http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1022622,00.html
Hunt for the Bomb Factories
By MICHAEL WARE
Feb. 7, 2005
The car bombs that go off in Baghdad are manufactured in the relative
quiet of an arc of Sunni tribal lands around the capital. That is the
true heartland of the resistance, where it draws on massive weapons
depots secreted in river valleys and deserts. The nationalist fighters
who control the area supply Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's networks with the
ammo they use for their deadly operations, according to U.S. military
intelligence.
Even as more attacks took place last week in the run-up to the
election--including mortar rounds on the U.S. embassy that killed two
Americans--the Iraqi government announced the capture of several key
al-Zarqawi lieutenants, including an alleged "bomber-in-chief."
U.S.-led forces arrested other significant insurgent leaders, the
result of a monthlong sweep beyond Iraq's big cities. On a recent
mission, TIME Baghdad bureau chief MICHAEL WARE saw the strategy at work:
Backed by Bradley fighting vehicles, the American soldiers of
Coldsteel Company swarm into a clutch of farmhouses as a platoon of
Estonian infantry closes from the rear. The Americans are part of the
2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment's operation to seal off a stretch
of villages hugging the Euphrates in the Jafr Sakhr region, about 60
miles southwest of Baghdad. "Go round 'em up," a U.S. officer hollers,
and male villagers of military age--one with his crying 3-year-old
clinging to his neck--are sifted out. A humvee approaches and stops in
front of the lined-up Iraqis. From within, a passenger, face masked,
raises or lowers a thumb as each man is singled out. It isn't clear
who the masked man is, perhaps an intelligence source or an informer.
Those given the thumbs-up are seated. Others, who get the thumbs-down,
are separated and detained. In the meantime, the village mosque is
secured. Its imam and congregation are known to be hostile to U.S.
forces.
The raid's focus shifts to a building marked as House 69 on the
soldiers' maps. The night before, a source, possibly a cell member who
turned during questioning, gave up the names and locations of six
suspected cell members. Among them are two brothers thought to be
central players in nationalist attacks on U.S. soldiers. Also on the
list is the leader of their Islamic Army outfit, a man known as Abu
Ayesha. The brothers are found in their family compound in a nearby
village. Abu Ayesha is a different story. One of the homes near House
69 is said to be his. But although spotters have been positioned to
catch anyone running from the battalion's advance, Abu Ayesha is not
to be found. "Everybody gave us a different story on which house was
his, so they were well versed in not giving a straight story," an
intelligence officer concludes.
Adjacent to House 69, in a small palm grove, the Estonians uncover a
weapons cache: rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and an AK-47, its ammo
hastily buried nearby. The weapon's magazines are wrapped in plastic
and sealed in a tin ammunition box. "There's gotta be stuff all over
the place," says 2-12 battalion commander Lieut. Colonel Tim Ryan. Two
days later, one of the detainees would break during interrogation and
betray the site of Abu Ayesha's main arsenal, which supplied the
al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Sunnah and nationalist cells blasting away at the
U.S.-led coalition and the fledgling Iraqi government's security forces.
The 2-12 spent a day digging into berms gouged from the flat desert,
retrieving one of the largest weapons caches found in Iraq in the past
year, including two suspected Scud-missile warheads. Says Ryan: "The
member of the cell who gave up the information said that this is
untouched, that it is a place where they've drawn their supplies from
ever since the fall of the Saddam regime, and from which they're
supplying activities in this part of the country, from southwest
Baghdad over toward Fallujah and then down to Musayyab."
The weapons seizure underlines the diverse and fractured nature of the
Iraqi insurgency. Al-Zarqawi's cells, mostly directed by non-Iraqi
jihadis, often don't know where the arms caches are and so cannot
function without the support of the Iraqi nationalists, mostly former
military officers, who do. The proliferation of car bombs doesn't
indicate a formal alliance between the two groups. But the ideological
divide is bridged by tribal commerce.
Within a single tribe, there can be a diversity of Islamist and
nationalist strains--and genealogy can usually produce a cousin able
to provide arms to a distant relative, perhaps via another distant
relative. Insurgents from the Karghouli tribe, for instance, are
principally led by a figure dubbed the Strawberry Sheik. One of his
relatives, Abu Mustafa, heads a self-titled military "company" of the
nationalist Islamic Army. Another of the sheik's kinsmen, Amara Adnan
Hamza, is a fundamentalist Muslim. Known locally as Little Zarqawi, he
commands a network loyal to the more famous al-Zarqawi that has
prepared car bombs destined for Baghdad. According to American as well
as insurgent sources, both Little Zarqawi and his nationalist relative
Abu Mustafa have drawn weapons from their senior relative, the
Strawberry Sheik. Ryan's battalion disrupted Little Zarqawi's cell and
found two tons of explosives at its disposal.
So far, in an offensive that began in late December, the 2-12 has
cracked an al-Zarqawi bombmaking cell and an Ansar al-Sunnah
stronghold, and severely disrupted a nest of nationalist cells
composed of former Republican Guard officers and Baathists upon whom
the other organizations rely. That has led the insurgents to attack
the 2-12 directly.
At one point during the Jafr Sakhr operation, a report comes in from
2-12's headquarters. Insurgents are lobbing mortars on the bridge over
the Euphrates where Ryan has positioned his tanks. He isn't dismayed.
"I was waiting to see how long it would take the enemy to get mad
enough about us being on the bridge before he started shooting mortars
at us. If he's shooting at us here, he isn't attacking toward Baghdad.
We have the bridge cut off, so now the bad guys on the east side of
the bridge can't connect with the bad guys on the west side of the
bridge." He adds, "The more [the enemy] has to turn and divert his
attention to us here in his supply lines, in his safe havens, the less
time he's devoted to attacking people in Baghdad." As a result, the
car bombs made in the Jafr Sakhr area must now pass through Fallujah
to the north or Musayyab to the south, running a gauntlet of U.S.
checkpoints before they can reach the capital.
The insurgents in Baghdad claim to be unperturbed by the recent U.S.
raids in the tribal heartland. The emir, or prince, controlling many
of the nationalist cells in the capital and in the Jafr Sakhr region,
which Ryan's 2-12 is targeting, told TIME that he knew of the seizures
but declared his group could recover. Ryan concedes he is only
disrupting those networks. If nothing else, he believes, it helps to
buy time for democracy and a central government to take hold. But he
is aware that the offensive will slow after the 2-12 leaves Iraq in
February. It will take time for its replacement battalion to get up to
speed with the strategy. And it's a daunting task. Abu Mohammed, an
Iraqi guerrilla leader in Baghdad, told TIME, "If you dig anywhere in
Iraq, you'll find one of two things: oil or weapons."
Ryan and his men already have recorded a chilling inventory of what
has been available to the enemy. In House 71, for example, they find
an array of weapons-- a crank-handle detonator, spools of detonation
cord, dozens of mortars, thousands of rounds of 12.7-mm ammo, a
sackful of yellow grenades and other bombmaking materials--buried in
pits all over a yard in which a herd of sheep and goats graze. A
pocket notebook inside the ramshackle dwelling proves to be a huge
intelligence boon, listing weapons and the cell leaders to whom they
were distributed. An Arabic-speaking Army specialist, born to
Palestinian and Puerto Rican parents, scans the pages. "He's written
everything here--who he gave what to. He's very stupid," the soldier
says with a smile. The pages connect a lot of dots to insurgent bosses
Ryan has been tracking.
At the 2-12's approach, the owner of House 71 had run to a neighbor's
home and attempted to mix in with other civilians, disguising himself
by adopting someone else's name. Ryan saw through it. "Take Mr. Turban
here," he orders, referring to the scarf around the suspect's head.
"All that s___ was right behind his house--he knows something," he
says. Under interrogation the man identifies himself as the weapons
dealer working under Abu Ayesha and supplying arms to a host of
divergent guerrilla and terrorist cells.
Ryan decides to send a message, a "show of force," as he calls it. He
instructs his engineers to pile the weapons caches in the front yard
of House 71. "We got all this stuff in his house, I don't see any
reason why we can't blow it up," Ryan says. His Estonian counterpart
chuckles. "I don't mind; it's not my house," he says. By day's end,
the message has been delivered repeatedly. Coalition troops destroy
two vehicles and another house in acts of retaliation. At nightfall
the battalion returns to its base, having uprooted a large number of
insurgent weapons sites. It has produced a staggering array of
antiaircraft guns, TNT, RPG warheads and launchers, machine guns,
plastic explosive, grenades and bombs. Surveying the booty, Ryan tells
a subordinate, "We're just scratching the surface." �
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