http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/international/middleeast/29mosul.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
The New York Times
November 29, 2004
MOSUL
Notes Spotted by Soldier Lead G.I.'s to Rebel Cache
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
OSUL, Iraq, Nov. 28 - At first the suspect was merely one of 115 Iraqis
whom American troops corralled for questioning on Saturday night in a
particularly nasty part of Mosul. But his belligerence stood out. And then
he made his move.
Sitting where the troops had ordered him to sit - in front of an open-air
cigarette store - the suspect flicked out of his pocket several folded
sheets of handwritten notes. It was clear he hoped the pages would land
unnoticed amid the clutter of the store just a step away.
They did not. A soldier scooped them up and handed them to an Iraqi
interpreter working for the Americans. "Who has this? He is an insurgent!"
shouted the interpreter, known only to the soldiers as Jeff the Fighting
Kurd.
Jeff and another interpreter quickly translated the pages for the American
officers who gathered around.
One passage mentioned a proposal for a large-scale attack against American
troops, according to the interpreters. Another urged attacks on the
families of Iraqis thought to be working for the Americans. Another
described "how to get money and use the money for jihad," an interpreter
said. And still another underscored the importance of "bringing information
about who is working for the U.S. forces."
An American commander told embedded journalists not to report other
passages - more specific, descriptive and pointed - for fear of
jeopardizing efforts to gather intelligence and prevent attacks on American
forces.
Suddenly, the night's operation was not over. Soldiers found keys on the
suspect and took him the short distance to his two-story home in Old Mosul,
a densely populated warren of rundown homes in central Mosul thought to be
a haven for hard-core insurgents in this northern city of two million.
They walked inside, through a 15-foot-square courtyard, past two women, an
elderly man, a child and a young boy, to another room packed with papers.
They moved upstairs, past a flower bed, and found two rooms that contained
all sorts of electronic equipment, the troops said.
"There was a large stash of bomb-making material, switches, wires, just a
trove of stuff," said the American commander, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, whose
battalion controls much of western Mosul. "Papers on how to launder money
and others that talked about the ineffectiveness of some of their weapons
systems against us and how they need to change." A 55-gallon drum of
bomb-making material and 2.5 million Iraqi dinars - about $1,700 - was also
found, he said.
The papers retrieved from the man in front of the cigarette stand, he
said, were "minutes from some type of meeting of terrorist cells where they
discussed money laundering, recruitment, weapons effectiveness and future
operations."
This is how it goes in the war against the insurgents in Mosul. Apparently
having learned that direct attacks on American troops and their heavily
armored vehicles are a difficult if not suicidal approach, insurgents often
keep to the confines of sympathetic neighborhoods. They come out to try to
pick off American troops patrolling the city or to launch mortars at
American bases. But most of their efforts lately have been to kidnap,
brutalize and kill young Iraqis who have joined the nation's new security
forces or who are thought to be helping the Americans.
So for American troops here, success often means catching a break or two
from a steady routine of raids and searches into places like Old Mosul, a
one-square-mile district in the center of the city that is home to as many
as 500,000 people.
Sometimes troops go into insurgent areas for the principal purpose of
drawing their fire - so the Americans can shoot back and capture or kill
them. Such missions are very frustrating when the insurgents do not take
the bait, as was the case during a rainy three-hour operation into Old
Mosul last week.
But on Saturday, the troops had help. Riding in a 19-ton armored Stryker
vehicle was "the source," an informant who, despite never leaving the
vehicle, was bedecked in a full-face scarf, a Kevlar helmet, and large
black sunglasses.
Using informants can be tricky business, Colonel Kurilla is quick to
concede. They can be motivated by revenge, and some do not have a good
track record.
With the informant in tow, troops raided an Old Mosul mosque and
surrounding homes in the morning, detaining eight people whom the informant
- peering through an on-board video monitor linked to a large camera atop
the Stryker - identified as insurgents. But there was not much evidence.
The most excited one of the Iraqi commanders became was when he brought a
pair of rubber boots out of a home and laid them at the feet of several
American soldiers, exclaiming, "Ali Baba!" The troops, mystified, went
inside the house and found a dozen pairs of boots, and nothing else.
But for the troops, Saturday night offered a welcome payoff. The troops
arrived at an intersection in Old Mosul at about 5:30 p.m. and began
rounding up people near a mosque and a social club where men were playing
cards on the second floor. Only toward the end of the mission did the
handwritten notes appear - confirming, in the view of the soldiers, that
they had found some bad guys.
"This is a very good night," said Capt. Matthew McGrew. "They're somebody."
He added that if they were not insurgent fighters, "they're one of the
terrorist cells working against us."
"We know they're bad," he said.
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R. A. Hettinga