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.

Ramadi’s residents, and those across Anbar Province, who require kidney dialysis treatment currently have to travel many kilometres to Baghdad or Basra. Once Janus has completed its operations clearing the Medical Complex, they will enable the rebuilding of its Kidney Hospital, generating employment for local contractors and medical staff and enabling patients in Anbar Province to receive care.

Priestley also describes their work on Iraq’s only Olympic standard stadium in Ramadi. The clearance of the Anbar Olympic Stadium will create 500 jobs during the reconstruction phase and a further 25 permanent staff once completed, returning it to what it once was.

Where the Euphrates River splits at Ramadi, one course heads east to Fallujah and the other feeds into the 54 square-mile Lake Habbaniyah, is the what was previously the State- owned glass and ceramics factory. It once turned out Italian-style decorative floor tiles, sinks and toilet bowls, and employed 3,500 people. After Janus completed a survey there, they found anti-lift devices in the buildings within its perimeter, around this, in the grounds, were pressure-plate devices, and beyond this was a long belt of IEDs, built as a defence line, explains Pehr Lodhammer, who heads up the United Nations Mine Action Service in Iraq.

Lodhammer speaks of “local twists” when he describes the idiosyncrasies he has identified in bomb-making across the country. “Only this morning I received some pictures from Sinjar of a teddy bear that was loaded with three pipe bombs. That we see across the liberated areas,” he says.

The amount of explosive in each device “ranges from only 10 kilos up to 3-4 hundred kilos.” These are found in roofs, or in floors, under tiles, Lodhammer says. In addition to that, they find more traditional munitions, like mortar rounds and grenades. “And, as it was standard issue for ISIS fighters to wear suicide vests, we're finding that a lot, especially in Mosul, where ISIS took their last stand. We have cleared close to 800 suicide belts, many still attached to human remains.”

But it’s not just IED and boobytrap clearance that UNMAS is doing in order to get people back to their homes in places like Ramadi. “Explosive asset management, risk education,

3 capacity advancement,” says Lodhammar. “Those are the three pillars of our organisation.” This means that in addition to clearing IEDs and working towards handing over all stabilisation operations to the Iraqi authorities, UNMAS educates all levels of Iraqi society to the dangers posed by the remnants of war. Over Ramadan, for example, messages were placed on water bottles and the packaging holding dates and handed out to people.

“Our focus areas so far have been Fallujah and Mosul. We now have operations in Kirkuk, also Tikrit, and then it’s Sinjar after Christmas. In the case of Ramadi, we actually made a split between the UNMAS capacity and that contracted directly by the US State Department, which is Janus.”

The UNDP established the Funding Facility for Stabilization (FFS) in June 2015 to return those displaced by ISIS to their homes. The FFS programme has been expanded from concentrating on clearing contamination from critical infrastructures, such as schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, power-generation facilities, bridges, things that support local industry, Lodhammer says, to now include private homes.

“Stabilisation is all about getting the 1.9 million people back to their place of origin. To do that, there needs to be infrastructure in place, schools in place and up-and-running, so that people can get their kids to school, so they can go to work. And, of course, people need access to their homes.” UNMAS has completed approximately 1,100 stabilisation priorities in Iraq, and about 300 remain, which, to Lodhammer makes this a success story.

“This is not a traditional mine action programme,” Lodhammer says, mirroring Priestley’s thoughts on the training of local Iraqis to be able to survey and clear IEDs themselves. “You can train national staff to mark, to use metal detectors, in four weeks, but when we talk about ISIS we're talking about ant-lift devices, ant-trip devices, that takes years and years of experience. You need to have been exposed in the past. Due to the complexities, due to the amount there, you cannot train someone in four weeks to do this.”

Both men agree that there is no end date in sight for a complete return to normality in Iraq. Even with the semblance of stability that followed the withdrawal in 2011, and the investment in infrastructure and civil projects this period saw, Iraq has not seen normal for a long time. The dangerous work of UNMAS and Janus continues. With every successful operation, the teams of locals they are training become more experienced.

After his body was returned home in 2016, a Home Office registered pathologist, carried out the post mortem on the body of the British explosive expert. While the cause of death was reported to be blast injuries caused by the explosion, the senior coroner responsible for the inquiry adjourned proceedings for further investigations. Nearly two-and-a-half years on, the inquest into his death is still yet to be concluded.

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