Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  Kuehl’s own relationship with the Awakening men in his area was tentative at first, but eventually they grew close. “For a long time I was not sure how far I could trust Abul Abed,” he said. “I knew he was a bit of a hothead. Some members of the group were just thugs. I believe some were brought in by Abul Abed and Sheikh Khalid to gain local political support for the movement. There were times where I had to discipline members of the group. At one point I arrested one of the leaders of one of the factions. I never trusted the guy because we suspected him of pushing people out of homes and stealing their furniture. I had even detained him and three of his brothers during an operation just before the Fursan came forward. One brother we kept, the others we released due to lack of evidence. I ended up detaining this guy after we connected him to an attack on Abul Abed and excessive use of force. I think we also got some other incriminating evidence on him.”

  Over time Kuehl developed closer relationships with the Awakening men at his level and also at subordinate levels. Abed’s men were brought into the planning and targeting process along with the Iraqi army. “In a sense, each of us gave legitimacy to the other,” Kuehl said. “Not everyone trusted the Fursan, nor did everyone trust us or the IA. When we did operations together, complaints went down.” Initially Abed’s men, who could move easily within the population and were not burdened with heavy equipment, conducted missions with U.S. oversight. They identified five targets on their first mission. Kuehl provided an outer cordon with his D Company, consisting of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. These vehicles were fitted with great optics so they could keep a close eye on what was going on, even at night.

  Abul Abed and his men went in and captured their five targets without firing a shot. They questioned them and turned two over to Kuehl. “They wanted to release the other three, which is an interesting part of this,” Kuehl said. “In our negotiations Sheikh Khalid asked for the ability to give amnesty. He said many of the AQI fighters were the young boys of the community. He wanted to release them after they signed an oath to not fight for Al Qaeda and for their parents to also sign for them. I thought this was a great idea and agreed. I think this did a lot to undermine AQI’s base.”

  The other part of destroying Al Qaeda involved local civil oversight, which was also risky. Kuehl saw Sheikh Khalid as the most legitimate local leader. The Neighborhood Advisory Council was seen to be ineffective and had links with AQI and corruption. On the other hand, Kuehl suggests, Sheikh Khalid seemed to be respected by many in the community. Sheikh Khalid was a strong critic of the Maliki government. He shared the perception with many in Amriya that the Maliki government was intentionally denying services to Sunni areas. He was fairly soft-spoken, but despite his quiet exterior he had strong opinions and definite influence in the community.

  Sheikh Khalid’s mosque was located next door to Gallagher’s company’s combat outpost, which helped facilitate communication. He would provide recommendations to Gallagher on how the locations of concrete barriers should be less obtrusive to the local pedestrian traffic, particularly for Iraqi children who walked to the nearby school. “We therefore adjusted the barrier locations to meet his request. I believe following through on such reasonable requests helped sustain a positive working relationship, which in turn helped sustain our credibility and respect in the area,” Gallagher said.

  Abul Abed seemed to respect Khalid. “I tried to get Khalid to sign the security contract we were establishing, but he kept delaying,” Kuehl said. “He never said no, but there was always some new demand. I think he was also getting pressure from other people behind the scenes. After months of haggling I finally made the decision to have Abul Abed sign the contract. In retrospect, I think Khalid wanted to keep out of direct involvement. Still, I thought it important that we get some voice of the people. We asked Khalid to organize the local leaders within the community. He formed a local council from the community to include tribal leaders, former military officers, and other professionals. He took great risk in doing this since it would have no official government legitimacy. However, he was politically connected, and I think he did a great job of adding legitimacy to the effort. One group that never really got on board was the Iraqi Islamic Party. They were jealous of the power that this movement was gaining, and I think they saw it as a threat.”

  “Money was not the primary motivator for Abul Abed,” Kuehl later wrote, noting that Abed’s men were not paid for the first three months. When they did get paid in September 2007, Kuehl described the sum as a “pittance” compared with the risk they were taking, much less than what Al Qaeda were paying their men. “[Abed] was driven by a desire to protect his family and bring stability to the Sunni areas. While he was very much against [the Mahdi Army], I would not label him as sectarian. Several of his closest aides were Shiites. I would classify him as a nationalist if anything.”

  Over time restrictions had to be put on the Fursan’s operations. All operations had to be conducted with the Iraqi army. The problem was that the army had difficulty keeping pace with the Fursan. But multiple security outposts were established throughout Amriya with the Fursan, protecting key infrastructure in the community. “Between their outposts, the Iraqi army outposts, and our two combat operation posts, you could not move two blocks in Amriya without running into someone involved in security,” Kuehl said. “Violence dropped significantly.”

  With Abul Abed’s intelligence as well as information coming from other sources, Kuehl was able to map out the insurgent network. “The information provided by Abul Abed and his men allowed us to target much more accurately,” he said. “We had names and in some cases pictures. We posted wanted posters that proved very effective. Tips from locals increased significantly. We hit Al Qaeda pretty hard, detaining some, killing others. Those that remained fled. Civilian deaths pretty much ceased.”

  Other than a couple found dead in their home in August, Amriya did not have any other murders until Christmas Day. IED attacks dropped off completely, as did small-arms fire and indirect-fire attacks. The last IED, a deep buried one that went off on August 6, ended up killing the driver of a Bradley. Within thirty-six hours of the attack, Abul Abed and his men were able to determine that it had been carried out by a cell from an insurgent group that was brought into Amriya for a joint operation. “We had never been able to do this before,” Kuehl said.

  Like many I spoke to, Gallagher characterized the initial relationship between the Americans and the Fursan as tenuous; many U.S. soldiers were skeptical of working with men who had been their enemy. “Some of the volunteers had almost certainly been emplacing IEDs against my soldiers just a few months earlier,” he said. But trust was built over time. Gallagher described a turning point for him and his men: “We were conducting a company cordon and search in northeastern Amriya, Mahala 630. We received a report that there was an IED just a few meters from one of our Bradleys on an exterior blocking position. I began to call up EOD [Explosive Ordinance Disposal] to destroy it,” Gallagher recalled. But before anyone could react, one of the new volunteers, a daring young nineteen-year-old named Ali, got out his small pocketknife, walked over to the location, unearthed the IED with his bare hands, and disconnected it. “He came back with a smug look of contentment on his face. To this day, this still strikes me as fairly crazy. Obviously he knew what he was doing, but at the same time it was extremely reckless. Events like this demonstrated that the volunteers were technically competent. It also demonstrated that they were not afraid to risk their lives to defeat AQI and gain our confidence.”

  But there were strains and rivalries within Abul Abed’s organization. One of his lieutenants, Abu Sayf, operated mainly in Mahala 634. Gallagher’s team began hearing reports that he was acting far too aggressively. He was alleged to have been stealing people’s belongings, stealing cars, forcing people from their homes. This culminated in a brief power struggle with Abul Abed in September and October. “One day Abu Sayf pulled me aside at his operational post and started making
wild accusations against Abul Abed. His underlying implication was clear, that Abul Abed needed to go away and he should be the rightful leader of the volunteer organization. He asked me not to tell anyone about what he had just told me. However I felt I could not keep that a secret from my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kuehl, so I informed him.” The battalion was able to substantiate the rumors that Abu Sayf was corrupt and had been stealing property. His suggestion that he should replace Abul Abed caused him to lose even more credibility. “We rapidly detained him,” Gallagher said, “and Abul Abed kicked him out of his organization.” Some of Abu Sayf’s comrades, led principally by his brother, threatened to quit if he was not released. The brother was subsequently expelled from the organization.

  KUEHL BELIEVED THAT Abul Abed was controversial because he was a charismatic leader who inspired others. “He had kind of a Robin Hood reputation within the populace and became quite popular in a short period of time. I think his rise in popularity was seen as a political threat both by the government and by the Iraqi Islamic Party. Overall he did pretty well with the press. Part of the controversy is his shadowy past. I know he was in the Iraqi army before the war—still not sure what rank, either major or captain. He claims to have been a sniper during Desert Storm. I believe he was in intelligence. His family lived in Baghdad and owned some bakeries. The biggest thing that concerned me about his behavior was his volatile temper and his violent tendencies. He used to beat his subordinates when they crossed him.”

  The Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad wrote an article about his time with Abul Abed. “I think Ghaith embellished a bit, but the behavior he describes was a concern for me,” Kuehl said. “We got a lot of reports about his behavior, and it is true we were not with him 24/7. But we were with him a lot, and he came to rely on our presence to ensure that he was not targeted by the government. In some cases we could deny reports because I had someone with him at the time he allegedly did something. In general his behavior was pretty consistent with what I saw from IA officers. I saw him on several occasions work to get Shiite families back into Amriya. Over time I think he learned that he had to tone down his image, since he had become a public figure. I think he grew with the increasing responsibility he gained from leading a large organization.”

  In late July 2007 a captain serving under Kuehl wrote to his father, reporting that within two months the Fursan had virtually eliminated Al Qaeda from Amriya—an area, as the captain observed, that had been declared “the capital of the Islamic State of Iraq” two months earlier. “These guys are from the neighborhoods, they know the people, and they are primarily concerned with making their neighborhoods safe again,” the captain wrote. “They conduct joint operations with us and the Iraqi Army. Unlike the IA, these guys are actually a pleasure to work with. Most of them are ex-military from the Saddam era and several are former captains, majors, or lieutenants. They have discipline and know how to plan and execute a mission. The month before the movement started, we lost fourteen American soldiers in Amriya. In the two months that the movement has been going, we have lost zero American soldiers in Amriya.”

  The captain noted that people all the way up the chain of command had visited to see the project. Everyone realized the strategic importance of the Fursan, even the Maliki government, which was wary of the Sunni militias. But when Fursan members were seriously injured, their options were limited: “They are paying a heavy burden for their relentless pursuit of AQIZ,” the captain said, using a common acronym for Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq. “We can only treat them at U.S. facilities if they are in danger of losing life, limb, or eyesight. Otherwise, they must be treated at an Iraqi facility. This works just fine for the ISF, which are predominantly Shia. The Ministry of Health is dominated by the Sadrists. I have personally been in the three hospitals that these guys would be treated at and all have pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr hanging on the walls. If I send my Freedom Fighters to these hospitals, they will not last a day. Obviously, my only option to maintain the fighting force is to get these guys seen by Americans. To this point, we’ve been unable to provide these guys much in the way of legitimacy, money, or weapons, but we have been able to care for them. They are doing the work that we could not do and they are paying the price for it. Knowing that they will be properly treated if they get injured is an incredible morale boost for them, not unlike any warrior. I can’t emphasize enough how this whole endeavor could go either way at this point. In three years of doing this, this is the first endeavor that’s actually given me hope.”

  According to a major who served under Kuehl, “An unsung hero of this entire time period was the commander of the combat support hospital in Baghdad. More than anyone else he kept our sometimes tenuous relationship with the SOI on good standing, simply by admitting their casualties to his facility and treating them. The rules on this were somewhat in the gray area, and lesser men or those who did not see the strategic situation would have been justified refusing care and turning them away. I had one such conversation with a doctor on Camp Liberty who was discussing the practical reasons for not treating them, that they wouldn’t have enough beds for the American casualties. I told him that if he wanted to quit treating American casualties altogether, all he had to do was to treat these SOIs when they were injured.”

  From August 7, 2007, until Kuehl’s battalion departed in January 2008, there were no serious attacks in Amriya. In the second half of 2007, the murder and kidnapping rate dropped from at least thirty a month to four. By the time Kuehl left, two hundred shops had reopened. Kuehl does not credit the surge itself for the reduction in violence, nor does he think that violence dropped because the battalion paid off a Sunni militia. But the increase in troops let him defeat Al Qaeda in his area and halt the Mahdi Army advance into north-west Baghdad. The joint security stations and combat outposts that Kuehl set up in neighborhoods, increased foot patrols, improved understanding of the communities his men patrolled, construction of concrete barriers, as well as improved cooperation with the Iraqi Security Forces were all factors that helped reduce the violence, Kuehl believes.

  In September the captain wrote once again, reflecting on the contribution played by Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha of the Anbar Awakening and Abul Abed, his Baghdad counterpart. He noted that both were charismatic leaders, uncompromising in their beliefs and corresponding actions—the types who start movements, excite people, and bring them together. But he cautioned: “They burn bright and they burn fast.” Up until the end of July, he noted, if they had lost Abul Abed, the movement in Baghdad would have died. “If he’d died before that point, I believe that many of his men would have gone out to Anbar and fought with their brothers there, while the locals would have gone back to what they were doing before . . . attacking the Iraqi Army, and us occasionally, and trying to figure out a way to feed themselves and their families.” But once Amriya was rid of Al Qaeda and the Awakening was legitimized, Abul Abed’s role seemed, paradoxically, less vital. “At this point, the show will go on with or without him.” The traits that the captain identified in Abul Abed were central to his success and what made him “such a joy to work with”: the honorable warrior, his charisma, the passion and principle that “rubbed off on his men . . . don’t necessarily lend themselves to usefulness in the current environment.” The same could have been said for Sattar Abu Risha, whose death, the captain suggested, was a “blessing in disguise, as now there’s a martyr for the cause.”

  “Unless they topple the current regime, they’re going to have to compromise,” the captain explained. “They’re going to have to work with others. They’re going to have to follow principles like due process. It’s not efficient, but that’s the point. Democracies are messy and slow and they put an emphasis on negotiation and accommodation. Those aren’t really traits that Abul Abed possesses. That’s why I like him.”

  “As we handed over eastern Amriya upon our departure in January ’08,” Captain Gallagher said, “I told my replacement that this would b
e his number-one challenge: to ensure the volunteers were formally integrated into the security framework. I did not want to see us, or the Iraqi government, turn our backs on these men, because the blowback could be significant.”

  Part 2

  I returned to Amriya in December 2007. My friend Hassan pointed to a gap in the concrete walls the Americans had built around the Sunni bastion. “We call it the Rafah Crossing,” he joked, referring to the gate to besieged Gaza that another occupying army occasionally opened. Iraqi National Police loyal to the Mahdi Army had once regularly attacked Amriya, and Sunnis caught in their checkpoints, which we drove through anxiously, would have once ended up in the city morgue. Police had recently put up Shiite flags all around western Baghdad, which the residents of Amriya viewed as a provocation. Our car lined up behind dozens of others that had been registered with the local Iraqi army unit and were allowed to enter and exit the imprisoned neighborhood. It often took two or three hours to get past the American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, or the Fursan (most people called them the Thuwar, or revolutionaries). When it was our turn, we exited the vehicle while Iraqi soldiers searched it and an American soldier led his dog around the car to sniff it. I was patted down by one of the Sunni militiamen, who asked me if I was a bodybuilder. Not knowing I was American, he reassured me: “Just let the dog and the dog that is with him finish with your car and you can go.” He laughed, and we laughed with him.

  We drove past residents who were forced to trudge a long distance in and out of their neighborhood, past the tall concrete walls, because their cars had not been given permission to exit. Boys labored behind pushcarts, wheeling in goods for the shops that were open. One elderly woman in a black robe sat on a pushcart and complained loudly that the Americans were to blame for all her problems. Cars could not enter Amriya after 7:30 p.m. Once inside, we drove along roads scarred by massive IEDs.