Sunni Attack in Al Atiba’aChapter 12 of Balloon Wars: An ISR Operator's Account Of The Wars In Iraq & Afghanistan

The blacked-out text are redactions resulting from the 2nd review of the book by the Department of Defense. The blue text was deemed classified or for some other reason not allowed during the 1st review. Appeal of the redactions that remain is pending.

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book chapter and photos © Robert A. Crimmins, Felton, Delaware, USA

Chapter 12 – Battle in Al Atiba’a

UTAMS takes us to fire fight in Al Atiba’a

PTDS Balloon with Al Atiba’a in background

Chapter Twelve describes a Sunni attack in Al Atiba’a, a neighborhood near the balloon site on Camp Slayer, one of many U.S. Army and Air Force bases on the Victory Base Complex. I was operating the camera just days after landing in Baghdad when the sensors that listen for weapons and explosions “slewed” the camera to five “pax” firing on an Iraqi police station. Before the violence ended a couple of hours later we watched that group and others fire RPGs into homes, launch mortars to more or less random locations and fire AK-47s and other automatic weapons at their neighbors. In the end our team directed the Army to the back yard where the fighters hid the weapons after the fight and watched the patrol climb the wall and capture the cache.

Balloon Wars Home Page
OTHER SELECTED CHAPTERS
Chapters 1 & 2 – PTDS & the ISR Network
Chapter 17 – Muqtada al-Sadr
Chapter 33 – Urged to Jump
Chapter 40 – Mortar Attack
Chapter 78 – UTAMS Repair
Chapter 79 – IRAM – A Deadly New Weapon
Chapter 82 – Bagram and Waza Khwa
Chapter 86 – Captain Ellis
Chapter 87 – 9th Inflation and The Karez
Chapter 116 – Just Living

This program is about my job in the war zones and how the events of September 11, 2001 affected my family. It isn’t the television version of the memoir. The resources to produce that are beyond me, but the video and stills in this more modest production compliment the book.

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM BACKGROUND

First journal entry minutes after an IED detonation.

Assessing The Surge is a NY Times web page with articles and videos that assess the effect of the "Surge" in thirteen Baghdad neighborhoods, including Jihad, the one closest to Site 1.

The Killing Fields of Baghdad
from March, 2008 is the second of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's three film series. In it he visits Baghdad's killings fields on the edge of Sadr City. The scene of thousands of sectarian murders over the previous three years, it is a desolate and evil place: "Only the killers and the killed ever come here" says Abdul-Ahad. Here in the thousands of graves marked with only scrap metal and junk lie the victims of the Shia militia gangs.

Baghdad's rich tradition in tatters was written in 1998 by Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who died while covering the uprising in Syria in 2012.

"Surreal Mother & Child" was an original oil painting for sale at the bazarre outside the big PX by an Iraqi artist whose name I didn't record.

June 10, 2007 Journal Entry about social contact with Iraqis.

Charles Lindholm is a professor of anthropology at Boston University and his book, The Islamic Middle East: An Historical Anthropology is an anthropologist's perspective on the history of the Middle East that places Islam in context with the other conditions that have shaped the cultures of the tribes and ethnicities of the region.

Koranic Mythology Behind Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army NPR's Mike Shuster reports on the mythology behind the Mahdi army, the militia supporting Iraqi insurgent leader Moqtada al-Sadr. The group has invoked the mahdi, an important Koranic symbol, to lend religious significance to their fight. (aired August 24, 2004)

Asia Times Online article on the motivation behind Muqtada al-Sadr's call for a cease fire in the summer of 2007.

Blast radii of munitions used against Iraqi and coalition forces.

Getting Used To the Racket, Rockets Stars and Stripes article in the September 6, 2007 edition about the frequent indirect fire attacks on FOB Loyalty.

June 15, 2007 Journal Entry about driving across the VBC at night.

Mahdi Army uses "flying IEDs" in Baghdad is a LongWarJournal.org article about the use of Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, IRAMs, against FOB Loyalty on April 28, 2008 and elsewhere.

Old prison a chilling reminder for Iraqis was in Stars and Stripes on April 3, 2005. It's about the Iraqi secret police headquarters and prison that became FOB Loyalty.

Six Questions For Wesley Morgan is a short interview with a college sophomore who spent the summer of 2007 in Iraq at the suggestion of General Patraeus.

CONTACT ROB CRIMMINS