Part II: The Suicide Bomber

Read Part I here.

I tried to squeeze into the Stryker to head to the site of the suicide bombing, but Captain Higgins needed the space for troops, not reporters, so I stayed to watch the EOD team pack the weapons cache with thirty pounds of C4 explosive and blow it in an impressive blast. At the same time, Lt. Pappas took the suspect to a larger forward operating base for processing and interrogation.

Leaving the farmhouse with Cpt. Higgins and the explosives team to investigate the suicide bomb site, we stopped at the IED that we had identified earlier—just long enough for the EOD team to frantically tell us that were sitting on top of an IED, and refuse to go any further. We moved on while they stayed behind to blow it.

By the time we made it to the scene of the suicide bombing, the force of the blast was evident. Twisted cars were still smoldering on the side of the road, walls of a makeshift guardhouse had been knocked down, and there was a blast pit ten feet by twelve feet, six feet deep. The bomb had killed one of the Sons of Iraq as well as the bomber, with fourteen others wounded, including eight that the Americans had helicoptered out for treatment. All that was left of the bomber were a few fingertips and the front halves of his feet, attached to blackish red slop that represented what once the bombers’ legs. When I started to photograph the remains, an Iraqi moved in to the frame to pose with them, then led me over to another pile of reddish black muck. He would point to it, then his stomach, and I assumed he was telling me that this was some part of the bomber’s intestines.

Abu Zakaria, the man whose house was hit, leads a group of 395 Sons of Iraq volunteers in the area, and apparently got the job because his brother is a big political player. Still, Higgins and the other officers at IBA sang his praises, telling me he ran a tight ship, and kept his men alert and well-disciplined. A short, solidly built thirty-six year-old with a neatly trimmed beard, Zakaria was clutching a small club behind his back when I saw him, and he looked shaken, but angry. He and Higgins walked through the crumbled bricks and the still-smoking debris, with Zarakia assuring Higgins that he was committed to staying put, and Higgins offering suggestions for securing his property.

One young Sons of Iraq member with cuts on his arms and face told me that he had seen the whole thing. A “foreigner” with a “pale face and a long beard” pulled around the corner in his car and stopped directly in front of the checkpoint in front of Zakaria’s house. Waiting to be checked, the driver pulled out a grenade and tossed it under a truck in front of him that was carrying large 55-gallon drums of diesel fuel, and just before the explosion, the young man said, he jumped into a canal across the street to save himself.

1st Lieutenant Pete Cox, a twenty-three year-old Class of 2006 West Point grad, was in the base at the time of the explosion, and helped coordinate the treatment of the wounded Iraqis. There were no interpreters on base at the time, so Cox and others had to rely on their rudimentary Arabic and sign language to communicate. “Remember that famous picture from Vietnam with the little girl running from the napalm?” he asked, “it reminded me of that scene. I’d never seen injuries like that, I’d never seen burns like that. You had some guys with small shrapnel cuts and burns, and then you had guys with compound fractures and cuts all over their body and burns all over their body.”

One of the injured was a young boy, who had been at Zakaria’s with his father. His face was badly burned. “He looked like his face had been exposed to the flame, but the rest of him was fine. It looked like he was behind a wall, maybe, and only his face was exposed.”

The explosion and the aftermath was a test Lt. Cox felt that the patrol base passed. “The soldiers were pretty inventive about where to hang the IV bags, and figure out ways to help these people. You only have so many medics and when you have a mass casualty situation like that, you just don’t have enough, you can’t tend them all at the same time.”

Within thirty minutes of the blast, two Army helicopters actually landed on the small patch of land inside the base to ferry the most badly wounded Iraqis to an Army hospital, a risky move that impressed Cox, and one he hoped impressed the Iraqis, as well. It showed the Iraqis, he believes, that while groups like al Qaeda want to sow death, the Americans are willing to risk their lives to save Iraqi lives.

The attack came at a time of increasing al Qaeda attacks on Sons of Iraq checkpoints, a gambit that doesn’t seem to be accomplishing its objective of getting Iraqis to quit the groups.

“That we’re taking more Iraqi casualties means that they’re getting involved,” Cox told me that evening. “And it’s not just bystanders but guys who are putting their life on the line. The fact that they were targeted—Abu Zakaria and the Sons of Iraq—means that they’re considered a threat. And if al Qaeda thinks they’re a threat that means that they’re doing something right.”

Still, while that may or may not be true, the events of a single day at combat outpost IBA show that this war is far from over, and the complex maneuverings of fighting a counterinsurgency are only now starting to become fully apparent.

Both parts can be read together at the Columbia Journalism Review

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[David M]

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 03/11/2008 News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.
http://thunderrun.blogspot.com/2008/03/from-front-03112008.html