration of working poor made it easy
for insurgents to hide. "It was easy sanctuary," he
says.
Abu Marwan and his cell arrived in the afternoon of
the first day's fighting, he says, but there was a
lull while they waited for a counterattack that
night. His job was to help defend the Abu Hanifa
mosque, he says, and when combat resumed the next
morning that's what he did. "We heard they were
coming," he says of the Iraqi troops, "so we took our
positions and started shooting at them from near the
mosque. We used PKC [machine guns], RPGs, grenades,
everything." The men of the 101st Airborne's MiTT
have no reason to doubt him. A U.S. soldier told TIME
days later of how RPG rounds had whizzed past his
humvee, with one sliding right under it.
Though the insurgents admit to attacking the
checkpoint identified by the Americans as ground
zero, they claim they did not start the battle. Local
clerics, municipal officials, community leaders and
the insurgents themselves all say the hostilities
were started by a raid from a "death squad" backed by
the Ministry of Interior (MOI) -- carloads of men in
MOI uniforms and irregular forces in civilian clothes
who entered Adhamiya after being passed through the
Iraqi army checkpoints. Indeed, sources within one
prominent Shi'ite militia say their men were part of
the Adhamiya raid, which was targeting top insurgent
leaders holed up in a building. A report prepared by
the local council for the Iraqi army claims the men
arrived in police and civilian cars and that another
group of men in military uniforms attacked from a
second direction. The report claims it took 90
minutes before the army units stationed in the area
intervened. By then the battle was in full fury, and
it was left for the American and Iraqi soldiers to
bear the onslaught.
The death squad claims are not far-fetched. Maj.
Markos told TIME his men have previously "encountered
unauthorized MOI elements" in Adhamiya conducting
illegal "snatch and grab type activities." He says,
"The bottom line is I can't tell you definitely [what
started last week's battle]. But nothing is black and
white here and I would be lying to say the MOI is
never here." He adds, "We're definitely going to look
into" the charges of death-squad involvement.
Intelligence officer Brandon admits the fusion of
legitimate government forces with militia is a
problem. "So many players are tied to the government
and to armed militias, and a lot of the time the
interests overlap," he says. Major General Rick Lynch
sums it up: "We don't know what happened yet." With
the Iraqis set to assume more control of the war, and
with newly anointed Prime Minister Jawad al-Maliki
calling for more militias to be integrated into
government forces, the murky battle at Adhamiya could
be a harbinger of more troubles to come.