The Enemy's New Tools in Iraq

By Bobby Ghosh/Baghdad

Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there. "I thought to myself, If my life had gone differently, who knows? I might have been on that team," he says, his eyes widening as he imagines that now impossible scenario. Then he shrugs. "God decided I should be on the other side."

Thin-voiced and thickly bespectacled, Abdallah, 28, fits every geek stereotype, right down to the acne and the flash drive on his key chain. His laboratory is a workbench in the bedroom of his Baghdad home. He says his tools are primitive -- soldering irons, old printed circuit boards, discarded TV remotes and other bits of electronic detritus. But he has a talent for fashioning instruments of death from such dreck, turning an old toy walkie-talkie into a trigger for an explosion 100 yards away or programming a washing-machine timer to set off an IED two hours later. Such capacity for destruction makes him invaluable to the disparate groups that make up the Sunni insurgency, including al-Qaeda. "In our circle, everyone has heard of him," says the commander of one rebel group, al-Nasr Salahdin.

Sectarian outrages like the June 13 attack on the holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra -- the same site that insurgents blew up in February 2006 -- have plunged Iraq into civil war. But it is brainy operatives like Abdallah who pose the most consistently lethal threat to U.S. forces. When we met for our second encounter in 15 months, he didn't seem especially worried that a massive U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown had been under way in Baghdad for the past four months -- and that one of its aims was to break the back of the IED industry and roll up people like him. (Abdallah was introduced to TIME through Sunni insurgent contacts, but he did not provide his real name or reveal where he lives.) Iraqi and American officials say they have shut down dozens of bomb factories, arrested nearly 18,000 insurgents and killed more than 3,000 others. But the only metric that matters to Abdallah is the number of Americans killed. By that measure, he figures his side is winning. U.S. casualties have risen every month since February, just after the start of President Bush's surge strategy to quell the bloody Shi'ite-Sunni war. At least 230 service personnel were killed in April and May, making it the deadliest two-month period for U.S. troops since the war began.

It is indicative of the U.S.'s inability to crush the insurgency that commanders are trying to find ways to split it. The military is urging Sunni nationalist groups to take up arms against their former al-Qaeda allies and has begun supplying some of them with weapons. In the immediate future, however, such efforts are unlikely to protect U.S. troops from an increasingly sophisticated and tenacious enemy -- and may even put Americans at greater risk. A TIME investigation reveals that militant groups have responded to the U.S. surge with a big push of their own, unleashing a flurry of new or rarely used tactics and innovations designed to maximize the death toll. Their most potent weapons are the roadside bombs being fashioned by men like Abdallah, which now account for roughly 80% of U.S. deaths, up from 50% at the start of the year. "People are calling me all the time, asking for new ways to ..." Abdallah says, pressing down his right thumb on an imaginary remote control, and adds, "... Boom!"

The military's current security push in Baghdad, known to Iraqis as Operation Fard al-Qanoon, or Imposing Law, has elicited opposite responses from Iraq's two warring sects. Shi'ite militias like the Mahdi Army have decided to lie low; their leaders went underground or on vacation to Iran. Sunni groups, especially al-Qaeda's Iraqi wing, have girded for battle. Groups associated with the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization controlled by al-Qaeda, began to confer with one another and with other Sunni groups. "The first thing we realized is that we would need lots of IEDs and car bombs," says al-Nasr Salahdin's field commander, who was involved in some of the discussions. "Once the Americans were fully deployed, it would be hard to move bombs around, so we had to make them quickly and distribute them."

Some insurgent commanders fell back on tactics that worked before, such as moving their operations into areas where there are relatively few U.S. troops. Al-Qaeda elements driven out of Anbar province by the Marines and a coalition of local tribes began to cluster in Diyala. In recent weeks, bombers have struck even farther north, in Mosul, Kirkuk and long-peaceful Kurdistan. But most groups remained in Baghdad and even called in reinforcements. Many al-Qaeda fighters moved from Anbar to the capital, and the Islamic Army, the largest Iraqi insurgent group, called on its fighters to rally there for a cataclysmic showdown with U.S. and Iraqi troops. They began to attack new targets, like U.S. helicopters and important bridges that connect Baghdad to the rest of the country. "These were all new kinds of attacks, and there were so many of them, it was hard to keep track," says a Western official in Baghdad, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak with the media. "The message from al-Qaeda was, You do your surge, we'll do ours."

The insurgents have upgraded their weaponry. A field commander of the Islamic Army told me his men had produced "hundreds" of huge IEDs more destructive than the armor-piercing bombs that, the U.S. believes, are being smuggled into Iraq from Iran. He said the new bombs are being buried deep in dirt tracks on the outskirts of Baghdad that are likely to be used by American patrols. Some of the bombs are planted in sewers and irrigation culverts; their concrete lining would direct most of the force of an explosion upward -- enough to "turn an Abrams tank into an airplane."

Such claims are typically greeted with skepticism by U.S. commanders. There have been no reports of any Abrams tanks being taken out by an IED since the start of the security crackdown. Still, there's anecdotal evidence that deep-buried bombs are having a devastating effect on other heavily armored American vehicles, even those designed to withstand large explosions. The Islamic Army isn't alone in employing this technique. In April a video posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq showed several Cougars and Nyala RG-31s -- "mine protected" troop carriers -- being blown up by IEDs. The video showed militants using deep-buried explosives to target vehicles meant to find and disable roadside bombs, like the Buffalo counter-IED vehicle and the Meerkat mine detector. The video's ominous title: "Hunting the Minesweepers."

Insurgent groups have had four years' practice in making and camouflaging IEDs. The bombs are especially hard to detect in crowded urban areas full of potholes, drains and sewers. The abundance of garbage on Baghdad's streets can defeat devices meant to locate bombs in relatively uncluttered locales. A discarded refrigerator on the curb could be packed with explosives. Every parked car is potentially a vehicle-borne IED (military jargon for a car bomb). Built-up areas also offer hiding places for those who plant the explosives and set them off. Abdallah says he has been asked to make trigger devices that work from as close as 75 feet away.

While urban settings undermine the U.S. military's high-tech tools, they suit the militants' low cunning. One common tactic is to hide bombs in loose rubble, then stack human feces on top; soldiers are less likely to investigate too closely. Other tactics are more complex. In some neighborhoods militants use snipers to lure soldiers toward IEDs. The bombs are hidden in places where the troops would tend to take cover when under fire -- behind a hedge or a pile of bricks. Senior Iraqi police officials report that militants hide bombs in human cadavers, dumping them on the street and detonating them when a military or police patrol stops for an inspection. "They know that we can't just leave a body to rot in the street," a police official says. "They are counting on us to do the right thing, then hit us when we do."

American soldiers have paid dearly for their commitment to their fallen comrades. On Memorial Day, six soldiers were killed in roadside bombings in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, as they rushed to the crash site of a downed OH-58D Kiowa scout helicopter. The two crewmen had died in the crash, but the militants who brought the helicopter down, apparently anticipating that a rescue would be attempted, had set up an IED ambush. A more sophisticated operation was mounted on May 12 by Islamic State fighters in rural Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. They attacked a U.S. patrol, killing five soldiers and capturing three others. They then planted IEDs in the adjoining palm groves, correctly believing that the military would launch a massive manhunt. One soldier was killed and three others were injured when an IED went off in a field. Two weeks later, the Islamic State claimed in a video that it had killed the three captured soldiers. Other patrols in Mahmudiyah have been hit by attacks involving roadside bombs followed by mortars and small-arms fire.

In response, the U.S. is stepping up its efforts to thwart the growing potency of IEDs. The Pentagon has formed a task force, the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Its more than 500 workers include "red teams," who spend their days trying to think like insurgents, hoping to stay ahead of them. JIEDDO has spent more than $5 billion in the past three years and has a $4 billion budget for the current year. The Pentagon says its spending yields tangible results. "Three years ago, practically every IED incident created some kind of casualty," says Brigadier General Anthony Tata, JIEDDO's deputy director of operations. "Now the enemy must create six incidents to create a casualty of some variety." But top commanders know that roadside bombs can't really be defeated by gadgetry. At a conference on roadside bombs, Brigadier General Joe Ramirez Jr., deputy commanding general of the Combined Arms Training Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., said, "For every move we make, the enemy makes three ... The enemy changes techniques, tactics and procedures every two to three weeks."

General Richard Cody, Army vice chief of staff, told Congress in April that finding and defusing roadside bombs is not a long-term solution. "The real issue about defeating IEDs ... is not at the point of impact," he said. "We have to go and find the guys making them and kill them. We have to find the guys who are getting ready to place them and kill them. That's how you defeat IEDs."

Abdallah concurs. "They are not going to defeat me with technology," he says. "If they want to get rid of IEDs, they have to kill me and everyone like me." If they don't, Abdallah is only going to get better at what he does, with deadly consequences for American soldiers. The terrorism geek has come a long way since our previous meeting. To demonstrate his prowess, he produces a black briefcase-size device with Japanese markings and flicks a switch on its side. He claims that the device is similar to those used by U.S. troops to block cellular signals around IEDs and disable bombs wired to detonate with a cell-phone call. Abdallah says he was given the device by a Saudi militant who asked him to find a way around jamming signals. He invites the four people in the room to try to use their cell phones; none of us can get a signal. "I've jammed you all," he says, tapping the black device. But his own phone, a cheap Nokia, shows a full-strength signal. "I made a few small changes inside," he says, holding up the phone and grinning triumphantly. "It took me just one day to figure it out." It is grim evidence of the perils facing the U.S. in Iraq that men like Abdallah can still make killing Americans look easy.

--With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington