“Muhamm…you were in the battle of Fish Lake?” The campaign known as Operation Karbala-5, the operation to try to take the Iraqi port city of Basrah which began in January of 1987, was one of the bloodiest in the Iran-Iraq War — over sixty-five thousand Iranians, mostly Basij volunteers, were slaughtered in six weeks of intense fighting and artillery and rocket battles. The worst battle of Karbala-5 was known as Fish Lake, referring to the artificial river over thirty kilometers long and two kilometers wide which the Iraqis had constructed to keep Iranian forces from sweeping into Baghdad. The Iranians outnumbered the Iraqis ten to one. Most of the Iranian fighters were conscripts and Basij volunteers like this old man — ordinary citizens who had received little or no military training. Fish Lake was protected by mine fields, barbed wire, trenches, and interlocking fields of machine gun and artillery fire — some even thought that Saddam had electrified the water itself.
When artillery barrages failed to break down the defenses around Fish Lake, the Pasdaran decided to send in the Basij. Over a quarter-million men, women, and children were marched forward against Fish Lake’s defenses with little more than a rifle and one clip of ammunition, and the Iraqis ruthlessly cut them down. The casualties were so staggeringly high that it was believed that the sheer mass of corpses in Fish Lake would allow the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to simply walk across without getting their feet wet.
The Battle of Fish Lake was still re-enacted every year in Iran and the participants celebrated as heroes, but the foreman could never understand what could drive a man to march against machine guns, artillery, and barbed- wire fences like that. “Yes, sir, and I fought proudly and may I say, sir, like a lion,” the old man said. “I firmly believe that the apostate Saddam was assisted by the Americans and the Zionists to destroy the Islamic republic, and it was completely necessary to send in the citizens of Iran en masse to win a great victory.” In fact, Operation Karbala-5 was a tremendous failure — Iran withdrew from Iraq and sued for peace just a few months later. “So you may place your complete trust in me and call upon me any time for any purpose whatsoever, sir.”
“I see that some of the men follow you,” the foreman said. “Are you their leader?”
“I suppose I am, sir,” the old man said, “since I appear to be the senior officer of this particular group of proud and able veterans, but I assure you, sir, that I had no intention of taking command or control of these men from yourself, sir.”
“Of course not — I assumed you all might be veterans or served together, and it is quite natural for old ties to hold,” the foreman said. He winced at the word “able” to describe them — none of them looked capable of carrying anything heavier than a hammer. “You can be a great help to me by organizing your men into three groups for the three sections of wall where we must install the cables, then further dividing them into threes for each segment of the wall. Do you understand?”
The old man looked as if the foreman had just told him that he was about to meet his seventy virgins promised to him in Heaven. “Why, I…I am honored, sir!” the old man squealed. “I will do as you wish immediately, sir! To whom should the details report when they are formed, sir?” The foreman pointed out the team chiefs, who were supervising as large spools of cable were being unloaded and brought to the site, and the old man hobbled off on battered thin legs, croaking orders in a battle- and cigarette-scarred voice. The others, some in even worse shape than he, at first did not appear to believe that the old man was their new supervisor, but after pointing and gesturing at the foreman and snapping orders, he quickly made the others get in a ragged line and started splitting them up.
To the foreman’s surprise, the three little details of old and battered-looking men were in a rough but presentable formation in short order, and the old man had them marching off to report to their team leaders. They then began hauling the big spools of wiring and cables into the headquarters building. Not bad, the foreman thought. They looked like they might work out well after all. He might even consider hiring the old guy for…
“Excuse me, sir.” The foreman jumped. The old man was beside him, standing almost at attention on unsteady legs.
“What is it?” the foreman asked impatiently. God, he thought, the old man moved like a cat despite his rickety appearance.
“There appears to be a problem with the detail’s security clearance. The guards are not allowing the men to enter the security center of the building without your authorization.”
“They have all been properly cleared,” the foreman groused. “Are you all wearing your new badges? I’ll straighten this out.” The foreman strode into the temporary doorway to the headquarters building. Even though the security center was the most secretive room being rebuilt, sometimes the guards got a little too…
…and then the foreman realized that the old man was right beside him, matching his gait step for step. At first he didn’t think anything of it…until he wondered how the old man knew that they were working on the new security center? The guards would not have told him which room they were working in — they just would have prohibited them from going inside. And why was the old man walking right behind him like…?
Suddenly the foreman was pushed inside the room, and his site radio was taken away from him. “What is going on h—?” He was pushed against several men sitting on the floor, gagged, their hands and feet secured — and only then did he realize that they were the building’s Pasdaran security guards. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“Beefing up your construction jihad,” the old man, Orum, said. His entire demeanor had completely changed — he didn’t appear to be disabled or confused at all, and neither did any of the jihadis in the room. “Believe me, the repairs to the outer wall will go a lot faster now.”
“Who are you?” the foreman asked. Orum ignored the question, but the foreman soon realized who it was: he was all the Pasdaran soldiers could talk about. “General Buzhazi?
“I suggest you make that the last comment about my future you say aloud if you like to keep your tongue attached to your throat, friend,” General Hesarak al-Kan Buzhazi said. “I need you to round up as many trucks as possible and have them driven over to the Pasdaran supply warehouses near the flight line. My men will be waiting to load them up.”
“I can’t cooperate with you — I’ll be executed the minute they find out…”
“Cooperate with me and at least you’ll have a chance to live,” Buzhazi said. “If you help us, I promise you won’t be harmed by my men or myself. Otherwise I’ll kill you and find another way to get supplies without starting a firefight.”
“I’m just a simple worker doing my job. I have no argument with you…”
“Your owners picked the wrong time to contract out to the Pasdaran, friend — like it or not, you have an argument with me,” Buzhazi said. “At least now you have a chance to do something for the right side for a change. What do you say?” The foreman had no choice but to comply, and he got on the phone and ordered trucks moved to the warehouses. “Next, I want you to cut power, natural gas, and communications to the entire base when I give you the word. You can tell the Pasdaran battalion duty officers that workers accidentally cut the lines and everything will be restored right away, and no you don’t need any assistance.”
“Their backup generators will automatically kick on…”
“Most of the backup generators run on natural gas, so if you cut off the gas the generators won’t stay on,” Buzhazi said. “For the generators that run on their own diesel supplies, it’ll take several minutes for their surveillance equipment to reboot, and by then we’ll be set up and waiting for their response.
“Finally, you will move every piece of heavy equipment you have to locations General Zhoram will direct — most on the perimeter, but a few in some key intersections and battalion entrances. Once they’re in place, have the drivers cut the battery cables to disable them. After that’s done, you and your men can get out.”
Brigadier-General Kamal Zhoram, the former Pasdaran rocket brigade commander who escaped from prison at the same time as Buzhazi, gave the foreman back his portable radio and directed him on exactly what to say and where to move his heavy equipment, then found Buzhazi watching the deployment of his men on the perimeter wall. The contractors were nowhere to be seen; some of his men were now dressed like the contractors, ordering Buzhazi’s soldiers into key defensive positions on the wall but making them appear as if they were still working. “Fifteen minutes and we should be ready to cut power, sir,” Zhoram reported. “The trucks are in position and ready to assault the warehouses.”
“Very well, Kamal. Get them moving, and make sure they work fast.”
“Yes, sir.” Zhoram issued the orders, and almost five hundred men began opening up Pasdaran supply warehouses and loading up stolen vehicles with ammunition, food, and other supplies. “No opposition yet,” Zhoram said a few minutes later, “but this was a very risky move, sir, assaulting the headquarters of the Pasdaran in broad daylight.”
