Barnes Blog
As the conflict in Iraq continues, U.S. News has dispatched Pentagon correspondent Julian E. Barnes for a frontline view. Barnes, who has periodically reported from Iraq since the war began in 2003, is blogging his impressions for usnews.com.
Battling snipers: 'We've killed all the stupid ones'
On midday on Friday, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's 1-327 infantry battalion move to the southern end of Huwija, away from the Sabbath crowds but just within range of the powerful loudspeakers of one of the city's mosques known to deliver anti-American sermons.
A few minutes after they park, a series of three shots ring out.
"That was close," shouts Spc. Dale Dugas, a humvee gunner for Charlie Company. As Dugas scans the rooftops, the patrol begins to move, first stopping and searching a car, then moving a block away from the first attack.
A few minutes later, a projectile whistles past Dugas's head. With a muffled boom, a rocket-propelled grenade sails over the humvee and lands in front of an Iraqi home—sending a cloud of smoke drifting into the air and forcing a man and his child to scurry away from their home.
"That just missed us," Dugas shouts.
"It came from the back left," calls out the driver, Spc. Chris Billingsley.
As the patrol begins rolling, Billingsley looks out his side window. A man is standing in a doorway pointing to his left.
"Do you see that guy in the doorway?" Dugas calls out. "He is motioning to someone!"
A sniper is haunting the town of Huwija, a small but violent majority-Sunni Arab town west of Kirkuk. Staff Sgt. Michael McMath thinks the sniper has something against him personally.
"I've been hit five times," McMath says. "It hit the turret, I got hit in the blue force tracker. Yesterday he hit my tire."
McMath says the sniper's tactics have been changing. At first he was aiming at the American gunners who stand exposed out of the top of the humvee. Now McMath believes the sniper is going for the tires, attempting to disable the humvees and force the soldiers inside to dismount.
"He is changing his tactics," McMath says, "so we are changing our TTPs"—tactics, techniques, and procedures. Less than an hour after McMath spoke those words, he got hit a sixth time. This time the bullet went harmlessly through the bumper.
It is not just the Americans who have become the target. The sniper has also killed an Iraqi soldier. First Sgt. Sami Rakan Majoud, a soldier in the Iraqi Army, believes the snipers working the streets of Huwija are more likely criminal thugs than hard-core terrorists, even if the snipers portray themselves in more glorious terms.
"These days, people go around doing anything and they say they do 'jihad,' " says First Sgt. Sami Rakan Majoud. Still, whatever the motivation, the Iraqi soldiers say they are not going to restrain themselves if they catch the sniper before the Americans do.
"We know you guys are nice to the detainees, keep them in jail for a year, then let them go," Majoud says. "If we catch him we are not going to let you guys see the [expletive]. We will kill him."
Both the Iraqis and the Americans believe there are multiple snipers, most likely working from cars, not buildings. Two and a half years into the war, fewer and fewer of the fighters opposed to the American presence will make a sustained fight in a group. Instead they are more likely to bide their time, take a single shot, and move.
"We've killed all the stupid ones," says one 101st soldier on his second tour in Iraq. "It's just the smart ones who are left."
Officers in the 1-327 Infantry battalion believe the majority of the time the snipers follows an American patrol in a car and waits for a moment when they can fire a shot unseen and then drive quietly away. Most patrols that pass through Huwija get fired at. Officially, only armor-piercing rounds fired at the American patrols count as the work of the sniper. Unofficially, the Joes don't care about the definition. They just want to catch the people firing at their humvees—and let the people of Huwija know it is not going to stop them.
"All they are doing is wasting their bullets," says Sgt. First Class Pete Chambers. "I don't see why they are doing it. We are not going away. We are going to roll in there tomorrow."
Lt. Josh Wolff turns to Billingsley and shouts: "Haul ass, man!" The patrol is flying down a road south of Huwija, in hot pursuit of a truck carrying two goats. Overhead two Kiowa warrior helicopters scan the road below. When the humvees catch up with the pickup, the soldiers have the men step out and check their hands for gunpowder residue. It is not a sniper truck. Dugas brings up the man he saw in the doorway. And Wolff consults with the platoon leader, Lt. Michael Frank. The soldiers mount up into their humvees and drive back to the buildings where the original attacks took place. As Billingsley pulls up to the building, two more shots fly past the humvee.
"It's this house," Billingsley shouts. "It is this house with the [expletive] wall around it."
Dugas agrees: "It is the other side of the [even worse expletive] wall." A team of soldiers dismounts from their humvee. Darryl, the interpreter, kicks open a gate and the team runs in to search the house. They find nothing.
Frank believes the sniper is striking from a car. He orders his soldiers back into their humvees, and the patrols begin moving in a pattern designed to have one group flush the sniper and the other watch their back.
After about 20 minutes of maneuvering, the patrol heads out of the city and toward its base. As the soldiers pass an Iraqi police station, the fourth attack of the day occurs. Someone fires multiple shots at the patrol. From his turret, Dugas watches the bullet hit the ground and ricochet. The patrol turns to once more search for the sniper. Once again they come up empty.
Back at the American forward operating base, Frank acknowledges the difficulty of catching an attacker disciplined enough to fire but a single shot. But it is a priority: Later in the day a platoon leader from another company will be shot in the arm while patrolling in Huwija. "Someday soon they will get lax, and we'll get them," Frank says. "One day, they will get too close."