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BACK TO : PSYOPS IN IRAQ 2003-6
Troops Attempt To Spook Enemy Into Surrender by Peter Finn 
Troops Attempt To Spook Enemy Into Surrender By Peter Finn Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, April 4, 2003; Page A23 OUTSIDE BASRA, Iraq, April 3 -- In the pitch black, a disembodied voice boomed Arabic words across a wasteland on the edge of the besieged city in southern Iraq early this morning. "ATTENTION! ATTENTION! SURRENDER! SURRENDER! YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY ELITE FORCES. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE. IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER, YOU WILL DIE. SURRENDER! SURRENDER!" As the words echoed, a small group of U.S. Special Operations troops stood waiting, hoping that the result would be a stream of Iraqis approaching with white flags. It was early in a long, strange and unpredictable mission near the no man's land that rings Basra. It began at dusk when the Americans arrived in two Humvees at Bridge 3, a British front-line position within sight of the lights of Basra and the oil fires that burn furiously along its edge. At the request of the British, a U.S. psychological operations unit had recorded a "capitulate-or-die" message to blare at Iraqi soldiers who British troops could see through night scopes, scurrying around at the point where sand meets the city. If the volume was high enough, the Iraqis would have no choice but to listen. The Americans conferred with the crew of one of two British tanks that would provide security. Then it was showtime. The message blared from loudspeakers mounted on the roof of an American "psy-ops" Humvee. But nothing happened, and in a while people agreed that the Iraqis were probably too far away to hear it well. So the team decided to move forward a bit and try again. In the interim, British artillery let loose with a salvo on Iraqi positions. The shelling at first startled the Americans. "What the hell is that?" shouted a man known as Chief, a 50-year-old veteran who was in the turret of the security Humvee, manning a .50-caliber machine gun and a sniper rifle. The Iraqis responded with small-arms fire and lit the sky with flares. British fragmentation rounds, tracing out bright paths in the air, slowly arced over a bridge before bursting over suspected Iraqi positions. "Lord, don't let them have a short round," said Chief. At the same time, the horizon came alive with sharp flashes, the effects of bombing many miles away. The sensory panorama was heightened even further when British Challenger tanks on Bridge 3 and another bridge began firing cannon rounds in quick succession, targeting something in the fields beyond a warehouse complex that the British had seized the previous day. "They smoked him," said one soldier. After the firing subsided, the British explained that 20 Iraqis, carrying rocket-propelled grenades, were crawling across an open space in an effort to flank the British position at the warehouse. Only three Iraqis were seen retreating after the assault. "A for effort, F for tactics," said a soldier after the night became silent except for the distant yelping of stray dogs. The team headed off to a spot for the second broadcast, a British tank leading the way in the darkness. But the Humvees had trouble following. The glare of the oil fires had all but blinded drivers who were using night-vision goggles, and the naked eye was no alternative. "It's like we're in a tub of black paint," said a master sergeant sitting beside his Humvee's driver. Curses were directed at the driver as he bounded through the darkness. "I said, right, right, hard right!" shouted Chief, following up with profanity. He had the only possible sightline because he was in the turret. Losing their ability to see spooked the soldiers. And suddenly, ahead, was another unpleasant surprise: the outline of the British tank, tipped over into a culvert, its cannon barrel in the sand. None of the four-man crew was injured. The Americans paused and decided to play the psy-ops message right there. This time, it got a response, but not the one planned. Unseen Iraqis began to play Arabic music, retorting with a little musical defiance, followed by a rocket-propelled grenade. "Is that for prayer?" asked a soldier. "No, they're trying to drown you out," replied another. "Man, that's funny." "Well, they heard us," said a member of the psy-ops team. "I got to put that in my impact report." With the tank out of commission, and no sign of Iraqis with white flags, a British soldier suggested the team move on to an intersection newly seized by the British, closer to the city. The British had set up checkpoints there and wanted Arabic-speaking members of the Special Operations teams and their interpreters to process Iraqis being detained there. At the intersection, British snipers watched buildings that looked down on them, as other soldiers searched vehicles, pulling out people deemed suspicious. A member of the Special Operations team spoke to the detainees in Arabic, telling them everything would be okay. "We are not a soldier, why are we here?" asked an Iraqi taxi driver in English. Meanwhile, the psy-ops team continued to broadcast, drawing out a number of people with white flags from buildings in the area. But the team had temporarily lost its interpreter, who had gone to interview prisoners, and could not tell the men to come forward. The Iraqis scattered as the British shelled a nearby position and a U.S. jet dropped two bombs. Later, 25 people detained at the checkpoint were taken away for further questioning, some riding on the hood of a Humvee. At a rear position, one man said he was a soldier who abandoned his unit on the day it launched a Soviet-era rocket, only to have the weapon fall back on them, killing 12 men. Another man said he had barely more than two pounds of potatoes and some bread left to eat. Nearly all said they had gotten diarrhea from drinking bad water. The men also provided intelligence on forces in Basra loyal to President Saddam Hussein. "We got some juicy stuff," said a soldier who interrogated one prisoner, a soldier, for close to two hours. In the end, eight of the detained men, some of them policemen and soldiers, were kept in custody and driven away by the British. The others were released and sent on their way with army rations and bottles of spring water. "I have mixed feelings about some of these guys," said one soldier. "Whether they were bad 10 minutes ago, I don't know, but they're out of the fight." By now, with the sun hot and high in the sky, the two teams had been on the road for 17 hours. "Rack time," said one soldier as they drove back to their base. © 2003 The Washington Post Company |