Full Battle Rattle

by Changiz Lahidji

  The flip side of outside assistance was dependence. Everywhere I went I met locals looking for the international community to solve their problems. The truth was that although the Darfuri didn’t have much, they were resourceful people.

  One morning a cow grazing on the street got caught in the barbed wire fence surrounding our house. I ran inside to get a pair of wire cutters. By the time I returned, local men had already slashed the animal’s neck and were cutting away chunks of meat to take to market.

  Nigerian General Martin Agwai, who commanded the AU force of 600–800, complained to anyone who would listen of the minimal support he was getting from the international community. His soldiers, mostly from Rwanda and Algeria, were poorly trained and lacked basic equipment, including weapons. They also lacked the helicopters they needed to help relieve camps under attack.

  One night the main AU camp at Haskanita was raided by a large force of rebels, thought to be a splinter group of the SLA. The battle raged until 0400, when the AU force ran out of ammunition and was overrun, suffering over two dozen casualties. The rebels escaped with money, vehicles, fuel, and weapons. UN relief helicopters weren’t permitted to land until after the fight was over, constrained by a policy that prevented them from getting involved in combat.

  When I reached Commander Ibrahim Abdullah Al “Hello,” who controlled the northern Darfur town of En Siro for one branch of the SLA, to ask what had happened, he claimed that he didn’t know who was responsible for the attack.

  Instead he expressed distrust for the AU force. “All the soldiers of the rebel movement are ashamed now to cooperate with the African Union,” Commander Hello said. “The AU came to look after the cease-fire and report to the international community but they have been unable to stop the big incidents carried out by the government and the Janjaweed.”

  “And your men have had no hand in the attacks?” I asked.

  “It’s very easy for the government to push the AU around and that makes us view them as the enemy,” he responded.

  Commander Hello might not have been educated at a Western university, but he had mastered spin and double-talk as well as any sophisticated politician. Nobody on any side of the conflict ever took responsibility. The government and Janjaweed blamed the SLA and JEM rebels, and the rebels pointed the finger at the Sudanese government and international community.

  Meanwhile, the raids continued and the plight of the refugees worsened. As cease-fire monitors we weren’t allowed to involve ourselves in any form of combat. One night, we received a radio alert that my buddy Serf Tellez’s camp was under attack. I said, “Fuck the policy,” grabbed my AK and ammo, and organized a relief convoy. It took us three hours to get to the camp. By the time we arrived, everything had been burned to the ground—guard towers, medical huts, tents. The rebels had left six dead and disappeared into the night. My buddy Serf was uninjured, but so badly shaken that he returned with me to the AU mission house in Al-Fashir.

  The next day, I started training a battalion of Rwandan soldiers to act as a QRF. I even built a firing range at the edge of town. The Rwandans expressed their deep appreciation, but without helicopters, which we didn’t have and couldn’t get, their effectiveness was limited.

  Without question, the overall AU, UN, and international community effort left a lot to be desired. Everyone’s hopes rose with the announcement that a group of Nelson Mandela–organized “Elders” would visit in October. The group was to include Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former US president Jimmy Carter.

  When the visit was announced, Archbishop Tutu told the press, “We want community leaders in Darfur to feel that they have been heard from us. We want the suffering to end, and we want to contribute to that.”

  Members of the Secret Service arrived in Al-Fashir ahead of the delegation and asked me if I would drive the Elders to some of the local camps.

  “It would be an honor,” I answered.

  They handed me a Glock. At 0600 hours the morning after the arrival of the Elders, I used a flashlight to carefully check the Toyota SUV I would be driving for hidden explosives. A half hour later, freshly showered, shaved, and dressed in the best clothes I had, I arrived at the State Department house where they were staying. Lined up outside were hundreds of locals, hoping to see the Elders.

  An hour later, I set out for the nearby Abu Shouk refugee camp with President Carter, Archbishop Tutu, Nelson Mandela’s wife, Graça Machel, and two Secret Service agents—one male and one female. My colleague Richard drove the SUV behind me, containing billionaire Richard Branson, two more Secret Service agents, and two support staff. Guarding our convoy were a half-dozen jeeps filled with AU soldiers.

  As we drove south, President Carter, who was seated behind me, asked me about my name and background.

  “Changiz Lahidji,” I answered. “I was born in Iran and served twenty-five years in the US Special Forces.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Changiz,” he said. “And thank you for your service.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Mr. President. You probably don’t remember, but during the early days of the Iran Hostage Crisis, I wrote you a letter offering to volunteer to go into Tehran.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry that didn’t go well, Changiz.”

  “No need to apologize, Mr. President. Not to me. The important thing is that the hostages returned home alive.”

  “Eventually, yes.”

  I had clearly brought up a bad memory. Hoping to change the subject, I said, “I respect what you’re trying to do here in Darfur, sir, in a very difficult situation.”

  He said, “Thank you, Changiz. And thank you for your enthusiasm.”

  When we reached Abu Shouk, which housed 40,000 refugees living on food supplied from the World Food Program, President Carter asked men, women, and children what they needed and what he could do to help, and patiently listened to their answers. Their wants were simple: peace, food to feed their children, a job, a new home.

  Pro-government Janjaweed militiamen blocked the Elders from entering a camp in the North Darfur town of Kabkabiya, claiming it wasn’t on the schedule that had been approved by President Bashir. Some refugees managed to slip notes through the fence. One of them written in Arabic read, “We are still suffering from the war as our girls are being raped on a daily basis.”

  Inspired by President Carter and the Elders, I arranged a meeting between JEM leaders, the AU base commander, and officers from the Sudanese army. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before. The South African officer who ran our base, Colonel Strum, grudgingly agreed to attend.

  Everyone thought we were taking a huge risk, because we were traveling into JEM-controlled territory. But the JEM intermediaries I spoke to assured me that they would welcome us in peace.

  I was nervous myself as we boarded a huge Russian Mi-27 helicopter, entered an area that was considered a JEM rebel stronghold, and landed at a designated site near the town of Deesa. On the other side of the field where we had touched down, I saw fifteen chairs that had been set up near a collection of huts. But no people.

  “Where the bloody hell are they?” Colonel Strum asked.

  “Wait here, Colonel. I’ll find out.”

  I reached the seating area and waited. A man came out of one of the nearby huts and offered me tea and water.

  “What the bloody hell is going on?” the colonel shouted. “Are the buggers coming or not?”

  “I believe they are, sir,” I said, glancing at my watch. The rebels were already twenty minutes late. Then I heard a roar of engines. Beyond the huts rose a cloud of yellow dust.

  A column of battered trucks entered the area, their cabs and beds stuffed with armed rebels wearing an assortment of masks, bandannas, and turbans. Many wore bandoliers of bullets across their chests.

  They were a fearsome-looking group, all armed with Chinese weapons.

  I raised my arms over my head and said, “I am an AU peacekeeping monitor. My name is Mohammed.
Salam allacom!” (Peace be with you.)

  Their leader stepped forward, wearing a Sudanese turban and a mask over his face, and presented me with a necklace of beads.

  I bowed and thanked him. He removed the mask to reveal a very serious and dark face and a light-colored beard. He offered his hand. Then we hugged.

  He said in a local Arab dialect, “Welcome.”

  “Thank you for coming here,” I responded. “We need to talk.”

  The mayor of the village appeared with helpers, who unrolled a carpet. We were shown to our places. I was seated facing the rebel commander, and a Sudanese army major and two captains sat on either side of me. Next to the major were the South African colonel and his translator.

  Our fifteen guards stood behind us. Standing behind the rebel leaders were 100 very fierce-looking fighters.

  The mayor’s aides served chai tea, dates, and cookies. All the principals introduced themselves, and then the meeting started. It was tense at first. The two sides hadn’t talked like this in twenty years.

  The rebels explained that they attacked refugee camps, food convoys, and AU outposts because they lacked food, gasoline, and money. Their tone was friendly and respectful.

  The Sudanese army major, who happened to be from the same tribe as the rebel leader, said, “If you need something, we can help you. Tell us what you need, but don’t attack us.”

  The rebel leader replied, “If you give us gas, food, and money, we won’t attack the camps or convoys.”

  After an hour of talking back and forth, a deal was struck and the leaders of both sides shook hands.

  14

  COMBINED JOINT TASK FORCE PALADIN

  My tenure as a cease-fire observer ended at the close of 2007, when I got a call from Bruce Parkman, who was working for the contracting company NEK Advanced Securities Group, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He asked me if I was interested in working as an IED expert in Afghanistan. Bruce and I had served in Special Forces together at Fort Bragg and Okinawa.

  “Sure,” I answered. “But I know almost nothing about IEDs except that they’re a real nasty problem.”

  “We’re seeing a big spike in IED attacks and expect that number to keep climbing. They accounted for seventy-five percent of all Coalition casualties in ’07, up from fifty percent in ’06.”

  “Where are they coming from?”

  “Everywhere,” Bruce answered. “They’re planted by the Taliban. Goddamn things complicate our entire mission. Primitive roads and difficult terrain make IEDs a powerful deterrent to everything we do. Every time we move supplies or personnel, we’re vulnerable to attack.”

  “How can I help?”

  “How close do you follow the news?” Bruce asked.

  “Close enough to know that things aren’t going well in Afghanistan.”

  “August 2007 the House passed RH 3222, which allocated $500 million over the next two years to the Joint IED Defeat Fund.”

  “That’s a lot of cash!”

  “It means they’re taking this threat seriously and want to defeat it,” explained Bruce. “Come aboard and we’ll train and equip you and send you in the field, ASAP. You’ll be coming in as a GS-15 so the pay is sweet.”

  “That was going to be my next question.”

  “You’ll be making 10K a month.”

  The pay sounded good and I was ready for a new adventure. “How long is the assignment?” I asked.

  “One year. You start the end of the month.”

  “I’m in.”

  I spent some time with my family in California, then flew to DC for a couple weeks of training at Fort Meade, Maryland. There I met the rest of the guys in my class—one former SEAL, the others all SF. A lecturer from military intelligence covered the basics, namely that IEDs were very easy and cheap to build and gave insurgents the potential to engage an enemy with a much larger and more sophisticated military.

  That’s exactly what was happening in Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents were taking advantage of their superior knowledge of the roads and terrain to hit Coalition troops and convoys with IEDs, either detonated remotely or equipped with a trigger device. Increasingly, the Taliban followed up IED attacks with ambushes to inflict more damage on a vulnerable opponent. Once a Coalition truck or Humvee was disabled, they’d move in quickly, usually in technicals with .50 cal machine guns mounted in the beds.

  In 2007, when American troops were losing limbs from blasts about every other day on average, the word IED—a military acronym for “improvised explosive device”—became so widely used it formally entered the American lexicon, accepted into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. These primitive devices ranging in size from a soda can to a tractor-trailer had dramatically affected how the American military deployed in the war zone, creating a heavy reliance on helicopters and other aircraft in order to avoid roads.

  At Meade, we learned that instructions for assembling IEDs could be easily downloaded from the internet or transmitted via USB thumb drive or CD-ROM. The materials required weren’t expensive and included explosives, a detonator, and some sort of power source. The aim of the bomb maker was to combine blast, fragmentation, and armor penetration to maximum effect.

  IEDs fell into three basic categories:

  Package-type IEDs

  Vehicle-born IEDs (also known as VBIED or truck bombs)

  Person-born IEDs (sometimes called suicide vests)

  They were generally activated in three ways:

  Victim operated IED (VOIED)—by pressure plate or switch (in the case of suicide vests).

  Radio controlled IED (RCIED)—usually set off by a signal from a cell phone or garage door opener.

  Command wire IED (CWIED)—uses an electric firing cable.

  Package-type IEDs—the most common—could be buried, disguised, or hidden in practically anything, including the body of a dead animal left alongside a road. While Iraqi IEDs typically used military-grade explosives, the Afghan variety was generally much cruder, using commonly available potassium chlorate and ammonium nitrate fertilizers as accelerants. But that didn’t mean the enemy wasn’t clever. When the US Army added more armor to their vehicles, the Taliban responded with bigger bombs buried deep under dirt roads and capable of delivering huge underbelly blasts.

  And when the US and their Coalition partners began using metal detectors to uncover buried IEDs, the Taliban eliminated metal triggers and packed bombs with rocks instead of metal shrapnel.

  We were engaged in a cat-and-mouse struggle to save limbs and lives.

  At the end of February 2008, we flew to Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base. As I passed through Customs, Kuwaiti officials pulled me aside and detained me.

  The reason, they explained, was that I had an Iranian name.

  “Yes,” I said in Arabic, “and I also have a US passport. Why? Because I’m a US citizen.”

  They seemed perplexed and started to take me away to be interrogated.

  I said, “I helped liberate your country in 1991, and now you’re going to give me a hard time. I don’t believe it.”

  I was released only after US Embassy officials arrived to vouch for me. It sucked to go through airports and look Middle Eastern.

  At the US base, the guys on the team and I were outfitted with binos, toaster-sized IED-detection devices, tools, body armor, and CAC (common access) Uniformed Services ID cards, which gave us access to military service benefits and privileges—especially free meals at DFACs—dining facilities—and the use of base gyms, cinemas, gaming rooms, and PXs.

  From Kuwait it was a relatively short hop to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, where we were attached to a JSOC demolition team from Fort Lewis, Washington, as part of Combined Joint Task Force Paladin (CJTF Paladin)—defined as an International Security Assistance Force command responsible for counter-IED efforts and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD).

  We were bused to a wooden hootch and went through three days of processing, during which we were kitted out with M4s, Sig S
auer handguns, level-4 body armor, and protective glasses.

  The afternoon of day three, four of us had to go to nearby Camp Phoenix to be briefed by an SF demolition team based there. Even in relatively secure Kabul, we traveled fully loaded—meaning weapons ready and wearing body armor.

  As I sat in the passenger seat of the Humvee waiting to exit the base, I felt a funny feeling at the pit of my stomach. It was as if someone was telling me not to go. When the Marines opened the gate, we turned left and saw two Humvees hurrying toward us. I took a breath and BOOM! The second Humvee hit an IED.

  The explosion lifted the vehicle three feet in the air and pushed it five feet to the right and against the wall of the base, causing it to turn over and land on its side.

  We drove around it and parked on the dirt shoulder. Then, with our M4s cocked and ready, we formed a perimeter around the injured vehicle. The Humvee’s windshield was shattered and there were five soldiers inside. The guy in the passenger seat was covered with blood. Another soldier in back had been wounded in the leg.

  While my colleagues called for medics, I stuck my head in the Humvee and tried to calm the wounded soldiers: “Medics are coming. Everything will be okay.”

  They were young kids, and couldn’t hear me because their eardrums were messed up. Instead, they stared back in shock. We were literally seventy meters from the entrance to the base, which was manned 24/7 by over a dozen armed soldiers.

  The young guys in the Humvee couldn’t be moved before being checked to make sure they hadn’t sustained any damage to their spines. So I carefully unstrapped their helmets and fed them sips of water.

  One of my colleagues poked his head in and said, “They put it in a goddamn watermelon.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “The IED.”

  It was broad daylight. Usually the insurgents set their IEDs at night. When the emergency medical team arrived, we donned gloves and started to gather every piece of evidence we could find—shards of metal, inch-long pieces of wire, even chunks of watermelon—and put it all in plastic evidence bags.