the walls. Dora was the first place in southwest Baghdad that got walls. There was one protest when walls went up by guys we believe were involved in the insurgency. The insurgents hated those walls. Over the course of a few weeks we saw the impact.” The farmlands that had been used to smuggle weapons or fighters into his area were now cut off.
In September 2007 there was a murder campaign in Dora, with more than nineteen killings. The first victim was Haji Sattar, a local council member. His killers entered the District Advisory Council in broad daylight and asked for him by name. Then they shot him in the head and walked out. “The murder campaign was an attempt to shake up the neighborhood,” Crider said, “They were trying to kill people who they thought were sources for us.” It briefly succeeded. Haji Hashim, the deputy head of the Rashid district council and a close ally of the Americans, fled for three months. “Sattar’s death got Hashim shaken,” Crider told me. Hashim had been collaborating with the Americans since 2003 but had managed to stay alive and stay respected by many people in Dora. “Hashim would give us tips: ‘Don’t drive down this street for a couple of days,’” Crider said.
By July 2007 Crider’s men had cultivated thirty-six new local Iraqi sources. “In August the number of detentions skyrocketed, and soon enemy activity fell down,” Crider said. The last attack that killed one of his soldiers happened on September 9. “The last IED was September 27. When Shiites returned to Dora in early 2008, there was some increase in violence but no killings.” Crider’s unit arrested more than 250 Al Qaeda suspects, with 80 percent of them sent on to long-term detention, although most never faced any court or due process to establish their guilt.
Nick Cook, a captain serving under Crider in Dora and the neighborhoods south of it, helped set up the first Awakening groups in his areas. “In Dora we were approached by a guy named Zeki, an old source of ours, who wanted to help stand up the SOIs,” he told me. They wanted their headquarters set up along the boundary between his troop and the other American troop in Dora. Cook was introduced to Zeki and his partner, who stated emphatically that they had hundreds of fighters ready to take up arms against Al Qaeda. A lot of their members had come from Arab Jubur. As Cook got to know Zeki’s group, it became clear that many had relatives living in Dora, and that they wanted to help their families.
At first it seemed that the group was making little difference in Dora. At the beginning of Ramadan in 2007, however, Zeki’s group received information that the mosques were going to be attacked by Al Qaeda. They asked permission to set up security. “About two dozen guys in red and black jogging suits took to the streets,” he said. No incidents occurred during that time, and the “neighbors seemed happy to see their sons taking to the streets.” From then on the Sons of Iraq were a constant presence. Many members of the group told Cook that they had joined resistance groups right after the invasion because they wanted to get the Americans out of Iraq. Later, though, they felt disenfranchised and identified the selfishness of the groups as the cause.
Cook was also the one who first established a relationship with Osama. “Osama came to me in April of 2007,” he said. “He had run into me the day before, and I had given him my phone number.” The father of one of Osama’s friends had been kidnapped that night, so Osama decided to bring his friend to the combat outpost in Mekanik. Cook met with Osama and heard his friend’s story. Then he immediately directed a patrol to try to find where the father had been taken. Unfortunately, the search was unsuccessful. But Cook said that Osama never forgot the encounter.
About two weeks later, an IED hit and destroyed a Humvee, killing one soldier in Cook’s troop and badly injuring two others. Three days later Osama called Cook and told him he was parked outside a house; inside it, he said, the man responsible for the IED was having lunch. A patrol was sent to investigate immediately. When the troops arrived Osama guided them to the house and pointed out the insurgent. Once the man was brought back to Forward Operating Base Falcon, the unit discovered that he was one of the top-ten “high-value individuals” for a cavalry regiment a little to the south of where Cook was stationed.
From then on, the unit forged a close relationship with Osama and relied on his intelligence. He even helped a patrol surprise a couple of insurgents emplacing an IED in the middle of the night. When Cook and his troops were moved north into Dora, they handed Osama over as a source and friend to the unit that replaced them. But the new unit did not manage the relationship well, and Osama started calling Cook’s fire support NCO to tell him how he was tired of working with them. He said he was planning to start the SOI in Mekanik because he hated what Mekanik had become.
At the beginning of August Cook’s Tactical Humintelligence Team received a phone call. Approximately sixteen members of Al Qaeda were being held by Osama and his fighters in Mekanik. This was no longer Cook’s area of operation, but the unit whose jurisdiction it was said they could not help. So Cook’s troop received permission to go and link up with Osama’s fighters. They joined forces and later transferred the sixteen men into U.S. custody.
Col. Jeff Peterson commanded the 1-14 Cavalry Squadron, which was attached to the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team. He was in Baghdad from July 2006 until September 2007, operating both in Haifa Street and areas in the neighborhoods of Saha, Mekanik, and Abu Dshir, just south of Dora proper. Peterson worked with the regular police and the national police in East Rashid. “They were over 90 percent Shiite and infiltrated with Mahdi Army members or at least sympathized with them,” he told me. “I had evidence that their leadership compromised our missions, and I suspected they at least cooperated with the enemy attacking our forces. Some members of the national police were guilty of sectarian violence, and we arrested some officers. The Sunni population was so distrustful of the national police that I built a barrier around the Mekanik neighborhood and didn’t allow the national police in the area.
“The security situation improved somewhat. There was significant improvement to the national police as we more effectively partnered with them down to platoon level. Additionally, the commander was replaced and we arrested several officers that we think were the primary source of corruption in the battalion. Over time they became much more competent, professional in their behavior, and successful in their operations. They also began gaining the trust of the local population.
“The biggest challenge I faced was the sectarian nature of the Shiite-dominated local government structures. They had significant influence over the decisions about resource allocation and controlling essential services like benzene, propane, and kerosene distribution, and medical clinic and school re-sourcing. They gave priority to the Shiite neighborhoods and neglected the Sunni neighborhoods. This made it very difficult to build legitimacy in the eyes of the Sunnis who were being marginalized by their local government. In general, the Shiites, in conjunction with the national police, would attempt to displace Sunnis from their homes and then take physical control of the vacant house. In response, the Sunnis would defend their homes or counterattack into Shiite areas. I never sensed the Sunnis were trying to expand; it was the Shiites that were trying to take control of more area.”
Something I was told by Capt. Jim Keirsey, who served in East Rashid between October 2006 and December 2007, confirmed the endemic sectarianism of the Iraqi Security Forces. “A large number of the national police brigade and battalion charged with securing the population of Dora persecuted the population,” Keirsey said. “They were often very antagonistic toward the population of Dora. It became a vicious cycle. Extremists within Dora would attack Shiite residents to drive them out. The national police would execute reprisal detentions or allow Shiite extremists to attack Sunnis in Dora. Or they would detain Sunnis from Dora outside of the community. Dora Sunni extremists would then seek additional reprisals, perhaps capturing a passing taxi driver and beating him near death. Then the national police, enraged, would charge into the
As I walked the desolate streets in December 2007, it was hard to know if things were improving. But with few killings occurring in Dora, the conflict seemed frozen in place. A man and his daughter walked hurriedly by. I asked them why the area was empty. “It’s a good neighborhood,” they assured me. “People left because there is no electricity.” In another home I found a man shaving a friend. They told me there had not been electricity in the area for a year and a half. The Mahdi Army controlled the electrical station in the area, they explained. “People will come back when electricity comes back,” they said. “We’re afraid to go out at night.” The Mahdi Army fired mortars at this area from the nearby Shiite neighborhood of Abu Dshir, people told me, and launched attacks from there, engaging Al Qaeda in firefights in Dora. I asked one man why he had not fled like everybody else. “Where will I go?” he asked me. Many Shiite homes in Dora were burned down, to prevent the owners from ever returning. Poor Sunnis who were expelled from Hurriya and Shaab or other poor Shiite areas had moved into the homes of better-off Shiites who had been expelled from well-to-do Sunni areas such as Dora, Ghazaliya, and Amriya.
Osama ran three hundred Iraqi Security Volunteers but resented the restrictions placed on him by the
