VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 302<br />
302<br />
M asters of C haos<br />
tain leading an ODA in Operation Provide Comfort. The operation was<br />
launched to help the Kurds after Saddam Hussein destroyed 400,000<br />
homes and the people had fled freezing into the mountains. Waltemeyer’s<br />
team had searched long and hard for the Kurdish refugee camp<br />
it was assigned to find, finally locating it wedged high in the 14,000-foot<br />
mountains, to escape both Iraqi and Turkish forces. The tribal leader<br />
had come forward and asked, “What message do you bring us from Haji<br />
Bush?” The twenty-something Special Forces captain had acted as the<br />
senior diplomat in that wilderness, enunciating U.S. policy and defusing<br />
his piece of a tense international standoff.<br />
However daunting the military challenge facing the Special Forces in<br />
northern Iraq, the outcome once again hinged on how well they managed<br />
the politics. Juggling the myriad competing interests would require<br />
major feats of realpolitik. The Kurd-Turk-Iraqi triangle contained some<br />
of the most heated and strongly held antipathies on earth. The Special<br />
Forces would have to lead the Kurds against the Iraqi army while<br />
restraining their secessionist impulses, because any move toward Kurdish<br />
independence would prompt Turkey to invade northern Iraq.<br />
The area bordering Iran also included a stew of obscure and sinister<br />
factions. One of them, a relatively new Islamic extremist group called<br />
Ansar al-Islam, was believed to be allied with Al Qaeda. It was occasionally<br />
supported by two other fundamentalist Kurdish splinter factions.<br />
Additionally, the Badr Corps, an armed band of fundamentalist Iraqi<br />
exiles, had infiltrated from Iran, and a group of armed Iranian exiles<br />
called the Mujahedeen e Khalq had moved into the region. To anticipate,<br />
parry, and neutralize all these factions would take the skills of a<br />
Bismarck. Tovo and Waltemeyer, the yin-yang battalion commanders,<br />
each sought to rise to the challenge in his own distinctive way.<br />
Time was the critical commodity needed to build a relationship with<br />
the Kurdish militias, assess their capabilities, and prepare for combat with<br />
them. An advance party of Special Forces had arrived several weeks<br />
before the main body of the task force, and a few before that. For their<br />
mission, Tovo and his men adopted the native dress of the shamag scarves<br />
and the ballooning brown pants that were the uniform of the Kurdish