In late 2003, five Military Intelligence Soldiers were tasked to track the radical firebrand Shi?ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. These Army Reservists followed his moves through the streets and back alleys of Kufa and Najaf, they reported the activities of and the growing influence of his ?Mahdi Army? as they slowly but deliberately encroached on the local governments for control of the prized Imam Ali shrine, and the millions of dollars worth of gold and currency that laid therein. Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez personally followed the progress of this small group of Soldiers, looking for clues of Sadr?s intentions and how it would affect the Coalition and the rest of Iraq. For the next six months, debates raged from the Green Zone to the corridors of the Pentagon, and even to the Oval Office of the White House: what should be done with Muqtada al-Sadr?Now for the first time, the ground truth is revealed about how America let Iraq?s most dangerous man raise an army, fight the Coalition?twice?and then slip through their fingers to escape to Iran, where he is being groomed to become Iraq?s next Ayatollah and awaits the time to return and claim Iraq for Iran.

Hunting Muqtada

Iraq's Most Dangerous ManBy Harold M. North

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Harold M. North
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-2463-1

Contents

CHAPTER 1 KUFA AND NAJAF.........................1CHAPTER 2 TAKING CHARGE..........................50CHAPTER 3 DEADLY ENCOUNTERS......................68CHAPTER 4 GIVING THANKS..........................83CHAPTER 5 W.M.D..................................97CHAPTER 6 NEW YEAR'S WEDDING.....................133CHAPTER 7 ASHURA.................................149CHAPTER 8 LIBERATION.............................178EPILOGUE..........................................198

Chapter One

KUFA AND NAJAF

DAY 146: SUN 5 OCT 03

I was surrounded by history. I had been walking, eating and sleeping on the decaying ruins of the ancient city of Babylon beside the Euphrates River for the past six weeks. The crumbling foundations of the Tower of Babel were only yards from my desk. The wall of King Nebuchadnezzar's throne chamber-whereupon God had written with His finger-was only a stone's throw from my sleeping tent. This same chamber was the last known resting place of Alexander the Great, before his remains had disappeared into the sands of history.

But just as ancient history surrounded me, there was modern history here as well. One of Saddam Hussein's 70-plus gaudy desert-colored palaces stood on a perfectly rounded hilltop overlooking the ruins. Much to the dismay of archeologists, bulldozers had scraped up ruins into the huge pile to form the hill. Countless artifacts that archeologists had never had an opportunity to examine had been destroyed and lost forever so Saddam could have his hill. Looters from the nearby town of Hilla had stripped the palace down to its bare Italian marble walls long before the coalition had arrived. It now resembled a cool, dark cavern wherein one could escape the brutal heat of the day, even without any functioning air conditioning.

Untold further damage was done when Saddam had directed the construction of a convention center and its entire supporting infrastructure at the base of his palace hill. Archeological destruction was multiplied exponentially when Saddam directed the resurrection of the ruins-by literally building on top of the remaining crumbling walls. Babylon was ringed with a number of brick factories that had been commissioned to provide all of the bricks to rebuild the entire city-supposedly as close to the original as was possible-by piling his new bricks on top of the 4,000-year-old originals. Nebuchadnezzar had a limited number of special bricks with his name inscribed on them claiming responsibility for building Babylon. Saddam had some patterned after Nebuchadnezzar's, taking credit for its resurrection that were found in walls randomly throughout the ruins. I wondered if God, annoyed with Saddam for rebuilding Babylon in his own image, was using us to symbolically destroy it once again.

Saddam's goal was to transform Babylon into a worldwide tourist attraction, a vacation resort for the rich and famous. Instead, the area had served as the headquarters of the First Marine Division, United States Marine Corps. The Marines had been here since the end of major hostilities in May 2003 until September, when they rotated back home. Camp Babylon, as it had been christened, was now the headquarters for the newly-formed Multi-National Division, or MND. Led by a brigade from the Polish army, who provided the largest contingency of any other nation, the MND was responsible for security in the five provinces identified as South-Central Iraq.

South-Central Iraq was practically void of U.S. forces. The coalition commander, Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, wanted American eyes and ears on the ground to provide him directly with ground-truth intelligence. This was where our little group of Soldiers came in. I was part of a Military Intelligence company of less than 40 Americans, all mobilized reservists. We were spread throughout the five provinces, tasked with tracking not only insurgents, but keeping an eye on our coalition partners as well-not so much to 'spy' on them as to keep General Sanchez apprised of their activities, or lack of them as the case may be.

Our recent experiences in the Balkans had taught us that our coalition partners did not always act in open faith or in the best interests of the coalition. Some partners in Bosnia had been caught running guns, drugs and/or prostitution rings, and were now also represented in our newly formed Iraqi coalition as well. And of course, despite the outward faade of being coalition partners, many of them spied on us as much as-or even more so than-the enemy. One coalition partner had brought along their signal intercept vans and placed them on some hills in the camp. However, instead of facing their collection dishes outwards towards town, they pointed into the camp-towards us.

Our company had already been in Iraq for six months, since the end of major hostilities in May 2003. We had spent those months in a camp northeast of Baghdad screening over 4,000 freedom fighters classified by our illustrious State Department at the insistence of former President Clinton as 'terrorists,' in a failed effort to curry favor with the "evil terrorist mullah regime" of Iran, as these freedom fighters referred to them. With only 12 hours' notice we were ordered to leave the camp and head south to Camp Babylon and conduct our current mission. We had been here six weeks so far.

I was the officer in charge of our company's night shift, as we ran 24-hour operations to support our five teams in the field, one in each province. I had served in the military in various capacities for the last 21 years: as an armor crewman on an M-60 tank in a cavalry troop, as a Special Operations Combat Controller in the Air Force, then back in the Army as an interrogator in Military Intelligence. I had been appointed a warrant officer in the early 1990s, and also had the honor of serving as a competitive member of the U.S. Shooting Team at one point in my career.

Some of our Soldiers had been previously mobilized under Operation Enduring Freedom in support of operations in Afghanistan. They were shortly coming up on their two-year limit of presidential authority for mobilization, and would be going home earlier than the rest of us. This re-deployment would leave us even more short-handed, but we had no choice but to adapt and continue the mission. Our company commander, Captain Oliver, and our Operations Officer, Captain Dave, had notified me the night before that in a couple of weeks or so, I would move to the city of Najaf to replace the current team leader that had to rotate back home soon. This duo had been aptly nicknamed "Captains Courageous" by the members of the company.

Captain Dave caught me in the hall after breakfast. He was tall and lean, with curly black hair and a long, a scruffy face that almost always bore a smile. His demonstrated care and concern for the Soldiers coupled with his easy demeanor and superior diplomatic skills made Dave one of the finest officers I had the pleasure of working for in my 21-year career to date. All of us felt blessed to have him with us during this particularly difficult period in our lives-serving in Iraq for a year, far from home and our families. For many of us, he made it almost bearable.

"Hey, Harry, can you come in here for a bit? Oliver and I need to talk with you." He invited me into the Captain Oliver's office. For reasons of Operations Security, our entire company was...