Against a deteriorating political situation that focused on regime change, neutralization of the Weapons of Mass Destruction, the distribution of humanitarian aid after the 12-year blockade and the security of Iraqi oil infrastructure, the Coalition Forces crept through the desert. As 1st Division went firm eight miles from the border, its J2 Branch adopted the intense application of the Intelligence Cycle in between taking cover from Iraqi ‘Seersucker’ missiles speeding south. In possession of ten years of intelligence, processing systems were enhanced by vastly improved Coalition co-ordination and information technology. Three 6 MI Company NCOs reinforcing the Joint Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Regiment Intelligence Section experienced a tougher time when they found that the Intelligence Officer was inexperienced and they had to compete for the use of a 6-foot trestle table in a small tent and ended up working at night. A HQ Land Command Intelligence Cell sergeant detached to the RAF Joint Helicopter Force in Camp Rhino found that his skills were much in demand, particularly in its forward operating base at Safwan, which was on a main supply route to the forward areas and under the control of 51 Squadron, RAF Regiment. Any concerns that he had about their ability to develop the Intelligence Cycle disappeared when he discovered that their systematic approach was controlled by a former member of the Corps. When the sergeant searched a suspect building with a section, 51 Squadron placed snipers on top of a high building and deployed a 50mm mortar in support.
Saddam Hussein continued to resist international pressure and then during the night of 19 March, Coalition Forces advanced to the Iraqi frontier and then at 05.34 (Baghdad time) on 20 March, G-Day, engineers breached the border sand berms in the expectation the Iraqis were expected to capitulate quickly, as they had done in 1991. Crossing the border with 1st (US) Marine Division was an Intelligence Corps sergeant with Tango Troop, 245 Signal Squadron:
Moving up from (Camp) Matilda, my 10 man EW Platform moved a few kilometers from the Iraqi border, just forward of a long berm, and began operations. Two days later, tens of US artillery pieces formed up behind the length of the berm, and soon began a bombardment that was to last 18 hours. The noise was intense, as rounds flew directly overhead. Visibility at night had so far not been a problem, as the skies were so clear, and well lit by the moon and stars. The night we crossed into Iraq, however, was recorded as being the darkest for 10 years. The two other platforms joined us in a Troop move and after an occasionally perilous journey, we moved north into Iraq, into a location by a berm, which shielded us from an abandoned gas/oil separation plant. By this time, we were working an eight hours on, eight hours off shift system and getting some good results. The heat, dust, dirt and danger, the potential threat of chemical attack, land mines and conventional warfare, and the pressure of operations all combined to make Operation Telic a life-changing experience.
On 21 March, 3 Commando Brigade supported by 15 Marine Expeditionary Unit and Polish troops advanced across Southern Iraq toward the port of Umm Qasr but met unexpected resistance that took several days to clear. The US Marines’ customary and enthusiastic use of firepower was noted by 1 FSS, entering the port with 17 Port and Maritime Regiment. Inside the port perimeter created from shipping containers, the section vetted local dockworkers and administered pass issue until the Intelligence Cell, 102 Logistics Brigade took over the task. The section then conducted heliborne security surveys of key points, such as oil fields and road and rail infrastructure, and dispensed security advice on such matters as the destruction and degaussing of computer hard drives. A Tactical Questioning centre debriefed suspect Saddam Hussein loyalists arrested by the Royal Marines in their internal security operations to establish a sense of normality in the town. Arriving with the Prisoner of War Holding Organisation, 5 FSS set up at Camp Freddie where an Arabic-speaking lance corporal interrogated prisoners. On 21 April, a 45 MI Section sergeant and a 44 MI lance corporal were investigating a suspect being treated for face wounds on a Spanish hospital ship when an Ammunition Technical Officer concluded that several pellets were contaminated with explosive. The suspect’s explanation that a pipe had exploded while he was welding gymnastic asymmetric bars failed to convince the two NCOs that he was not a bomb-maker and they escorted him for tactical questioning.
On 24 March, 7 Armoured Brigade halted at the former RAF Shaibah, south-west of As-Asmarah. In the knowledge that the FS Company was following, its 13 MI Section reformed into two Operational Intelligence detachments covering Basra and the Rest of Area and dispatched JNCOs to the Battle Group headquarters as intelligence advisers. When 7 Armoured Brigade supported 3 Commando Brigade entering the south-eastern suburbs of Basra and experienced some of the fiercest fighting encountered by Division, 13 MI Intelligence Section exploited airborne and satellite intelligence collection assets to pinpoint positions. One prisoner turned out to be a senior Republican Guard officer sent from Baghdad to encourage Iraqi units to fight. Three days later, the Light Electronic Warfare Troop attached to the 3 Parachute Battalion detected a T-59 tank company twenty miles south-east of Basra preparing to counter-attack. After a Phoenix drone had confirmed the threat, C Squadron, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Challenger-2 tanks supporting 3 Commando Brigade ambushed the Iraqis with devastating results. Then 245 Signal Squadron returned to 1st Armoured Division where its Analysis and Reporting Cell intercepts compromised Ba’athist Party personalities and pinpointed unit locations and ambushes. Meanwhile, 15 Psychological Operations Group challenged Iraqi broadcasts by suggesting there was an alternative to Saddam Hussein. By the first week of April, 1st Armoured Division had seized most of its objectives and even though 1 Parachute Battalion was still clearing the claustrophobic, narrow streets of the ‘old quarter’, HQ 4 Brigade occupied the sumptuous presidential palace overlooking the Shatt al-Arab waterway and commenced Phase 4 (Peace Support Operations). Fresh food was a distant memory and air conditioning non existent.
Meanwhile, as 16 Air Assault Brigade advanced north-west, it was supported by the Light Electronic Warfare Troop locating positions, such as an observation post co-coordinating the shelling of 3 Parachute Battalion as it attacked a bridge over the Shatt Al-Arab near Al-Rumailah in order to secure the gas oil separation plants. When its left flank came under artillery fire from the Iraqi 6th Armoured Division, 89 (Airborne) Military Intelligence Section deduced that Iraqi forward operations officers were using motorcycles. To give the Brigade an enhanced capability to address the increasing number of prisoners, two interrogators debriefing Iraqis at the Intelligence Exploitation Base were hurriedly issued with the paraphernalia of front line troops and soon after joining Brigade HQ at Al-Rumaylah had pinpointed a BM-21 multi-barreled rocket launcher battery mentioned by several civilians. But the inability to charge their laptops forced them to adopt the practices of their predecessors of writing their reports, which a captain found ‘frustrating at the end of very long days’. During the advance to the next objective of Al-Dayr astride the main road north to Baghdad, the Troop broadcast personal messages to several 6th Armoured Division tank battalion commanders and suggested that since Coalition artillery and aircraft had caused so many casualties, defeat was inevitable and anyone wishing to surrender should assemble at a rendezvous. During the night of 5/6 April, as 3 Parachute Battalion advanced eight miles to contact towards Al-Dayr, the interrogators following close behind the lead company during the final assault processed some of the 1,200 prisoners captured by the Royal Irish Rangers. By 12 April, the Brigade had reached Al-Amarah.
To the north, Baghdad fell and Saddam Hussein was on the run. When his home town of Tikrit was captured by US forces three days later, the Coalition declared the invasion to be over.
The Reconstruction Phase led to British force levels quickly reduced from 46,000 to 8,600 and the commencement of six monthly roulement Operation Telic tours. But, in spite of twelve years of preparing to dethrone Saddam Hussein, there was little official understanding of Shia/Sunni religious and political fault lines and internal security collapsed from in
active civil administrations, weak humanitarian services and the disbandment of the Iraqi Army and police. The crucial strategy of ‘hearts and minds’ was undermined. Frequent electrical black-outs played havoc with data processing the Intelligence Cycle. Nevertheless on 31 May, over 100 Corps gathered around the grave of CSM Maurice French for a simple Act of Remembrance in the Basra Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. He had died on 30 August 1947, aged 32, while serving with 266 FSS. The section was formed in Winchester in October 1940 and sailed for Iraq from Liverpool in April 1941to take over Port Security duties at Maqil.
In mid-July, HQ 3rd Division relieved HQ 1st Armoured Division on Telic II and then converted to HQ Multi National Division (South East). Its operations were monitored by a forward Permanent Joint HQ from the comfort and safety of Qatar. In Telic III at the end of December, 20 Armoured Brigade relieved 19 Mechanized Brigade. To preserve the integrity of sharing information within the Coalition, the Force MI Company, which included a Royal Artillery Surveillance Target Acquisition Battery, a Phoenix Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Battery and specialist capabilities such as Document Examination, formed up as the Divisional J2 All Sources Cell that included Dutch, Italians, Norwegians and Romanians. The UK National Intelligence Cell provided daily intelligence to the Divisional commander and twice weekly verbal briefings to the Command Group. And 1 MI Section, which had been formed from the Basra and Umm Qasar FS detachments and was based at the Shaibah Logistic Base, adopted counter-surveillance skills to enhance their survival in dangerous environments, particularly when visiting Iraqi Police stations and Coalition bases. In the first year, they completed over 300 tasks. One sergeant surpassed Middle Eastern diplomacy by greeting a sentry at a Kuwaiti Army base with ‘Shalom.’
As 1 Mechanized Brigade arrived on Telic IV, deteriorating internal security was being engineered by the Mahdi Militia, a Shi’ite paramilitary force formed in mid-2003 by the cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who was using his influence in local government and among the police to fill the security and humanitarian aid vacuum in Sadr City in Baghdad and several southern Iraqi cities. When the Coalition authorities banned his newspaper, an uprising conducted by lightly equipped militia using road-side bombs, some triggered by infra-red sensors, surged throughout Iraq on 16 April. Five days later there were several devastating bombs in Basra. In Al-Amarah, the Multi National Division Civil/Military Co-operation House was besieged for twenty-three day in fierce fighting. In an initiative designed to stabilise the political situation and enable the Coalition to reduce its military presence and promote sovereignty and democracy, some powers were transferred to a provisional government, In October, the Iraqi Coastal Defence Force at Umm Qasr took responsibility for Iraqi territorial waters. In early January 2004 in Telic V, the Basra FS Section began delivering intelligence and security training to an Iraqi brigade staff and the Civil Defence Corps.
Hopes for an end to the insurgency were dashed in May 2005 when vehicle bombs and suicide bombers tore into Shia communities and attacked mosques, markets and bus stations. Forty devices in 2003 in Iraq rose to 478 in 2005. The unrest on Telic V was absorbed by 12 Mechanised Brigade and its 161 MI Section. At about 11am on 11 September, Major Matthew Bacon, then serving with HQ Multi National Division, was killed on his way to Basra Airport after a meeting at the Palace when his lightly-armoured ‘Snatch’ Land Rover was wrecked by a roadside device. Corporal Neil Collins was badly wounded, as were two Royal Regiment of Fusiliers soldiers giving top cover. Major Bacon’s father has since conducted a vigorous campaign to expose the frailties of the ‘Snatch’. In commemoration of his son, he established the Matthew Bacon Bursary to finance older Army Cadet Force members taking part in Outward Bound courses or expeditions beyond their financial means.
After just a fortnight’s notice, a 63 (Joint Force HQ) MI Section lance corporal arrived midway through Telic V and was among several Intelligence Corps earmarked to join Task Force Eagle, which was tasked to replace the Dutch Task Force near As-Samawah in Al-Muthanna Province. After attending briefings at the Force MI Company, they were flown by Chinook to Camp Smitty where they took over from the Dutch Intelligence Cell then located in a leaking 12-foot by 12-foot frame tent. The section quickly moved into a more robust Corrimech prefabricated building. Generations of Intelligence Corps will recognize the NCO’s thoughts:
As an Intelligence Corps JNCO, the battalion accepted you as a specialist and allowed you a degree of privilege, meaning there were many opportunities to leave camp. Sometimes they would be jollies: to the Italian Camp Mittica where wine and beer was available in the cookhouse….. More often leaving camp meant work-related tasks, like top cover, eagle patrols (flying around the desert in a Merlin), a fact-finding visit to a town with Civil and Military Cooperation, or just attached to a patrol. Six months after my JNCO cadre, I was using the patrolling skills I learnt for real on the ground in Iraq. On the majority of my trips, I was accompanied by Trooper Frankie Vaughan (Queens Dragoon Guards), my unofficial minder and Intelligence Corps’ mascot’.
Towards the end of his tour, when the Australian Battle Group arrived, the lance corporal noted they were ‘a little over excited for this sleepy corner of south-east Iraq’. He was then posted to J2 at Basra Airport and astonished by the civility of permanent buildings, a bus service, a Pizza Hut and bars.
In November on Telic VII in a deployment that mirrored Intelligence Corps (Field) in 1944, Tactical HQ 4 MI Battalion deployed to Iraq and strengthened the cohesion of the functions controlled by the Force MI Company by taking under command the Human Intelligence Company, the Counter-Intelligence Company, Document Exploitation and Weapons Intelligence and developing the All Sources Cell to include Current Intelligence, Criminality, Governance, Regional Influence and Security Sector Reform desks. Counter-Intelligence/Security was kept busy vetting 6,000 locally employed civilians and contractors, and undertaking Protective Security tasks as brigades rotated. As with the establishing of FS Reserve Detachments to support FS sections in the advance through North-West Europe, Close Support Intelligence sections were formed to give direct support to the Divisions and their brigades while General Support sections provided indirect support. Operational Intelligence Support Groups enhanced the product by developing strategic Intelligence Summaries and thematic papers for military commanders and diplomats. The entire organisation numbered 390 all ranks The Form Operational Readiness Mechanism of supplying trained organizations and individuals to be in the right place and on time was achieved by a thirty month cycle of sections and individuals either being on deployment or resting or in Pre-Deployment Training of home and overseas exercises and studies dispersed by adventurous training and career progression. The mantra was ‘train hard, fight easy’.
During July, 472 (Spearhead Lead Element) MI Section deployed to Cyprus in Operation Highbrow to debrief civilians being evacuated from Lebanon after Israel forces moved against Hezbollah.
By the beginning of 2006, as the strategic priority shifted to Afghanistan, disengagement in Iraq was relying upon the newly-elected local authorities to take control of internal security. But when 20 Armoured Brigade arrived on Telic VIII in May with its 141 MI Intelligence Section, on its second tour, it was pitched into another Mahdi Army uprising after a breakdown in negotiations. In early June, fierce fighting developed around the former Iraq Air Force base at Camp Abu Naji two miles south of Al-Amarah. Nevertheless, by July the British had returned Muthanna Province, in the south-east, to Iraq civil control, the first administration to be handed over. At the end of August, as the Brigade looked south to address extensive smuggling, Camp Abu Naji was transferred to 4 (Iraqi) Brigade. One officer who spent his six month tour as part of the Military Transition Team training Iraqi intelligence officers in the brigade found that his logistic difficulties were solved by ‘someone’s friend or brother who fixes various pieces of equipment.’ In September, Operation Sinbad targeted the subversion of the police and then focused on the militia. On 12 November, the Intelligence Corps los
t its second fatality in Iraq when Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, aged 34, was killed, along with three servicemen when their assault boat was wrecked by an improvised explosive device under a bridge spanning the Shatt Al-Arab waterway. It was the heaviest loss of life in a single incident for British forces for six months, bringing the death toll to 125. Staff Sergeant Elliott is commemorated by the annual Rugby competition.
By February 2007, part of HQ Multi National Division (South-East) had moved from Basra Palace to the Airport but there was then a difficult summer of attacks, bombs and rocket attacks. During a ceasefire, British consolidation at the Airport during the night of 3 September led to accusation from within the Coalition that the British counter-insurgency strategy, at which it had excelled in other campaigns, had failed in Basra.
By the time that Brigadier Everson handed over the Director, on promotion, to Brigadier Ewan Duncan in 2007, he had largely met his vision. Further evidence of the influence and esteem of the Intelligence Corps emerged when Major General Everson was appointed the V (US) Corps Deputy Commander with direct responsibility for Coalition Operations, Intelligence and Security, an important and influential appointment that saw him commanding Coalition forces when its commander was away. The first Intelligence Corps Major General was Graham Messervy-Whiting, who was promoted in 2000 to take up the appointment of Head of Interim Military Staff of the European Union, itself a significant sign of the influence of the Intelligence Corps in the international political and military arena. Three other Intelligence Corps brigadiers were also appointed to be Deputy Commanders, Intelligence and Security of the Coalition forces, an important appointment that linked strategic, political and diplomatic intelligence with events on the ground, not only in Iraq but also regionally. Iraqi intelligence and security services were included in a Joint Intelligence Committee.
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