Iraqi defenders withstood nearly a year of Daesh attacks on a strategic oil refinery
STAFF COL. ALI SAHAM ALKENANI, IRAQI COUNTER-TERRORISM SERVICE | Photos by Getty Images
The Battle for Baiji Refinery cannot be summed up in a single article. The stories of heroism there are the stuff of military legend: the fierceness of the fighting, the plumes of smoke from burning fuel tanks that blocked the sun, the earth quaking from the intensity of the explosions, the tales of martyrdom etched in Soldiers’ hearts. For 11 months we lived in the Baiji refinery, demonstrating patriotic resolve in the face of attacks by the most monstrous terrorist gangs. This is not my story; it is a tale of 325 heroes who fended off 40 full-scale attacks and 175 confrontations with terrorists fielding twice as many fighters as we had, using all types of weapons and hundreds of car bombs. We maintained the cohesion of our forces and repelled the attacks.
The strategic location of the city of Baiji made it a target for Daesh gangs — the main roads connecting Baghdad, Mosul, Saladin, Kirkuk, and Diyala pass through it. Controlling this location means cutting supply lines coming from Baghdad. The refinery complex in Baiji is one of the biggest in the Middle East, and it dominates the country’s revenues and economy. Daesh wanted to control the refinery by any means because of its enormous storage tanks of crude oil and processed fuels. After Daesh managed to take over the city of Baiji, it focused its attacks on gaining control of the refinery. With control of the refinery, it would possess a self-financing military base. Iraqi liberation forces would have had trouble reaching northern Iraq, and any battle to liberate Baiji would have been devastating. That’s why terrorists risked their lives to storm the refinery.
Its capture also would have had a major impact on morale. Daesh recognized the symbolic importance of Baiji; most news agencies were talking about it at the time. More than once, despite official government denials, terrorists claimed that they controlled it.
The battles began on June 10, 2014, and lasted until May 21, 2015. Throughout this period, the refinery was besieged on all sides. In the beginning, we were 35 warriors from the Counter-Terrorism Service, 40 from the 9th Division, a few others from the 14th Infantry Brigade, and a group of tribesmen. In all, we had about 110 fighters. We were able to repel the first attacks on the refinery in 2014, withstanding them even though Daesh controlled most of the cities around us. In late 2014, our forces managed to create an opening for reinforcements and supplies to be sent, but this passage was severed within weeks. When the battles intensified, our supplies were cut off.
For the sake of history, I want to mention the courage of Staff Gen. Talib Shaghati Alkenani, head of the Counter-Terrorism Service and commander of the joint operations command at the time, and his considerable and active role in the refinery’s resistance. In mid-July 2014, Brig. Gen. Ali Al-Quraishi contacted him with a request direct from Staff Maj. Gen. Dhaif Al-Tai, commanding the Iraqi forces at Baiji. He explained to him the challenges we were facing as a Counter-Terrorism Service force and as part of a joint operations command’s area of responsibility at the Baiji refinery, as well as the risk of supply lines for the refinery being cut off. Gen. Alkenani reassured us that he would use all his powers to send reinforcements. After intensive meetings between the Army Aviation Command and the Air Force Command, we received a call two days later from Maj. Ammar Abbas Sharhan, who told us that the leadership had decided to send up-to-date weapons, equipment, and rations via Army Aviation with the protection of a specialized team from the Counter-Terrorism Service. The helicopters encountered violent resistance from Daesh defenses, but thank God, they managed to destroy those defenses and opened up a perilous supply route.
Our happiness was indescribable as the helicopters landed in a cloud of dust on August 22, 2014, inside the refinery compound, with protection provided by MI-28 attack helicopters. This daring operation boosted our Soldiers’ morale significantly. As elated as we were to see our fellow fighters from the Counter-Terrorism Service, we were just as eager to look over the weapons and gear we had received, like children opening Eid presents: MK-19 grenade launchers, 8.6 mm long-range sniper rifles equipped with silencers, night-vision and daytime lenses, and all kinds of gear in large quantities. The special operations team from Baghdad trained members of our force on the use of the new weapons, and they reconnoitered the area to provide their impressions to the joint operations commander, who sent his greetings to every member of the force and affirmed his personal interest in the refinery’s resistance. For us, it felt like a victory of sorts.
The reinforcements were limited to the Army Aviation helicopters. They reached us at unpredictable times because of poor weather, sandstorms and enemy fire, but they transported equipment and fighters, and so the strength of our force reached 325 warriors from all branches of the Armed Forces. Although the goal was to bring in more reinforcements, our hopes soon crumbled when the terrorists targeted the helicopters and brought down two of them, which stopped Army Aviation from sending reinforcements.
Two weeks passed. No helicopters arrived from Baghdad. They had been a source of comfort to our hearts. The scarcity of rations, gear and medical supplies and the ever-louder moans of the wounded strained our nerves. At dawn one dark day, the loudspeakers from the Baiji mosques near the refinery began broadcasting messages with threats designed to sap our resistance:
“Hey, Safavids, your time is almost up, and there is no one to save you. Who will bring you food and water? Your ammunition will run out soon, and we will slaughter you like sheep, film your bodies and post it online. You have no choice but to surrender yourselves to the Islamic State mujahedeen before it’s too late.”
We got used to their horrible speeches, and the helicopter crashes and psychological warfare failed to reduce combat effectiveness or weaken our resolve to resist.
Because of our small numbers and the large area we had to defend, everyone took turns on guard duty. Even the commander took his turn on duty in one of the towers. I started out as deputy commander of the counterterrorism forces at the refinery, and the commander was Brig. Gen. Ali Al-Quraishi. I became the forces’ commander after Brig. Gen. Ali was wounded and evacuated from the battlefield before the helicopters stopped coming. We didn’t have a field hospital, so we treated the wounded with the simple bandages that every fighter carried as first aid. When a fighter thought he could carry a weapon, you would see him leaving the casualty collection point and head to a duty post or, at the height of the battle, fighting in field bandages. This was because our forces knew we had no replacements. The wounded Soldiers would volunteer for combat even when their officers ordered them to rest. As for critical cases, we sent them with Army Aviation if there was a plane coming, but we were often unable to save those who were gravely wounded because of poor flying conditions that limited the mobility of MI-17 helicopters.
We made every attempt to break the siege against us with our Armed Forces. Nearly out of water and ammunition, we assumed we were nearing the end. When every solution for sending us supplies had been exhausted, our leadership sought the help from the commanders of our partners in the coalition forces, asking them to send equipment and rations using large, specialized parachutes dropped by C-130 aircraft from high altitudes. Thank you to our friends in the coalition for sustaining the battle with the logistical support we desperately needed. We were overjoyed by this great achievement. The coalition forces have the latest technology in this field, and they started furnishing the Iraqi Air Force with parachutes for dropping military and medical supplies to us.
We endured difficult and uneasy days, especially when every means of communication and supply was cut off, dampening Soldiers’ morale. This was in addition to the psychological warfare that Daesh conducted every day. At sunset, a cacophony of voices would start up in a war to undermine our morale and break our will. Sometimes it came from the mosques’ minarets, but often it came from the earthen berm that separated us:
“The Day of Sacrifice has come, you Safavids. Your day will be just like the day at Speicher. There’s no escaping death. We gave you the chance to surrender yourselves, but you decided to die cowering under the knives of the men of the Islamic State!”
We remembered the crime at Camp Speicher and how Daesh double-crossed and massacred unarmed Soldiers. Our steadfast determination was a declaration to the mothers and children of the Speicher martyrs that the blood of their sons and fathers had not been shed in vain, as well as a message of hope to the Yazidi and Christian girls abducted by the terrorists because our victory would represent hope of salvation for them and for all the Iraqis who fell under Daesh’s oppression. Daesh’s crimes made us more determined to fight and not turn over the refinery to murderers, no matter what the cost.
Some nights, we would recall the facts of the Speicher massacre, a true crime against humanity. Because it was so close to the refinery, about 35 kilometers away, most of the Soldiers at the refinery had a brother or cousin or friend among the Speicher martyrs. After Daesh took control of the Saladin governorate, the Soldiers at Camp Speicher were besieged. They ran out of ammunition, and terrorists stormed the camp. The Soldiers had no choice but to surrender. Daesh committed a crime disgraceful to humanity. The Soldiers were unarmed, and nothing in international law or the revealed religions permits the killing of prisoners. Daesh gathered the unarmed Soldiers and opened fire on them in front of the cameras. They threw some into the Tigris River and buried others in a mass grave. In total, 1,700 Soldiers were killed. Not satisfied with murder, Daesh mutilated the martyrs’ bodies in monstrous ways. Besides satiating their sadistic desires to revel in killing and brutality, they wanted to sow fear in the hearts of other Soldiers, but it only increased our determination to fight to the end. So we fought to the death to defeat this terrorist enemy and bring vengeance upon those who committed the crime at Speicher.
The morale of the warriors inside the refinery played a big role in restoring the confidence and maintaining the morale of the Iraqi Armed Forces. We were a force besieged, outnumbered by the terrorists encircling the area. The refinery had an area of 24 square kilometers, and there was no way 325 fighters could patrol such a large space. Despite Daesh’s repeated, desperate attacks, despite the shortage of food and water, our forces held together. The leaders and commanders in other sectors of operation like Kirkuk, Diyala, Samarra, and Anbar praised the heroics and sacrifices of the warriors inside the Baiji refinery and began exhorting their Soldiers to follow suit.
At the start of the battle, Daesh’s morale was high, and they had immense military capabilities exceeding the strength of our forces in the operations sectors. The Baiji battle, however, tipped the scales in our favor and became a symbol for our Armed Forces on the battlefield.
The distance separating us from the terrorists ranged from 5 to 500 meters. We would hear them talking in the still of the night. Daesh launched many attacks in 11 months. Ferocious battles raged, and many officers and Soldiers were killed in the savage action. We fed our best men into the refinery battles, but we were determined to not give up the location to terrorist gangs.
Daesh also spread rumors on social networking pages and fabricated videos. With the support of some biased networks, they put out false reports about the fall of the refinery. Their goal was to spread chaos and strike fear in the hearts of the fighters’ families so that they would ask their sons to abandon the refinery.
One night, a Daesh member called to one of our men, Lt. Wissam Mohammed Khaled Al-Takriti, saying:
“Wissam, you’re a son of Tikrit, and we know your people well. Why are you fighting your Sunni brothers and helping the Rafidahs? The Islamic State came to rescue the Sunnis from the oppression of the Rafidah government. Repent, and you’ll be safe. Kill as many as you can of those who don’t trust you and would kill you, and join your mujahedeen brothers.”
Moments passed in silence, then Lt. Wissam’s voice came from behind the berm, responding that he was proud to be Iraqi and would fight to the death with his brothers in arms. He said that Daesh killed Sunni, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis indiscriminately and that they were a terrorist gang that would be defeated at the hands of Iraqis.
Lt. Wissam was martyred in a night battle on August 24, 2014. He was a handsome young man and a courageous officer. The Soldiers really loved him, and he earned the confidence of the leadership through his competence. Soldiers witnessed his brave stand that night, as he sacrificed himself and did not allow Daesh to penetrate near his defensive position. We prayed over his cleansed body at dawn and laid him in his resting place. We kept a picture of his father and his watch to give them to his family at the end of the war.
We would tell them about Wissam’s heroic actions and his love for his family and his city, Tikrit.
The Soldiers’ morale strengthened my determination to continue the battle. I had a wired switchboard that the Soldiers used to call their families. Sometimes when waiting for a call from higher headquarters, I would hear a Soldier tell his family that our position was stable and that there were no attacks or losses, even if we had fought off an attack the previous night. We suffered considerably from the shortage of rations because we prioritized bringing in equipment over food and water, but we would tell our families that we had everything we needed.
During those 11 months, we used only the equipment we had. There were no huge weapons caches we could access to sustain battle momentum. Sometimes when fending off attacks, we used equipment and weapons seized from dead Daesh fighters, collecting them and distributing them to the Soldiers. Each bullet represented survival, and we did not fire randomly. At times we were forced not to respond to incoming fire. In one of the battles, the enemy cut off the roads and started putting pressure on the forces in the areas of Al-Mazraa and Al-Malha to stop the advance of troops and interrupt communications between Speicher and Baiji.
We were on the verge of running out of ammunition entirely, so I asked Staff Maj. Gen. Dhaif to make a new plan to reduce the enemy’s pressure on other areas. Our plan was to conserve our ammunition, give the troops some rest, and lure the enemy to an area where troops were gathered. Daesh had already started mobilizing its forces around the refinery. We were watching their movements using infrared cameras, night vision, surveillance devices, and reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the coalition forces. After we identified a Daesh mobilization site at the Seneia base, from which they were about to attack, we asked the command to bombard it. We wiped out the massed Daesh forces with an airstrike conducted by the Iraqi Air Force and the coalition forces. By doing so we conserved our own ammunition. More than 150 terrorists were killed.
We tracked the course of the battles elsewhere and our Armed Forces’ conquest of the Al-Alam district north of Tikrit. Our hearts danced with joy at this advance, and we were certain that Tikrit would be liberated. We realized our resistance at the refinery would be a cornerstone in the defeat of Daesh.
Fourteen-hundred Daesh fighters launched an attack on the refinery on April 10, 2015. The attacking force was at least three times bigger than our force. The battle lasted 11 days. Fighting was savage and raged day and night. Col. Khaled Al-Jannabi was martyred on April 12 while fighting bravely alongside the Soldiers. The deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Shibr, fell as a martyr on April 14. The fighting wouldn’t stop; it only grew fiercer. One day later, the forces’ commander, Maj. Gen. Dhaif Al-Tai, was martyred. When the fighting ceased for a few moments, Daesh used loudspeakers to call for the Soldiers to surrender themselves:
“Most of your leaders have been killed, and all of you will be killed. We have brought the best Islamic State fighters, and this is your last chance to repent and throw down your weapons. Haven’t you seen the bodies of Maj. Gen. Dhaif and Brig. Gen. Karim? How will you fight without a commander? The government in Baghdad has abandoned you here to die.”
But we were more determined than ever to continue fighting because we had sworn to each other that we would not be defeated and that Iraq’s hopes rested with us. After Daesh despaired of taking the refinery, they focused on creating a breach in our defenses and trying to steal the bodies of our martyred leaders. The bodies of Maj. Gen. Dhaif, Brig. Gen. Karim, and Col. Khaled — who were martyred during fighting near the forward towers from which we withdrew to absorb the first attack — were now between us and them.
After the death of Maj. Gen. Dhaif, I was assigned to lead the forces because I was the senior ranking officer. At midnight, I was with some Soldiers in headquarters to make a plan to plug the hole that Daesh had created at one point. I received a call on the military radio from someone who told me that he was the commander of the Daesh assault force that would attack the refinery. Based on his manner of speaking, he sounded Arab. He told me we had no hope of surviving and started making threats. He said that he would attack with a hundred truck bombs and destroy the refinery and everyone in it. We listened quietly, and after he finished with the threats, he said that he was making me an honorable promise to let me leave safely if I surrendered the refinery and the Soldiers.
I answered: There’s no way that I would betray my country and my Soldiers. The refinery will resist you, and it will be your grave and the grave of anyone who comes near it. We will avenge the martyrs of Speicher and honor the Iraqi girls that your gangs have profaned. Then the call ended.
Daesh tried more than once to reach the body of Maj. Gen. Dhaif, but we were vigilant and foiled their attempts. Their goal was to mutilate the bodies and display them in their online publications as evidence of their conquest of the refinery. This would certainly boost the morale of Daesh after the Tikrit setback. But thank God that, despite the violence of the attack and the terrorists’ desperation, they failed to achieve their goals. I prepared a plan to push Daesh back behind the defensive line, which became a no-man’s land, and secure the bodies of the martyrs. I was sure that this operation would break their spirits and achieve victory for us.
The dawn of April 22 was full of sorrow for us as we performed burial rites for Maj. Gen. Dhaif and Brig. Gen. Karim. Their words and the memories that bound us to them were fixed in our minds. A deadly calm permeated the ceremonies like tears shed unconsciously. Losing these leaders had a big impact on the Soldiers’ spirits.
Daesh poured all of the weapons and skills they had, even tanks and armored personnel carriers, into the refinery battles.
They used car bombs extensively to destroy our defenses and attack main entry points. They employed drones to determine our positions, chlorine gas and heavy mortar fire. During the attack, they bombarded the fuel tanks intensively, striking and igniting them to block the visibility of aircraft and confuse our fighters because the tanks were nearby and part of the refinery was isolated from the rest of the force. The refinery contained flammable materials and poisonous gases. It was no good as a defensive position or a battleground. At times, liberating a single meter required hours of vicious fighting owing to the nature of the terrain, the enemy’s fortifications and their use of improvised explosive devices. A single bullet could cause a square kilometer to go up in flames. They used such means to try to gain control of the refinery, but they still failed in the face of the heroic defenders.
The Armed Forces started to tighten the noose on Daesh in nearby cities of the Baiji district. This relieved pressure on us as Daesh fighters departed to head off our forces elsewhere in the district. Days passed, and events unfolded quickly. News of our brave Army’s victories spread rapidly. On May 21, 2015, Hummers full of Counter-Terrorism Service men arrived, coming from the direction of Albu Tama and Al-Mazraa. We sang with joy and hugged each other. Only victorious Soldiers know the elation of such hugs.
That was the first night in 11 months that I slept soundly, without placing my hand on the grip of my weapon.
The war media cell rushed the news of the liberation of Baiji to the Iraqi people and the world. I was immensely happy that I would return to my children with my head held high, proud of the near-miraculous victory we had achieved. I don’t know why I felt moved to go to the grave of the martyrs and salute them for their sacrifices that led to our victory. I was surprised to find that some of the Soldiers had beat me there. I felt that the martyrs were smiling on us from the silhouette of the Iraqi flag that flapped high above them.
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