Read Online Until Tuesday by Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván - Free Book Online
Authors: Bret Witter, Luis Carlos Montalván
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task was to establish a base of operations, which meant commandeering a building at the Iraqi border compound, establishing a defensive perimeter, and jerry-rigging basic amenities like electricity. I had great men, like Staff Sgt. Brian Potter, Sgt. Carl Bishop, Pfc. Tyson Carter, and Pfc. Derek Martin, an indefatigable twenty-year-old who could hump more stone than most mules. But we had inadequate supplies. In the end, we strung our only roll of concertina wire, which we scavenged from an old Iraq Army outpost, and then spent weeks filling sandbags and wire mesh baskets with dirt and rocks so that suicide bombers wouldn’t have unimpeded access to our post.
When we weren’t improving our defensive perimeter, we patrolled the ramshackle villages and flat endless desert that surrounded us, usually nine men per patrol in three Humvees. It was like America’s Wild West out there. When Saddam was in power, he had issued “shoot on sight” orders for anyone traveling or living within twenty-five miles of the border, so the small towns that had grown up near the POE in the fading years of his reign were 90 percent male, 60 percent smugglers and criminals, and 100 percent armed. There was a certain thrill in that, I can’t deny. I remember my gunner, Spc. Eric Pearcy, sticking out of his turret yelling “Yee-haw, Carlos Montalván’s Bedouin Assault Force rides again!” each time we went racing across the desert in pursuit of smugglers in pickup trucks. We discovered numerous small caches of weapons and ordnance, such as five brand-new AK-47s hidden under a haystack in a Bedouin camp, but ultimately the patrols were little more than a high-intensity, low-efficiency grind. The villagers, most of whom were members of criminal syndicates specializing in various smuggling schemes, were too sophisticated to hide weapons or anything else of value in their houses.
Our success or failure, I knew, depended on controlling the port of entry—a combination customs office, passport control center, and paramilitary base that straddled the main road just inside the Iraqi border. The port was in theory operated by our allies in the new Iraqi government, but in practice it was controlled by Sunni tribal leaders in Ramadi—the leaders who, almost assuredly, were supporting the burgeoning insurgency. The man in charge was a Ramadi-born official known as “Mr. Waleed”—that’s what everyone called him, even me—and nearly all the police and border officials were his tribal members. They were little more than a mafia, operating more for monetary gain than ideology, but undermining the stability of Iraq nonetheless.
My goal, as a local American commander, was to shift the balance of power at the crossing: to send home or detain the corrupt officials, empower the honest ones, turn the Bedouins into our allies, and cripple the smuggling operations in the area. For this, we used a combination of hard and soft power. My men stopped trucks that had already been checked by Iraqi customs inspectors and police. When we found contraband, the officials were held responsible. We went on joint patrols and insisted on confiscations. We arrested Abu Meteab, known within the American military as the Tony Soprano of western Al-Anbar. He came quietly, despite his armed militia, but not before we searched the hundreds of U.S. Army–owned containerized housing units (CHUs) stacked behind his compound. The CHUs were supposed to provide comfortable housing for American troops across Iraq enduring the sweltering Mesopotamian heat. Abu Meteab was holding them until the United States paid a “toll fee” for their transportation from Al-Waleed.
We took on the benzene smugglers, the most brazenly corrupt aspect of Al-Waleed culture. Benzene, the Iraqi form of gasoline, is supposed to be free. It is given to government-sanctioned gas stations, including one in Al-Waleed, for distribution to the public. But the gas station in Al-Waleed was never open.
When we weren’t improving our defensive perimeter, we patrolled the ramshackle villages and flat endless desert that surrounded us, usually nine men per patrol in three Humvees. It was like America’s Wild West out there. When Saddam was in power, he had issued “shoot on sight” orders for anyone traveling or living within twenty-five miles of the border, so the small towns that had grown up near the POE in the fading years of his reign were 90 percent male, 60 percent smugglers and criminals, and 100 percent armed. There was a certain thrill in that, I can’t deny. I remember my gunner, Spc. Eric Pearcy, sticking out of his turret yelling “Yee-haw, Carlos Montalván’s Bedouin Assault Force rides again!” each time we went racing across the desert in pursuit of smugglers in pickup trucks. We discovered numerous small caches of weapons and ordnance, such as five brand-new AK-47s hidden under a haystack in a Bedouin camp, but ultimately the patrols were little more than a high-intensity, low-efficiency grind. The villagers, most of whom were members of criminal syndicates specializing in various smuggling schemes, were too sophisticated to hide weapons or anything else of value in their houses.
Our success or failure, I knew, depended on controlling the port of entry—a combination customs office, passport control center, and paramilitary base that straddled the main road just inside the Iraqi border. The port was in theory operated by our allies in the new Iraqi government, but in practice it was controlled by Sunni tribal leaders in Ramadi—the leaders who, almost assuredly, were supporting the burgeoning insurgency. The man in charge was a Ramadi-born official known as “Mr. Waleed”—that’s what everyone called him, even me—and nearly all the police and border officials were his tribal members. They were little more than a mafia, operating more for monetary gain than ideology, but undermining the stability of Iraq nonetheless.
My goal, as a local American commander, was to shift the balance of power at the crossing: to send home or detain the corrupt officials, empower the honest ones, turn the Bedouins into our allies, and cripple the smuggling operations in the area. For this, we used a combination of hard and soft power. My men stopped trucks that had already been checked by Iraqi customs inspectors and police. When we found contraband, the officials were held responsible. We went on joint patrols and insisted on confiscations. We arrested Abu Meteab, known within the American military as the Tony Soprano of western Al-Anbar. He came quietly, despite his armed militia, but not before we searched the hundreds of U.S. Army–owned containerized housing units (CHUs) stacked behind his compound. The CHUs were supposed to provide comfortable housing for American troops across Iraq enduring the sweltering Mesopotamian heat. Abu Meteab was holding them until the United States paid a “toll fee” for their transportation from Al-Waleed.
We took on the benzene smugglers, the most brazenly corrupt aspect of Al-Waleed culture. Benzene, the Iraqi form of gasoline, is supposed to be free. It is given to government-sanctioned gas stations, including one in Al-Waleed, for distribution to the public. But the gas station in Al-Waleed was never open.
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