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Saturday, March 22, 2008
‘Robin Hood’ risks life for his people
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Arab Jabour, Iraq — Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel beams with pride. He adjusts his red-and-white head scarf, tied and knotted the way Iraq’s Jabouri tribe wears it, and the leather holster that holds his 13 mm pistol. He stands and faces a dozen Iraqi television crews.
For the first time, high-ranking government officials have traveled from Baghdad to Arab Jabour. They want to hear how darkness turned to light in this impoverished rural, Sunni district southeast of the capital.
Once a stronghold for al-Qaida in Iraq, the area is now hailed as an example of “surge” success.
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie is greeted by religious leaders as he arrives to meet with Baghdad officials and Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel. |
There had been no sustained U.S. presence here since November 2005. The surge in troops brought the Georgia-based 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment to Arab Jabour in June.
Now, nine months later, Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, 41, commander of the 1-30, shares the spotlight with Mustafa, 54. Adgie is eager to credit the former Iraqi general with the area’s transformation.
He calls him a Robin Hood who risked his life for his people.
‘These kids were punks’
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mustafa was left without an Iraqi army job. He wanted to settle down as a beekeeper. That never happened as discontent among disenfranchised Sunnis made Arab Jabour a perfect breeding ground for al-Qaida ideology.
Adgie likes to describe the area as a petri dish for terrorism. He says the seeds were sown here by outside forces. Out-of-work, listless, rogue residents took up the mantle for al-Qaida. But they were hardly in the vein of Osama bin Laden. “These kids were punks,” he says, who did it for money.
The violence was so out of control that Adgie was ready to call it quits just days after his battalion arrived here.
Mustafa, meanwhile, hunkered down in his house, an AK-47 in his hands. The insurgents' threats came via phone, e-mail and text messages: "We will cut off your head."
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Despite threats to cut off his head, Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel walked outside his compound and told Adgie he wanted to help. |
Then one day in early August, Mustafa walked outside the gates of his compound and told Adgie he was ready to help. He was determined to save his familial land and people.
The soldiers knew it would be a hard fight, and it was. The Fort Stewart infantry unit has lost 14 men and had more than 80 injured.
As the Americans began to clear routes and detain suspects, residents fed up with the spiraling violence followed Mustafa’s lead and found the courage to stand up. In the winter, U.S. forces staged large air assaults to drive out remaining al-Qaida cells. It was the intel that came from residents — whom the Americans call “bird dogs” — that made the bombing campaigns a success, say the 1-30 soldiers.
Now, as Mustafa recounts his story for the Iraqi media, he pulls out a U.S. Army fever-line chart that tracks the number of terrorist attacks by month. In June, Arab Jabour averaged almost 100 attacks.
There were times it was so bad that Mustafa admits he even wished for a return of Saddam Hussein. Adgie stationed an entire tank platoon to guard Mustafa and his family.
“He was a dead man walking. He was the guy we had to keep alive,” Adgie says.
The American commander and his new Iraqi ally met seven days a week, under cover of night, sitting in vehicles with the lights out to talk about what they could do to rescue Arab Jabour.
Men who were insurgent one day became a “concerned local citizen” the next. The CLCs were Sunni militias who have since rebranded themselves as the Sons of Iraq. They wear bright orange reflective vests, carry U.S.-issued identity cards, man checkpoints (Arab Jabour has no police presence) and are the eyes and ears of the counterinsurgency here.
The Sons of Iraq
They began as a group of 89 men. Now they number more than 1,400. Mustafa uses the chart again to show the correlation between militia recruitment and the downturn in terrorist attacks. In February, there were fewer than five incidents.
“The more recruits we got, the more intel we got,” Adgie says. The Sons of Iraq collect $10 a day from the Americans for their efforts. The Americans also reward residents for helping turn in unexploded ordnance that litter the area.
The soldiers of the 1-30 take personal satisfaction in Arab Jabour’s turnaround. Adgie, a pragmatist at heart, acknowledges the fragility of peace here. It’s on everyone’s mind, especially in recent days as the number of violent attacks in Iraq seem to be on the uptick again.
The Georgia-based soldiers have turned their attention to reopening local power plants, water pumping stations and schools. Last week, they helped the Iraqi police establish a presence here with a recruitment drive.
Mustafa, too, admits that Arab Jabour’s tale is far from finished. As he closes his speech to the crowd gathered at his house, he says he hopes officials in Baghdad will pay heed to the needs of his people.
That they even deemed Arab Jabour secure enough to make the drive down from the capital is, in itself, a victory.
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