Wesley Gray - Embedded

After returning from the mission in one piece, I was ready to hit the rack. Sadly, Colonel Abass made a request to speak with the advisers who were embedded with Najib. He had correctly sensed problems during the Kaffijiyah mission between the embedded advisers and Najib and wanted to smooth over the situation. Abass had unique insights to share. He gave me, Horvath, and Chin a lesson on how to deal with Arab men. His lecture was directed mostly at Horvath, but we all gained insight from his wisdom.

“Gunny Horvath,” he began, “you are as stubborn as Captain Najib. I respect this quality in men and I believe it contributes to your success and pride as a military man, however—” Colonel Abass interrupted himself. “Captain Najib will be punished for not cooperating with you today on the battlefield. I am sorry for his actions. However, I want to lend you some advice. In our culture, you must give a little if you want to get anything. If two stubborn people meet, it always creates problems. For example, Arab people are similar to a taut string. At one end you have the reasonable people; on the other end you have the maniacs. They are both connected by this taut line. If the maniacs want something, the reasonable people must soften and give him some line and vice versa. Unfortunately this line is not strong. If one group pulls against the other, the line breaks and everything is broken.”

Abass continued his lecture. “Here’s a more personal example. The U.S. Army Special Forces team that previously worked here were bossy. They were smart men, had excellent tactics, and trained my scouts well. But they were stern, demanding, and stubborn. On one mission they asked me if they could take my scouts. I agreed with them that the mission was valuable, however, I would have none of it.” Abass got louder. “Why should I allow them to order my scouts around without consulting my advice and without respecting my stature as commander? We were not friends. I was merely their pawn. The Special Forces team was terrible with relations and I made them pay!”

At this point Colonel Abass was excited, but he began to calm down. “The next Special Forces team to come in was different,” he said. “Their tactics were terrible and their advice incompetent. However, they were my friends, drank tea with me, and consulted me on the best employment of my scouts. I would try to please them and I allowed them to employ my scouts in any matter they chose, even if I felt it was unwise. This is something Iraqis do. We take the extra step to please a friend. It is important to compromise and keep the string I spoke of from breaking.” Abass was wise. We decided to build our personal friendship and military relationship with Captain Najib and the other jundi .

Improvised explosive devices, better known as IEDs, are the biggest threat in Iraq. The number of devices and tactics insurgents use to build and employ IEDs could fill a book. Breaking it down “Barney-style” (Marine term for synthesizing things so even the dumb purple dinosaur can understand it), these devices can be separated into three categories: pressure-plate IEDs (PPIEDs), command-wire IEDs (CWIEDs), and radio-controlled IEDs (RCIEDs) (see photo 6).

PPIEDs are any IED initiated by the victim. The classic example is the homemade land mine. Imagine you are walking through a rice paddy in Vietnam and step on a metal or plastic object stuffed with C-4 explosives by the local villager. The next thing you know your leg is flying through the sky and you are collapsing to the ground. This is a type of PPIED. A more complicated example of the type found in Iraq might be a couple strips of thin metal separated by Styrofoam wafers on each end. These metal strips connect to four 155-mm artillery shells buried on the side of the road. The idea is to have a vehicle roll over the metal strips. The pressure from the weight of the tires then causes the metal strips to touch, completing the electric circuit and setting off the artillery shells. This makes a bad day for the Marines or Iraqi army.

Insurgents love PPIEDs because they are “fire and forget”—drop it, leave, and hope Allah will find the right victim. Tactically, though, insurgents have two drawbacks they must consider: accidentally killing the local populace and emplacement. The PPIED is not discriminating. Because whoever happens to drive over the top of a triggering device ignites a PPIED, an insurgent may end up blowing up his uncle, his sister, or his neighbor who is cruising down the street. Insurgents place these IEDs on military-only roads or place them on the civilian roads after curfew hours, when no civilian traffic should be traveling.

But this placement presents a conundrum to the insurgent: How can he emplace the IED on a military-only road if he will be searched if he is seen on this road? Also, if he instead decides to place the IED after curfew hours on a civilian road, he will be searched because he is driving after curfew. All of this makes emplacement appear impossible. It is not, as evidenced by the countless dead Marines and jundi who have died from PPIEDs.

The simplest of IEDs are the CWIEDs. If you think back to the Wile E. Coyote cartoons, you already know about CWIEDs. Remember how Wile E. Coyote would set up a bunch of TNT on the road and trace his wire back to a hidden spot where it would be connected to a large ignition switch that said “ACME” on it? When the roadrunner, his target, was in his kill zone, Wile E. Coyote would push down on the igniter box. Unfortunately for the coyote, something would invariably be screwed up with his CWIED; he would get fried and the roadrunner would run off.

Insurgents do the exact same thing as Wile E. Coyote, but their CWIEDs work. First, they place a large amount of explosives: 155-mm artillery shells, four-hundred-pound propane tanks filled with PE-4, satchel charges, metal barrels stuffed with rusty nails and shrapnel, and so on. Second, they trace a copper wire back to their hidden ignition point. This hidden area could be an old sheepherder’s tent, a civilian’s house, or a stack of rocks. The third step in the CWIED phase is to wait for an unlucky convoy to enter the kill zone and then count, wahid, ithnien, thlathe (one, two, three)—boom!

Owing to their simplicity and ultralow technology (which limits our ability to defeat them with expensive technology), command wires are an insurgent favorite. The added bonus of CWIEDs for insurgents is that they eliminate the issue of accidentally blowing up their neighbors. Yet there are drawbacks to CWIEDs. Insurgents have to sit and wait for a target, which takes time and manpower, not to mention that sitting in the searing heat for hours on end is no fun. Also, CWIEDs are difficult to hide—concealing two thousand meters of copper wire is not easy!

The final category of IED is the RCIED, also an insurgent favorite, consisting of explosives connected to a modified electronic receiving device. Examples of RCIEDs receiving devices include Sanyo base stations, cell phones, and Motorola radios. These devices can be programmed to detonate explosives at the insurgent’s desired time. The RCIED is the lazy man’s IED. Imagine an insurgent sitting on his patio smoking his hookah pipe. When he sees a convoy passing a few miles away, he dials a special code on his cell phone and detonates the IED, goes back into his house, collects a five hundred dollar check from Al Qaeda, and takes a nap as if nothing ever happened. The chances of the Marines finding this guy? Zero.

What the insurgents can achieve with IEDs is amazing. Roughly 20 percent of every American’s tax bill goes to the defense budget. And yet a bunch of relatively uneducated sheepherders with twenty bucks can kick our asses all over Iraq. Luckily a new electronic countermeasure device called the Chameleon is now employed on every Humvee in Al Anbar. At one hundred thousand dollars per Chameleon, these devices are worth every penny. The Chameleon blocks every radio-controlled device. What this means in Al Anbar is that the RCIED threat is gone. The insurgents are left with the PPIED or the CWIED, both of which are difficult to emplace and are easily seen. Because of the Chameleon the challenge of emplacing IEDs has become more difficult for the insurgents.