Active Unit News

Saddam loyalists targeted in predawn raids

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer
BALAD, Iraq —- U.S. forces in Iraq carried out a series of predawn raids against Saddam loyalists early Tuesday morning, capturing two top Baath party leaders suspected of organizing attacks against coalition troops and the sabotage of Iraqi infrastructure. Soldiers from Crazy Horse troop of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment and troops from Alpha Company 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division captured a total of 11 suspected Iraqi militants, including five former leaders of Saddam Hussein’s political organization in seven separate raids. The troops fanned out in seven separate strikes were carried out in the town of Balad, — situated just miles south of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace. The raids came on the third day of a major counter-insurgency push in the area dubbed Operation Sidewinder. Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles were pressed into the campaign. Tuesday morning’s operation netted local Baath party branch chief Burham Jasm Hussein — who military intelligence officials believe was close to Saddam Hussein — and Saddiz Darwash, a Baath official and a suspected local organizer for Al Auyda, or “The Return,” a loyalist guerrilla movement. Soldiers took the Iraqis into custody and detained them for questioning at the Crazy Horse troop’s forward operating base here, in Balad. Throughout Iraq, U.S. and British forces have been plagued by attacks military officials believe are directed and carried out by Hussein loyalists angry at his ouster. Twenty-three U.S. troops have been killed in guerrilla attacks since the end of major combat operations was declared May 1. Operation Sidewinder is intended to crush resistance in a region military intelligence officials believe to be an increasingly popular sanctuary for former regime members. “We’ll break their back eventually,” said Capt. Brett Bair, Crazy Horse troop commander. “I just don’t see how they’ll be able to keep this up for much longer.” Operation Sidewinder kicked off early in the Sunday morning of June 29 with a raid by Alpha 1/8 soldiers on a small Tigris river island near Balad believed to be a training camp for the Fedayeen Saddam, a Baathist paramilitary group. While that raid came up dry, another conducted simultaneously at a house in Balad netted Najim Abdulla Abboud, a Baath party branch head and area chief for the Fedayeen. Under questioning by military intelligence officers at the Crazy Horse base, Abboud reportedly fingered Burham Hussein as a local Baath leader. This, combined with a variety of local tips and other intelligence prompted Tuesday’s raids, Army officials said. “He sung like a songbird,” an intelligence officer quipped of Abboud's confession. Tuesday’s predawn nighttime operation was not without its snags, with troops in at least one case raiding the home next to one they were supposed to and, in another raid, detaining a frail elderly man whose connections to Iraqi party activities ended nearly 20 years ago. At least one of the Baath party officials targeted in the July 1 raid, Sahab Hussein Mahawish, was clearly too old and frail to be a resistance organizer. Under questioning he admitted to having been a leader of the party until 1986, so military intelligence officers let him go that night. During another assault, soldiers targeting Baath organizer Kassim Abd Razak raided the neighbor’s house instead of Razak’s. Minutes later Razak was netted in his home after the soldiers realized their mistake and regrouped for a follow-up raid. The missteps are an indication of how fragile intelligence can be for U.S. forces in a country where political and religious rivalries run deep. Despite the sometimes questionable intelligence and bum leads, however, soldiers here vow to carry on their high pace of counter-guerrilla operations until resistance has withered and the rebuilding of post-war Iraq has begun. “We’re this close, this close, to knocking them out,” Bair said, gesturing with his fingers the sign for an inch.

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