1 in Liberated Ramadi, the Fight to Clear 'Unprecedented' Explosive
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In liberated Ramadi, the fight to clear ‘unprecedented’ explosive contamination left behind by ISIS continues On a 30-degree day in August 2016, a team of Western contractors and Iraqis worked their way through buildings in the al-Mal'ab District on Ramadi’s southern edge. They were clearing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) left there by the Islamic State of Iraq and al- Sham (ISIS) who Iraqi forces had defeated only a few months before. The devices they came across were mostly primitive; none of the components are very complex or difficult to get hold of, usually items as ubiquitous as nine-volt batteries and electrical switches. Ammonium nitrate – fertiliser used in agriculture – or anther homemade explosive packed into a pot or plastic container, forms the main charge. In some cases, DIY fragmentation such as ball bearings or nails add to the destruction. Some use a passive infrared sensor, just like you would see in the outdoor light that switches on as it senses motion. Anti-lift devices are set off in a similar way to a fridge mechanism, where when the door is opened the light turns on. Others have a pressure plate which enlarges the area of sensitivity needed to actuate it. Usually all it takes is to remove the nine-volt battery to disarm the device before they are dismantled and handed off to Iraqi explosive ordinance disposal units. Except, some of the devices laid by ISIS are more technically complex. Among the team that day was a former British Army Sergeant Major and an Iraqi policeman. Both were killed when the device they were attempting to neutralise set off in an explosion that injured a further three members of the team; another British contractor and two more policemen. The risk these teams face is very real, but the work they do is necessary to stabilise a nation where contamination of such weaponry is on an unprecedented previously unseen scale. Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, declared 10 December this year a day of celebration marking the one-year anniversary since Iraqi forces liberated the country from ISIS during their last stand in Mosul. This comes despite recent reports of fighters reappearing in western Anbar, close to the border with Syria, and in territory to the north that remains disputed between the Kurds and Baghdad. Iraqi forces, with assistance from the coalition, whose members include the Britain and United States, battled ISIS for three years. The fighting and bombing campaign left unprecedented damage to critical infrastructure, private homes, and to rural areas and agriculture, which Amnesty International described as a war crime in recent weeks. A UN assessment team who went to Ramadi after it was recaptured from ISIS in 2016 described the destruction they saw as “staggering,” and at the time, worse than anywhere else in Iraq. This was later surpassed only by Mosul after it was liberated in 2017. Mosul’s near-total destruction has been compared to that of Dresden and Hiroshima, and its rebuild, it has been said, may take as long as a decade. ISIS was not the first jihadist movement to have taken sway in Anbar. The very routes in and borders crossed by foreign ISIS fighters were paved by Al Qaeda militants during the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies. With Tikrit to its north, Baghdad to its east, Ramadi marks the western point of the so-called Sunni Triangle, ¬ a term that arose during the insurgency, and from where a majority of its local militants originated from. Anbar Province is largely barren desert, all but for a fertile strip of land along the Euphrates River, where 80 percent of the population live. In addition to the hot, dry weather synonymous with the landscape, Anbar Province can experience fierce winds year-round, 1 making for cold winters. From its centre of populace surrounding the Euphrates, the desert- lands of Anbar Province stretch out to its mostly unsecure borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, making it a prime location for militancy. Described by a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel as the deadliest city in the most dangerous anti-American region in Iraq, Ramadi was a notorious posting for U.S. soldiers; some of the war’s fiercest battles occurred in the city, surpassing even those that occurred in Fallujah, which have come to dominate the popular culture image of West’s war in Iraq. Anbar Province is 95 per cent Sunni Muslim, which when compared to the rest of Iraq, which is 39 per cent Sunni, sets out its unique position in its history of conflict. Since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011, Ramadi was lost to ISIS in January 2014, earlier than its main offensive across the rest of Iraq, in a battle that lasted 17 months. ISIS control of Ramadi was brief, and, following their defeat in June 2015, Iraqi forces returned as early as October that year, retaking the city in January 2016. Ramadi’s population declined dramatically in this period. Approximately 100,000 residents left the city between May 2015 and March 2016, when the city was being contested. Following its liberation, the population was only 36,000, just 13 per cent of its 2008 levels. The city was largely uninhabitable as of early 2016 when experts entered the city to deal with the prevalence of explosive hazards. In addition to what has been left by ISIS is the legacy contamination; the unexploded ordinance left over from as far back as the Iran-Iraq wars, as well as the two gulf wars, and that which was dropped from the sky by the coalition and planted by insurgents during the Iraq War. It is the unexploded ordinance, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and boobytraps left behind that remain a barrier to the nearly two million displaced Iraqis who are yet to return to their homes. This is despite efforts in recent years by the international community, who pump funds into projects such as the one being undertaken on that August day in Ramadi back in 2016. The team clearing buildings were working for the Tennessee-based firm Janus Global Operations, who in April of that year, had won a $5 million contract from the U.S. Department of State. Alongside these commercial entities, United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), and the numerous NGOs who work with local teams, are slowly working their way through the IEDs placed both individually and as part of extensive belts that plague much of urban and rural Iraq. As part the State Department’s concept for clearing contamination, Janus’s explosives experts went into Ramadi the moment it was declared liberated. Steve Priestley, a former Iraq-based Janus employee, was one of the first experts to enter the city. He had been in the north of Iraq, mainly doing contamination clearance for oil and gas companies. “We knew that as soon as an area was semi-permissive, we needed to be in there to get the infrastructure clear and up-and-running again,” he says. “Initially in Ramadi, they were still fighting in the west of the city, and we were starting to do reconnaissance and surveys in other parts. So, we travelled in armoured vehicles with a high level of armed security.” When people want to return home, whether that is entire families coming back, or the men of the family being sent to see whether their home had been destroyed or looted, time becomes key, says Priestley “We knew this from previous emergencies,” he explains. “In Lebanon, you had one-and-a- quarter million people who'd been displaced from southern Lebanon, and they went back in 72 hours. The Middle East isn't like Africa, where IDPs and refugees are having to move on foot, here they've got good access to vehicles and they can move very, very quickly. That 2 was a key concern; there was going to be a load of people moving back into these areas very, very quickly.” When he got there, Priestley explains, he soon realised the political dynamic at play. “Unfortunately, the personnel we had already trained were Kurdish or Shia, and it was clear that bringing these people wasn't going to be a good idea. We spoke to the National Mine Authority in Baghdad and asked whether there were companies or NGOs from Anbar or operating in Anbar.” And it turns out there was; a company called Al Fahad, who had been working in Ramadi unpaid since early 2016. Al Fahad’s most experienced members were trained to clear traditional landmines, which, Priestley says, was a good foundation to build on for clearing or searching for IEDs. “We put them through how to search for IEDs systematically. Because of the situation at this time, you were getting a lot of spontaneous return of people. They were opening their front doors and their whole house was blowing up. We didn't really have the luxury saying, 'right we're all going to go off and train Al Fahad for two or three weeks.’ We had to mentor them operationally to try and make them safer in what they were doing.” Since they first entered Ramadi in 2016, Janus teams have recovered 9,174 individual explosives, clearing over 5.5 million square metres of contamination. In the past week, their stabilisation efforts alongside Al Fahad have seen them hand Al Tash School back over. They did a number of risk education sessions at primary schools, bringing the number of people they have given awareness training to in Ramadi since 2016 to 40,763.