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11/23/08: Views from inside the glass

10/23/08: "Do they have any idea when the coalition will be leaving?"

8/9/08: The Chopper Fiend

7/12/08: Bad Day in Mosul

4/22/08: Soldiers of the 1st/151st prove themselves under attack

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Video captures security fleeing seconds before Baghdad bombing

Baghdad- The Hamra Hotel, used by many foreign journalists, was one of three hotels hit in a coordinated bombing on January 25th. Sixteen Iraqis were reported killed and 33 wounded.


(As always, Baghdad is rife with rumors about the perpetrators and collaborators of these horrific attacks. This video leads an outsider like me to more questions rather than answers, but it does show what others are merely saying.)

This surveillance video, captured from a nearby hotel camera, was used by local police to analyze how Hamra security failed. The video shows what appears to be an initial distraction of the security guards, followed by the immediate failure on the part of the same guards to man the gates and/or block the passage of the bomb-laden vehicle.

The details- 00:40 Policemen can be heard analyzing the security camera video projected on a slide screen. First, they say- "They're shooting at them" (at the hotel guards)... we see the guards gathered towards the far left gate... "Here comes Abu Akhmed (head of security, dressed in black)... "It's calm after the firing"... "Here comes the Peshmerga (the Kurdish guards guarding the President's residency across the street." (who ask why the guards were shooting, the guards respond they were being fired upon.)

It appears that unknown gunmen started shooting to distract the guards, and possibly to waste their ammunition, then the Peshmerga arrive from the far left. Next, the first vehicle, the minibus, 1:05, to arrive at the gates is the bomber. The police ask the video to pause here to try to make out the license plate, which they cannot. The police ask why the normal rolling barrier isn't in place. (Some suspect an early video shows the outside gunmen actually opening the barrier). The guards claim the wheel on the barrier was broken and the hotel ownership refused to fix it.

Guards fleeing just before explosion- The bomber bus goes through unimpeded, 1:20 and immediately after it passes several guards begin running away from the checkpoint. The police say, and so it appears, they were warned by the driver, as in "I'm going to blow up the hotel..."

Rather than trying to stop or shoot him, they immediately begin running for cover. At least four of the guards have been arrested and are being held by the government.

video

The NYT reported the bomb left a crater 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep about 50 feet from the hotel. A nearby day laborer said he saw men in a car exchange gunshots at the checkpoint outside the compound and watched a second car speed through... but neither of the cars on the video appear to have been shot at.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Hebron- city of bloodshed, still contested

(Saeed, on the roof top of his family's house, contested by settlers next door.)


"Jerusalem's problems are easy compared to Hebron's," Bashar, a quiet-voiced Palestinian who's currently looking for work, said.

We were standing on a roof top overlooking the Jewish settlement that has occupied the center of the old Arab Souk (market) since 1980. Adjacent to the rooftop is a modern looking settler's building.

The Palestinian residents say the settlers next door tried to buy their building, offering first half a million dollars, then a million and when the residents still refused, a flaming molotov was tossed in the top room. That was almost a year ago. You can still see the scorches on the floor. On the rooftop there are bullet holes in a small water tank.

Site of conflict
Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank. On the outskirts is a still productive agricultural and textile zone, with about 170,000 Palestinian residents. Closer to the old city, the tension simmers. Since the second Intifada, when Palestinian and Israel forces clashed daily, friction between religious-motivated settlers and Palestinian residents is never more than one incident away from violence.

(Gates and barbed wire surround the settlement in the city center.)

Here lies Abraham, the patriarch to both Judaism and Islam. Abraham's wife Sarah, his son's Issac and Jacob, and their wives Rebecca and Leah are also entombed in the cave of Patriarchs, which King Herod built a holy fortress on top of.

Then a church was built on it, which was later converted into a mosque, that the Crusaders reconverted into a church, only to have Saladin re-conquer and rebuild a mosque on top of. This land is written all over the Old Testament, and if there's any certainty, both sides will continue to shed blood for it.

(A sign in the old city settlement proclaiming Jewish entitlement to the land they occupy.)

Hebron's modern history is also shaped by violence. In 1929 60 something Jews were murdered in a pogrom incited by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Jews were evacuated by the British; some were saved by Arab neighbors. An orthodox settler community returned after the six-day war in 1967 and settled into the city center in 1980. They've dug in ever since.

There are five Jewish settlements in Hebron. The teens in the contested house can name them, and also the number of settlers- at least 500 in the old city center and another 7,000 in settlements on hill tops around the city. They are protected by thousands of Israeli soldiers.

The teens also say the name- Baruch Goldstein, a Broolyn-born, extremist who massacred 29 Palestinians gathered for Friday prayers before he was beaten to death in 1994. One of the settlements outside the city supposedly still has a shrine in his honor, although the official shrine was ordered to be bulldozed and the right wing party he was a member of was banned in Israel.

Depends on who you ask
"They really want this house," Bashar said, referring to the settlers next door. "If they take this house, the can take other houses."

The contesting of ownership of Palestinian houses by Jewish settlers is nothing new. Inside Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, one hears stories of settlers contesting the ownership of a Palestinian houses based on records dating from before the six-day war, some even from Ottoman times. Israeli courts side are predisposed to siding with settlers. Israeli Defense forces guard the reoccupation of the houses by settlers.

One of the young residents of the house in Hebron, Saeed said 11 people still live there, including his mother and younger siblings. "We live in a lot of fear," the teenager said, "we can't go and leave the house."

(A settler in the old city.)

Three Europeans in bright blue jackets with red patches passed us in the old Souk. They were civilian observers from Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), founded immediately after the '94 massacre with the mission to report human rights abuses through both the Palestinian and Israeli diplomatic channels.

I asked how the tensions were in Hebron currently. The TIPH volunteers appeared reluctant to be perceived as taking sides, or say anything negative against the settlers.

One woman, an Arabic speaker from Norway said, it is clear the settlers are "trying to expand." She also mentioned how the Israeli courts decide over land ownership disputes is "unclear," especially in the area designated as H2, which the Israelis officially control.

As the sun set, and Sabbath was about to being, we made our way into the old city's settlement. It was like an abandoned movie set. The shuttered shops bore spray painted Stars of David, whether as sign of warning or ownership. Some Jewish settlers in the center of the square met us briefly. We were eager to talk to them. Despite their traditional clothes and beards, some claimed Miami and New York accents. But they rush to a waiting van to before we could ask them much.

The last settler in the square didn't seem to mind us hanging around. "This is the best place in the world, but there are terrorists.
Last night they shot down here with M-16s."

Some would wonder whether he meant the Palestinians or Israeli soldiers. Depends who you ask.

(As Israeli soldier at a guard post inside the old city settlement.)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

"They're going for every day of the week," bombs rock Baghdad, 127 killed

(Iraqi security forces and rescuers search for survivors at the site of a bomb attack near the new Finance Ministry in Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 8 2009 (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

The blast slammed like a gigantic gavel. It threw doors open and sucked them shut again. Windows rattled in their casements. Too close and powerful to shrug off, but nothing compared to what was happening outside our compound's blast walls.

Iraqi colleagues ran outside the building to scan the sky for smoke. It was rising in the distance (see picture). Most were already on their phones to check on family members. One colleague said his brother had been injured in the neighborhood. Another said his brother, who just missed being hit, helped pile some wounded in his car and was sped them to a local hospital. Today we learned a woman was waiting for her father who never came to pick her up. He was driving by as one of the bombs detonated.

A series of five bombs, at least three suicide, rocked Baghdad leaving 121 dead, the NYT reported. Car bombs struck- near a college, a court complex in western Baghdad, a mosque and a market and a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry in what appeared to be a larger and as equally deadly a coordinated assault as the Oct. 25th bombing. Offices of the Ministry of Labor and the Finance Ministry, which had moved to a new location after the massive October bombing were, hit again.

An expat Iraqi colleague described his convoy missing the first bomb in the Dora neighborhood by minutes. The guards at the next checkpoint waived them through fearing the bombers were targeting their convoy.

Today we happened to go to an oil refinery in Dora, the neighborhood where the first bomb detonated. The Director General was rolling a metal ball the size of a marble in his hands as we talked. It came from the bomb in Adimiya, he said. I imagined what that kind of shrapnel would do to a human body.

The bombings bear the signs of an Al-Qaeda in Iraq operation, all sources say, but in an evolving strategy targeting government ministries and offices in order to incite public outrage at the Maliki government for failing to provide the promised security and sow fear before the elections.

The election disagreements between parties and ethnic groups were just resolved this week. National elections are planned for March. Baghdadis say the bombings will continue until then, and it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Crudely written leaflets were found at some sites about a week before bombs struck, one local said. This kind of hand washing on the part of extremists before they attack has been reported throughout the war. Rumors also abound that the U.S. military may have picked up on intelligence before the October bombing and informed security contractors not to travel certain roads.

What is painfully true is the bombings, while nowhere near as frequent as a few years ago, have become more horrific in their destruction.

First the August bombing dubbed Bloody Wednesday killed 122, then the October bombing, dubbed Bloody Sunday killed 155. Today's bombing will most like be named Bloody Tuesday.

"They're going for every day of the week," a colleague said, in a nod to the gallows humor that is so common for Iraqis who have to live through this.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Realities- When your buddy gets hit

Just so we remember, as 30,000 or so troops deploy into the Eastern and Southern regions of Afghanistan, where almost all the fighting takes place, the real risks to all soldiers:

The following is a correspondence I came across through a colleague. The names and places have been blanked out to protect the individuals' privacy and to prevent any repercussion from his/her command for posting the correspondence. But I believe it's valuable as it really gets at the trauma of being in the war zone and what perseverance means- to continue doing dangerous a job after seeing your buddy get hurt really badly.

"I must make known that the last 36 hours here have been absolute hell. I was on mission for the last week in a very bad part of ______ . I'll leave further specifics at that, but where I was is not a good area, nor do I hope to return there in the near future..."

"At the root of all this -- my partner, ____, was hit in a mortar attack at the Combat Operating Post (COP) where we were staying. To be quite blunt, his injuries are bad -- he took shrapnel to face, and for now, we know his left eye is lost (the right one is questionable) and his skull has suffered several severe fractures."

"I was in the general vicinity when the rounds hit the COP...maybe 75 meters from his location. When we found him it was an ugly sight. I don't care to relive that experience again -- helping to transport a bloodied-colleague in a stretcher to a nearby Helicopter Landing Zone, only to feel helpless because of the nature of his wounds. All I could do was hold one end of the litter and and support the IV-drip that was running from one of his arms as we loaded him onto the Blackhawk."

"That was the last I saw of him. I know he's now in Bagram -- having undergone two surgeries -- and is being prepped for movement to Germany for further evaluation and care. What happened yesterday though was bad... the aftermath of it all is no more pleasant. Having to collect his belongings and watch as the Army inventories them is unnerving. The process is handled almost as if he's dead. What compounds the frustration is that I'm now the only person left on this _______ Team, waiting for replacements to arrive. Thankfully, my higher-ups are moving me temporarily to another team until the others arrive, but to have this happen under these conditions makes processing this incident no easier."

"I'll be okay though. Everyone here has been very supportive. As I've said to others, it's just the nature of his injuries that eat at me. Everywhere I walk, no matter what I'm doing, those images constantly replay in my head...and in that sense, it's tough. But please, don't be too alarmed by this note. Yes, what happened was absolutely awful, but as I said before, I'll manage. It's just that this is still so fresh, and never did I imagine that I'd be put in a position where I'd have to help rush a colleague to a MEDEVAC after he'd been hit by shrapnel from a mortar that exploded just 20 meters from him. What gets at you is that getting hurt out here is all too easy. I must admit, I'm kinda scared..."

"Well, obviously we run huge risks out here... This Sunday was tough for everyone here. Last update I got on ____ was that he's undergone four surgeries and is in stable condition in Germany. Obviously, his life has no changed forever... I can only imagine the pain this is causing his family. I'll leave it at that..."

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Iraqi money pit- conflicting views

The U.S. built hospital was full of new equipment: x-ray machines, dialysis machines, even CAT scanners, but none of the Iraqis had been properly trained to use them. The expensive, desperately needed machines would eventually be scavenged for basic parts.

Complex oil drilling simulators, designed to train Iraqis how to tap their vast reserves, were delivered at a cost of a million dollars each. But the manufacturing company refused to send any advisors to Iraq, so Iraqi never learned how to assemble them. The simulators gathered dust in their shipping boxes for years.

(Two new refineries being constructed at Daura Refinery)

In a Nov. 20th article, Timothy Williams of the NYT lays out the cost to the U.S. taxpayer in reconstructing Iraq- $53 billion, so far. (Some claim the total reconstruction figure is closer to $114 billion including U.S., foreign and Iraqi funds, and projects still in progress.) Out of these totals, the article claims hundreds have millions have been wasted.

Taxpayer waste in Iraqi is an old theme, but revisited at a time when projects are supposed to be improving transferal of ownership to Iraqi counterparts, it's like tearing into scar tissue. There's a natural tendency to blame Iraqis for not taking any ownership over the huge reconstruction projects built to provide essentials like better health care and clean water.. but as the NYT article states, "many projects have remained empty or unused long after completion because not enough Iraqis have been trained to use them."

Amidst the anger and frustration, there' s two sides to this failure. Many U.S. aid and military officials lament Iraqis' lack of initiative and responsibility to cooperate on good projects. A Congressional Research Service Report cited two Baghdad regional power stations rehabilitated in 2007 with U.S. funds as not operational, largely because of insufficiently maintained equipment.

The finger pointing

But several advisors currently working on U.S. funded capacity building programs in Baghdad, reacted strongly against laying the onus on the Iraqis, and letting the American mistakes off the hook. They echo a section of the article stating, "While Iraq has often been guilty of poor management, American authorities have repeatedly failed to ask Iraqis what sort of projects they needed and have not followed up with adequate training."

This too is an old, sad story in reconstruction circles. Americans working unilaterally on huge construction jobs, that they didn't involve the Iraqis in even the initial planning of.

A senior advisor working with a U.S. funded capacity building project to assist the Iraqi Ministry of Planning said, "This is unbelievable to blame the Gov't. of Iraq (GOI) for the lack of sustainability or maintenance of projects funded by the U.S. Gov't. (USG). It is one thing to blame the GOI for its lack of capacity to effectively implement and manage its projects using its own money, but to blame it for not running and maintaining projects which they were never consulted on, or even knew of their existence, is outrageous."

The Congressional Research Service's report on Iraq Reconstruction Assistance stated, the Iraqi Gov't. has not allowed any project transfers from the USG since 2006. As of May 2007, $5.3 billion in USG funded projects awaited transfer to the GOI.

The senior advisor disputed this claim. "I've been working closely with the International Cooperation Directorate at the Ministry of Planning (MoP) for the last three years," he said. "The MoP has been requesting the U.S. Embassy to give them any information about USG funded projects and the later refused until this summer (2009) to do so."

It seems to be a case of finger pointing. The advisor went on to explain, "The U.S. Embassy and Army refused any coordination with the GOI regarding USG funded projects and insisted that these are US tax payer-funded projects and the GOI has nothing to do with them. This summer the Embassy handed over a list of 18,000 projects and claimed that they're worth $21 billion and asked the GOI to take over these projects and start operating them. I will leave you to guess what the answer of the GOI was. If we want to talk about failures, let's talk about both sides and not only one."

One prominent Director General of a state oil company weighed in on the finger pointing, "Get a list of projects from the Americans and come to me (a high level gov't. figure) and I'll tell you if it's right or wrong (completed or not, or if it should be continued or mothballed). The problem is most probably many half finished projects have already been cannibalized."

The underlying problem is the reconstruction efforts were and still are needed, particular in areas of clean water and medical services. The Red Cross estimates 40 percent of Iraqis still don't have access to clean water. Oxfam reports 90 percent of Iraq's 180 hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies.

Twin problems: Budget execution and Corruption

Compounding the lack of coordination between U.S. reconstruction efforts and Iraqi ownership, are the ever-present issues of Iraqi budget execution and widespread corruption.

Iraqi Ministries have executed less than half their allocated budgets over the last two years. This doesn't make much sense to an outsider who hears cries for assistance amidst falling oil prices. But many officials admit they're afraid to spend the money for fear of being singled out for corruption.

In 2008 Iraq spent only 39 percent of its capital budget, and that was huge leap forward from 2007. As of Aug. 2009 only forty percent of the total $55.6 billion dollar budget had been spent. Meanwhile ministry operational costs, such as salaries, are skyrocketing. From 2005-2007, Iraq spent $67 billion, 90 percent on operating costs.

The implications are serious- Iraq is spending more and more on employee salaries at over-staffed ministries, still hesitant to use its own money on infrastructure developments while U.S. reconstruction is still pouring in hundreds of millions, and Iraq holds out for favorable international oil company consortium deals to stave severe losses in agriculture and prop up an almost nonexistent private sector.

Ghosts in the project

Earlier this year, a USA Today story reported that USAID suspended its single most expensive program, a $644 million initiative run by a U.S. non-profit to give Iraqis jobs and steer them away from the insurgency. The Community Stabilization Program paid Iraqis cash to do basic public works projects, but the inspector general's audit found the program was rife with phantom jobs and a lack of accountability. One of the companies staffers said that tens of millions worth of projects didn't exist and the documents detailing them were faked.

It's bad, really bad, when one doesn't even know where to start. Kind of chicken or the egg argument. Hard to say whether it's so difficult to account for the money because Iraqi groups and even insurgents used community and religious fronts to enrich themselves, or whether the astounding lack of contractor oversight, itself a form of gov't. fraud, allowed this to happen, probably both. Suffice to say the fact the program was so needed, points to the reasons why it was so easily exploit- corruption perpetuates itself on all levels and both sides.

The most egregious accusations of corruption come from an Iraqi, Salam Adhoob, who according to the Mother Jones article "The Boy Scout of Baghdad" really tried to root out corruption as the country's chief investigator of the Commission on Public Integrity. He went after several of PM Maliki's aides, who eventually issued orders to fire Adhoob.

Thirty two of his 200 employees were killed. The U.S. Embassy was afraid to accuse senior Iraqi officials of corruption, and couldn't protect him. Eventually he made it to the U.S. on an emergency visa.

Mr. Salam Adhoob, whistleblower silenced by both U.S. and Iraqi officials. (Photo: David S. Holloway/Reportage by Getty Images)

According to the article, Adhoob has compared the Maliki administration to the Mafia and declared the government had stolen more than $12 billion.

He also testified before the Senate Democratic Public Committee, where he said, "based on the cases that I have personally investigated, I believe that at least $ 18 billion have been lost in Iraq through corruption and waste, more than half of which was American money." He cited many Iraqi ministries' paying contractors for "phantom projects". He also said an American company delivered only one-third of the 510 Humvees it had been paid to supply the Iraqi military.

After his testimony, Adhoob could not get any kind of job with corruption oversight in the States, he even lost his job as a language instructor.

Ownership

Another senior advisor working on building Iraq's procurement capabilities suggested, "The USG should have involved the Iraqis in the decision on what the country really needed and how much it was going to cost the GOI to operate it. The USG should have ensured that the GOI could operate each project even before reconstruction commenced."

Granted, the point of view of many of these advisors has been shaped by being from the region, by their long-time work in Iraq and by the inter-agency rivalries between U.S. funded projects.

Also there's the pervasive belief that their current practices- embedding local staff with senior Iraqi officials and involving them, even while they are leading them by the hand, in the decision making process, is the best option for continuity and sustainability.

While this intuitively seems to be true, and mid-level bureaucrats respond well to empowerment and skill building training programs, there's no short-term evidence that building the capacity of already bloated, unwieldy ministries will bring systematic change. Those at the top have too much to lose if they let go of their authority.

There's some anecdotal evidence that such training and mentoring will eventually open up bureaucrat mind sets and budgets to much needed fresh ideas, like public private partnerships common in Westernized countries, and without which there is little hope for efficient, corruption-free delivery of basic services.

As the same advisor said, "The most important aspect in reconstruction in an environment like Iraq is ownership..." In this case a slow building of personnel capacity through mentoring may be the only way after so many failures.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Talking to the Enemy

(photos by Simon Klingert)

So how does a military intelligence gatherer know if an informant’s lying?

“A lot of times you don’t know if someone’s lying,” Chief warrant officer Edward Strauss, head of a Human Intelligence team based out of Jalabad, said in a phone interview. “Sometimes they outright tell me the wrong name. A lot of times we have other intelligence signals- (satellite or drone) imagery, that will give us ‘contrary’ information.”

“One thing we cannot do,” Strauss said, “we can’t do an operation based on what one person says. Nine times out of 10, (an informant’s motivation is based) on a tribal feud. You don’t go in on one person’s word.”

“The hardest part,” Dan, one of Strauss's enlisted soldiers, said, “is to corroborate and vet the information we get. When we hear a specific high-value target is moving in the region, we note it. When we get two or three sources saying it, then we move to find someone who has had direct contact with the target.”

But the difficulty in confirming such information is, “the Afghans have a fantastic technique of deflecting,” Dan said. “You’ll ask them how many guys they need at a command post, and he’ll talk to you about vehicle requests, more ammunition and goats. A tremendous amount is based on interpersonal skills, reading the subtleties and the signs. You have to pay attention. You have to come in with a clean slate. Pre-conceived notions in a combat zone are useless.”

“There are different levels of people we talk to.” Strauss explained that the insurgents pursue counter-intelligence operations, and it's hard to be sure exactly what a person's motivation is when you first meet them. “When we meet with them we try to give them the minimal level of information about us. We have to maintain operational security. There are people we trust, some have received a polygraph.”

"The big thing is you have to look at their history, if he was actively fighting," Stauss said. "They have to provide a tight (account of what they did and who they are); they have to build that trust slowly... You have to think, how would using this informant look to some one in the U.S. gov't. You have to be very careful."

"We've had several individuals lie to us. If I catch them in a lie, I won't work with them. It’s a lost cause. We put that information out there,” Strauss said.

What if you have a warlord, like Haji Jan Dad, who may be working with both insurgents and the coalition at the same time, I asked.

"He's a very influential man," Strauss said. "Commanders have to work with him. He's influential over a lot of village Maliks; he gets a lot of support from the Afghan government. But I wouldn't work with him. If you work with him, you don't act solely on his information. He's doing it for his own reasons. I'd be careful on any operations with him, whether Shura (community meeting) or road contracts."

I asked Strauss how they conduct interrogations. "Interrogations have gotten such a bad name since Abu Ghraib, we have to take high road at all times... There's a lot of oversight, reports before and after." He said all (interrogations) are managed differently now. "We don't have one person going into the room with the suspect. There's checks and balances. It's more rapport building like in an interview, and questioning and catching people in lies."

“The difficulty is being a principal-driven person when dealing with the enemy on a daily basis,” Dan said.

“Working both sides, it’s hard,” Strauss said. “You basically got to make him feel for the other side,” meaning trying to distill empathy from the low-level insurgent for their own people. “I don’t want to see young Afghans getting killed. I’m always trying to get them to see this, and to do something good.”

The Insurgent Business

“Being Taliban is a business,” Dan explained. “Ninety percent do it to feed their family. When a better opportunity comes, they will leave it for a steady paycheck. I talked to Talibs today, in a business sense,” he said.

Often times they’ll try to get even higher level insurgents to “reconcile”, a promise to lay down their arms, usually in exchange for a coalition-sponsored job or contract for their tribe.

“If they killed Americans we sometimes have to hide that from soldiers," Dan said. In Kunar province they brought in Taliban commanders for reconciliations, but they had to hide it from the battlefield commanders. “We disguised them under cover of the night,” Dan said.

“Every province has it’s own (Talib) shadow governor,” Dan said. In Afghanistan our main priority is to remove the dissenters- the ninety percent who have taken the Taliban name, from the “hard core” Taliban, some of whom are foreign fighters who travel over the border from Pakistan in pairs. They link with a local Taliban commander and move around. They’re classic jihadists… The American idea of borders doesn't effect their movements. It ebbs and flows.”

What is certain is that the local population is watching how Americans react to Taliban attacks. This summer an IED hit Nuristan’s Provincial Reconstruction Team during their last week in country. The vehicle rolled down a hill, injuring all five occupants. “It was a big upset to the PRT,” Dan said. But the American response was the difference maker.

“Nuristan is used to retaliation,” Dan said. “They thought we would blow stuff up. Now the people mention, you didn’t bomb us. That was a Russian tactic. It was a victory for us, when we were hurt, not to hurt more.”

“There’s two kinds of Nuristanis- those who see Americans from a distance, and the second kind that view Americans as guests," under the Pashtun tradition of Pashtunwali. “The salt of the earth who say if you weren’t our guests, ‘I’d shoot you myself.”

"You can't kill all the bad guys to help locals"

Torquem Gate is one of the main border crossings with Pakistan and notorious for arms smuggling. The intelligence teams use informants on both sides of the border, using a system of concealing informants, Strauss said. Information is passed through more than one person, so that informants aren't seen dealing directly with Americans. These actions probably save lives. Not only does it insulate the informant, 700 pounds of explosives were found hidden in the floorboards of a bus, based on this kind of information sharing.

This summer an informant saw a coffin surrounded by women, coming from Pakistan. It fit a profile he'd been told to look for. Police intercepted the coffin. It was full of suicide vests. They’d previously gotten reports of women smuggling weapons in coffins.

“A big part of it is meeting and talking with locals," Strauss said. "A big part is information operations, to get a sense how public feels about us.”

Often they hear about villagers helping the Taliban indirectly, like with food or shelter, probably under threat. Strauss explained instead of arresting the villagers, they try to garner allegiance from them by offering incentives to the local Malik, like medical assistance or digging a well, to side with the coalition.

The problem is the Taliban know the villagers personally and can return at night to make reprisals. To this reality, Strauss responded, "You can't kill all the bad guys to help the locals."

He spoke of one local Malik in southern Nangahar named Malik Niaz who publically rose against the Taliban. "This is not-media savy culture," Strauss said, "The tough part is working with the villagers who haven't seen foreigners since the Russians. But it's a word of mouth culture. The people knew about him."

Niaz on his own initiative went to the coalition and the local gov't. asking for funding to assemble a militia to defend the village. "Working with a militia," Stauss said, "that's a good possibility. Local people trust them. The Afghan Army is not as trusted, they’d rather have a local national guard."

"I don’t think it’s too out of the realm to pay and train them, so they don’t get into tribal feuds," Strauss said. "Locals are accepting it, it’s on the edge of happening. This Malik Niaz thing, they talked about it (all the way in) Nuristan."

Recent history shows a coalition-funded militia system worked extremely well to de-fang the Sunni insurgency starting in Anbar, Iraq.

But first, a critical mass of influential sheiks had to step forward. Here as in Iraq, the first few who step forward will be targeted and killed.

Malik Niaz was killed by a suicide bomb this summer as he was assembling the militia. But was he the start of a movement?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Intelligence Games: Fishing in Murky Waters

(The following story and images by Simon Klingert, are reconstructed from interviews and eye-witness accounts during his embed in Diyala, Iraq in 2008)

"Do we want to have him killed or not?"

The question hung in the air, as the solider followed up with the target's profile:

"We know that he recently abducted a 14- year old kid and is training him to be an assassin. He has ties to the insurgency, but he's more of a criminal than anything else. He is also close friends with the local police chief, who wouldn't be too happy to see him killed."

Captain Bangura sat in the cramped room that served as home and office to the intelligence cell under his command, and took a moment to process the question his intelligence sergeant had put out in the open. As commander of Cobra Troop, (2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment as part of 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division), it would be up to him to decide if the target, this shady figure with ties to the Iraqi insurgency, would live or die.

In early 2008, the violence in Iraq had calmed somewhat. U.S. and Iraqi security forces had pushed insurgent groups from their strongholds in cities like Baghdad and Baqubah, forcing them to retreat to the Northern city of Mosul and to more rural areas, such as in restive Diyala governorate. In this area, about 15 Kilometers (9 Miles) North of Baqubah lies the quiet town of al Khalis, where Captain Bangura had set up shop at Joint Combat Outpost Blackfoot.

The outpost's strategic emplacement in a residential neighborhood in close proximity to an Iraqi Police station and the local Bazaar was part of the then new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) that required troops to move off their big Forward Operating Bases and live amongst the population they sought to protect.

While it is hard to gauge exactly which factors brought the relative calm to al Khalis, one element stood out as a reliable indicator of the improved security: The amount of information or "human intelligence" coming from the local populace. The near constant presence of U.S. troops instilled a sense of security in the neighborhood, which enabled residents to covertly rely information to the military without the fear of immediate insurgent retribution. Even so, appearing to be close friends with the Americans was still considered hazardous to ones health in Iraq.

In the end it was strategy that kept the criminal suspect alive. His partnership with the Iraqi Police and their commander was too important to jeopardize, given the fact that the local security forces also played their part in securing the town.

After the meeting, Sergeant Hines, the man in charge of the intelligence cell at the combat outpost, sat on his cot and started to explain. Fearing that the preceding discussion might have created a distorted image of intelligence operations, he pointed out the possibilities as well as the limits of methods used to collect intelligence. He took his M16 assault rifle, checked that it was on safe, laid it on his lap and slowly moved the barrel in my direction.

"I cannot even do this when I interrogate suspects," he said, the barrel of his rifle pointing menacingly in my direction. "I try to extract information by opening and closing doors. I thoroughly explain the situation to the suspects I interrogate, and offer them various benefits if they cooperate. For example, that I can make sure their families will be provided for if they are sentenced to jail."

With regards to the darker side of his job, Sergeant Hines in a matter- of-fact tone suggested a method to eliminate a person: "If we really decide a target should be killed, we would set up a meeting with him, invite his worst enemy and simply wouldn't show up."

In a country where conflicts are often resolved with arms, this seemed to be an efficient method to get an enemy out of the way.

But his rifle wasn't Sergeant Hines' most important tool. Almost constantly, he checked his cell phones. There were five of them, neatly arranged in a row on the single table that dominated the room. Every now and then, he would receive calls from informants who either lived in the town or the surrounding area. As time progressed, his Arabic language skills had put him in a position to build personal relationships with his sources. As a result, a relatively constant flow of intelligence kept coming in, but it came with an increased responsibility to protect his sources, who knowingly risked a violent death at the hand of the insurgents.

Only when a real threat to one of his informants emerged, would Sergeant Hines bring his rifle.

A trick to protecting informants

The Cobra Troopers entered the courtyard and dispersed quickly, their weapons raised. Some of them swiftly climbed the stairs to the roof while others stormed inside the house, passing the anxious looking Iraqi women who opened the door. Running upstairs in a blur, there were shouts and the bang of more doors. One soldier entered what seemed to be the bedroom and began to rifle through the closet, looking for weapons or other suspicious items.

Meanwhile Sergeant Hines, together with an Iraqi interpreter and other soldiers at his side started to question a middle-aged man who turned out to be the homeowner's brother.

"Where is you brother, we are looking for him. When have you last seen him?" Sergeant Hines said using a stern voice. "We have information from– he named a local insurgent who had recently been arrested by coalition forces– that you brother is supporting the insurgency. Where is he?"

The brothers face changed from disbelief to anger: "God is my witness, my brother has nothing to do with the insurgency! Anyone who claims that is a liar!"

It quickly became apparent that the man either did not know his brother's location or was not willing to give away, so the soldiers went on to question some of the neighbors who had come out on the street. The suspect's brother was left alone standing in the courtyard, visibly distraught.

Little did he know that in reality the soldiers were looking to protect, not apprehend his brother. He was a local shop owner who sought to maintain the calm by providing Sergeant Hines with valuable information about insurgents operating in the area. With the shop owner's consent, the soldiers of Cobra Troop had simply put up a show to deflect suspicions from him, as rumors began circulating in the neighborhood that he was working with the Americans.

With the neighbors and even his own brother thinking the U.S. military was after him for suspected connections with the insurgency, these rumors were blunted. The source had come off the hook and was left to swim in the murky waters where intelligence operations are carried out. In Iraq early 2008, nothing was as it seemed.