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"Hey Sir, there's fat little dude with a broken arm!" Specialist Parker yelled down from the gunner's turret in the Humvee.
With those words the hunt for the Jaysha Mahdi militia boss in Baghdad's Mahala 885 moved from tips from informants to intelligence databases, to humvees to a foot race.
THE ARENA
East of Camp Victory and Baghdad International Airport, along an arc of dense residential neighborhoods south of Route Irish called West Rasheed, is the Area of Operations for the 1-28 Infantry Battalion of the Army's 1st Infantry Division.
The 1st Battalion of the 28th Infantry Regiment--the Black Lions--is a true surge battalion spooled up in 2006 for deployment in 2007. The Battalion literally did not exist until a few officers were assigned to it and started building it.
The Black Lions crossed the berm in mid March taking an area that had previously been worked by only one Infantry Company--Alpha 1-18 of 1st Infantry Division out of Germany.
If there is a civil war raging in Baghdad, West Rasheed is one of the front lines.
Up until a few weeks ago AQIZ and Sunni militants and JAM and Shia militants would lob mortars at each other and shoot at each other across canals a few evenings a week.
The terror campaign of assasinations, kidnappings and sniping was so bad some Baghdad residents supposedly nicknamed West Rasheed "The Arena."
MAHALA 885
Nearly 2 kilometers south of Route Irish, in the middle of West Rasheed is Mahala 885.
The Mahala system is the traditional way Baghdad was broken down. Each Mahala consists of 20-40 residential blocks and is usually bordered by a major road, canal or other boundary.
Mahala 885 is no different--bordered by major roads on three sides and combined U.S. Military/Iraqi Army outpost on the fourth.
The Shia dominate 885 and have for some time. The last Sunni hold outs fled more than a month ago. The JAM in the area use 885 as a staging ground to perpetrate acts of terror against the Sunnis who live further north and run the Mahala like a continuing criminal enterprise--except no one seems to have won the battle over who will control the garbage routes as trash is heaped up in every vacant lot and corner in 885. Raw sewage and backed up rain water fill some of the streets calf deep. In Baghdad trash and sewage is a weapon used by AQIZ and JAM. Denial of essential services shows that the government has failed and keeps people fearfull, depressed and powerless.
Throughout the Mahala and West Rasheed home-made barriers block many of the roads in and out and even within the neighborhoods.
The roads and two story homes that line them are laid out on a grid. Streets are named and houses are numbered, but no postman delivers the mail.
The tightly compressed brick and stucco homes all have a courtyard and once in the courtyard, many seem like a little paradise un-touched by the rest of the vileness of The Arena.
A patch of grass, flowers, trees, caged birds and shrubbery are all common in the courtyards of homes in the Mahalas. Some homes even have swimming pools.
The insides of the homes are clean and decorated with the kinds of knick-knacks your grandmother has. Every home has a TV, DVD player, stereo, refrigerator, cook stove and satellite dish.
Family photos grace the walls and shelves--images and memories of another time.
Next to the family photos and swap-meet prints of water falls there is usually a poster that looks out of place, displayed prominently, but unwantedly--that is the poster with Al Sadr's face on it.
People who hadn't been to mosque in years now have posters of clerics on their walls.
Kids who didn't even know what they sect they belonged to now commit murders, referred to in military terms as Extra Judicial Killings, and other atrocities on a daily or weekly basis for their sect.
This is The Arena and Mahala 885. This is the home of the Fat Guy and the Three Home Dudes.
EJK
Omar was Sunni and in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which means he was a Sunni anywhere near Mahala 885.
A fat man in a blue shirt and three other men pulled up beside his car.
Pistols came out.
Omar knew what would happen next.
He was shoved into another car and driven to the center of the maze that is Mahala 885.
He was bound and beaten on his head, shoulders and upper back with a piece of rebar.
A pistol was pointed at his head.
The fat man in the blue shirt and three others taunted him and berated him as they asked him what the Army was up to.
Omar's biggest sin was working at the Iraqi Army side of the Joint Security Center. Not only was Omar Sunni, he was working with a Kurdish military unit.
"You will never see your family again. We will kill you and your family," the thugs said.
Omar was just a laborer on the base. But that didn't matter to the thugs. Blood was in the air and these were men who had grown addicted to the kill.
Suddenly the quiet of the Mahala was broken by the distinct roar of diesel engines. Humvees. The Americans were coming.
The thugs thought they might just drive by and barely paused.
Omar waited for the bullet.
THE THREE HOME DUDES
"My driver, PFC Bennet did what we call a slow roll (past the Mercedes) and looked at these three individuals and they refused to look at Bennet," said Lt. Colonel Patrick Frank, Commanding Officer of 1st Battalion 28th Infantry Regiment--The Black Lions.
"Anytime you see that nice of vehicle in a poor neighborhood that makes you suspicious."
Earlier in the morning Staff Sergeant Huling, the Battle Captain, Intel Chief, Ops Chief and all around indispensible man for Alpha Company 1-18 received a tip from one of his informants.
Huling runs nearly a dozen informants and many of the informants have sub-informants.
A new JAM Boss had been appointed for Mahala 885 and the greater Jihad area of West Rasheed. The new boss would be in ethier a dark BMW, a black Crown Royal or a black Mercedes
The informant described the new JAM Boss as a fat guy with a broken arm, gave a partial name, Abdeel, and license plate numbers.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon Huling tracked down information on Abdeel and confirmed with Division Intel that Abdeel was in fact the new Jaysha Mahdi cell leader for Jihad.
"I heard a bit of a transmission on the Battalion Net about three guys and a black Mercedes," Huling said. "I radioed Black Lion 6 to read me the license plate number and it matched what my informant gave me. These guys were the personal security detail for Abdeel."
"When these gentlemen got out and showed us their identification we immediately recognized that two of them had concealed weapons," Frank said.
A search of the men and the car yielded a Glock 9mm like the Iraqi Police carry, a Beretta 9mm similar to what U.S. Soldiers carry, a dozen Iraqi Army tactical vests, other tac vests, cell phones and several license plates.
Lt. Colonel Frank's jump team detained the three men and brought them back to Joint Security Station Black Lion (also known as Outpost Angry Dragon).
The three home dudes were segregated and questioned by interpreters under the direction of Huling and Battalion staff.
After 45 minutes one of the home dudes broke down and started talking.
He confirmed Abdeel's description gave a location and said he wanted to cooperate more.
Lt. Colonel Frank gave him the opportunity--he would ride in a Humvee to house where he said Abdeel was.
FORTUNES OF WAR
"Follow them or go right?" Specialist Wilson, the driver for Captain Robby Johnson, asked.
Johnson thought for a moment looking at his map--"Push Right."
It was the decision that changed the face of the raid to catch Abdeel.
After one of the home dudes began rolling on his boss and buddies, Lt. Colonel Frank stepped into the Alpha 1-18 Tactical Operations Center.
"I want to get this guy while the trail is fresh. I want to be out the gate in 45 minutes," Frank said.
Johnson, a Citadel gradute, had been on the ground in West Rasheed for 9 months and understood the need for immediate action. It wouldn't take long for Abdeel to figure out that some of his home boys had been rolled up and jet on out of Mahala and lay low in another part of Baghdad. In his time commanding Alpha Co. Johnson had seen more than his share of dry holes and was more than willing to put all the pieces together for a pedal to the metal daylight raid into 885.
"When we get into the Mahala, floor it," Johnson said as the patrol moved away from thier outpost.
The humvees bounced down the broken and dusty asphalt roads and splashed through the pools of knee-deep sewage of 885.
As Johnson's Humvee turned toward the target house with the rest of his platoon behind him the raid came to screeching halt--a pool of sewage had eaten away the road bed, reeds were growing in the urban marsh, a humvee would get stuck.
The 1st Sergeant peeled off taking an alternate route, but something Johnson remembered made him decide to take a different course.
"There is a main road in 885 that our informants tell us the JAM members use. If I couldn't take the direct path to the target house, I wanted to take the path they would use to escape."
Wilson wheeled the Humvee around and pushed the accelerator. As Johnson's Humvee pulled around a corner, the Gunner, Parker, yelled down from the turret.
He had spotted a fat guy with a broken arm.
In his commentaries, Julius Caesar often talks about the role of fortune in war. Clauswitz even discussed the role of chance.
In war things are unpredictable and anyone who says their plan will work is a fool because all plans have to change as the enemy reacts--or because the aerial maps were a few months old and didn't show how the sewage pond had eaten away the road bed.
Ceaser would understand that just because the platoon could not move to the target that the plan was not a bust. The plan was not to hit a house but to capture a man and the platoon was briefed accordingly.
Planning gave Parker the information he needed to spot Abdeel, the fat guy with a broken arm. Fortune put him in the right place to spot him--trying to hide behind a white truck.
"Are we running sir?" Private First Class Kloos hollered.
Johnson was already out the door. Kloos and another soldier followed. As the soldiers moved on a house where Abdeel may have fled when Johnson rounded a corner.
Across a vacant lot, Johnson's gunner and driver had their weapons trained on a fat Arab man in a blue shirt. His right arm was in a cast and sling. Abdeel crouched next to the wall of a house professing not to know what was going on.
An instant later a burst of a dozen shots from a Soviet RPK machine gun echoed off the stucco walls.
THE BATTLE FIELD
Captain Johnson's forces were spread out across the cross hatched Mahala.
One element had set the cordon around the target house. Attack Platoon out of Ft. Riley, KS, which was orginally intended to be the entry tream, diverted toward a hasty cordon on Captain Johnson's flank and Delta was in an outer cordon to the west.
Apache attack helicopters were coming on station as was an unmanned ariel vehicle.
As the bullets started flying, Johnson was commanding 5 different elements and in communication with 8.
Johnson's driver returned fire with his M-4 carbine and another soldier opened up on the JAM gunmen with the M-240 mounted on the humvee.
Dozens of incomplete data inputs were coming through the radios. Johnson then had to synthesize the incomplete data, make decisions on the incomplete data, issue instructions and report his actions back to higher HQ. And do it all within the span of 2-3 minutes.
One of the gunmen was hit.
Attack Company started following the blood trail through the Mahala as fire from AK-47s clattered.
And Omar, the Sunni man that was minutes, if not seconds from death came running out of a house--but the soldiers did not know Omar's predicament when he came running out.
Attack stayed on the blood trail, hitting houses and staying in contact with the gunmen.
The 1st Sergeant and his element conintued to hold the cordon on the block around the target house with the 1st Sergeant and his team securing the high ground on top of a building.
Johnson's Black Platoon hit the houses where Abdeel was located and Omar was held.
Delta held the outer cordon and the UAV continued to circle providing a constant audio stream of data that did not match what the other elements were reporting.
The flow of data, the lack of data and the weight of the decisions would crush your average cubicle dwelling corporate manager, but this was just another day at the office for Johnson.
"Because I have been in the Mahala dozens of times I can picture it better in my mind than on a map. Keeping track of the elements is not difficult as long as they update the information."
As Johnson and his team cleared a house a with good view of the flanks, Kloos, Johnson's Radio Operator, and Staff Sgt. Copney took precision small arms fire.
Now there was a sniper added to the mix.
At the Alpha Company and Black Lion Tactical Operations Centers soldiers monitored radios of every unit on the mission.
Blue Force Trackers plotted the location of vehicles via satellite GPS and the UAV provided a video feed of the area around the target house.
The four primary battle elements, despite being only a few hundred of meters apart could not see each other.
The fires of one unit could easily be mistaken for enemy action and result in a Blue on Blue.
A primary role of the TOC Battle Captain is to prevent a Blue on Blue between units.
Field Commanders like Captain Johnson and Squad Leaders also have keep that awareness of the battle field often without the benefit of satellite GPS and a steady stream of UAV video.
The sniper's round whizzed by Kloos and Copney slamming into a steel door on the roof making it sound more like an explosion than a 7.62mm bullet.
The most likely angle of the sniper shot was an almost straight line between Johnson's Platoon and the 1st Sergeant's position.
Any rounds that Johnson's soldiers would have fired at the Sniper would be headed in the direction of friendly forces.
The soldiers scanned the surrounding houses from behind a wall on the landing.
The Gunners in humvees traversed their turrets, their mounted machine guns at the ready for the next shot.
OMAR AND THE FAT GUY
"He started hitting the fat guy, saying 'he tried to kill me,'" Sgt. Edwards said.
Omar came running out of a house with his hands tied into the middle of the gunfire.
Speaking english well, he quickly explained that the Fat Guy and his buddies had kidnapped him, beat him and were about to kill him.
When Edwards put him into the Humvee with Abdeel, Omar began yelling at the Abdeel in Arabic and started hitting him from across the transmission hump.
"He had been beaten pretty bad," said Bohling, a medic with Alpha Company.
Omar was bleeding from his head and hands and lacerations and deep red marks across his upper back.
Abdeel, for his part, continued to play dumb.
After a few more blows to Abdeel and a cessation of gunfire, the soldiers took Omar out of the Humvee and had him sit in an area fairly well covered.
When it came time to roll out a few minutes later, Omar sprinted to Johnson's Humvee--glad to be getting out of Mahala 885.
BLOOD TRAILS
One of the gunmen had been hit with a burst of 7.62mm from one of the M-240 machine guns.
After that burst, the gunmen with the RPK began fleeing through the maze of streets of back alleys.
Attack Platoon continued to follow the trail of blood from one of the gunmen hitting house after house.
Johnson's Black Platoon had finished clearing the houses in the area and was piecing together the details of what happened.
"I was positive that we had our target and the contact that we were receiving was only diversionary," Johnson said of the sporadic gunfire that continued.
Diversionary fire is common in Rasheed. As an American unit closes in on a weapons cache, or target, JAM or AQIZ members will begin pumping hundreds of rounds into the air in an effort to draw them away from an area.
There are some times when the gunfire in the air will go on for nearly a half hour a block away but not one shot is fired at the Americans.
"Attack was losing the blood trail so I made the call to proceed to the target house."
At this point it had been almost 40 minutes since Johnson's Black Platoon had to change course due to an impassable road.
THE DRY HOLE
Johnson's humvee looked like a clown car.
In the back seat was Bohling, Kloos, a documentary filmmaker and Omar. Someone even started mimicking clown music from a circus.
Descriptions of the UAV video feed were being fed to Johnson over the radio, but it was not matching the reality on the ground. The UAV was talking about people congregating, people on roof tops and different houses.
"When I have that many sources of information and they are in conflict I usually choose the one with actual eyes on."
In this case it was the Company 1st Sergeant.
1st Sergeant Hatley had been to the rodeo a few times and in addition to his duties as the top Non Commissioned Officer spends plenty of time leading soldiers in sector.
"When one of the sources is the 1st Sergeant, I'll believe him," Johnson said.
The people congregating were cooking a lamb--common on a Friday. The personnel on the roof were freindly and house identified by the informant who was on the ground was different from what the GPS grid driven UAV reported as the target house.
As the soldiers hit the target house the AK fire started up again.
A team ran up a flight of stairs to the roof taking positions at the corners when the AK fire started again.
"Oh, I see that sh**! I see that sh**!" Kloos said sighting in with the scope on his M-4.
PFC Kloos was confident he spotted a man with an AK, but was not positive.
"I wanted to shoot him, but, I couldn't get PID on whether he had a weapon. I saw an AK, I saw a man, but wasn't sure he was using the weapon," Kloos said later.
After searching the target house and others around it Johnson pulled the plug.
"I had the guy. We weren't developing anything new and any more time spent would have provided deminishing returns."
The soldiers loaded up. With Abdeel and Omar in tow, the only spare seats were in a humvee a few blocks away. With escort from another truck, Copney and this documentary filmmaker walked the route and every truck made it back to JSS Black Lion.
EPILOG
Abdeel was positively identified as the JAM Boss for Jihad and Mahala 885.
His cell phone address book read like a who's who of JAM leaders and shady charachters from Rasheed and the rest of Baghdad.
His cell phone even had several video clips of Al Sadr.
As the night wore on high value targets would call Abdeel's phone and the Black Lions would call people from Abdeel's cell phone.
This is called the cellular battlespace and will be discussed in a following story.
Abdeel, who was once only known as the Fat Guy with a broken arm, is now on his way to Cropper. Omar made a sworn statement against him and even one of Abdeel's own guys is ratting on him.
The Black Lion Battalion Intel Officer is still putting together evidence that will be used to keep Abdeel off the streets forever.
One of the things Alpha 1-18 and the Black Lions do is act immediately. I have seen some units over develop and over plan missions. When a unit takes too long to plan a mission they cede the kinetic momentum.
Hitting a house used to be a Spec Ops style mission but infantry units in Iraq have been hitting so many houses for so long all they need to do is be well briefed on the location and target and sent out to do the work.
A few days later the Black Lions and Alpha 1-18 brought in an EFP cell.
I discussed with Lt. Colonel Frank the aggressive I had seen from his Battalion in going after targets and developing intelligence.
He was candid in saying that his goal is not to beat the refresh rate--there will always be plenty of bad guys willing to work for JAM--but to degrade it and disrupt JAM and AQIZ's operations simultaneously conducting end-state operations like census data collection, public works projects, cleaning up the IP, training the IA and building safe neighborhoods.
The operational pace of the companies of the 1-28 is exhausting. It is like the officers and senior enlisted can hear the clock ticking and want to beat the clock.
Warning: The following video contains a few curse words.
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