An Iraqi border fort sitting less than 150 yards from Syria / Photo: David Botti
Roughly 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, the border between
Iraq’s Ninawa province and Syria is marked by nothing more than a
single dirt berm. The mound is easy enough to walk, and in some places,
drive a vehicle over. While the terrain is mostly flat, nighttime often
brings a consuming darkness and electricity here is non-existent.
Snaking through this terrain are countless dried-up canals, affording
the area’s smugglers concealed routes through which their cross-border
business is conducted with relative ease. Meanwhile, members of Iraq’s border police (the IBP) wait, watch,
and listen from their forts and outposts, some with little more than a
flashlight, a few rifles, and handheld radios frequently turned off to
conserve what little battery life remains.
Equipment shortages, lack of fuel, poor
training, and the large swaths of terrain to cover have hampered the
force’s effectiveness. And, the life out here is hard. Between the more
livable forts spaced along the border, IBP soldiers can find themselves
working for days at smaller outposts that can consist of only a small
tent. Around them the desert stretches endlessly in all directions,
with no one and nothing in sight.
Tasked with advising and
training the nearly 3,000 members of Ninawa’s border force are three
small groups of senior U.S. Army soldiers assigned to units known as
border transition teams. Lead by Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Rainey,
the soldiers have a 12-month mission to strengthen this force, while
trying to ensure needed changes ultimately come from the Iraqis
themselves. It’s a difficult balance for the Americans to find.
Threats to the Border
On a day-to-day basis, the two main
threats to the Iraq-Syria border are the smuggling of various products,
and the crossing of foreign fighters; though the degree to which these
types of operations are intertwined is still murky. There is the
possibility that the smugglers are simply trying to make a living the
only way they know how, while foreign fighters arrive in Iraq with the
aid of sympathetic residents living in border villages. Or, smugglers
are aiding the fighters, using their knowledge of the terrain to
facilitate movement.
The reality may also be some combination
of the two, but while the IBP and Americans can quantify smuggling
operations by goods confiscated (50,000 packs of cigarettes were
confiscated in July), it’s difficult to track the foreign fighters.
“The IBP has never caught foreign
fighters in the act [of coming through],” said Lieutenant Colonel Todd
Wasmund, head of a transition team here. “It’s all been done through
intelligence.”
These fighters never cross the border
carrying weapons or other identifying equipment, choosing instead to
blend in with the locals. It isn’t until they travel further into the
country, that they join the various insurgent groups.
One result of this is the relatively low
number of violent incidents, though they do occur. The border police
have found themselves the targets of roadside bombs and small arms
fire, as smugglers seek to harass and intimidate. It’s not uncommon to
see IBP vehicles driving around with all their windows blown out from a
bomb blast, though the resources to repair this damage are scant.
American commanders also cite the
isolation of the border area as another reason for so few attacks,
saying insurgents prefer to hit higher profile, more densely populated
areas. Still, earlier this year a suicide bomber detonated himself
steps from the border in the town of Rabiyah, one of two official
points of entry from Syria. His targets: machines in place for
biometrically scanning travelers to Iraq.
In some places Iraq's border with Syria is marked only by a sand berm, such as seen here / Photo: David Botti
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