Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  ABUL ABED WAS KNOWN for his brutality. He was a short, thin thirty-five-year-old who had broken his knuckles beating prisoners and suspected members of Al Qaeda. He destroyed the homes of Al Qaeda men and hung pictures of their dead bodies on the walls of Amriya. He claimed four of his brothers had been killed by Shiite militiamen, and he kept pictures of their broken and tortured bodies on his phone. He and his men blasted through Amriya, letting everybody know they were its new rulers. According to some stories, Abul Abed had been working with a network of informers for the Americans, targeting Al Qaeda and Iranian spies, finally infiltrating Al Qaeda in Amriya. Abul Abed also had a good relationship with politicians Saleh al-Mutlaq and Ali Baban, a Sunni Kurd who was minister of planning and who had been expelled by the Islamic Party. Many of Abul Abed’s men were displaced Sunnis from Mahdi Army-controlled areas like Hurriya, yet he claimed he helped seventy-five Shiite families return to Amriya.

  I first met with Abul Abed in what looked like a school or ex-Baath Party headquarters that had been converted into an office, and I later interviewed him several times in his lavish home. (One morning I found him drinking a can of nonalcoholic beer.) The street where he lived was manned by his guards, who stood at roadblocks. He traveled in convoys of pickup trucks and SUVs with his men hanging out of windows, their rifles and pistols waving about, sirens blaring, a pale imitation of the Blackwater style. He was a former military officer and leader in the Islamic Army of Iraq, but much of his biography was apocryphal, and he had labored to construct a heroic legend about himself.

  He claimed that in 2006 he and others from the Islamic Army decided to fight Al Qaeda, which had declared the Islamic State of Iraq and was trying to control other Sunni groups, insisting that they pledge allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who would be the future caliph, and demanding a portion of their loot. The Islamic Army refused, and Abul Abed and his men began a clandestine war on Al Qaeda. The conflict started with assassinations but soon escalated into open warfare. Abul Abed claimed he had spent months collecting intelligence on Al Qaeda fighters who had sought sanctuary in Amriya after fleeing from other parts of Baghdad or the Anbar.

  In May 2007, fourteen American soldiers were killed in Amriya. Until then Lieut. Col. Dale Kuehl had lost only three men in Amriya. On May 29 Sheikh Walid of the Fardus Mosque called Kuehl up and told him Abul Abed’s men would be attacking Al Qaeda in Amriya. They attacked an Al Qaeda base at the Maluki Mosque, and the next day Al Qaeda men struck back at Tikriti Mosque. Sheikh Walid contacted the Americans, who sent Stryker vehicles to assist Abul Abed’s fighters. The Americans helped defeat Al Qaeda in that battle and then provided medical assistance to Abul Abed’s wounded men. That first week Abul Abed and his men, along with the Americans, killed about ten Al Qaeda suspects and captured another fifteen.

  The official name for Abul Abed’s Awakening group, the first of its kind in Baghdad, was the Fursan (Knights) of Mesopotamia. But Abul Abed and his men referred to themselves as the Thuwar (revolutionaries). Part of Kuehl’s deal was that he would help Abul Abed’s men if they did not torture prisoners or kill people who were not from Al Qaeda. They would be allowed to hold prisoners for only twenty-four hours. Kuehl knew that as an American, he would never know the area or its people as well as the local Awakening men. At first Kuehl’s men asked the Fursan to wear white headbands and sit in the American vehicles to identify Al Qaeda locations. But soon Al Qaeda men took to wearing white headbands. Riding along with the Americans also didn’t work because the windowless vehicles left the Fursan disoriented and unable to locate targets. The Fursan were given special reflective armbands that the Americans could see as well as handcuffs and flares to help send signals to the Americans. Kuehl collected their biometric data and agreed to provide them with some weapons.

  At first Abul Abed believed he could spread his control into other Sunni areas in western Baghdad. When Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, of the Sunni Islamic Party, visited Amriya without coordinating with Abul Abed, the Fursan leader was furious and nearly clashed with Hashimi’s bodyguards. Abul Abed felt threatened by the Islamic Party, and that same night he raided the home of Abu Omar, Um Omar’s husband, and a subordinate commander who was allied with the party. Shots were fired and civilians were threatened. Abu Omar was not home, but Abul Abed arrested several of his men.

  In November 2007 Abul Abed was interviewed by the London-based, Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper. Al Qaeda had turned into Iraq’s biggest enemy, he said, and so he had to ally himself with his erstwhile enemies, the Americans, against whom he claimed he had once fought “honorably.” He claimed to have six hundred men under his control, each of whom got paid about $360 a month, and three hundred of whom had become Amriya’s police force. He called for further integration of Awakening men into the government.

  When I met him again in early 2008 he had switched from wearing military uniforms to suits. “The situation is different now,” he said. “We have destroyed Qaeda. It is safe now, and it is very good for me—I am number one on the hit list of Qaeda. Just after the assassination of Sheikh Sattar, the next primary goal for Qaeda became me. If my fate is to die, then that is okay.” He repeated his claim that he had six hundred men in Amriya, and many outside. I asked where. “All of Baghdad,” he said. I asked how many; he said “a lot.” His main target was anyone who broke the law, he said, whether they were Al Qaeda or not. “We are against criminals, against killers, against the ones who make bombs and against the ones who destroy.” In the past his men had clashed with the Mahdi Army as well.

  “Our areas and our sect were marginalized, which is what Al Qaeda used to initiate a sectarian war. Now we are working on fixing this and rehabilitat[ing] our areas in order to take our real positions in the government and in the country.” He would not run in elections, he said, but Iraq’s national security adviser had taken the surprising step of offering Abul Abed a position in the government. “I have been offered many positions from different big political parties. But I refused them. I explained from the beginning to the journalists that I didn’t come for money, nor for political reasons. I know lots of scornful people who put themselves in front of others and step on people’s shoulders to go up the ladder and take a chair or a position in the government. This is not my goal, and I have explained that to the channels that visited me. I am not running for any position, not going to take part of the political process. I have a goal that I would like to achieve, not only in Amriya but in all of Baghdad: reinstate the security in our areas and save innocent people’s lives. Only when I achieve these goals I will leave.

  “Everybody knows how Al Qaeda used to control our areas. They destroyed the area, they killed civilian families, they filled the streets with bombs. Their work became barbaric, killing people for their identity, on suspicion. They started by killing Shiites, then they started killing Sunnis, then finally they started killing Christians with the excuse of establishing the Islamic State of Iraq. They said, ‘Since you are a Christian, you must pay a ransom.’ If the man had money to pay the ransom, he paid and lived in his home. If he didn’t, they killed him and threw his corpse in the trash. People advised them that this is destruction and far away of jihad, so they killed the ones who gave such advice. They acted like a gang—they kill and steal, and they look for new modern cars. They killed people under the name of jihad.”

  Abul Abed told me that jihad had four conditions: to preserve the religion, the land, the honor, and the money. “These are four conditions, all of which Al Qaeda breached. Qaeda claimed that they are fighting the occupation. If you fight the occupation, why would you kill civilians? If you are fighting occupation, why would you steal the water pumps? If you are fighting the occupation, why would you take down the mobile telecommunications towers? If you are fighting the occupation, why would you steal from the shops of the Muslims? They did that with the excuse, this is Shiite and that is Christian. Did the Prophet do that? The Prophet had a Jewish neighbor, and he never did that t
o him. Is taking rich people’s money a form of jihad? Is this against occupation? No, it is not.” Al Qaeda, he said, is a dirty gang using the cover of Islam. They dragged people from their cars and filled the streets of Amriya with corpses. The smell of these bodies was everywhere, but people were prohibited from removing them because IEDs were placed just underneath them. “This is not jihad, this is destruction!” Abul Abed said. “All the shops were closed, food never entered the area because people were afraid to come into the area. If a man looks at them in a strange way, they killed him, and many other issues that we can’t count. The garbage accumulated and made mountains two meters high in the streets of Amriya. The government was about to attack Amriya. Day after day they said, ‘We must attack Amriya, we must bomb Amriya.’

  “It started when Al Qaeda kidnapped two young guys from the Dulaimi tribe in Amriya. The father of the two guys came into the mosque and was crying. Two days earlier Sheikh Walid was passing by the Munadhama Street when he saw a very old woman. She was a Christian, white, and she was wearing a skirt that was not long, and she was fat. The woman’s husband was taken by Al Qaeda, and his body was in the back of their car and his leg was outside the car. The woman was holding her husband’s leg, not letting it go. The woman was on the ground and they were hitting her with their pistols. The sheikh and I were asking if this was jihad. No, this is not jihad. We knew then that fighting these people is the jihad itself, in order to protect people from them, to protect their money and to protect their honors. Al Qaeda destroyed people’s lives.”

  What actually sparked the war between the Islamic Army fighters and Al Qaeda in Amriya was the murder of an Islamic Army leader called Zeid, or Abu Teiba, who was a good friend of Sheikh Hussein of the Maluki Mosque. Abu Teiba was a law school graduate who also provided security for the Maluki Mosque. Sheikh Hussein had been detained by the Americans, and Al Qaeda had taken over his mosque. Al Qaeda men captured Abu Teiba and brought him to the mosque, where they filmed his torture and accused him of being an infidel. “Zeid, he was one of the best guys in Amriya,” Abul Abed told me. “He was an Arabic teacher, he was teaching the Koran, he was teaching Islamic religious beliefs and Islamic religious law, he was popular in mosques, he was popular in the area. They tortured him until he died. He was in the Maluki Mosque, he was in the house of God. When I started the fight, Zeid used to always protect the mosques. We have a video of him being tortured, tortured according to the Sharia law. A guy from the Islamic State of Iraq was slapping him while he was bleeding. He was not allowed to discuss why they tortured him because in their view he was an apostate. They were telling him, ‘You are a criminal. Abul Abed told you to fight the mujahideen.’”

  Abul Abed was in the Dubat neighborhood of Amriya, supplying his men with weapons and vehicles, when one of his men told him about Sabah, the so-called “white lion,” who led Al Qaeda in Amriya. Sabah was standing on a corner with his assistant. Abul Abed walked to him accompanied by three or four of his men, carrying his charged pistol. They stood face to face.

  After Abul Abed challenged him, Sabah stepped back, pulled his pistol, and shot at him, but his weapon didn’t work. Abul Abed pulled his pistol too. He shot Sabah, and Sabah ran. While he was running he charged his weapon again and pulled the trigger, but again it didn’t work. He was using Iraqi bullets. Abul Abed kept shooting at him until he fell; then he took his gun. “I always carry it with me,” Abul Abed said. “I replaced the bullets with good foreign bullets.”

  Abul Abed recited the names of other Al Qaeda leaders he had fought and killed. “Let me tell you one point. They have announced themselves as an Islamic country. They all came up as leaders. Some of them presented themselves as a minister of defense, minister of interior, and mosque leaders, and security and intelligence and army and patrols. They were all known to the people of Amriya. We knew their names and their faces. We knew them all. They were not working only secretly but also publicly. They didn’t even cover their faces. The Iraqi and national forces were unable to enter the area.” Abul Abed told me his unit lost about twenty martyrs in the battle of Amriya. The day before I met him the Iraqi National Guard and the Thuwar raided a home and confiscated weapons.

  Abul Abed no longer bragged about being a former resistance fighter. He had become more cautious after Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s controversial profile of him appeared in the Guardian. I told him that everybody said he was in the Islamic Army of Iraq. “Is this something to be ashamed of ?” he asked. “Allow me to let you know that we have corrected the attitudes of many of the jihadist battalions. Many of them have put their guns down and said, ‘Enough.’ Some media are trying to make this a point against us, to make a problem between us and the Iraqi government.”

  I told him that the government maintained that the Awakening men were former insurgents and that it did not trust them. “Let’s say I am strong and you are also strong and I want to fight you but you can’t fight me, and I have caused you so many injuries, and made you dizzy, and you can’t win the fight with me despite your capabilities,” Abul Abed said. “And then I tell you I won’t fight you anymore and give you my hands. I ask you to put your hands in mine, and I say, ‘Let’s build Iraq and forget our problems.’ If you are a nationalist and love your country and don’t have loyalties to neighboring countries, you would accept me as a friend, not because you are weak. But if you are loyal to a neighboring country and you have an interest in this fight, when I give you my hand you will beat my hand. That is fine, let’s fight again. This is Iran’s interest. I’m giving an example that if there were, as they say, armed resistance groups who offered their hands to the government, the government should accept them. If I push the resistance groups in the corner, they will give up and become more violent than before.”

  I asked him if Al Qaeda was the only threat to Iraq. “Not only Al Qaeda,” he said. “We have the Mahdi Army. I think the Mahdi Army has a very short life.” I asked him if he trusted the Mahdi Army cease-fire. “No,” he said.

  Abul Abed believed there was an Iranian occupation in Iraq. “The American occupation in Iraq is 20 percent, and the Iranian occupation is 80 percent in Iraq. We started being terminated. I experienced this during the time when Bayan Jabr Solagh was the minister of interior. I saw fifty police cars equipped with big machine guns. They entered Amriya from 4 a.m. till 7 a.m. They took my four older brothers. Since then they said they are in the ministry for interrogation. We went there and found their names in the detainee list. We went there more than once. After a while we heard there were more than twenty-one bodies found in the Iraqi-Iranian border in a town called Badra wa Jasan. When they transferred the bodies to the morgue, my four brothers were among the corpses. Their arms were cut, their eyes were taken out, their fingers were cut, their skin was burned with acid. Why? This is a question that I always direct to the Iraqi government. I say, Why? Because they are Sunnis, they always accuse us of being terrorists. If we were terrorists, what have we done? Why were my relatives terminated? Because Iran wants to terminate us.”

  I asked him if he was accusing the Iraqi government of being Iranian. He smiled. “I never said the government. I said Iran has the bigger hand in Iraq. . . . I am not accusing the journalists, but journalists often make problems for us with the government, and there are some parties in the government who want these problems. I am sure you understand my concerns. Journalism is a two-edged sword: one edge that can cut with it and the other edge might cut the user. I have been visited by a journalist from the Guardian, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. I hosted him for four days in my house with my family. He ate my food, I satisfied all his wishes, and then in his article he said I am a mafia man. He made a big mess for me.”

  When I mentioned the walls that Kuehl had erected in Amriya, Abul Abed denied that the walls made it like a prison. “Keep in mind that it is not only our area that is walled. Amriya is walled, Khadra is walled, Dora is walled, Hatin is walled, Adhamiya is walled. If we take off the walls, you will see how many car bombs w
ill attack civilians. Qaeda attacked children and women in Ramadi with massive trucks filled with chlorine.” But he expected that the walls would shortly come down. “We are planning to open a police station manned by local inhabitants of this area. An official police station. Khadra police station is manned by Khadra people, Adhamiya police station is manned by Adhamiya people. Dora the same, and Fadhil the same.”

  Of his 600 men only 333 received salaries under the American contract, he said. “We are not here for the money. Ask any soldier of the Awakening if they have come for money. Is he risking his life, his family’s life, his children’s life, his wife’s life, for two hundred dollars? He might get killed, slaughtered, killed in car bombs for this simple amount of money. No, he is here for his beliefs and his principles.” Abul Abed told me that he planned to open a police station in Amriya. Only 233 of the 600 candidates he had offered to the police academy had been accepted. He complained that his men were abused there. “The officers in the training center take our guys every night at about 2 a.m. into interrogation rooms. It’s like they were in a detention center, not a training center. The officers tell our guys that Abul Abed is a criminal and a terrorist. They ask them, ‘What did you do before coming here? Why did you sabotage Iraq?’ They harass our guys a lot. Yesterday I paid a visit to the center and met with the guys. They were afraid to talk to me in public, and the majority of them said, ‘We want to leave this country.’ A first lieutenant from the national police who works in the center goes into their room every night and takes four or five of them and keeps interrogating them until the morning. The guys were asking me if they were detainees. We have very deep wounds. Let me tell you something, if you see all these fighters, every one of them has lost his brother, his uncle or his father, most of the guys have lost members of their families.”