Nir Rosen - Aftermath

The 1-4 Cav visited every home in the area, talking at length with every family. Using handheld biometric data collection tools, the Americans were able to document who lived in every house and made it difficult for the Al Qaeda men to know who was informing on them. By June and July of 2007, the 1-4 Cav was able to use local sources and terminate Al Qaeda cells that dispatched car bombs and planted IEDs. The removal of these cells allowed for the Awakening men to begin operating in the area.

Although an occupation is always onerous, the 1-4 Cav and other units that implemented COIN did not conduct mass arrests in which all men were targeted randomly, as had units before 2007. Officers from the 1-4 Cav visited families of arrested men, explaining to them what evidence they had. In August Al Qaeda men from Arab Jubur infiltrated Dora, bringing their families so that they would appear to be internally displaced persons. As the 1-4 Cav cooperated with the American unit in Arab Jubur, they were able to arrest the Al Qaeda men, frustrating the group’s attempt to reinvigorate itself.

Crider insists that the twenty-four-hour presence in the neighborhoods produced immediate results, with IEDs and murders dropping off significantly. He also suggested that because his unit was made up of young soldiers who were in Iraq for the first time, they were not encumbered with the attitude that the Iraqi people were the enemy. “A platoon would go out and do an eight-hour patrol, handing out microgrants, cutting loose wires, talking to Iraqis,” Crider said. He was struck at the familiarity his lieutenants developed with the neighborhoods and local families. Using a computer program called Tigernet, they could plot the information on who lived in every house, their job, skills, ability to speak English, and other details into every location on the satellite maps of his area.

Back then the only concrete barriers in Dora were smaller “Jersey” barriers around the Mekanik area. “They didn’t stop movement as good as we wanted to,” Crider said. “We were trying to get walls as soon as we could. It forces the population to funnel through checkpoints and protects from gunfire. It took three or four months to put up the walls. Dora was the first place in southwest Baghdad that got walls. There was one protest when walls went up by guys we believe were involved in the insurgency. The insurgents hated those walls. Over the course of a few weeks we saw the impact.” The farmlands that had been used to smuggle weapons or fighters into his area were now cut off.

In September 2007 there was a murder campaign in Dora, with more than nineteen killings. The first victim was Haji Sattar, a local council member. His killers entered the District Advisory Council in broad daylight and asked for him by name. Then they shot him in the head and walked out. “The murder campaign was an attempt to shake up the neighborhood,” Crider said, “They were trying to kill people who they thought were sources for us.” It briefly succeeded. Haji Hashim, the deputy head of the Rashid district council and a close ally of the Americans, fled for three months. “Sattar’s death got Hashim shaken,” Crider told me. Hashim had been collaborating with the Americans since 2003 but had managed to stay alive and stay respected by many people in Dora. “Hashim would give us tips: ‘Don’t drive down this street for a couple of days,’” Crider said.

By July 2007 Crider’s men had cultivated thirty-six new local Iraqi sources. “In August the number of detentions skyrocketed, and soon enemy activity fell down,” Crider said. The last attack that killed one of his soldiers happened on September 9. “The last IED was September 27. When Shiites returned to Dora in early 2008, there was some increase in violence but no killings.” Crider’s unit arrested more than 250 Al Qaeda suspects, with 80 percent of them sent on to long-term detention, although most never faced any court or due process to establish their guilt.

Nick Cook, a captain serving under Crider in Dora and the neighborhoods south of it, helped set up the first Awakening groups in his areas. “In Dora we were approached by a guy named Zeki, an old source of ours, who wanted to help stand up the SOIs,” he told me. They wanted their headquarters set up along the boundary between his troop and the other American troop in Dora. Cook was introduced to Zeki and his partner, who stated emphatically that they had hundreds of fighters ready to take up arms against Al Qaeda. A lot of their members had come from Arab Jubur. As Cook got to know Zeki’s group, it became clear that many had relatives living in Dora, and that they wanted to help their families.

At first it seemed that the group was making little difference in Dora. At the beginning of Ramadan in 2007, however, Zeki’s group received information that the mosques were going to be attacked by Al Qaeda. They asked permission to set up security. “About two dozen guys in red and black jogging suits took to the streets,” he said. No incidents occurred during that time, and the “neighbors seemed happy to see their sons taking to the streets.” From then on the Sons of Iraq were a constant presence. Many members of the group told Cook that they had joined resistance groups right after the invasion because they wanted to get the Americans out of Iraq. Later, though, they felt disenfranchised and identified the selfishness of the groups as the cause.

Cook was also the one who first established a relationship with Osama. “Osama came to me in April of 2007,” he said. “He had run into me the day before, and I had given him my phone number.” The father of one of Osama’s friends had been kidnapped that night, so Osama decided to bring his friend to the combat outpost in Mekanik. Cook met with Osama and heard his friend’s story. Then he immediately directed a patrol to try to find where the father had been taken. Unfortunately, the search was unsuccessful. But Cook said that Osama never forgot the encounter.

About two weeks later, an IED hit and destroyed a Humvee, killing one soldier in Cook’s troop and badly injuring two others. Three days later Osama called Cook and told him he was parked outside a house; inside it, he said, the man responsible for the IED was having lunch. A patrol was sent to investigate immediately. When the troops arrived Osama guided them to the house and pointed out the insurgent. Once the man was brought back to Forward Operating Base Falcon, the unit discovered that he was one of the top-ten “high-value individuals” for a cavalry regiment a little to the south of where Cook was stationed.

From then on, the unit forged a close relationship with Osama and relied on his intelligence. He even helped a patrol surprise a couple of insurgents emplacing an IED in the middle of the night. When Cook and his troops were moved north into Dora, they handed Osama over as a source and friend to the unit that replaced them. But the new unit did not manage the relationship well, and Osama started calling Cook’s fire support NCO to tell him how he was tired of working with them. He said he was planning to start the SOI in Mekanik because he hated what Mekanik had become.

At the beginning of August Cook’s Tactical Humintelligence Team received a phone call. Approximately sixteen members of Al Qaeda were being held by Osama and his fighters in Mekanik. This was no longer Cook’s area of operation, but the unit whose jurisdiction it was said they could not help. So Cook’s troop received permission to go and link up with Osama’s fighters. They joined forces and later transferred the sixteen men into U.S. custody.

Col. Jeff Peterson commanded the 1-14 Cavalry Squadron, which was attached to the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team. He was in Baghdad from July 2006 until September 2007, operating both in Haifa Street and areas in the neighborhoods of Saha, Mekanik, and Abu Dshir, just south of Dora proper. Peterson worked with the regular police and the national police in East Rashid. “They were over 90 percent Shiite and infiltrated with Mahdi Army members or at least sympathized with them,” he told me. “I had evidence that their leadership compromised our missions, and I suspected they at least cooperated with the enemy attacking our forces. Some members of the national police were guilty of sectarian violence, and we arrested some officers. The Sunni population was so distrustful of the national police that I built a barrier around the Mekanik neighborhood and didn’t allow the national police in the area.