Task Force Black

by Mark Urban

  As pressure increased on JSOC from Casey and others wanting results, McChrystal began to shift the emphasis of his operation in Iraq. Since his target had become that of the entire Coalition force, he needed to do more to take on the local militant networks that were killing and maiming so many US troops. Many hard-pressed commanders had formed the idea that JSOC was there to take down Zarqawi and a handful of his associates – in short, that they were playing a game of high Pentagon politics that consumed huge resources but was failing to deliver. McChrystal responded by exploiting the growing information flow from drones and cell phones to target the entire al-Qaeda network from top to bottom, but with particular focus on those in between. ‘The aim was to go after the middle of their network,’ McChrystal would later reveal, ‘in a regular army, their senior non-commissioned officers. We tried to cause the network to collapse.’ The changes were of vital importance, not just because they would bring about dramatic shifts in the secret war but also because they brought to a head various UK special forces issues. McChrystal’s new approach required the British to rethink why they were mounting covert operations in Iraq, triggering bitter battles between those responsible.

  McChrystal sought to mollify Casey that summer with special operations in support of a broad military effort to interdict the Sunni militant rat lines from the western borders of Iraq to Baghdad. The JSOC commander codenamed this effort Operation SNAKE EYES. It involved synchronising raids by Seal Team 6 or Delta Force to those of the ground-holding army and marine units up the Euphrates valley. From May to October regular US ground forces fought a series of at least fourteen major operations, each involving more than a thousand troops, along the course of this key watercourse from places such as al-Qaim, close to the Syrian frontier, down through Haditha and Hit, through Ramadi and Fallujah to Abu Ghraib on the outskirts of Baghdad. The battlefield ranged from remote farms fringed with date palms to the suburbs of major cities. The Americans characterised these places as stopovers on the infiltration route of foreign fighters from the Jordanian or Syrian frontiers to the capital. What the ordinary grunts found in many of these communities were well-organised paramilitary groups armed with everything from small arms to mortars or surface-to-air missiles, who manoeuvred against them.

  During one of the early operations, a single platoon of US Marines had suffered 60 per cent casualties in five days. Attacking a house in Ubaydi, a small town in western Anbar Province, two men were killed and five wounded. In the words of an embedded reporter, ‘It took twelve hours and five assaults by the squad – plus grenades, bombing by an F/A-18 attack plane, tank rounds and rockets at twenty yards – to kill the insurgents and permit recovery of the dead Marines’ bodies.’ A couple of days later, survivors of that fight were in their vehicle when it was hit by an IED, killing another four and wounding ten. Their parent battalion suffered forty-eight fatalities and more than 120 wounded during a seven-month tour.

  As these operations went ahead during the summer of 2005, JSOC mounted dozens of takedowns against suspected local players or middle managers in the guerrilla organisation. These actions exposed McChrystal’s men to determined heavily armed opposition that often stood and fought rather than retreating in classic guerrilla fashion. In many places the fighting started with small arms and grenades but soon escalated to strafing runs by helicopters and air strikes.

  As Delta Force operators stormed a house in al-Qaim on 17 June, the deadly drama played out on big plasma screens in a hall on the edge of Balad airbase. There, JSOC had built its main operations centre in Iraq. Its centrepiece was a basketball-court-sized control room, the Joint Operations Centre (JOC). Here, during the course of 2004 and early 2005, the technology, people and ideas at the heart of JSOC’s war had coalesced. Three large screens at one end of the hall relayed live pictures from different operations, as well as other information that desk officers needed to know. Facing the big plasmas were desks for all of the main sections involved: operations, intelligence, aviation, medical and so on. A ‘Jag’ or Judge Advocate General, a military lawyer, was always on hand to rule over the legality of proposed operations. Each of these specialist desks had its own array of screens on which officers could bring up information from orbiting drones, their own computers or the JSOC intranet. At busy times there would be scores of staff at work in this darkened cockpit of technology and violence.

  People who worked in the JOC sometimes referred to it as the Death Star because of the sense that ‘you could just reach out with a finger, as it were, and eliminate somebody’. Others who watched live the white splash of five-hundred-pound bombs on image-intensifier cameras referred to the screens up above them as ‘Kill TV’. For many, industrial metaphors were more appropriate to the relentless process of changing shifts, nightly raids and ceaseless target development work. They called the JOC ‘the factory’ or ‘the shop floor’. McChrystal himself often described his whole setup in Iraq as ‘the machine’. Around the main area, with its feeling of mission control, were a number of discrete offices. The liaison team from the National Security Agency, the huge US eavesdropping operation, had a private room. The commander of Delta Force ran the battle in the JOC but had his own space too. The task force running this secret campaign chewed through codenames with dizzying speed, often discarding them when they became compromised in the press, going from TF-20, to TF 6-26 then TF-121: by this time, the main operation run by the CO of Delta was TF-145. Major-General McChrystal had offices in a nearby building and while he spent about half of his year in Iraq, was not in day-to-day operational control of the forces there. McChrystal and his people had however worked up doctrines that meant the campaign being fought in the JOC was in itself a quiet revolution.

  The JSOC commander and his staff were, by the first half of 2005, putting forward three concepts that were central to much of what followed: they advocated 24/7 aerial surveillance of certain critical targets – a concept referred to as ‘the Unblinking Eye’; black operations were to increase sharply in tempo or frequency, something made possible in part by the growing Iraqi uptake of mobile phones; and the emphasis of operations was crystallised into ‘F3EA’ – find-fix-finish-exploit-analyse. Some argued that finding the bad guy, fixing where he was in space and time, then finishing him had been the essence of their man-hunting techniques even before they arrived in Iraq. But McChrystal’s particular emphasis on the exploitation and analysis of each raid meant that intelligence gathering became the point of each strike.

  At this time, JSOC’s intelligence operation was run by an army colonel, Mike Flynn. The colonel, whose dark hair and prominent nose gave him a passing resemblance to the Hollywood actor Roy Scheider, was one of McChrystal’s key ideas men. Flynn and his boss constantly sparked off each other, and such was the intellectual level of their debate that the rest of the staff often struggled to keep up with them. Flynn and two colleagues later gave an unclassified insight into their work in an article published in a US military magazine in 2008. Explaining why JSOC needed to monopolise so many of the best Coalition information-gathering aircraft, Flynn wrote, ‘intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance are most effective against low-contrast enemies when massed… the purpose of this long dwell airborne stakeout is to apply multisensor observation 24/7 to achieve a greater understanding of how the enemy’s network operates by building a pattern of life analysis’. The prolonged siege of Fallujah, and mishaps like the Predator’s camera going awry on the Zarqawi stakeout, had taught Flynn that anything up to three aircraft needed to be concentrated simultaneously against a target or network.

  Flynn explicitly rejected the idea of fairness in allocating these precious intelligence-gathering assets. This meant not only telling the wider army that it would have to make do with its poorer share, but also moving the drones or other important technologies between the different task forces controlled from Balad. The commander who could work up the most promising case – be it the Delta squadron man, the leader of Seal Team 6, or whoever else –
would get huge back-up. Flynn wrote, ‘Massing implies focus and priority. Selected parts of the enemy’s network receive focus, which should be unwavering for a specified time… enemy actions are not easily predictable. Without prediction the next best thing is redundancy and saturation.’

  Where this Unblinking Eye was maintained, relationships could be mapped between individuals, their meetings or vehicles being followed from the sky. As JSOC got better and better at this, airborne sensors could be used to lock on to mobile phones carried by these suspects, and earlier recordings examined after a car bomb had gone off could be used to trace an explosives-laden vehicle as it left a suspect house. Little wonder that one visiting US general described the system they created as ‘magic’.

  Flynn defined the Unblinking Eye as ‘long-dwell, persistent surveillance directed against known and suspected terrorist sites and individuals’. Those working in the JOC knew it had other definitions too. McChrystal’s ideas about everyone sharing the same intelligence picture were designed to prevent a ‘blink’ as one agency or target developer handed the information to someone who had to act on it. The SAS lifting CIA asset Abu Jamal was a spectacular blink; more often it was a case of a target individual or network being forgotten or mislaid by poor communication. In the JOC at Balad they aimed to eliminate such slips.

  JSOC wanted simultaneous coverage of a target by up to three drones – yet early in 2004 all of the other Coalition units operating in Iraq had to share two Predators between them. By 2007 the US commanders would have twelve Predators and eighteen of the smaller Shadow drones, and JSOC a large ration of its own. But in the summer of 2005 these tensions about the black operation’s use of special resources had prompted Operation SNAKE EYES.

  The June Delta operation in al-Qaim, for example, was carried out in support of nearby US Marine battalions, which meant hitting further down the al-Qaeda food chain. Even if Zarqawi himself was smart enough not to use a mobile phone, many of his subordinates were busy chatting away. But however disciplined the user was in conversation, the handset could still become a means to locate a man in the anonymous sprawl of a city or indeed in a remote village.

  In May, the Delta squadron at MSS Fernandez had deployed west to back up Task Force Blue in the Euphrates valley. They soon became engaged in a series of blistering close-range battles with Sunni militants. Many of the special operators were shocked by the numbers, sophistication and intensity of attacks they faced. Within a few weeks three Delta operators had been killed in western Iraq. The first Delta fatality since 2003, Sergeant First Class Steven Langmack fell on 31 May during an operation near the Syrian border. In the second incident – that operation on 17 June – two had died while assaulting a house not far from where Langmack had died, at al-Qaim. The two fatalities, Master Sergeants Michael McNulty and Robert Horrigan, were seasoned Delta operators. Horrigan was in fact on virtually his last mission before leaving the army. The Americans had begun their assault oblivious to the fact that a trap had been set. A bunker had been built inside the building, and when the Delta men blew their way in the defenders were waiting unscathed in their strongpoint. After two of the Delta attackers had been killed, the remaining men withdrew and dropped a bomb on the house.

  With Delta squadrons fielding only thirty to forty operators, it did not take long before the deaths and injuries seriously limited their capability. In June, McChrystal formally asked Peter Rogers whether UK special forces might be able to assist. Apparently citing ongoing British concerns about the Balad detention facilities and other operational issues such as rules of engagement, Rogers declined. The Americans flew in a second squadron of Delta Force and pressed on. But the American request had lit a fuse, a simmering conflict between Rogers and the newly installed commander of the SAS that would cause an explosion later that summer. The new boss at Hereford was Richard Williams. As a major he had frequently been in Baghdad during the spring and summer of 2003, before being posted away from the SAS on another job. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel, Williams became an outspoken advocate of those within the regiment who believed that they were wasting their time chasing the ‘old men’ of the Ba’athist target set and needed to do whatever was necessary to assist their brothers in Delta in a time of crisis. While the UK–US stand-off continued, and relations between Williams and Rogers worsened, those on the ground tried to deal with daily crises in the best way they could.

  On 23 July, the duty squadron in Baghdad would find itself in the thick of it. JSOC had developed intelligence on the type of al-Qaeda target that the US operators would normally have guarded jealously. They were so heavily committed out west, and the information was so urgent, that they had no choice but to give it to Task Force Black in Baghdad. So, with little time to argue about it with the DSF back in London, the British were to get a taste of the fight against al-Qaeda.

  The mission was codenamed Operation MARLBOROUGH. It resulted from urgent intelligence that a multiple suicide bombing was about to be launched from a house in southern Baghdad. The unit on duty at the time was M Squadron of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service. This was the second of just two tours in Baghdad by the Royal Marines special operators, and it was due to last just three months. But it was their duty, that sultry evening, to prosecute the kind of al-Qaeda target that the rotating special forces squadrons had been longing for.

  Some members of G Squadron had stayed behind to help the marines, but the bulk of the force that assembled that night for the mission was from the SBS. There had been a great deal of tension between the two British special operations units – some of it soothed away with banter – albeit hard-edged – but much of it still festering. M Squadron was the SBS element that had been mauled in northern Iraq back in 2003, losing most of its vehicles and much other equipment. The SAS men did not consider them up to the job, referring to them as ‘Tier 2 SF’. Plans to double the size of the SBS at this time had caused further ill-feeling because many recruits from the joint selection process run for UK special forces had been siphoned into the new SBS squadrons. The marines’ special unit was not at that time deeply committed to Afghanistan and its commanders insisted they gain operational exposure in Task Force Black.

  The SAS–SBS rivalry is deeply rooted and essentially tribal. Many of those who played supporting roles in Task Force Black actually preferred the marines’ approach, arguing they displayed less macho swagger and greater thoughtfulness than the SAS blades. C Squadron of the SBS had served in Baghdad in 2004, gaining a reputation for being remarkably leisurely about its business. It had mounted twenty-two raids during a four-month tour, compared, say, to A Squadron of the SAS’s eighty-five missions during its 2003 deployment. The slow pace of operations set by C Squadron had reflected many factors, not least that the time had marked a low point in overall US–UK special forces cooperation. Nevertheless that tour provided ammunition for the SBS’s critics. But what happened that night in July 2005, on Operation MARLBOROUGH, should have been enough to silence the sceptics at Hereford.

  The commandos had arrived close to their Alpha (the target house) with a combination of Humvees and Pumas. The Americans were also closely involved. A detachment of Task Force Red, the Rangers, was acting as a back-up force, and the ground-holding unit had furnished some M1 tanks because of the dangers of the neighbourhood in question. A couple of technical experts from the US special ops community were there too, as custodians of the sensitive technology that had allowed the al-Qaeda cell to be pinpointed, and to act as liaison. Overhead, Task Force Black had Pumas carrying snipers in case the people inside the Alpha tried to launch an attack. An orbiting command and control aircraft was also aloft to help direct the operation.

  When the SBS men moved up on foot to hit the target compound a man wearing a suicide vest came running towards them. He detonated the bomb too early to kill the crouching commandos, but one of the Pumas was so low – less than a hundred feet above them – that the explosion caused the aircraft to lose control. It lofted upwards on a cus
hion of blast and then, for a split second, the troop-carrying helicopter dropped like a stone. Against the odds, given their low altitude, the pilot managed to recover the situation, the twin engines screaming as he piled on the power to pull his Puma up. Having come within a few feet of smashing into the Baghdad rooftops the machine roared up into the night air. Whatever expletives might have been flying in the passenger cabin, they were not given time to dwell on their experience. One of the airborne platforms watching the Alpha had picked up on its image-intensifying camera a man leaving the back of the building and running for it.

  The Puma swung around to give the sniper a shot. The SBS man fixed the target in his telescopic sights and opened fire, killing the militant. A second suicide bomber had been stopped.

  It was time for the house itself to be stormed. Bursting into the main building of the compound, the SBS began room clearing. As they went, another man wearing a bomb vest ran down a corridor towards them. One of the SBS Team Leaders, a senior NCO, opened fire at close range, cutting him down. Nobody was quite sure whether he had died before he had a chance to press the button or whether his device had revealed itself as faulty – and nobody at that moment wanted to look too closely at the slumped body. As the teams worked their way through the rooms they did so with growing trepidation. There were explosives or other components of bomb vests scattered in different parts of the building. Throwing grenades into rooms or firing indiscriminately might cause a disaster. They withdrew, confident that their tally of three dead bombers represented the total threat and left the place to bomb disposal experts.

  With Operation MARLBOROUGH over the SBS was commended, having had a taste of the kind of violence facing Delta as it prosecuted its operations against AQI. The Puma pilot who had saved his ship was decorated for this feat of bravery and airmanship. What the events of 23 July rammed home more clearly than any intelligence briefing could have done was that a world of difference existed between the type of FRE arrest work to which Task Force Black had been relegated and the intensely violent fight taking place against al-Qaeda.