QAYYARAH, Iraq--Driving to Qayyarah south of Mosul feels like driving towards the end of the world. You cannot see anything in the distance. The sky is darkened with a black smoke that rises from burning oil wells and your view is blocked by a thick blanket of dust.
I was on this road on Wednesday on my way to the Qayyarah airfield where Americans and other members of the coalition are based. It takes many checkpoints and bomb craters to get there and you won’t see the airfield because of the dust and smoke until you find yourself at its gate.
This airfield is located at a strategic place. It was built by the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and it has changed hands many times in the past decade. It was under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS) until July when the Iraqi army reclaimed it after weeks of heavy fighting. Since then, American and other coalition countries too have come to the base to contribute directly and at close range to the war against ISIS.
The Americans have more men and women in this airfield, numbering 800. And they are using a powerful and deadly rocket called high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) against ISIS. This rocket is fired from trucks called launchers, they hit their target within five meters and each one costs $90,000. They have fired more than 290 of them against ISIS in less than three months, according to Staff Sergeant Thomas Morris.
A small group of specialists among them gunners and operators of the trucks sit in their tent close to the launchers and wait for target coordinates to come from their coalition or local partners. Then they drive the launchers to outside the airfield and fire the rockets into Mosul 70 km away.
These rockets are called in when those fighting on the ground think an airstrike too big for a certain target or when they worry about collateral damage, especially now that it is a house to house battle inside Mosul.
One of the gunners is 20-year-old Specialist Nathan Wedgeworth of Georgia who said he was happy to be contributing to the fight against ISIS and firing these rockets against them, because a group that beheads others “can't be good people.”
The airfield came under the control of the Iraqi and coalition forces at the right time, just before the start of the Mosul operation to liberate the city from ISIS. And the extremist group must have known the dangers of losing this airfield, not just as a base but knowing that it will become a Launchpad against itself in the future which is exactly what is happening now.
That is also why before ceding control, the militants had destroyed the runways and the rest of the infrastructure.
“Daesh (ISIS) bombed the runway, they jackhammered it and dug trenches and tried to make the airstrip unusable but clearly that didn’t work,” said Lt. Col. Alison Hamilton. “We were able to get the airfield repaired, operational and make it be a strategic airstrip for the ISF and coalition for logistics and resupply.”
American civil engineering teams arrived in August, shortly after Iraqi troops took the airfield, removed the rubble, repaired the runway and cleared the place for building a command and control center inside a tent.
Two rows of specialists holding radios and staring at computer screens help Iraqi and coalition planes with cargo delivery, limited maintenance and air traffic and making sure multiple aircraft could operate safely in the airspace, said Lt. Col. Blaine Baker.
American troops were in Iraq once before and they pulled out when the Iraqi government said its army could manage on its own. But the fight against ISIS and the collapse of the Iraqi army two years ago brought them back.
They are not combat troops and are here to train and advise the Iraqis part of which handing the Qayyarah airfield back to the Iraqis one day. “We are working on long term plans with the Iraqis right now and that is part of the training and partnership to at some point transition the base over to them.” Lt. Col. Baker said.
At this stage no one knows how long this fight will last or what will happen once the radical group is gone, but for now the deadly rockets keep raining down on ISIS from the very base they once tried to destroy, and in the words of Lt. Col. Baker, the Americans “are prepared to do our mission for as long as it takes,”
