Iraq’s ‘Dirty Division’ restores reputation
Once loathed anti-terror team now battlefield celebrities in ongoing fight against Daesh
FALLUJAH, IRAQ— Iraq’s counterterrorism forces, known as the Golden Division, were once so loathed that they were nicknamed the “Dirty Division.”
They were accused of running secret prisons and carrying out extrajudicial killings. Some lawmakers called for them to be disbanded.
But the country’s war against Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, has restored the reputation of the elite forces, which have spearheaded nearly every major fight against the militants in Iraq. Their commanders have become battlefield celebrities, while popular songs praise the troops’ prowess.
The force of about 10,000 men is a small bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre legacy of American efforts to rebuild Iraq’s military in the 13 years since the invasion.
U.S. officials say it is their most reliable partner in fighting Daesh on the ground, while the Iraqi army struggles with corruption and mismanagement. But with hundreds of casualties over the past two-and-a-half-years and few breaks for the men from the grinding war, Iraq may slowly be degrading its best weapon to fight the militants.
“We’re carrying the rest of them, but we’ve got used to it,” Col. Arkan Fadhil said with a shrug as he called in airstrikes from U.S.-led coalition jets in Fallujah a few days before the city was retaken last month. “It’s been from the beginning of the war until now.”
As Daesh made its first sweeping advances, a group of counterterrorism troops held on for months in the face of hundreds of car bombs during a siege on Iraq’s largest oil refinery.
Last year, the Golden Division led the battle to retake Ramadi, sweeping east to west as federal police forces struggled to progress.
Most recently, here in Fallujah, Golden Division commandos were the first to break through defence lines set up two-and-a-half years ago in the city, the first in Iraq under the control of Daesh.
Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, their black Humvees raced through neighbourhoods where the militants had planted deadly roadside bombs and built networks of tunnels.
“They are lead sled dog,” said Lt. Gen. Mick Bednarek, who headed the U.S. training effort in Iraq between 2013 and 2015.
The units were formed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when officials realized forces who could work with the United States would be needed as insurgency grew. They were modelled on American Special Operations troops, and drawn from across Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups.
From the outset the Golden Division was viewed with suspicion because it was formed under the command of the prime minister’s office. Accusations grew that then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was using the forces to eliminate his rivals.
“Their transformation over the past two years has been amazing,” said David Witty, a retired U.S. army Special Forces colonel and a former adviser to the Iraqi counterterrorism force.
“They went from being on the verge of being disbanded or absorbed to being the darlings of Iraq.”
The fact that the units were kept separate from Iraq’s traditional security structure in the end may have saved them.
The Golden Division managed to insulate itself largely from the corruption that gnawed through the foundations of the Iraqi army and flourished elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the counterterrorism units received concentrated and continuous training from a small contingent of U.S. troops that stayed behind after American forces pulled out in 2011.
Commanders say that the accusations levelled at them in the past were politically motivated, but American trainers put a special emphasis on human rights in an effort to keep the force beyond reproach, Bednarek said.
The Golden Division remained cohesive even as Daesh propelled Iraq into crisis in 2014 and the Iraqi military collapsed despite more than $20 billion spent by the U.S. to rebuild it.
Maliki soon departed, and this put an end to the accusations that the soldiers acted as his private army.
The force is now the “most professional technically capable force” the Iraq government has at its disposal, Bednarek said. But the Golden Division was not created for its new role.
“We used to have missions for selective, high-value targets, small-team operations,” Fadhil said.
The weight of running a ground war is putting a strain on the division.
Even as their fighters were in the thick of the Fallujah fight, some had to be called back to Ramadi to recapture areas on the outskirts of the city that they had secured months ago. Police and tribal fighters had lost control of the ground once more.
“There’s a weakness in the army and other forces which has increased the pressure on us,” said Brig. Gen. Haider al-Obeidi, the division’s field commander for the operation, recalling the early days of battle.
He stopped to receive co-ordinates for a strike over a walkie-talkie. With a pop, a bullet flew into the leg of a soldier standing next to him. “Sniper!” someone shouted as the men took cover behind a small building.
“As I told you, we couldn’t clear all the houses,” Obeidi remarked. Later, he said the round was more likely a stray bullet, but his point still stood.
Before the war, the men would do seven days on an operation, seven days of training and seven days off. Now that’s changed to two weeks on and a week on leave, but the intensity of the fight means that doesn’t always happen.
The men don’t expect much of a pause now that Fallujah is behind them. There are more battles to fight in Anbar province, while other Golden Division units have already begun operations south of Mosul.
Their front line role has made for heavy losses. The battalion Fadhil commands had 240 men in December 2013. Now it has just 190, even after replacements were sent in for many of those killed.
Other units have lost more men, he said. They are hard to replace.
“You can’t mass produce specialoperations guys,” Fadhil said.