My Share of the Task(162)

                “And seventeen is just wrapping up an op,” he added, referring to TF 17.

                “Long one, huh?” Chris asked, concerned. Something didn’t seem right. We tried to avoid operating in daylight, when more civilians and traffic were out.

                “Yeah, in Sadr City. No friendlies lost, but they think more than fifty fighters were killed,” the ops officer said.

                Chris stared at him, stunned. “Wait. You’re saying we just killed fifty people in Sadr City? In daylight?”

                The operations officer nodded. Chris asked whether I had been notified. No, the operations officer said, looking quizzically back at Chris, “no friendly casualties.”

                Chris took off for the gym and caught me as I was walking along the hot gravel back to my hooch. He told me quickly about the operation: a big gunfight in Sadr City, went into daytime, maybe fifty killed. I went straight to the SAR to get a better understanding of the situation.

                As I sat in my gym shorts and shirt, the staff gathered as many details of the firefight as possible. For nearly three months, there had been a cease-fire in effect between Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Iraqi government and Coalition. As in this case, our only raids into Sadr City were against the Special Groups that shunned Sadr’s agreement with the Maliki government and continued to attack both Iraqi and Coalition forces with devastating rockets. The operation in question had begun as a night raid to target a Special Groups leader in charge of kidnapping and death squads. But quickly, it had gone bad in the thicketlike backstreets of Sadr City.

                While clearing the target building, the team came under fire from surrounding buildings, as fighters fired machine guns and rocket grenades at them. Helicopters came to their support, firing from the air. The team fought street to street in order to escape the slum, departing under gunfire and hitting an IED as they withdrew. As I watched the recorded aerial surveillance of the fight, the violence and the rapidly gathering swarms of enemy fighters moving to the site reminded me of the Battle of Mogadishu, where in October 1993, special operations forces fought a desperate battle against Somali fighters who gathered like antibodies against an infection.

                By the time this battle in Sadr City was over, our force reported that forty-nine fighters had been killed, but there were no known civilian casualties. Despite the immense violence, TF 17’s assault force was able to withdraw.

                Dave Petraeus called, and I closed the door to my office.

                “Stan, this is bad. This could be really ugly,” Dave said. He was a masterfully cool commander, but as he spoke, his words carried an edge of worry.

                “Sir, I understand,” I said.

                “Stan,” he said, “Maliki called; he’s really upset.” He paused. “He said the whole government may fall.”

                “Sir, I understand,” I said. “It’s over; there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

                After a couple of hours, our force made it back to its outstation. In the meantime, the insurgents had cranked into gear their propaganda machine, filming at the local hospital, igniting outrage and barraging the Iraqi government with complaints. Iraqis in the neighborhood reported that bullets from the helicopter had killed teenagers and children, and the Iraqi government spokesman said that fifteen people, not fifty, had died, but that all fifteen were civilians. Dave was taking the heat from Maliki and would later meet with him to discuss the raid.

                I understood how fragile a moment this was for the Coalition—and for Dave Petraeus in particular. A month earlier, he and Ryan Crocker had returned to Washington, D.C., for a highly scrutinized public update on the surge in front of Congress. He faced strong skepticism and outright hostility from many of the legislators. And yet he presented—most memorably, in a thirteen-slide PowerPoint presentation—evidence of a truly dramatic reduction in violence. He showed improvements on a number of key metrics. Civilian deaths, ethno-sectarian killing, and weekly attacks were down. American fatalities had spiked as more troops entered the war during the early summer, but now fewer Americans were dying. In May, 126 Americans were killed; in October, that number was 38. It was far from clear that these trends were real and would continue, and the political reconciliation that the added security was meant to midwife was not yet moving. But it appeared for the first time that a spectacular turnaround of the war, under Dave’s leadership, seemed within grasp.