September 4,2008:
One important component of the
U.S. "Surge Offensive" in Iraq last year was actually a three year
old, generally discreet, commando operation. This was Task Force Black (TFB).
Composed of only a few hundred troops, the core of this force was operators
from the British SAS and the U.S. Delta Force. Task Force Black was assigned to
go after the Islamic terrorists who were
actually planning and carrying out the suicide bombings that were killing
thousands of Iraqi civilians a month until last year.
TFB tactics
were bold and dangerous, as they went after terrorists who were on their way to
an operation (either on foot with explosive belts, or suicide car bombers.)
These attacks were are the most carefully planned and executed terrorist
operations, and the objective of TFB was to take down the attackers before they
could detonate their explosives. This is easier to do if you catch them before
they are close to their target, because the bombers are not poised to set off
their explosives on short notice.
Some suicide
bomber teams do not rig their detonators to work until they are close to the
target. They have good reason for this, for there have been accidental
detonations, which kill the support staff as well as the suicide bomber. This
is not good for the morale of the escorts, security detail and bomb technicians
that make all the preparations for these attacks. The bombers themselves only
do it once, and are not as highly trained and difficult to replace. Without the
support people, who are harder to recruit than suicide bombers, these attacks
are much less effective. When Israel began going after the support staff five
years ago, the Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel greatly diminished, and
there were more accidents from poorly made bombs, and more bombers were caught
before they could reach their targets. TFB often brought along American and
Iraqi troops to make a follow up sweep to grab as many of the support staff as
possible.
TFB used all
available intelligence resources to find terrorist gangs that were making the
suicide attacks. Most of these terrorists worked for "al Qaeda in
Iraq," but some were run by various Sunni Arab groups trying to get a
civil war going between Sunni and Shia Arabs. The terrorists believed that such
a conflict would result in a Sunni Arab victory. Three years ago, realizing
that an outcome like that was highly unlikely, some of the terrorist gangs
began shutting down, and there was a decline on terrorist attacks because of
it. But the attacks continued, and in 2006, they increased as Shia death squads
proliferated.
TFB had a
rough time of it for over a year, as Shia terrorists now began setting off
bombs in Sunni Arab neighborhoods. But throughout that period, the intelligence
picture kept getting better. The TFB operators spent much of their time among
Iraqis, so when the Surge Offensive kicked off in early 2007, there was an
opportunity to hit many of the suicide bomber support groups hard. By the time
the Surge Offensive wound down earlier this year, TFB had taken down (killed or
captured) nearly 4,000 Islamic terrorists. Most of them were the hard to
replace support staff. This was reflected in the sharp decline in the number of
terror bombs going off. From a peak of over a hundred bombs a month going off
in Baghdad, to as little as two. TFB suffered about 20 percent casualties
through all this.
After the
Surge Offensive, many surviving terrorists fled north, to Mosul and surrounding
areas. The terrorists still being hunted there, mostly by Iraqis soldiers and
police.