Angry Planet - American Troops Navigate Complicated Political Realities in Iraq

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

This week, producer Kevin Knodell walks us through his recent reporting in Iraq.https://coffeeordie.com/american-troops-iraq/You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Nobody got hurt during that attack, but they launched a fair amount of rockets. And the question was, are they really bad at aiming? Or are they doing this just to send a message? Is this some sort of show?

Were we saved by incompetence? or were we saved by the fact that they didn't actually want to kill us? You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Oh, yeah, so nothing's been going on in Iraq lately. No, nothing at all. Hello and welcome to War College. This is Matthew Galt, your host.

I'm on with producer Kevin Nodell, who just returned from Iraq in, was it mid-December? About. about. And how long were you there? Just about, just about a month. Okay. And you saw some of the lead-up to, we've been gone so long. I don't even know where to start because so much has happened in kind of the two months. We've been watching and we've been talking to people, but we haven't really discussed it on the show. I'm sure the audience is, is at least, you know, passingly familiar with what's been going on. But one thing I do think is interesting about kind of world events is that Iran and America are, trying to even think of what to call it, are having a conflict in Iraq. And we're not really getting the perspective of the people on the ground a lot in the news.

Would you say that's fair? I'd say that's pretty fair. So what was your month like there? What did you see? Who did you talk to? You know, what soldiers did you visit that kind of thing? Well, I was only embedded for two weeks. But, I mean, that's actually a fair amount of time to be on some of those bases when life moves kind of slowly. Yeah, it was embedded for about two weeks, including at Q West, Cairo West, base kind of south of Mosul.

I arrived there just a few days after they had been hit with. rockets by a Khatib Hezbollah. All right. Now, who is Khatib Hezbollah? Like, who are they affiliated with? What are they want? That is, there's a few different answers to that question because it's kind of a complicated issue.

Ketib Hezbollah is a Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militant group that was founded in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq. was very active against coalition forces, was infamous for using the EFPs, very deadly form of IED, killed a bunch of U.S. soldiers. But more recently, they've been functioning as the 45th brigade of the popular mobilization forces, which is a collection of militias that were raised in 2014 to fight against ISIS. with the permission of the Iraqi government. And over the summer, officially became part of the Iraqi security forces. Okay, so back up, my first question is,

what distinguish an EFP from an IED for me? Well, I don't really have the specific expertise to really do that. I'm not a bomb guy. But the basic thing, the thing that made them particularly dangerous is while a lot of IEDs were the ones that, were just made in somebody's garage and could do a little bit of damage to a vehicle, maybe scare some people or do some damage to a marketplace. These things penetrated armor.

These things got through the up-armored Humvees, the MRAPs, the MRAPs, the various vehicles that U.S. troops were using, and went through the armor and killed the people inside. I feel like there's this perception here from the media and from certainly my first friends and people I've talked to that it feels like the killing of Soleimani and the storming of the embassy and all this stuff happened very quickly

that it came out of nowhere that nobody saw it coming you were there into the run-up to all of this and that's not quite true, right? Well, I would say that all of that did in fact happen very quickly but there was definitely

there was definitely a bunch of events leading up to that that maybe weren't getting the attention that they needed. American bases were getting rocketed and mortared on a pretty regular basis. There's also, I think, some context that these tensions go back all the way back to this summer. And what happened in the summer? Well, during the summer, interestingly, actually during my last trip, There were a series of mysterious explosions at various sites operated by the popular mobilization forces, specifically some Ketheb Hezbollah sites, around Amirley and near Baghdad. And eventually what kind of came out and what we now understand to have happened is that some Israeli drones went in and hit some Katab Hezbollah targets.

in August when we started kind of figuring out that that's what it happened, the militants kind of said they put out an announcement saying that they hold America responsible for that and that they intended to strike back at American forces and retaliation by using rockets. That's specifically what they said that they were going to do as far back as August. So in a lot of ways, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. All right. So what was the, you embedded with U.S. forces? Correct. All right. So what was the mood among the U.S. forces there?

And, you know, what was there, what's the job as they see it right now? Well, in terms of how they see it right now, I think there's a lot of, a lot of discussion about what that actually is and trying to figure out what things look like now. but I can talk about what it was like then. I think I showed up at a very interesting time. I would say that morale was pretty high when I was in Mosul. It was relatively high in Q West when I was there. I think people were pretty, people were sort of relaxed, but it was also becoming a raising concern that these attacks seemed to be escalation.

There was a nervousness about what exactly was happening, particularly because, and this was something that I had difficulty talking them about, particularly a lot of the officers got nervous and discussing what exactly was happening, and that they were getting mortared and rocketed by members of the PMF, which are ostensibly their allies in the fight against ISIS. they are a part of the Iraqi government. And that was something that they were very nervous about and unsure what they were supposed to do in response to that. And while you were there, did you see any, was there any word from the Iraqi government? Did they say anything? You know, was there a sense that they were in control of any of this? Because it seems like it's three steps, the people that are rocketing U.S. forces are three steps removed from the Iraqi. government. Well, that in and of itself becomes confusing again because they were,

Ketip Isbla is the 45th Brigade of the popular mobilization forces. So these were members of the Iraqi government. However, an important thing to note is as they were shooting at U.S. troops at these bases, U.S. troops don't really have bases in Iraq. And American troops don't leave the wire without checking in with the Iraqis as they leave because they are living in compounds inside what are actually essentially Iraqi bases, though some of them used to be U.S. bases during Operation Iraqi Freedom. So anytime that these militias were shooting at these bases, they were actually shooting at Iraqi bases with lots of Iraqi soldiers and military personnel on them.

You know, let's zoom out just a little bit if we can, because I think this will be a good. So I think there's also some confusion here about what exactly the U.S. presence looks like. I know it's changed, you know, in the past month. But what exactly is the U.S. presence in Iraq? Because I think most people just assume that we built these bases there. And, you know, like John McCain said, we're going to be there forever. And we're basically, we're essentially an occupying force. What exactly does it look like? it's a real interesting operation out there right now. I think there's a lot of rhetorical stuff that gets thrown around, but I think it really is important to understand that Operation Inherent Resolve is not the same thing as Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It's a lot less U.S. troops, and they also do have considerably less freedom of movement. As I kind of mentioned before, any time that U.S. troops do leave their bases, they have to leave with either Iraqi police or military. They need to have approval from Iraqi authorities, and they need to have a pretty good idea of where they're going and why, at least with the conventional troops. I don't know if the arrangement is considerably different with special operations forces. I saw special operations force as well as I was there, but I didn't really interact with them. Didn't ask them too many questions because I wasn't going to get any answers due the nature of their work and what they were doing. Though I know that they typically work in conjunction with Iraqi Special Operations troops as well. mostly the mission is to support Iraqi troops in the fight against ISIS.

And specifically, their mandate is to go after ISIS. While I was there, there's been talk about countering Iranian influence. And I think in Syria, things maybe are a little bit different. But in Iraq, anytime I talk them about the Iranians, the answer was sort of, what about the Iranians? That's not what our mission is here. like their mission is to fight ISIS. What's what kind of Islamic State Presences left? Well, hard to say.

And I think we're going to probably talk considerably more about that in a future episode. Because a lot of the Islamic State presence in talking about that has to do with Syria and recent events out there as well. but we do know that there is still a not insignificant ISIS presence operating in Iraq. They've kind of taken advantage, actually, of things like what just recently happened, of tensions in between the various factions in the country, like tensions between the Peshmerga and the PMF in the north. ISIS has been operating in areas in between their lines and regrouping in that way. It's definitely much more of a traditional insurgency again than the kind of hybrid conventional threat that they had before.

They don't have any more tanks. They don't have much heavy artillery. But they still produce bombs and they still have the potential to hurt a lot of people. All right. We're going to pause here for a break. You are listening to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. We're on with producer Kevin O'Dell, who just returned from a trip to Iraq.

All right. You are listening to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. We're on with Kevin Nodell, who just got back from Iraq and is also the producer of our wonderful program. Kevin, so can you explain kind of the complicated relationship between Iran and the Iraqi security forces and how it's affecting the troops that you were embedded with? Yeah. So one thing, and there's a lot of, there's a lot. lot to say about the history of this, but I would direct people toward the U.S. Army's official history of the Iraq War kind of lays out how involved Iran got in the country in the aftermath of the American invasion. has Iran has been heavily involved in Iraq since the American invasion. The American Army's own official history of the Iraq war essentially concluded that the biggest winner of the Iraq war was Iran, in fact, in the level of influence that they were able to secure within the country. Iranian officials, particularly the late General Kassam Soleimani, had deaties to the Iraqi security forces. Iran sent a fair amount of advisors and expertise to the country when they were fighting against ISIS.

And Iran has also played a very strong role in the developments. and deployment of the popular mobilization forces. Okay. Now, what did the soldiers think about all this? What was their perspective? And was there a difference, talking about American soldiers specifically? And was there a difference between the officers and, you know, the boots on the ground, so to speak? Well, there's always a difference between the officers and the enlisted.

You know what? I want to call them troops, but I'm stopping myself now because of the John McCorder essay. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. I don't. McCorder was wrong. Hopefully we can have him on the program to talk about that sometime. But I think, certainly, I think officers were much more delicate in talking about this issue for a lot of reasons. it was something that was making everybody, I think, very uncomfortable as the tensions were starting to escalate.

Because the Americans were actually during that time, which after everything that's happened now, it seems strange to say, the Americans were trying very hard to not be aggressive with these militias, with these Iranian back groups. we're doing a lot to try to avoid them, trying to avoid confrontation, trying to let them go where they were going to go. And emphasizing over and over again, these guys are not the enemy. Our mission is to fight ISIS. These people are on the same side as us, though they would occasionally kind of couch that and say, you know, some of these groups have a little bit of work to do. Some of them aren't necessarily reliable partners, but they kept emphasizing over and over again.

They're not the enemy. We're not here to fight them. That's not our goal. The enlisted guys knew that as well, but it was something that, for one, the people who were getting rocketed, that definitely didn't seem like they were reliable partners. I also talked to some guys, both some junior officers and enlisted guys who spent a little bit of time outside the wire who occasionally did interact with these guys and told me about how they kind of go by checkpoints and these guys would flip them off or make kind of threatening gestures. It never escalated into a firefight. At no point have they been shooting at each other in that sort of way. but it got tense

before one operation that we went out on down at QS and this was shortly after the base got mortared they gave the briefing and they talked about what to do if they run into ISIS and all of that but one of the soldiers kind of asked

what was on everybody's mind was well okay but what happens we run into these guys what are we supposed to do and they were kind of told you know the same sort of thing you know they're not the enemy. That's not who we're here to fight. But I mean, they, they did talk real with them. There was an interesting interaction between the platoon sergeant and the soldier. He said,

you know, they're not the enemy. And he kind of sarcastically said they're a noncompliant actor, which I think was a really interesting way of describing that. That's a beautiful euphematic. Yeah. Yeah. But their company commander went on. to kind of say, you know, these guys might try to beat you into a fight. They may try to make you feel threatened and like be vigilant, but don't overreact. Don't get drawn into a fight and told them specifically there some of these guys probably want that to happen. Iran has, is conducting information warfare and a lot of them would probably like an incident

and seemed to be really baiting U.S. forces. Throughout all of this, yeah, they were getting shot at. They occasionally did some shooting back. I know that when Q.S. got hit, it was an artillery base, and they fired back with artillery. They were a little bit vague to me about whether or not they actually hit anybody or whether they were just using the artillery. They mostly said that the artillery was just a show of force.

And if they did kill anybody, they didn't find any bodies. And none of the militias announced that the Americans had killed any of their people in response for the rocket attacks, at least then. You make it sound in context as if the storming of the embassy and everything that came after it was part of a natural progression. Obviously, you know, president of the United States ordered a strike that nobody expected. But other than that, we should have seen this coming or something like this, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't see how it was going to not have. I mean, ultimately, the strikes against Katip Hasla happened only after they conducted a strike that killed an American contractor, in a rocky-born Arab linguist and wounded several American soldiers.

These rocket attacks were also escalating in terms of they were starting to use more powerful rockets, longer range rockets, and that rocket attack used 30 plus rockets. And at some point when that keeps happening, someone's going to get hurt or killed. And as the American troops are at there sitting, watching this, the minute they started getting hurt and killed, that's the minute where you. something is going to happen in response, whether anybody likes it or not. Is there this sense to all of this? This would be a weird question, but I'm going to ask it, as it's kind of a thread that I've been picking at in my brain and maybe in the show over the past few years.

Is there a sense to any of this that some of it is theater? Did you get that sense when you were out there? Does that question make sense? Like I'm thinking about kind of the way Robert Young-Pelton explained, Bia to us, and I'm thinking about the Iranian retaliation after the Soleimani killing, felt like a show of force that wasn't meant to harm anybody. Yeah. There wasn't, and that was actually a question that was actually on a lot of people's minds,

like particularly when we were at Q West, because the rocket attack that was launched against that base, without getting into specifics, was a fairly sufficient. sophisticated one. And there were some questions among people there, kind of talking amongst themselves. And even when I asked them, like, you know, nobody got hurt during that attack, but they launched a fair amount of rockets. And the question was, are they really bad at aiming? Or are they doing this just to send a message?

Is this some sort of show? were we saved by incompetence or were we saved by the fact that they didn't actually want to kill us? War seems very odd right now, Kevin, just in general. Yeah, I'll say one thing, though, that I think it's a little bit different than from what Robert was talking about in Libya. because one of the things he talked about is how the two sides in that case were people who often knew each other and didn't actually hate each other. That's not the case here. Kedip Hezbollah really does hate America. All right.

So I assume you're writing about the things that you saw there and what you experienced. Where can people read more in-depth versions of the stories you're telling here? Yeah. Most of the stories are being published at Coffee. or die magazine, publication run by friend of the show, Marty Scoveland, Jr. We published one story about the rocket attacks and the escalation therein. That was published actually the day that we struck at, that we started striking back at Ketipisbala. And there should be another episode, sorry, article dropping soon about U.S.

and Mosul. Kevin O'Dell, thank you so much for coming on to your show and telling us all about what you saw in Iraq.

Thanks. That's it for this week War College. Listeners, I am your host, Matthew Galt. As always, War College is me

and producer Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, please follow us on Twitter at War underscore College.

I'm going to sit on that Metal Your Solid 2 episode just a little bit longer. And we'll be back next week with a perspective of what's going on in Iraq from a point of view that I feel is getting lost, that of the Iraqis. Stay safe until then.