that remained fled. Civilian deaths pretty much ceased.”
Other than a couple found dead in their home in August, Amriya did not have any other murders until Christmas Day. IED attacks dropped off completely, as did small-arms fire and indirect-fire attacks. The last IED, a deep buried one that went off on August 6, ended up killing the driver of a Bradley. Within thirty-six hours of the attack, Abul Abed and his men were able to determine that it had been carried out by a cell from an insurgent group that was brought into Amriya for a joint operation. “We had never been able to do this before,” Kuehl said.
Like many I spoke to, Gallagher characterized the initial relationship between the Americans and the Fursan as tenuous; many U.S. soldiers were skeptical of working with men who had been their enemy. “Some of the volunteers had almost certainly been emplacing IEDs against my soldiers just a few months earlier,” he said. But trust was built over time. Gallagher described a turning point for him and his men: “We were conducting a company cordon and search in northeastern Amriya, Mahala 630. We received a report that there was an IED just a few meters from one of our Bradleys on an exterior blocking position. I began to call up EOD [Explosive Ordinance Disposal] to destroy it,” Gallagher recalled. But before anyone could react, one of the new volunteers, a daring young nineteen-year-old named Ali, got out his small pocketknife, walked over to the location, unearthed the IED with his bare hands, and disconnected it. “He came back with a smug look of contentment on his face. To this day, this still strikes me as fairly crazy. Obviously he knew what he was doing, but at the same time it was extremely reckless. Events like this demonstrated that the volunteers were technically competent. It also demonstrated that they were not afraid to risk their lives to defeat AQI and gain our confidence.”
But there were strains and rivalries within Abul Abed’s organization. One of his lieutenants, Abu Sayf, operated mainly in Mahala 634. Gallagher’s team began hearing reports that he was acting far too aggressively. He was alleged to have been stealing people’s belongings, stealing cars, forcing people from their homes. This culminated in a brief power struggle with Abul Abed in September and October. “One day Abu Sayf pulled me aside at his operational post and started making wild accusations against Abul Abed. His underlying implication was clear, that Abul Abed needed to go away and he should be the rightful leader of the volunteer organization. He asked me not to tell anyone about what he had just told me. However I felt I could not keep that a secret from my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kuehl, so I informed him.” The battalion was able to substantiate the rumors that Abu Sayf was corrupt and had been stealing property. His suggestion that he should replace Abul Abed caused him to lose even more credibility. “We rapidly detained him,” Gallagher said, “and Abul Abed kicked him out of his organization.” Some of Abu Sayf’s comrades, led principally by his brother, threatened to quit if he was not released. The brother was subsequently expelled from the organization.
KUEHL BELIEVED THAT Abul Abed was controversial because he was a charismatic leader who inspired others. “He had kind of a Robin Hood reputation within the populace and became quite popular in a short period of time. I think his rise in popularity was seen as a political threat both by the government and by the Iraqi Islamic Party. Overall he did pretty well with the press. Part of the controversy is his shadowy past. I know he was in the Iraqi army before the war—still not sure what rank, either major or captain. He claims to have been a sniper during Desert Storm. I believe he was in intelligence. His family lived in Baghdad and owned some bakeries. The biggest thing that concerned me about his behavior was his volatile temper and his violent tendencies. He used to beat his subordinates when they crossed him.”
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In late July 2007 a captain serving under Kuehl wrote to his father, reporting that within two months the Fursan had virtually eliminated Al Qaeda from Amriya—an area, as the captain observed, that had been declared “the capital of the Islamic State of Iraq” two months earlier. “These guys are from the neighborhoods, they know the people, and they are primarily concerned with making their neighborhoods safe again,” the captain wrote. “They conduct joint operations with us and the Iraqi Army. Unlike the IA, these guys are actually a pleasure to work with. Most of them are ex-military from the Saddam era and several are former captains, majors, or lieutenants. They have discipline and know how to plan and execute a mission. The month before the movement started, we lost fourteen American soldiers in Amriya. In the two months that the movement has been going, we have lost zero American soldiers in Amriya.”
The captain noted that people all the way up the chain of command had visited to see the project. Everyone realized the strategic importance of the Fursan, even the Maliki government, which was wary of the Sunni militias. But when Fursan members were seriously injured, their options were limited: “They are paying a heavy burden for their relentless pursuit of AQIZ,” the captain said, using a common acronym for Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq. “We can only treat them at U.S. facilities if they are in danger of losing life, limb, or eyesight. Otherwise, they must be treated at an Iraqi facility. This works just fine for the ISF, which are predominantly Shia. The Ministry of Health is dominated by the Sadrists. I have personally been in the three hospitals that these guys would be treated at and all have pictures of Muqtada al-Sadr hanging on the walls. If I send my Freedom Fighters to these hospitals, they will not last a day. Obviously, my only option to maintain the fighting force is to get these guys seen by Americans. To this point, we’ve been unable to provide these guys much in the way of legitimacy, money, or weapons, but we have been able to care for them. They are doing the work that we could not do and they are paying the price for it. Knowing that they will be properly treated if they get injured is an incredible morale boost for them, not unlike any warrior. I can’t emphasize enough how this whole endeavor could go either way at this point. In three years of doing this, this is the first endeavor that’s actually given me hope.”
According to a major who served under Kuehl, “An unsung hero of this entire time period was the commander of the combat support hospital in Baghdad. More than anyone else he kept our sometimes tenuous relationship with the SOI on good standing, simply by admitting their casualties to his facility and treating them. The rules on this were somewhat in the gray area, and lesser men or those who did not see the strategic situation would have been justified refusing care and turning them away. I had one such conversation with a doctor on Camp Liberty who was discussing the practical reasons for not treating them, that they wouldn’t have enough beds for the American casualties. I told him that if he wanted to quit treating American casualties altogether, all he had to do was to treat these SOIs when they were injured.”
From August 7, 2007, until Kuehl’s battalion departed in January 2008, there were no serious attacks in Amriya. In the second half of 2007, the murder and kidnapping rate dropped from at least thirty a month to four. By the time Kuehl left, two hundred shops had reopened. Kuehl does not credit the surge itself for the reduction in violence, nor does he think that violence dropped because the battalion paid off a Sunni militia. But the increase in troops let him defeat Al Qaeda in his area and halt the Mahdi Army advance into north-west Baghdad. The joint security stations and combat outposts that Kuehl set up in neighborhoods, increased foot patrols, improved understanding of the communities his men patrolled, construction of concrete barriers, as well as improved cooperation with the Iraqi Security Forces were all factors that helped reduce the violence, Kuehl believes.
In September the captain wrote once again, reflecting on the contribution played by Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha of the Anbar Awakening and Abul Abed, his Baghdad counterpart. He noted that both were charismatic leaders, uncompromising in their beliefs and corresponding actions—the types who start movements, excite people, and bring them together. But he cautioned: “They burn bright and they burn fast.” Up until the end of July, he noted, if they had lost Abul Abed, the movement in Baghdad would have died. “If he’d died before that point, I believe that many of his men would have gone out to Anbar and fought with their brothers there, while the locals would have gone back to what they were doing before . . . attacking the Iraqi Army, and us occasionally, and trying to figure out a way to feed themselves and their families.” But once Amriya was rid of Al Qaeda and the Awakening was legitimized, Abul Abed’s role seemed, paradoxically, less vital. “At this point, the show will go on with or without him.” The traits that the captain identified in Abul Abed were central to his success and what made him “such a joy to work with”: the honorable warrior, his charisma, the passion and principle that “rubbed off on his men . . . don’t necessarily lend themselves to usefulness in the current environment.” The same could have been said for Sattar Abu Risha, whose death, the captain suggested, was a “blessing in disguise, as now there’s a martyr for the
