The Mythical Heaven's Houris
Many things are well-known here in Iraq but seldom, if ever, mentioned in the news. For example, Jihadist bombers are notorious for engaging in debauchery on a stag party scale the eve of their "holy mission." The modus operandi for their crime against humanity is to get drugged up and thoroughly drunk the night before, lay up with a prostitute and then start the countdown on their souls by turning themselves into bomb delivery devices which explode while they are still high on drugs.
Many believe that what motivates many of the murderers is a selfish belief that their final actions ensure a most comfortable eternity, after a painless passage to Heaven where a harem of 72 Houris waits to service them. The word Houri describes a sensuous dark-eyed maiden, untouched by man or jinn, reserved for faithful Muslim men in Heaven. (This topic is apparently highly debated in America, but not here.)
In fact, one citizen of Mosul told me that the 72 is just a number that the Americans made up; a kind of exaggeration. "They only get 7 Houris," he said, turning his nose up at the insignificance of that deal. Others think it's just a sham, like those "great" time-share "deals" where the duped buyer arrives at the airport of a tropical paradise, only to find no one waiting to transport them to their "luxury vacation home." Still others say it's less about fanatical glory and more about familial greed, with survivor benefits exceeding annual household income exponentially. Plus they get the Houris.
Apparently it is taking a increasing amount of trickery and coercion to transform someone into sanctimonious shrapnel.
Baby girl injured by insurgent bomb in May in Mosul
Often, the vest or belt they don or the car they drive is remotely detonated so that they cannot chicken out at the last second. This remote detonating system can cause near misses. The trigger man with the radio has to be distant enough to avoid becoming a permanent part of the blast, but this is often too far back to know exactly when to hit the button. Timing is everything.
Day 20
It was just after midnight when the man who had said, "For me to give the locations of these two men would be treason"—led Deuce-Four to the house—"However, if death comes to greet you at your door, introduce him to your brother," where, SMASH, the soldiers rushed in. At first the Algerians were silent, their eyes noticeably bloodshot. They appeared sedated, reflexes on a time delay, as if they had just used opium. The three "martyrs" had been traveling for about thirty days before sneaking into Mosul. Since their arrival 48 hours earlier, apparently they had been hanging around, doing drugs, killing time, you know, just waiting to explode.
At first, the soldiers did not realize they had stumbled onto the last stop of the underground railroad to hell. Deuce-Four thought they were just hitting the home of a common terror cell leader. The soldiers quickly cleared all the rooms, floors, and hiding places. Some insurgents have boobytrapped their homes with explosives, so soldiers also search for bombs, while captives are immediately separated to prevent them from talking amongst themselves, or making eye contact or other signals to each other.
The owner of the house was a known mortar cell leader. The best thing about insurgent cell leaders is their meticulous record-keeping. No slaves to posterity, rather, their detailed notes of terrorist activities and videotapes of their operations, serve as proof for payment. Many insurgents simply work for hire. The man's diary contained entries dated all the way back to the fall of Baghdad—including their successful attacks against Iraqis and Americans, and also those that failed, carefully noting the reasons for the failures. Comparing the entries with actual SIGACTs would later verify the accuracy of this record, and seal the fate of Mosul's answer to Capone's bookkeeper.
No one had the time that night to scour the diary in Arabic, but had they read the entry for May 17th they would never have lowered their guns. For there it was, plain as the ink on the page:
May 17th: Praise Allah, 3 Algerians have come to my house today. 2 are willing to do whatever it takes and be martyrs. 1 is in search of his brother.
The four men had been taken into separate rooms. My neighbors, John Welch and Erik Ramirez, each took Algerians into rooms, while LTC Kurilla had the third. Two other soldiers stayed with the Iraqi cell leader. LTC Kurilla had one Algerian jacked up against a wall and began questioning him—the man was strangely and completely sedate, clearly under the influence of drugs. When he began talking, both interpreters noticed his foreign accent immediately and they started shouting to the Americans, "These men are foreigners!"
As if hit with buckets of ice water, all four men snapped to life and began struggling against the soldiers. The three Algerians went rabid, and the one with Ramirez slipped out the flex-cuffs Ramirez had just put on. Too close for rifles, this was hand-to-hand combat. The soldiers with the Iraqi man quickly subdued him, but the "martyrs" put up a better fight.
They beat-up the Algerian killers: Ramirez and Welch
Ramirez is powerful, and threw his Algerian to the ground. The man continued to fight wildly until Ramirez's knee smashing the back of his skull knocked him out. The Algerian with Welch in the other room was not yet cuffed when he started to fight, but Welch knocked his man out with punches.
But the "martyr" that LTC Kurilla had jacked against the wall by the collar with his left hand, simply reached down with his mouth and grabbed a hunk of Kurilla's left forearm and began to rip as he punched at Kurilla, scraping his nose. Kurilla responded by punching him in the face three times and taking him to the ground.
Meanwhile, with Ramirez's guy unconscious, he rushed into the room where Kurilla was fighting and smashed the guy in the face three more times until he went limp. With the four captives in a more docile state, Deuce-Four headed back to base. All in all, the night was a pretty good haul. Nine raids and 13 catches, including the three Algerians, two of whom were willing to blow themselves up with a vest bomb or in a car bomb, not caring who they killed as long as they were able to use their bodies as instruments of death.
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