Read Online ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan
Ads: Link
insurgency’ssuccess was the failure by the Americans to engage with arguably the most important demographic in Sunni Iraq—the tribes. They had suffered enormously from de-Baathification. Saddam had understood the importance of these ancient confederations of families and clans and had thus made them a large part of his state patronage system: the tribes ran smuggling rings, gray-market merchant businesses, all under the auspices of al-Douri.
It wasn’t for a lack of trying that the tribes failed to persuade the coalition of their bellwether status for defeating the insurgency. A sheikh from the influential Albu Nimr tribe had offered to work with the Iraqi Governing Council and the CPA in establishing a much-needed border guard as early as 2003, an offer that was reflected in a memo prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October of that same year. “Leaders of these tribes—many of whom still occupy key positions of local authority—appear to be increasingly willing to cooperate with the Coalition in order to restore or maintain their influence in post-Saddam Iraq,” the memo read. “If they perceive failure, they may take other actions, to include creating alternate governing and security institutions, working with anti-Coalition forces, or engaging in criminal activity to ensure the prosperity and security of their tribes.” Nothing came of the memo.
Al-Zarqawi again proved more adept at navigating Iraqi culture than the CPA or US military—at least at first. “Zarqawi, or the Iraqis he had working for him, understood who was who in the tribes and he worked them,” Derek Harvey told us. “That’s how he controlled territory in Anbar and the Euphrates River Valley.”
His fatal error, however, was in overplaying his hand by turning AQI’s protection racket into an asphyxiating mode of jihadist governance. The tribes chafed at the implementation of a seventh-century civil code in areas ruled by fundamentalists, many of whom were foreign-born and behaved exactly as the colonial usurpers they were meant to expel. Tribal businesses were disrupted or takenover by those seeking their own monopoly on smuggling, and AQI protected its confiscated interest with a mafia’s thuggish zeal. It justified killing on the basis of market competition.
So when it assassinated a sheikh from the Albu Nimr tribe in 2005, Major Adam Such, who commanded the Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 555 Company under the 1st Marine Division, seized the opportunity to make AQI a pariah among its most important constituency. He recruited tribesmen to join an ad hoc militia to monitor the roads near the Anbar city of Hit—another strategically vital town that ISIS later seized in 2014. It was an inspired idea, although it lacked the necessary structural support to become wholly transformative. At the time, there was no permanent US military presence in the area to convince the locals that the routing of AQI wouldn’t be a flash in the pan, but the prelude to a long-term counterinsurgent policing mission. Still, the fact that Iraqis suddenly wanted Americans to stay in their midst indicated that the jihadists had worn out their welcome.
Another city where this proved to be so was Qa’im, which al-Zarqawi had made the capital of his Western Euphrates “emirate” for obvious geostrategic reasons. The Sunni and Bedouin town abuts the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal and is also situated along a main road connecting Iraq to Jordan. It also contains the largest phosphate mines in the Middle East, with an enormous subterranean cave system, which became a guerrilla network for moving men and materiél through undetected.
US Marines moved in to take Qa’im in September 2005, followed by subsequent sorties in subordinate AQI bases in the Western Euphrates. They constructed concrete-fortified outposts to mark an indefinite presence and thereby forestall a jihadist resurgence. Building on Adam Such’s experience in Hit, they
It wasn’t for a lack of trying that the tribes failed to persuade the coalition of their bellwether status for defeating the insurgency. A sheikh from the influential Albu Nimr tribe had offered to work with the Iraqi Governing Council and the CPA in establishing a much-needed border guard as early as 2003, an offer that was reflected in a memo prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October of that same year. “Leaders of these tribes—many of whom still occupy key positions of local authority—appear to be increasingly willing to cooperate with the Coalition in order to restore or maintain their influence in post-Saddam Iraq,” the memo read. “If they perceive failure, they may take other actions, to include creating alternate governing and security institutions, working with anti-Coalition forces, or engaging in criminal activity to ensure the prosperity and security of their tribes.” Nothing came of the memo.
Al-Zarqawi again proved more adept at navigating Iraqi culture than the CPA or US military—at least at first. “Zarqawi, or the Iraqis he had working for him, understood who was who in the tribes and he worked them,” Derek Harvey told us. “That’s how he controlled territory in Anbar and the Euphrates River Valley.”
His fatal error, however, was in overplaying his hand by turning AQI’s protection racket into an asphyxiating mode of jihadist governance. The tribes chafed at the implementation of a seventh-century civil code in areas ruled by fundamentalists, many of whom were foreign-born and behaved exactly as the colonial usurpers they were meant to expel. Tribal businesses were disrupted or takenover by those seeking their own monopoly on smuggling, and AQI protected its confiscated interest with a mafia’s thuggish zeal. It justified killing on the basis of market competition.
So when it assassinated a sheikh from the Albu Nimr tribe in 2005, Major Adam Such, who commanded the Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 555 Company under the 1st Marine Division, seized the opportunity to make AQI a pariah among its most important constituency. He recruited tribesmen to join an ad hoc militia to monitor the roads near the Anbar city of Hit—another strategically vital town that ISIS later seized in 2014. It was an inspired idea, although it lacked the necessary structural support to become wholly transformative. At the time, there was no permanent US military presence in the area to convince the locals that the routing of AQI wouldn’t be a flash in the pan, but the prelude to a long-term counterinsurgent policing mission. Still, the fact that Iraqis suddenly wanted Americans to stay in their midst indicated that the jihadists had worn out their welcome.
Another city where this proved to be so was Qa’im, which al-Zarqawi had made the capital of his Western Euphrates “emirate” for obvious geostrategic reasons. The Sunni and Bedouin town abuts the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal and is also situated along a main road connecting Iraq to Jordan. It also contains the largest phosphate mines in the Middle East, with an enormous subterranean cave system, which became a guerrilla network for moving men and materiél through undetected.
US Marines moved in to take Qa’im in September 2005, followed by subsequent sorties in subordinate AQI bases in the Western Euphrates. They constructed concrete-fortified outposts to mark an indefinite presence and thereby forestall a jihadist resurgence. Building on Adam Such’s experience in Hit, they
Similar Books
