Other Worlds and Other Times Iraq – 1985

Remember to duck the commander said, with his face contorted as though he was going to laugh, and he numbered the three objectives that had to be met: 1. cripple the merchant vessels 2. use them to block the port of Khorramshahr and 3. make shipping in the gulf uninsurable. Like many of the intelligence briefings from my missions for the Iraqis during the Gulf War, this one took place on horseback riding Capt. Amad Hajinasiri’s horses. It was early morning and we were on the island in the River Tigris that was the secret base of the Iraqi special forces that he commanded.

I had known Amad since my first combat missions in Iraq during the campaign against the Kurds in 1976 when as a “Contractor”, I had been hired to train troopers and move munitions for attacks in the Kurdish mountains. This was to be his warfare model, and it had to work. The reason I was there was to provide intelligence on where the enemy was, the disposition of the independent tribesmen, and my knowledge of secret backways I had traversed when I was working for the Iranians and Afghans. We had fought together successfully previously in Kurdistan while I traversed the Middle East Triangle. I was contracted to help set up a secure comm system for his new unit and supply equipment on and off for more than three years. I helped to train men on the island and participated in missions against the Iranians who I had worked for a few years previous. It worked to improve my teaching and combat skills in the desert. The mission being planned now during this early morning in the summer of 1983 and was one of the most crucial missions of the Gulf War. It was to be the first use of attacks on international shipping as a tactic in the war and its other purpose was to avenge a humiliating defeat which Iraq had suffered through the betrayal of one of its own officers.

From the earliest days of the war, the Iranian port of Khorramshahr had been a vital strategic target. The Iraqis had captured it after a ferocious battle and held it successfully causing serious problems to Iran’s oil exports and receiving the military equipment vital to their survival. Now the Iraqis had lost it again because of the treachery of just one individual, an Iraqi officer commanding the Khorramshahr Garrison. The Iranians had mounted a massive counterattack in the battle of Bandar Abas when this Iraqi commander delayed his resistance to the last moment, and finally when the situation was already desperate, he had abandoned his men and had been airlifted by helicopter to Tehran leaving Khorramshahr to fall with scarcely a shot being fired. The humiliation of the defeat had burned deeply into the collective psyche of the Iraqi command and they wanted vengeance – and they also needed to act quickly as the Iranians had moved at lightning speed to reopen the port to freighters and the tankers collecting Iranian crude at Kharg Island at the head of the gulf. I hadn’t been asked to fight their wars but advise on a raid on some of the foreign vessels which are already using the Shatt-Al Arab waterways, and there were three directives Abu Azad had outlined that were partly the result of my own proposals during earlier briefings relating to Khorramshahr.

I had already worked several of these commando style raids across Iranian lines to hit at supply routes, the communication posts, and to strike oil pipelines and other installations. Despite the Iraqis lack of experience in this type of warfare, they had a considerable amount of background in multi-terrain warfare. As warfighters, they had considerable successes, but it was in a very different style of warfare from the on-going conflict between Iran and Iraq. The West has never understood the Gulf Wars. It is probably one of the most underreported and misreported conflicts in the history of war partly because virtually no western correspondents have gotten near the front, and partially because the American and European observers generally fail completely to understand the Islamic mentality of either side.

One thing is certain though, the war is every bit as bloody and horrific as the worst of the unconfirmed news reports have suggested, I have never seen such mass carnage anywhere. The sheer numbers of the dead pales in comparison, and everything since and including Vietnam, and that style of warfare waged, especially the Iranian human wave attacks, are simply unimaginable to the western mind. Once when we were being flown in a Soviet made Hind helicopter over the battlefield near Dezful at 500 feet, despite the blistering desert heat, we had to keep the cockpit closed to shut out the stench of death which seemed to fill the whole sky. In WW II, the Russians used human wave attacks to overwhelm the enemy with their unlimited conscripts. Here the Iranians drove hundreds and hundreds of children and aged ahead of them to try and deter the Iraqi forces. The children, the old and infirm, are armed only with placards carrying images of Ayatollah Khomeini and a note guarantying that they would go to heaven as “martyrs” if killed. Many of the children are collected from villages on the way to the battlefront and their parents are told they are going to carry water for the gallant troops at the front. So that they do not slow down the attack, they are driven on from behind like a cattle stampede by fanatical Iranian militiamen who make up the second echelon of the attack with regular forces bringing up the rear, at first the Iraqis tried to avoid killing the children but the militiamen mingled with them and before long orders were given from Baghdad that all the attackers had to be targeted, the Iraqis fired airburst shells over the attacking hordes killing thousands of people in a single day’s combat, the regular Iranian troops also die in huge numbers because they are often too lazy to march and so ride in clusters of vehicles like a swarm of bees on top of French made Panhard armored cars, and scores would die with a single direct hit.

The casualty figures cause disbelief in the western world and revulsion in the conservative Arab countries which are supporting Iraq, so Baghdad has learned to play down the figures. Some of the battles are like the American Civil War, with it all happening in one day, with 50,000 to 60,000 Iranians dying in one attack. In such warfare, there can be no evacuation of casualties, the wounded who aren’t dead are shot by the Iranians themselves, and I have seen the Iraqis using flamethrowers to incinerate the dead just to be able to make a pass through this to their troops. When the reports are read as rumors of such fighting, and the civilians who read about it, have one common reaction, and they think that the Gulf War cannot last long at that pitch. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Similarly Western observers take heart quite wrongly when they hear that the war is draining the Iraqi economy or that the Iraqis are failing to capture Iranian oil installations.

The reality is that this war is not about economics or oil it is a religious Jihad war whose origins go back centuries and the enemy for the Iraqis is not Ayatollah Khamenei – it is the “Persian” who Iraqis have always fought over the centuries. With the Persians, the weapons may now be modern, but the causes are as old as the countries themselves. The balance of weapons is not the determining factor, Iran has a vast arsenal of modern weaponry built up during the reign of the Shah, but 80% of it is unserviceable that does not stop the human wave attacks and the Iraqis know it is immensely hard to stop a half million men and children whatever weapons they use against them.

 The Iraqis fight with any weapons they can buy including chemical ones they have, and they do so with a clear conscience thinking that anything that will kill the hated Persian is acceptable. When saying that they can’t use chemical weapons to kill Persians is as unreal to an Iraqi as not wanting to use an insect spray on an annoying gnat. Nevertheless, the Iraqis who have one of the best led and best trained armies in the Middle East know how they must use sophisticated techniques including selective special warfare raids to defeat the Iranians. The Iraqis are not fanatics in any way. They know that they cannot defeat the massive population of Iran in a war of attrition. Iraqi officers are generally highly publicized, politicized, motivated, and conscious of the inseparability of politics in the war in the region, and leaders like Abu Azad are well aware that although economic damage will not stop the Iranians it can seriously impede their efforts to overrun Iraqi territory by depriving the Iranian forces of fuel supplies and money.

The special forces base on Qanus Island in the Tigris grouped together some of the best trained and motivated officers that the men and men that Iraq possessed, at this time there were about 2000 people on the island which was virtually cut off from the outside world to maintain secrecy. Their absolute leader is Captain Abu Azad, and he was in his mid-40s. He is a natural leader who likes to lead from the front, but he also has a permanent compulsion to prove himself which both inspires and puts a strain on those around him. He left his family in Baghdad and lived in a small bungalow on the island, and when he wasn’t riding his horses, he would drive around the 1.5-mile-long island in a white Mercedes which had been given to him by President Saddam Hussein personally. But Abu Azad also used to run around the island most days at the head of his men. They all had to complete the circuit every day before breakfast, and yet he’s always dressed immaculately whether in mess dress uniform or combat camouflage and is totally dedicated to his special forces unit.

The island itself is fairly open and sandy with patches of gum and bamboo here and there. You reach it from an unmarked turn off point behind an oasis area of brush between Baghdad and Kuwait. There is a cluster of huts and a battered filling station to tell you where to turn off, then a short drive down a desert road through scrubby farming country and across an old twin hull ferry boat.

 The camp is only about 100 miles from the Iranian border and there are observation posts everywhere to warn Baghdad if Iranian phantom jets are screaming over on their way to the capital as well as the tight security checkpoints all around the island. a British firm was contracted to build the security perimeter which had sophisticated electronic sensors, but nonmember of the British firm was ever allowed on to the island itself during the whole construction project. It is probably the most sensitive military installation in the country.

The water current in the Tigris River is extremely fast and the ferry has to aim off in an acute angle upstream to reach the opposite bank but the waters are very good for training in various waterborne vehicles the main part of the island is like special forces training camps everywhere with assault courses ranges and roofless buildings for teaching of advanced assault techniques. There is also one tall structure which is used for teaching repelling for the use in attacking from a rope descent. I tried to mount the 2-inch-thick rope and show that even I could do it. So much for that dream.

The Iraqi soldiers were tough and reliable and courageous, their main drawback was having too much pride and the desire to go to Allah in style, often too early in my judgment as soldiers without pride or without courage, but wanting to die a glorious and stylish death, does not make for good warfighters. The special weaponry techniques and I, had to curb the men’s death wishes on many occasions. As an observer, my main concern on this particular mission against the shipping at the port side of Hormuz. The real problem here was that the Iraqis water skills were not their strongest point. They had selected 20 men to make up four teams of five. Three teams for the attack, and one in reserve. Technically they were all qualified, and several of them had attended civilian diving schools in France and Malta to learn scuba techniques underwater swimming with breathing masks etcetera, but they were a long way from being experienced frogmen and in an unfamiliar environment, their bravery would be a drawback making them feel that they were not really qualifying to perform.

We’d been training on the island for three weeks before the final briefing and we had also made expeditions up the Tigers to practice in more recent warm open water. They were pretty good fast learners, and the team leaders proved excellent officers although they were still some way away from USA standards.

 Interestingly, you could always judge the importance of the mission by the number of officers assigned to it, in this case one of the assault teams was led by a captain and the other three by 4 lieutenants – way over ranked as compared to U.S. special forces teams. It was unlikely there would be more than one commissioned officer with the whole force and an individual assault team would as like as not, be led by a trooper partly it was because Abu Azad wanted his leaders to get the most varied combat experience possible but there’s also an element of prestige if the mission was seen to be important there had to be a senior personnel in the teams this mission would also satisfy various critical government observers and my buyers, as to the forces maritime capability, for this assault I was watching them use semi-submersible silent running inflatables. They are particularly effective for this kind of operation. The boat is like a large rubber dinghy except that when semi-inflated, the bulk of it hangs just below the surface of the water, the explosive and weapons are carried on the craft and the men swim along beside it holding on to loops on the sides. When silenced, the outboard is capable of moving big loads at impressive speeds. We had trained with them in the Tigris and had practiced placing the explosives on mockups of hulls using a Soviet tile type limpet mine and some Spanish manufactured submersible charges, but for the most of the men, it was their first experiences in open water.

In the period leading up to the raid we had been receiving daily aerial reconnaissance photos of the port area and on the day of the assault there were three ships lying at anchor one was German one was Greek and one had Panamanian registration and they had only skeleton watch crews on board. The German ship was a small tanker but the other two were freighters and it was suspected of having brought a cargo of weapons in for the Iranian forces. As soon as the port had been recaptured, the Iranians had opened the channels through the scattered rusty halls and they shutout rob and had been shipping in weapons as fast as they could, there have been several confrontations over consignments, over the previous month shipments of a size large enough to worry the Iraqis were seen being off-loaded. The priority in targeting these vessels using commando techniques was to ensure the hulls sank in the exact locations. Laying in artillery fire could not guarantee this. In order to cover the minimum possible distance by water, it was decided to launch the raid from inside Iranian territory, and this first stage of the mission was a journey by truck all the way down to Basra and then across the southern corner of the border, into Iran. Theoretically we would be moving under the cover of Iraqi artillery but there was still a lot of Iranian movement in the area and there was a considerable risk of running into enemy patrols we reached our mission jumping off point, a desolate stretch of beach partially shielded by low dead dunes just before midnight and prepared to move nearer our targets. In the first stage, we inflated one semi-submersible, only the one that was to carry the reserve team. It carried the other three craft uninflated, and all the men swam behind it as we slowly moved along the shore to a point where we could prepare for the final assault, the reserve submersible was camouflaged and left on the beach with its team inside ready to move off to support us if we ran into trouble, the other three were quickly inflated the explosives and other loads distributed and the assault teams took their positions Captain Abboud the senior officer, led one of the teams but it was understood as always, that no matter what happens, he was in full command of the operation. At that point we were about 10 kilometers from the target and the initial swim went off relatively well except that physically it took too much out of the 10. endurance swimming is definitely not the Iraqi strong point and with this kind of semi-submersible the team had to assist a silent electric motor by kicking all the way to maintain speed.

They were not too encumbered, their diving equipment was light, warm water gear, wet suit, mask, flippers, and light breathing tank, but many were clearly overcoming fear of the water which creates tensions and as comfortably to the fact that considerably to the fatigue my main worry was whether all three teams would be able to place their charges properly.

Right Through it all I was expecting trouble. For me, night swimming by compass is not the easiest of tasks and each team had to swim from its target on a compass bearing to a point on open water, measuring the distance by the time taken. That meant trusting their judgment and a drift factor while remaining calm in the very unfamiliar environment of the darkened water, as well as keeping the boat at constant speed. Once at the rendezvous, the teams were to tread water using a landmark to keep their position and not drift away. I was not surprised when I reached the rendezvous and found no one there. I left my submersible in position and swam around managing to locate Captain Abboud who was not very far off the mark we joined up but there was no sign anywhere of the third team which had botched the chance of the Greek vessel and eventually I ordered both teams to head back to the beach assembly point because we could not wait indefinitely in open water and anyway it was almost time for the fireworks display. When they came, the explosions were almost simultaneous with decks burning and I knew immediately we had a success. Fireballs rose from all three ships as well as the muffled sound of the multiple explosions which was like a giant cannon going off underwater and echoed right across the gulf. The German tanker started sinking rapidly as did the Greek freighter. Not all the charges placed by Captain Abboud under the Panamanian ship went off but there was one huge explosion in its stern, and it swung and collided with the Greek freighter.