Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs

by Walker, Johnny

  I kissed Hamid’s cheek before he was buried, a final good-bye.

  SOME PEOPLE ASK ME: Did you get revenge for your brother?

  The honest answer is this:

  I wanted to. I would have loved to. I looked for his killers. I asked others to look for them. If I had found them, certainly at that time I would have had satisfaction.

  But I never found out exactly who they were. Helping the SEALs, I had helped apprehend a lot of bad people, but there was no way to know if any of them were responsible for his death. There were just so many mujahideen and other criminals operating in Mosul.

  I suppose in a sense, as I went on and helped bring others to justice, there was a kind of payback for me. But if so, it was empty. Whether you believe that revenge brings satisfaction or not, there was and is simply no way to substitute the action of what I felt I should do—help arrest and stop evil people—for what I felt I must do—revenge my brother.

  As an American now, I am not supposed to believe in revenge. I am supposed to believe that more killing does not solve anything.

  I know those things, and they are true. But that does not change how I feel. It cannot change how I love my brother, or the fact that he was killed by cowards who did not give him a fair chance to defend himself, who refused the invitation to fight fair. Instead they hid behind guns and masks.

  I remember his death many times a day.

  HAMID’S MURDER WAS the first of many in the community of people we knew. It was the most shocking, of course, since it was our blood that was spilled. But the others hit us hard as well. We came to realize how terrible things had become. The streets started to fill with bodies, literally.

  Sunni insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks in the beginning of November, starting what looks like in retrospect an all-out campaign to assert their control over the city. These were of a different sort than the IED plantings or drive-by shootings that had dominated attacks earlier. Mujahideen fighters launched a number of coordinated attacks against American units—including a sustained attack on the First Battalion, Twenty-fourth Regiment, near the Yarmuk traffic circle in western Mosul.

  The insurgents used RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and mortars to up the firepower, provoking a response from the Americans that included large JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs and helicopter strikes. Police stations were attacked throughout the city, and the fanatics even managed to take control of one of the bridges over the Tigris for a short time. For several weeks, there was all-out warfare in the city, intense fighting on a scale that had not been seen earlier.

  American observers have speculated quite a bit about what was going on, and where the influx of violent insurgents came from. There are theories that they fled from Fallujah and other places where the Americans were mounting operations to flush them out. Some think that Mosul’s population had reached a breaking point and simply turned against the Shia and Kurd-dominated government, as well as the Americans.

  From what I saw and heard, the mujahideen were mostly villagers from outside Mosul who’d been recruited to fight, persuaded with rhetoric and money. There were foreign fighters as well, influenced by al-Qaeda and maybe recruited by them. While there were people from Mosul, these two other groups swelled their ranks.

  The fighters were poorly trained, barely even knowing how to use their weapons. They were ill equipped to fight in a coordinated attack. The Americans recovered, and once the U.S. soldiers showed up in force, they easily beat back their enemy.

  But the insurgents were tenacious and learned quickly from their mistakes. They were never so foolish as to attack in large numbers again.

  They had excellent intelligence, which gradually improved. They were able to get information from many, many people, and they had time on their side. They could wait and watch the air base or different buildings, recording what was going on, gradually building up mental databases. As their leaders gained more experience, they did a better job of planning and training. Eventually, they became practiced killers.

  Killers, not warriors.

  Warriors fight for the goal of peace. Warriors fight so things can be built. The insurgents fought to destroy.

  The profound difference touches deep into the soul. If you are a killer and not a warrior, you have no problem using a woman or a child to get what you want. You do not worry about that person dying. The life of an innocent is nothing to you.

  A warrior risks his life to protect the innocent.

  When you talked with the mujahideen, as I did when I had acted as an interpreter with the SEALs, they told you that they were fighting for Islam, defending the faith against infidels. But it wasn’t the real reason for most. The leaders, who were former Ba’ath Party and Fedayeen members, were fighting for revenge and dominance—they wanted the party to once again rule Iraq, and they felt they could accomplish this by chasing the Americans away and then battling the Shiites for control. Many of the al-Qaeda–inspired leaders were fighting for the same thing, though they cloaked their thinking in religious justifications.

  Is it necessary for me to say that even the people who were sincerely motivated by religion were wrong? God did not tell them to kill people in His name. God is greater than that. God does not need a man to kill another man. God can strike dead whomever He chooses, if He chooses; He is all powerful.

  Many of these so-called mujahideen killed other Muslims. Would God direct a believer to kill another believer?

  From being with the Americans, I knew the United States wasn’t out to harm Islam. It was more the opposite: what most Americans I met wanted was similar to what I wanted, peace for Iraq. I wanted to make it a secure place where I could raise my family, and so did they.

  Most Americans in fact had an even simpler dream: they wanted to do their jobs and go home.

  And in a way, that was my dream as well. But it started to fade as the gunfire and bombings increased.

  THE MAIN INSURGENT organization said to be responsible for the attacks that year was Jaish Ansar al-Sunna. The words mean, roughly, the Assembly of Helpers of Sunni Muslims. While the group was affiliated with al-Qaeda, it is difficult for an outsider to untangle the actual lines of responsibility, let alone the group’s own organizational chart. It was active not only in Mosul but in cities like Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra, and Baquba. While it has been debated whether the group was more an umbrella organization or had direct control of the insurgent fighters in each instance, there is no doubt that the continuing campaign of attacks was organized and assisted at a high level.

  It is said that the group later severed its ties with Ba’athist factions and al-Qaeda, supposedly over tactics that targeted civilians, which some of its leaders were said to oppose. Whether this was the case earlier is difficult to tell. I can say that civilians were killed in Mosul by men said to be operating in association with Jaish Ansar al-Sunna. Where actual responsibility lies, what the exact truth may or may not be, has for me been lost like a paper blown away by the wind. Only the results remain, and in a very real sense, only those deadly, horrible results matter.

  It has been estimated that roughly two-thirds of the city was either under insurgent control or hotly contested at the campaign’s peak in mid-November, before the Americans finally brought in enough troops to retake Mosul and restore an uneasy “peace.” In the interim, the insurgency had killed many Iraqi policemen and others who worked with them or the Americans.

  Even after the offensive was crushed, the mujahideen were still active in Mosul. On December 21, just a few days before Christmas, a man who was in the Iraqi army went into the mess tent in the U.S. Army portion of the base. As he walked amid the lunchtime crowd, the bomb that had been strapped to his body suddenly detonated. A total of twenty-two people were killed, with roughly sixty wounded. Fifteen of the men who died were American servicemen; the rest were contractors and Iraqi civilians who were working for Americans.

  (Initial reports claimed that the tent—which was larger than
many houses—was hit by a mortar shell. There were also reports that a bomb may have been placed inside and then detonated. There are those who believe these alternative theories to be true. But most observers, as well as myself, believe it was the work of a suicide bomber.)

  At the time, Iraqi army soldiers didn’t have to be searched and could go into the chow hall without a hassle. That quickly changed. From that point on, force protection—a military term for security—became greatly strengthened. There were all sorts of new rules, especially when it came to Iraqis. Iraqis entering certain areas had to be searched, and often required escorts.

  I was included in that provision—or would have been, had I been working at the camp. With the atmosphere changing, the civilian company no longer had any real work for me. Even if they had, I wasn’t in a position to give them my full attention. I moved around, trying mostly to stay alive and keep my family safe. I stayed away from our house as much as possible, never wanting to be seen going or coming. If I was targeted, I didn’t want the kids or Soheila caught in the crossfire.

  Just before my brother’s death, I told Soheila everything about the Opel incident, explaining to her what had happened and telling her that I was taking precautions. She wasn’t exactly reassured.

  “Hey, Johnny,” Soheila told me. “You have to go to Syria or go to Baghdad. You have to go.”

  She meant that I should leave her and the kids and flee to safety for a few months. I dismissed both possibilities.

  “Baghdad is not safe,” I told her. “Why are you saying Baghdad?”

  “It’s safer than Mosul.”

  “Of course it’s not.” I was right—Baghdad had its own problems. Soheila was just making suggestions based on wishful thinking. And I certainly wasn’t going to Syria. What would I do there?

  Not that I was doing much in Mosul. Many nights I spent with one or another of my cousins, playing cards and sometimes drinking. The days were just as empty, perhaps more so. I wasn’t working, and even if there had been work in Mosul, no one would have hired me—it would have been too dangerous. I thought eventually I would go back to work for the Americans, probably the army, though it was impossible at that point to arrange any sort of plan, realistic or otherwise.

  The civilians still owed me a paycheck, and finally one day I arranged to go out to the airport and get it. As I was on my way to their office at the base, I ran into a friend who told me that the SEAL unit I’d been working with earlier in the year had returned.

  I went immediately over to their compound at the airport. The unit there turned out to be a group composed of men from SEAL Team 3 and Team 5, different than the men I’d worked with before.

  But they had heard of me.

  “Hey, we’ve been looking for you,” said a man whom I’ll call Senior Chief White. “We need an interpreter.”

  “I am glad I have a reputation,” I told him. “When can I start?”

  “Right away” was Chief White’s answer.

  And so I did. The unit relocated to a new camp outside the airport. Once again they wanted me to stay with them so I would be available for their night missions. I had no objections to that: instead of being a virtual nomad, always moving and looking over my shoulder, I could stay in the safest place in Mosul.

  At first glance, working with the SEALs again would seem to have increased the risks to me personally. As careful as the SEALs were, they were definitely Americans and what are known as “high- value targets” to the insurgents. But the mujahideen tended to hit weak and unprotected targets—words that certainly didn’t describe the SEALs. I felt safe with them, and frankly I liked working with them for many reasons.

  I still dreamed of a better Iraq. To me, the mujahideen were the biggest thing standing in the way of a better future, and the Americans offered a way of combating them.

  SOMETIMES I FANTASIZE that if I hadn’t worked with the Americans, I might have started my own antiterror group, made up of Iraqis.

  A noble idea, but realistically, how far would it have gotten? I lacked many things, starting with money, equipment, and a surfeit of friends who could be trusted.

  BY NOW MY ENGLISH was vastly improved. My pronunciation was far better. My vocabulary had also expanded, especially in one particular area: curse words.

  The simplest ones are the best, in any language. I still say “fuck” a lot, too much probably, with kids around. But I use it far less than during those days with the SEALs, when it punctuated every sentence five, six, ten times. I was barely conscious of it. And at least according to the SEALs who were with me, I used it no matter whether I was talking to them or in far less appropriate situations, like talking to an officer back at the base.

  During an operation, there wasn’t much I had to say—a lot of communication could be done by body language, or simply pointing. The SEALs and other special operations troops do that as a matter of routine. When they are moving up to a target, the last thing they want to do is alert whoever is around that they are there, so they point and use a small set of hand signals indicating what they are about to do. These signs—putting up your hand a certain way, for example—are easily mastered no matter what your language.

  My improving language skills were quite useful when questioning people for the Americans, and I started doing this more and more, with better results. At the same time, I learned the best way to ask people questions and to detect when they were lying. My ability progressed from questions like Where is the Jackpot? Are the guns in the house? to things that were more complex, like asking who else was involved in a terror network and ferreting out the most likely person to talk when a group was detained. The latter took wit, not force. I learned to ask indirect questions that would lead me to more information, or make suggestions that seemed innocuous but that would yield me something I could use.

  I approached situations in ways that would open me up to information. If I saw kids outside a house, for example, I might strike up a conversation with them, offering them candy and talking to them as comfortably and naturally as possible. I’d get their names, maybe joke a little before getting down to business.

  “Where’s your father?” I might ask, mentioning the jackpot’s name.

  Inevitably, they’d run to him.

  The jackpot located, I’d try to find different ways to chat him up, to get him to tell me what was going on. Deeper interrogation took place in other units, and was not part of my job. But every tidbit I discovered might be useful in some way or another.

  THE CAMP WAS safe but boring. And I was used to a certain amount of freedom. Mosul was dangerous at night, but there was no reason for me to sit in the trailer like a prisoner. So one night I planned an “escape.”

  I was fleeing boredom, not jail, but in some ways it was the same thing. Technically it wasn’t escaping—I was free to come and go as I pleased, so long as I wasn’t needed and obeyed whatever security rules were in force. But it certainly felt like escaping, as if I were a bird or an animal pushing the bars of my cage apart and fleeing.

  When darkness came, I tucked my pistol under my shirt, then arranged for a taxi to take me to a hotel in town. From there I caught another taxi, then walked until I got to my cousin’s house. My success that first night led to other “escapes,” and they soon became a routine: when I wasn’t needed, I’d sneak out and head for his house. From there we would often go to another friend’s or a club where we could drink coffee and play cards.

  One night we were playing poker in a coffee shop. I always faced the windows so I could see what was coming. My attention picked up as I saw four men walk by and then enter. They were strangers, but something about the way they carried themselves made them seem dangerous.

  Quietly, I pulled out my pistol and cocked back the hammer, keeping it under the table but ready to fire.

  Everyone nearby must have felt the tension. Mosul was not a safe place, and the men looked like they were here for trouble.

  A waiter greeted them.

&nbs
p; “Hey guys, how are you?” he said, walking over. “What can I get for you?”

  “We are looking for Johnny.”

  Me.

  I glanced at my cousin to make sure he was watching what was going on, then looked back at the men. None were showing their weapons—if they wanted to shoot me, it would take at least a few seconds for them to get their guns out.

  By then, I would kill them all.

  “You’re looking for Johnny?” asked the waiter.

  “Here,” I said, loudly. I stayed in my seat, gun hidden but ready. My cousin, meanwhile, had placed his hand on his own hidden weapon.

  The men walked over, smiling. “We wanted to talk to you,” said one. “We need a favor.”

  I rose, revealing my pistol. “Good,” I said. “But you better be careful. I almost killed you because I don’t know you.”

  One of the men mentioned a friend, speaking a little nervously. He went on to explain that they weren’t enemies, and needed only to make contact with the Americans to give them some information.

  “I can help you,” I told them. And I did. But they had aided me as well, giving me a lesson in being careful: more people than I thought were aware of my comings and goings.

  It was also a lesson, maybe, in restraint.

  I NEED A VARIETY of IDs to get around Mosul and the rest of the country without hassle. Besides your name, the standard ID card typically listed your birthday and the names of your parents. (The format of the cards changed over the years. Most notably, from 2003, they started including numbers written in Western style as well as Arabic.) The details on the cards could indicate whether you were Sunni or Shiite—if someone couldn’t tell from the name alone, the stamp indicating where the card was issued would tend to give the person’s background away.

  Needless to say, having the wrong ID card in the wrong place was asking for trouble. I managed to have “real” IDs made that rendered my name slightly differently, one in a Sunni style and the other Shia. Besides these, I bought a variety on the black market to use to help shield my identity. Typically, I would be carrying at least two different sets of IDs that alternatively identified me as a Sunni or a Shiite, and I chose the one most appropriate to the circumstances. I’d also change my accent and even my curses to match, a trick I’d learned while interrogating subjects. (Yes, Sunnis and Shia take the names of different holy people in vain.)