On June 11, 2010 a suicide carbomb struck a dismounted platoon of American soldiers conducting a combined patrol with police and other local security forces in a neighborhood of Jalula. The platoon was from 5-20 IN and had been attached to 1-14 CAV in order to provide the squadron with more manpower to conduct missions/patrols while still manning our 5 combined checkpoints meant to ease Arab/Kurd tensions. Two soldiers were killed and multiple others wounded in the worst attack against U.S. forces in the area in well over a year. The attack was the third suicide carbombing in 4 days targeting Americans in Diyala Province.
I took the attack as a personal insult as the intelligence officer for the squadron. Throughout the entire deployment fingers had been pointed at our area by Iraqi officials and senior American military officers as to where carbombs were coming from that struck in Baghdad and Baqubah. I constantly defended the area and pointed out that there was no evidence that carbombs were either being made in N.E. Diyala or being transported through the area. Only two carbombs had gone off previous to the 11 June attack in the region and I argued that there was no reporting or indication of a carbomb factory in our battlespace and the few carbombs that were being made were being used against targets locally. I had both the Squadron commander and the Brigade intelligence officer on my side.
By late June/early July my section and I had pieced together the puzzle of who was responsible and the timeline of events. Most of our usual suspects were the ones involved and had likely temporarily left the area in order to avoid being captured after the attack. There was one individual, however, who we knew to still be in the area, including the exact house he lived in. We believed he was the "Godfather" of AQI in the area and had a hand in, or at least knowledge of, most of the attacks that were conducted by the organization. His capture would at the very least send a message that no one was untouchable, at best he could provide a lot of good intelligence on AQI. The one problem? No warrant.
Late one night I had this discussion with the Division targeting NCO. He was questioning why we weren't actioning this guy if we knew exactly where he was. I of course mentioned the lack of a legal means of keeping him detained longer than 48 hours. The next afternoon Division sent me a warrant for the target. My anger that Division had a warrant for this guy when we didn't have it was tempered by my joy of now having the crucial piece of beauracratic lunacy to detain and hold this guy.
Unfortunately it was late...about 6pm at this time. I called the acting C troop commander (the commander having been relieved early in June and his replacement hadn't shown up yet) and we did a quick wargame of the situation. He said that it would be possible to get an Iraqi force together and we could use the Kurdish Peshmerga platoon we kept on Cobra for just such instances. However, by the time all the cats were herded, a plan was developed, and we got to the target location it would likely be around midnight or 2 am and the target would likely have gotten word we were coming. If we delayed and conducted the mission the next night there was still a substantial risk that the operation would be compromised and the target would flee.
We both decided to pass the target off to the task force whose sole purpose was to detain Sunni AQI targets quickly and on short notice if needed. After consulting the operations officer and letting him know my and Crazyhorse 6's plan I rang up the Brigade targeting officer (the S3 didn't really seem to care at all about the situation, after a brief "why isn't C troop going after the guy" he was pretty reserved about the whole thing). Brigade called the task force who determined that if the target was still in the same area that night then they would go after him the next night.
All worked according to plan and looking back it was a great coordination between troop, squadron, brigade, division, an outside task force, and ISR assets. The target was captured and while he didn't give up any information within a couple of weeks of his capture we were getting reports that other key AQI leaders in the area were attempting to flee.
There was just one turd in the punch bowl. While all fingers were pointing at this individual as well as the AQI network in the area, Kurdish intelligence in Khanaqin was pointing at Ansar al Sunna. The Khanaqin CID appeared so convinced that even the A troop commander was believing what they had to say. To top it off, Kurdish security in the Qara Tapa area began pointing to AAS (likely because they talked to Khanaqin) which got the B troop commander telling me it might be AAS. The problem was that AAS had desintegrated around 2007 and was no longer a threat. We had a few reports of them in the area but I had always chalked it up to misinformation on the part of AQI or JRTN. Was my assessment of this attack, and potentially the entire area, incorrect?
I tend to think I wasn't that blind to what was going on. C troop still maintained that AQI was behind the attack as was the Iraqi Army. AQI/ISI would later even claim credit for the three carbombs (the others being in Muqdadiyah and Khalis). The Kurds were doing a surge of information operations at the time to discredit the Iraqi security forces in the area and the reports that AAS was responsible included accusations against key Iraqi leaders who the Kurds blamed were either complicit in the attacks or actively took part. Sorry if I have my doubts. I also find it extremely unlikely that AAS would be able to coordinate three carbomb attacks in three completely different areas of Diyala in which they have little to no influence without anyone picking up on it.
One last tidbit from this whole situation. There may have been some involvement in the attack from our friendly intelligence agency/special forces organization to the east. In a note dated 24 June in my notebook..."I hate proxy wars".
*Note: I know I mentioned last blog about writing about our relationship with SOF organizations but I decided that would likely get me in real trouble despite being in limbo between units right now. All I'll say is this...Rangers are egotistical fucks who steal all your toilet paper and the Green Berets can't handle any criticism at all, pansies.
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