The Men In The Shadows
Why Special Forces are providing the model for a new kind of war
A ROBOCOP WITH BRAINS
Before they left the next day, the Green Berets helped the marines find an interpreter and gathered some educated Iraqis who had held a town council. They also surveyed the town's water and power needs and arranged for some relief aid. Just before they left, the team sergeant joked with the curious youths who gathered around him. He had that SF look--orange-tinted Oakley shades and a fully tricked out M-4 with a silencer that made it half his height. His futuristic communications headset, bleached hair, and deeply tanned face made him look like a character from a RoboCop movie. But he sure didn't talk like one. "This is more of a tribal culture than a naturally occurring nation-state," he said. "There's going to be a ferocious competition between tribes, and Sunni and Shia Muslims, now that the control of the regime is ending."
More prophetic words were seldom spoken. As the A-Teams pushed on to Najaf, Hillah, and Baghdad with their FIFF charges, they found a ferment of competing factions. The last company of FIFF with its A-Team headed to Kut, near the border with Iran. The A-Team arrived in time to supply security for its fellow Green Berets, whose compound, and that of the marines next door, were the site of an anti-American Islamic demonstration. A sniper team hauled a Stoner to the rooftop, and the "wind caller" lay down with his scope. They would shoot only if someone was shot, but there were reports of armed Badr Brigade militia in the crowd. The Badr Brigade is the armed wing of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Men brandished photos of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and the council founder, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who seeks to set up a similar regime in Iraq. The marines were nominally in control of Kut, but gunfire sounded most nights, and the occasional grenade whooshed toward their compounds facing the Tigris River.
The marines were nervous about unleashing the FIFF in this volatile situation, so the newly arrived A-Team first made camp at a destroyed Republican Guard base near the airport. The A-Team found the surrounding area full of land mines, bombs, and other munitions. The small stuff they could get rid of, while explosive ordnance disposal teams worked on the big stuff. At last a plan for the FIFF was hatched, and they moved into town. There they continued to work in their low-key way. They ran a clinic out of their compound. The A-Team's medic treated a baby with shrapnel wounds. Such deeds not only earned the A-Team members Iraqis' goodwill; it gave them valuable insight into the mood of Kut. Each night, an A-Team sergeant drank tea with one of the radical fundamentalists. Another Green Beret met quietly with a major Shiite businessman who believes that only a minority of Kut residents want to see a radical Islamic government come to power. "But he says they are gaining ground among the poor," the soldier recounted, "and the Iranians are spreading a lot of money around."
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