Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World by Joby Warrick

Author:Joby Warrick [Warrick, Joby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 21st Century, Biological & Chemical Warfare, Favorite, Genocide & War Crimes, History, Intelligence & Espionage, International Relations, Middle East, Political Science, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Syria, Syrian Civil War (2011-), Terrorism, United States
ISBN: 9780385544474
Google: Vn7JDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B083RZTNBF
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2021-02-23T03:00:00+00:00

12

Ghost Armies

In the same week the weapons inspectors arrived in Damascus, an Iraqi army helicopter with four crewmen aboard left its base to investigate reports of a strange military encampment in the desert near Baiji. The town in north central Iraq, about 120 miles up the Tigris River from Baghdad, is close to Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, in a neighborhood known as a haven for armed gangs of all kinds. One of these gangs had apparently settled in the arid hills outside town, and it had exchanged gunfire with an Iraqi army patrol. A chopper and crew—pilot, copilot, crew chief, and gunner—were dispatched to look for the militants and then to give chase.

The pilot skimmed the tops of date-palm groves and followed newly planted barley fields along the lush corridor of green where the Tigris snakes through the desert. Then he headed out over the wastelands to begin the search, the gunner scanning the terrain from the open side door. They spotted something in a cleft in the hills, and as they flew closer, they discovered a small vale that had been turned into a military encampment of astonishing size. This was no band of renegades. It was a small army, with vehicles, tents, heavy weapons, and a mountain of supplies. Before the crew could react, a swarm of machine-gun rounds ripped through the helicopter’s unarmored floor. The aircraft went down in a spiral and crashed hard, killing all four crew members.

The incident received scant notice in the U.S. capital, where a partisan squabble over health care had triggered a budgetary crisis and a shutdown of the federal government. But within a small cadre of officials monitoring Iraq’s growing Islamist insurgency, the helicopter’s fiery demise flashed like an alarm. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham—now widely known as ISIS—had smashed through yet another threshold on its path to becoming a true regional menace. In the week that followed, the group downed two more Iraqi helicopters, evidence of its vastly enhanced firepower.

Among those studying the reports was a State Department policy expert and diplomatic troubleshooter named Brett McGurk. At age forty, McGurk already was regarded as one of Washington’s most experienced and capable Iraq hands. He served as a legal counsel to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority beginning in early 2004, eight months after the 2003 invasion, and he helped draft Iraq’s interim constitution. After returning to Washington, he served as a senior adviser on Iraq for the George W. Bush White House, earning distinction as a leading architect of the 2007 “surge” policy that brought stability to Iraq after a brutal, three-year insurgency. He was then tapped by President Barack Obama to help untangle various diplomatic disputes with Iraq, becoming one of a small handful of political appointees to serve under Bush and Obama. Tall and athletic with square-jawed good looks, he impressed superiors with his ability to perceive root causes of complex problems and then to work smartly and diligently to overcome them.

At the time

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