A long convoy of tactical vehicles, trucks and troop carriers moved slowly through the countryside to the south of the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, ferrying dozens of Iraqi special forces. Their target was a string of hideouts used by Islamic State (IS) militants in the rough terrain of hills and lowlands crisscrossed by canals and long-dried seasonal river gullies, or wadis as they are called in the region.
In the lead vehicle sat Ihab Jalil, commander of the Kirkuk regiment of the Iraqi Special Operation Forces, a young man with a clipped moustache and hazelnut-colored eyes. He charted the routes of the convoy on his tablet.
At the same time, switching between three radio sets, he talked to the pilots of two helicopters that circled over the convoy, scouting the road ahead.
Illustration: Mountain People
The night before, Jalil had gathered his men at their base and briefed them on the mission: “Our intelligence reports say that DAESH [IS] fighters are based in the mountainous areas in Hamreen, to the east of Kirkuk. During the summer months they have to move down to the wadis to get water. These wadis and gorges become their shelter and communication networks, connecting the villages in the lowlands to their bases in the hills,” he told the soldiers. “The terrain is very difficult, and we know that they have multiple shelters hidden in these wadis and irrigation ditches. I want you to be very careful; I don’t want you to wander through them alone; you will lose your comrade if you move too fast.”
Four years after their astounding defeat in the battle of Mosul, IS militants are regrouping. Small bands of fighters attack military and police checkpoints, assassinating local leaders and assailing electricity transmission grids and oil installations.
Their numbers are still a fraction of when the group ruled large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Deprived of local support in cities and towns after the devastation they wrought upon communities, and unable to hold territory in the face of much superior government forces, they have resorted to a quasi-nomadic existence, local tribal leaders and intelligence officers say.
With their financial resources severely depleted, they seek shelter in the mountains and gorges, and constantly move until enough resources and volunteers are mustered to organize an attack.
A senior intelligence officer stationed in the region said that this area, a triangle between Kirkuk in the north, Baiji in the west and Samara in the south, is very important to the group.
“It’s in the center of Iraq and connects the hills and mountains in the east, a perfect place to hide, to the deserts in the west that would lead to Syria. They will never let go of this area,” the officer said.
One tribal leader whose men had fought against the IS in this region said that although the militants’ numbers are small at the moment, they are working to recreate the conditions that allowed them to control the area.
If they were left unchecked, they would soon manage to organize and regroup.
The IS is “in the same situation as al-Qaeda after their defeat in 2009,” the tribal leader said. “They went underground to regroup and reorganize; it took them less than three years to come back stronger.”
He said that the same conditions that had allowed the IS to manipulate local anger and garner support persists.
“There is little or no trust in the government, and local communities are collectively punished and treated as members [of the IS] until proven innocent,” the tribal leader said.
The mutual suspicion between authorities and the public was on full display in the Kirkuk operation. The convoy of Iraqi special forces ploughed on slowly, the heavy vehicles moaning and creaking as they climbed and fell through ditches and canals. They passed many villages, abandoned since the last war against the IS four years ago, their houses destroyed and their roofs flattened by explosives to prevent the inhabitants from returning.
Sometimes the convoy inched slowly behind mine-clearing soldiers, who walked ahead, inspecting broken pipes and abandoned sacks, and looking for possible explosive devices.
Finally, the vehicles stopped on the outskirts of a small village: Intelligence reports indicated that a the IS deputy governor for the region, Mohamad Daham, came from there.
Even after its losses and the killing of its senior leaders, the IS still maintains a hierarchy and appoints regional governors and commanders, whose job is to oversee provinces and regions that it no longer controls.
SUPPORT STRUCTURES
Platoons of soldiers, clad in black uniforms, their faces hidden under ski masks, descended and entered the village from different directions.
They spread out between mud houses and animal pens, crouching in the shade of the walls, their guns pointing in multiple directions.
Two snipers climbed over a barn and lay on its thatched roof, scanning the horizon. Dogs ran into the fields, barking and giving chase to the low-hovering helicopters.
The place looked deserted, like a long-abandoned movie set. In the center sat an old tractor and some rusted machinery. In the haze of the early morning sun, the Earth, walls and even sky were all in shades of yellow and brown.
However, it was not an abandoned village, and gradually the soldiers started rounding up the men there. They were made to crouch on the ground, their heads bent and faces lined against the wall. The women and children stood in nearby doorways, watching with the apprehensive looks of people well accustomed to almost two decades of interrogations and raids.
Jalil began questioning the men about the whereabouts of the deputy governor.
One after another, they denied knowing him; some even claimed that they had not heard of his family. Then, one man disclosed that IS militants had over the past few weeks passed through the village.
“You have seen the ground here,” he said. “It’s all wadis and canals, so we don’t know when they come and leave.”
“Do you give them bread?” Jalil asked.
“No sir,” the man replied instantly. “I haven’t seen them myself.”
Then came the turn of one very thin man, wearing a mud-caked shirt and a red kufiya wrapped tight around his thin, emaciated waist.
Jalil, who towered over him, ruffled his dirty hair filled with straw and mud, and asked him to stand up and face him.
The man stood, visibly shaking and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. A scared grin grew on his face.
“Why are you scared? We won’t hurt you,” Jalil said with a smile. “Talk; why are you scared? Who are you scared of?”
The man replied: “I swear I don’t know him, but I know that his father was with the [Islamic] State, and his father is now in prison.”
The interrogation continued.
“So you know nothing? Well, maybe you are one of them,” Jalil said and added after turning to his soldiers: “Look how thin he is. Maybe we take him with us.”
Upon hearing this, the man began speaking again with a grimace of pain, telling the soldiers that many families had left when the IS was driven out.
“Some are living in the mountains; at night the men come through the wadi and enter from there,” he said pointing to the far side of the village. “And then leave from this way.”
“Of course they want food, and they take what they want forcefully. We are tired and fed up,” the man said. “I swear by Allah we are fed up, the [Islamic] State comes every night, and the government doesn’t do anything.”
Frustrated, Jalil and his convoy left. He admitted that he could understand the man’s fear.
“They all know the deputy governor, they all know him very well — how could they not if they come from the same village? Yet at the same time, no one wants to be seen talking to us, because they still fear DAESH, and they have the right — we are here for a few hours, and we leave, and the gunmen would come at night looking for supplies.”
Jalil said that part of the problem lay with local security forces who sat behind high walls in a fortified position above the hills, leaving the villages and fields unprotected.
“The locals are trapped,” he said. “They have to deal with them [the militants] because they don’t have security forces to protect them.”
LAYING LOW
The convoy marched on, headed toward a series of canals and ditches that the IS had been using as a makeshift shelter and communication network.
Arriving at their targeted location in the afternoon, the convoy formed an arc facing a network of irrigation ditches and leaching canals where meters-high reeds had grown.
The two helicopters circled overhead. One of the pilots said that he could spot three men running.
The helicopter swept down, lowering its nose and mowing the canal with heavy machine gun fire, before arching into the sky and looping back for another attack.
After a few rounds, a line of smoke rose from the middle of one canal, and the vehicles advanced.
Soldiers walked to the bank and sprayed the bush with their machine guns, while another in the turret of one vehicle fired grenades that popped with muffled explosions among the high reeds.
A fire raged, and one soldier said that there was something flammable there.
The men waded into the thick bush and then the canal, parting the reeds with their guns, cold water reaching up to their waists and their feet sinking in the mud at the bottom. Small black insects landed on their faces and necks with stinging bites.
Unable to see clearly more than 1m ahead, they walked through the water and mud, looking for the elusive enemy that had long run away, most likely scared off by the sounds of the approaching helicopter.
After a few hundred meters of combing the marsh, they came out near the site of the fire to find a metal bed frame nestled in the middle of the canal. It sat above the water, covered in thick black slime of mud and ashes. Next to it was twisted metal mesh that had been used to create a shelter above the bed. Blankets and clothing were the cause of the fire.
There, in the middle of the swamp, was where an IS member — possibly more than one — had spent days or weeks waiting for the day when the group could rule again, the soldiers deduced.
“In reality, it is like looking for a needle in a marshland,” Jalil said.
After looking through other canals, and not finding anything, the convoy moved again toward a nearby abandoned village where the team set up camp for the night. Signs of the previous war against the IS were apparent in the surrounding landscape: demolished houses, burned-out vehicle skeletons, and electricity poles and facades riddled with bullets.
Fires were lit and food was cooked before the soldiers settled down for the night. Some of them slept on the roofs of their trucks or huddled inside their vehicles. Jackals, enticed by the smell of food, came to the edge of the camp, their cries rising, filling the cold night.
“Sir, do you know that these are the same kind of beds we saw earlier,” the group’s deputy commander, Ahmad Sultan, said to Jalil, referring to their makeshift sleeping arrangements.
“I know,” Jalil said. “And most probably DAESH used the same village as a camp, too.”
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