My Share of the Task(111)

                But also, by all accounts, the Albu Mahal’s was a reaction to the tyranny and barbarism that ran amok when AQI governed anything bigger than a city block. Al Qaeda degraded the tribal structures and overtook smuggling and other criminal sources of wealth. It forced intermarriages between its foreign men and Iraqi girls. Reports from the mini emirates AQI established, like the one in Baqubah north of Baghdad, reported that they punished grocers who kept tomatoes alongside cucumbers in the same stall—as the vegetables’ shape suggested male and female body parts commingling. Sunnis throughout Anbar were having similar reactions to Al Qaeda’s mix of the infantile and the sadistic. Al Qaeda shifted in the eyes of many Sunnis from protectors to parasites. As it did, many Sunnis realized that they had made a nasty Faustian bargain by accepting the jihadists. If they resisted, Al Qaeda brutally forced them into submission.

                So it was in Al Qaim: The defiant Albu Mahal uprising was quickly snuffed out. A week after I left Al Qaim, Al Qaeda pushed into the town center up the road from the phosphate plant. Its men openly patrolled the streets, where they promptly executed nine members of the Albu Mahal-led resistance. They hung Zarqawi’s black flags from buildings and, at the city’s edge, brazenly announced their coup: “Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Al Qaim.”

                Although the Mahal failed, other tribal leaders took note as they and their people squirmed in the grip of AQI. These onlookers saw that resistance to Al Qaeda was possible, but highly dangerous. Such resistance needed the full, coordinated backing of the Americans—something the Albu Mahal complained they lacked. Moreover, throughout Anbar that summer and fall, tribal leaders saw that when Americans showed up to a place in full force, when they surged, they defeated Al Qaeda. John Christian spent much of the summer out west. He would later play a critical role in helping the Coalition capitalize on the promising dynamics that flashed in Al Qaim and would soon spread wider.


* * *

                Any payoff from our push was, however, many hard weeks of fighting away when I left Al Qaim that evening of August 28. On the long nighttime helicopter ride back to Balad, with the gray desert rolling beneath, I thought about the team I had just seen and the previous two years. I thought about where I stood with my force. I wasn’t a full member of their small subtribe out in Al Qaim, which had grown even tighter through its toil and losses along the border. But I was more than a mere visitor to their camp.

                Back in Balad, I walked from the tarmac across the gravel buffer, silver under the glow of the spotlights, to my office to write another e-mail to Annie. “Just got back from a long helicopter flight to see the guys farthest out, who lost so many recently. Great trip and I am very happy I did it,” I wrote to her. “Some very genuine comments afterwards about how much they appreciate me doing that regularly like I’ve been able to do.” Upon reflection, the note was more upbeat than I felt. But it showed my resolve—and that of my men.

                By now the force knew I had been forward for almost two years and had extended for a third. I was fiercely proud to be associated with the people in TF 714, and leading them had become inseparable from how I thought of myself.

                I had told the men that day what I believed and what had come to be my life: It’s the fight. It’s the fight. It’s the fight.





| CHAPTER 12 |

                The Hunt

                June 2005–May 2006



“Good morning,” the president said in a brisk but friendly manner as he took his seat at the head of the conference table.

                On June 29, 2005, the White House Situation Room felt miniature. The principals’ black leather chairs, with high backs and deep seats, felt outsize, and it was difficult to move around due to the tight quarters. The walls’ lacquered wood paneling shined plastic-like under the fluorescent glow. They were undecorated except for a Frisbee-size presidential seal, hung at eye level directly behind the president’s chair, and a digital clock with red LED numbers that clicked away near the ceiling.