Mosul’s IED hunter wounded in attack

MOSUL, IRAQ: More than once, the cell phone rang in Iraqi Army Major Fakhir Ibrahim Mohammad's hand seconds after he'd pulled wires away from the phone's battery, disarming the remote-controlled Improvised Explosive Device that insurgents had buried in a street in the hopes of killing Iraqi police, Army or Coalition forces.

“Hello, this is your IED, come save me,” he would usually answer. Insurgents at the other end of the phone line were always speechless; bombs don't normally talk back. Other times he would add a little taunt before getting hung up upon. “Come save me if you're man enough to come out of hiding and fight me the open.”

It's estimated by his superiors that Fahkir personally discovered and defused more than 100 IED and Vehicle Borne explosives in Mosul during a two-year period through June. No one else in the Iraqi Army's Mosul-based 2nd Division, the Iraqi Army itself, or the Coalition for that matter, has a reputation for discovering and disabling as many planned insurgent attacks as Fakhir.

Because the Iraqi Army is still being reformed, there is no awards system, so the embedded US Army Military Transition Team, with the 8th Brigade is sending an application to the Pentagon for Fahkir to receive an US Army Commendation Medal with “V” Device for Valor.

It is no accident that US personnel working with Iraqi troops in Mosul began calling the Major “Crazy Fakhir” as a term of head-shaking endearment.

“The U.S. Army doesn't like to give out medals to foreign nationals much,” said Lt. Colonel Eric Price, the commander of the 8th Military Transition Team located at Command Outpost Lion in northern Mosul. “But when you consider everything he's done for the Coalition, his relentless pursuit of these explosives, it's pretty incredible.”

The methods the Major used to fight the insurgents were considered both unusual and highly dangerous, both for the Coalition and the Iraqi Army. Typically, when an IED is discovered, an engineering unit is call to the scene, the area cordoned off and the explosive destroyed from a distance using more explosives.

Despite warnings from his superiors, Fakhir wouldn't pull back from his dangerous behavior, and on June 23, after four or five planned assassination attempts, insurgents in Mosul's Al Arabiya neighborhood finally got the Major, exploding a second, buried bomb under him as he defused a newly discovered IED. The explosion caused the amputation of his right leg below the knee and put a piece of metal shrapnel as long as a hand into the back of his right shoulder, partially destroying his shoulder joint.

The explosion knocked Fakhir unconscious. He woke up in an ambulance taking him to an emergency hospital in the Kurdish-majority dominated province of Duhok, about 50 miles north of Mosul.

“My leg is not the problem. I'm still waiting for my shoulder to heal,” said Fakhir as he recuperated at his home in Duhok, the capital of the province. “The enemy was very happy with my injury so I want to go back.”

Fakhir's exploits became so well known that Arabic language media reported his death throughout the day before Kurdish language media reported his survival.

The US Army Commendation award application says Fakhir personally disarmed more than 40 IEDs, one Vehicle-Borne IED and on two occasions saved Coalition lives by directing them away from an IED. In addition, Fakhir was instrumental in the discovery of dozens of weapons caches, some hidden under abandoned cars and sheep pens, confiscating hundreds of RGP rounds, motors and tons of homemade explosives.

“After 2005, he had a great impact on us in terms of motivation,” said Brigadier General Noor Aldeen, commander of Iraq's 2nd Army Division's 8th Brigade. “Fakhir was always motivated.”

Fakhir's activity and that of his brigade tells part of the story of the Iraqi Army's struggle against Al-Qaeda and other insurgencies during the past three years. Throughout 2006 and 2007, the 2nd Division, which is led mostly by Kurdish officers, fought pitched battles with Sunni-led insurgents. At its peak, about 120 insurgents a month from places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Algeria were crossing the nearby border with Syria to participate in suicide bombings and other terrorist activity.

The major came to the attention of his superiors after a complex insurgent raid on his battalion in April 2007, caused all but 12 men to abandon their posts. The attack used two dump-trucks filled with explosives to nearly destroy an Iraqi-manned command outpost in the center of the city, injuring 39 Iraqi soldiers.