ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan Page B
Authors: Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan
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road—until the bomb went off, damaging or destroying a Bradley fighting vehicle or Abrams tank and killing or maiming the occupants inside. The holes these inlaid IEDs left in the ground also caused severe infrastructure damage, bursting the city’s sewage pipes and flooding the streets with filth.
As elsewhere in Iraq, the provincial government in Ramadi had been keeping two sets of books, one for its official duties on behalf of Baghdad, the other for AQI, which bribed and cajoled Iraqi Security Forces and municipal officials, using its greatest asset outside of murder: oil-smuggling revenue. Barrels of purloined crude were imported into Ramadi on a regular basis from the Bayji Oil Refinery up north, then exported for resale on Iraq’s black market. This had been the tribes’ arrangement with the Saddamists for years. But the new bosses proved more difficult to work with.
Locals bridled at medieval rule, for starters, especially since one of AQI’s self-arrogated entitlements was sharia’s answer to droit du seigneur: just like ISIS today, the jihadists in 2006 raped Iraqi women at their pleasure. Tribal elders, too, were susceptible to kidnapping or murder. Two sheikhs from the Albu Aetha and Albu Dhiyab tribes had been killed already, and others were being targeted as competition to what had become the AQI’s thriving war economy.
The people of Ramadi turned slowly against terrorism. Nighttime vigilantism gained enough of a following among families of the group’s victims, who were joined by vengeful Iraqi policemen and even rival insurgents fed up with takfiris, that soon a bona fide civil resistance movement was born under the banner of Thuwaral-Anbar, or the Revolutionaries of Anbar. It was the beginning of what became known as Sahwa — “Awakening.” These native revolutionaries proved so successful in Ramadi that AQI even attempted to negotiate with them.
What made Ramadi different was that, when the city was retaken by American and Iraqi forces, a post-battle strategy of police recruitment was wisely implemented not in the vulnerable city center, which, as with the glass factory episode two years prior, was an easy target for insurgent attack, but in the adjoining rural tribal districts. Keeping Sahwa confined to the countryside encouraged what was already a growing insurrection to build enough to become an officially sanctioned one, fostered by growing mutual trust between the Americans and the tribes. One of the key tribal allies was the charismatic Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, whose compound had actually been raided twice before by US forces after allegations that he was cooperating commercially with the insurgents. Suddenly, out of the very self-interest and pragmatism that had catalyzed the temporary alliance, al-Rishawi was ready to cut a new deal with the enemy of his enemy. “People with ties to the insurgents have us over for tea,” a US lieutenant had told the journalist George Packer about a similar experience in Tal Afar in 2005, when H. R. McMaster had overseen that border town’s temporary turnaround on much the same principle. Al-Rishawi would prove one of the most significant allies the United States ever made in Iraq.
AQI’s attempt to undermine his efforts failed because tribal disaffection had already grown into a significant groundswell. Along with his brother, Al-Rishawi formed the Anbar Emergency Council, which claimed to represent seventeen Anbari tribes ready to partner with coalition forces against AQI. The council quickly expanded and was rebranded the Anbar Awakening. Al-Rishawi oversaw the recruitment of four hundred men to the Iraqi police force in October 2006, and then another five hundred in November.He was also farsighted enough to realize that recruitment did not necessarily translate into immediate security: these cadets all had to be sent off to Jordan for training, creating a vacuum that AQI was sure to exploit. Al-Rishawi convinced Nouri al-Maliki to authorize
As elsewhere in Iraq, the provincial government in Ramadi had been keeping two sets of books, one for its official duties on behalf of Baghdad, the other for AQI, which bribed and cajoled Iraqi Security Forces and municipal officials, using its greatest asset outside of murder: oil-smuggling revenue. Barrels of purloined crude were imported into Ramadi on a regular basis from the Bayji Oil Refinery up north, then exported for resale on Iraq’s black market. This had been the tribes’ arrangement with the Saddamists for years. But the new bosses proved more difficult to work with.
Locals bridled at medieval rule, for starters, especially since one of AQI’s self-arrogated entitlements was sharia’s answer to droit du seigneur: just like ISIS today, the jihadists in 2006 raped Iraqi women at their pleasure. Tribal elders, too, were susceptible to kidnapping or murder. Two sheikhs from the Albu Aetha and Albu Dhiyab tribes had been killed already, and others were being targeted as competition to what had become the AQI’s thriving war economy.
The people of Ramadi turned slowly against terrorism. Nighttime vigilantism gained enough of a following among families of the group’s victims, who were joined by vengeful Iraqi policemen and even rival insurgents fed up with takfiris, that soon a bona fide civil resistance movement was born under the banner of Thuwaral-Anbar, or the Revolutionaries of Anbar. It was the beginning of what became known as Sahwa — “Awakening.” These native revolutionaries proved so successful in Ramadi that AQI even attempted to negotiate with them.
What made Ramadi different was that, when the city was retaken by American and Iraqi forces, a post-battle strategy of police recruitment was wisely implemented not in the vulnerable city center, which, as with the glass factory episode two years prior, was an easy target for insurgent attack, but in the adjoining rural tribal districts. Keeping Sahwa confined to the countryside encouraged what was already a growing insurrection to build enough to become an officially sanctioned one, fostered by growing mutual trust between the Americans and the tribes. One of the key tribal allies was the charismatic Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, whose compound had actually been raided twice before by US forces after allegations that he was cooperating commercially with the insurgents. Suddenly, out of the very self-interest and pragmatism that had catalyzed the temporary alliance, al-Rishawi was ready to cut a new deal with the enemy of his enemy. “People with ties to the insurgents have us over for tea,” a US lieutenant had told the journalist George Packer about a similar experience in Tal Afar in 2005, when H. R. McMaster had overseen that border town’s temporary turnaround on much the same principle. Al-Rishawi would prove one of the most significant allies the United States ever made in Iraq.
AQI’s attempt to undermine his efforts failed because tribal disaffection had already grown into a significant groundswell. Along with his brother, Al-Rishawi formed the Anbar Emergency Council, which claimed to represent seventeen Anbari tribes ready to partner with coalition forces against AQI. The council quickly expanded and was rebranded the Anbar Awakening. Al-Rishawi oversaw the recruitment of four hundred men to the Iraqi police force in October 2006, and then another five hundred in November.He was also farsighted enough to realize that recruitment did not necessarily translate into immediate security: these cadets all had to be sent off to Jordan for training, creating a vacuum that AQI was sure to exploit. Al-Rishawi convinced Nouri al-Maliki to authorize
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