THE FIGHTERS.

C.J. Chivers. Writer at Large, The New York Times Magazine. Adjunct Professor, Columbia Journalism School. Author of THE FIGHTERS, an unvarnished account of the rank-and-file experience of modern combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, called a "a classic" by The New York Times, "a memorial in pages" by The Washington Post, and "an honest reckoning" by The Wall Street Journal. Author of THE GUN, a social history of the AK-47 that examines the origins & proliferation of automatic arms, & their influence on war. Contributor, here and there. PGP: AE4C E7EA F09E 0A2B C995 4659 30A3 E36D 949C 4FC1 Fishcatcher. Woodcutter. Quahog crew. Small-scale farmer, working by hand. Butcher. Breeder. Briner. Boathand. Root-cellar fan. Former Marine. Wearer of earplugs and hearing aids, too. (Not quite deaf as a nail.) Toggling between on and off the grid. Usually preferring off. Apprenticing, still. What happens here? Field reporting on conflict, tactics, insurgency and counterinsurgency, the arms trade and human rights. Behind scenes glimpses of work. Front-line forensics, battlefield paleontology, appreciative nods, mini-profiles, explanatory riffs. Pix. Tweets. Updates. Links. And occasional accounts of the other, better life.

[cjchivers]

Not sure how I missed this but THE FIGHTERS has been selected as an Editors’ Pick for Best History at amazon.com. Glad to have any new readers.

The Fighters [Chivers, C. J.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Fighters

[cjchivers]

An Era Ends.

Alice Mayhew, who edited both THE GUN and THE FIGHTERS, died today, leaving behind a list of accomplishments too lengthy to enumerate. She was a path-cutter -- Our Body, Ourselves (!) and then Woodward and Bernstein, and on and on. (And on.) What to say of Alice? She had zero tolerance for bullshit. And she was kinder to me and my work than I deserved. While she was and always will be better known as an editor of beltway chroniclers, veterans should also know how thoroughly she committed to THE FIGHTERS, and to helping to shepherd a book that told the stories of the real people who lived downstream of Washington's decisions, in the agonizing and indelible experiences of modern war. As I wrote the book, and as she read each draft chapter, Alice told me again and again how she felt like she knew and understood Michael Slebodnik, and how drawn she was to Rob Soto, and then moved to admiration and awe in the power of the love of Gail Kirby and Cindy Kryszewski, all the while encouraging me to finish, ***to get the job done,*** so people might see the wars as they actually were, and politicians might see what they had wrought. I know no one quite like her. An era ends today. But books will outlast us all, to carry truths and ideas through time. In Memoriam? Sure. Also: In gratitude. Such luck to have been under her tutelage and care.

[cjchivers]

THE FIGHTERS makes the Commandant’s Reading List at West Point.

Early this fall West Point published its commandant’s updated reading list, which included THE FIGHTERS. 

The list has issues, as you'll see. But I am pleased that THE FIGHTERS, with its stories of the lives and combat service of rank-and-file troops (and pilots) from Iraq and Afghanistan, and of their returns home, will have more readers and a place at the academy. 

If you have not read THE FIGHTERS I hope you will.

[cjchivers]

A Body of Largely Unrecorded Memories from War

This At War story (and mini-compilation) by John Ismay covers a little discussed but widely experienced element of veteran memory. As I mentioned to others yesterday when it published on the web page of The New York Times Magazine, there’s a simple (if partial) answer to why many veterans' moments of communion with nature resonate so consistently and so palpably. It is this: Too many Americans, shackled to commutes, indoor work spaces and these infernal screens, are rarely out in the elements at length. A sailor or grunt inhabits an older world, for which we, as human beings, are actually coded. Encounters with sea and mountain and desert and night sky, with wild creatures and the full (sometimes overpowering) embrace of weather, are part of who we are and who we evolved to be, and yet modernity denies its masses these experiences at a boggling scale. This remove from nature is a latter day pox, and while it is a sorrow that many Americans have to deploy to see more than they can see in their more common routines, it's also a solid unsung outcome, and a source of joy and even peace, and we'll take it.

[cjchivers]

nothing wasted, topneck mulch version. (just left a pickup truck full of stinking shell in the amtrak lot. #commuter #rhodeislandoroblems)

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provisioning (fuel).

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Diggers. (Wiliie & Joe, hauling and selling their catch.) #commercialfishing #knowyourfood

[cjchivers]

Please read this story on the At War section of The New York Times, by T.M. Gibbons-Neff. It’s about the longevity of military rifles and the seemingly inevitable consequences of their spread after governments hand them out. It serves as a bracing reminder to the good-idea fairies at the Department of Defense about what happened, and will continue to happen, with many of the hundreds of thousands of assault rifles the United States passed around to unreliable partners in recent years, thereby providing the logistical fuel for militants the Pentagon continues to fight, with no clear end in sight.

[cjchivers]

A Father’s Day review that made my day. Thank you to the many readers who have reached out.

[cjchivers]

THE FIGHTERS, now in paperback.

Today brings the paperback release of THE FIGHTERS, with a new cover, and, I hope, a secure place in the long conversation ahead about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

The New York Times, which labeled the work “a classic,” described it this way: 

...this is a book about the lower ranks who experience the thing itself, the gut-wrenching violence and confusion of war — history from the ground up, not from the top down, precisely what Washington elites miss. “The Fighters” constitutes an illusion-free zone, where the concrete triumphs over the abstract..

If you have not yet read it, I hope you will.  

The new edition is available here.

[cjchivers]

For the past several years, in often ungoverned lands beset by terrorism, militias, instability and crime, Facebook has been hosting vibrant on-line arms bazaars, where users can advertise and arrange to buy all manner of military weapons, from handguns to guided missiles (and most everything between).

With support from Nicolas Florquin and the Small Arms Survey, Nic R. Jenzen-Jones and the private consultancy he leads, Armament Research Services, published a report on the widespread use of the bazaars in Libya for arranging transfers of a range of powerful weapons, including heavy machine guns, anti-tank guided missiles, and first-generation shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles. The report was the result of site-monitoring by ARES since late 2014.

Further reporting and monitoring by The New York Times offered insights into similar Facebook bazaars active in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. All of these bazaars violate Facebook’s new(ish) policies re using the site to facilitate private weapons sales.

After the Times shared details of several groups with Facebook, it swiftly shut down six of them, and said it encouraged its 1.6 billion monthly visitors to report more. (There are many more.)

Details at the link, but first thanks to Ian Fisher, Shreeya Sinha, Karam Shoumali and Shuaib Almosawa for work on a complicated project, which required intensive gathering, archiving and analysis of on-line evidence to stand the story up and present it in a still-experimental web and print format.

[cjchivers]

Did Al Qaeda’s On-Line Magazine Influence the Design of the San Bernardino Perps’ Bombs?

Of the many details emerging today related to the search of the home and garage of Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook, the description of apparent bomb components was among the most intriguing.  The list of items seized by investigators and left behind at the apartment, and another law enforcement document reviewed by The New York Times, both mention Christmas tree lights or, in one reference, “miniature Christmas tree lamps.” 

That reference reverberates among bomb disposal techs who track developments in improvised explosive devices, because the combination of the small bombs made from pipe elbows (confiscated immediately after the mass shooting yesterday in San Bernardino) and the reference to the Christmas tree lights as components, could be read as a direct echo from a recent issue of Inspire, al Qaeda’s English-language magazine. 

Inspire’s issue number 14, posted this September, included a step-by-step tutorial offering an update on the familiar pipe-bomb concept. The leading image for the article, entitled “Designing a Timed Hand Grenade,” is shown above.  The pages that followed, partial excerpt below, included detailed guidance in how to repurpose a small Christmas tree lamp by converting it to an electrically-powered igniter with a brief delay.  (The article immediately followed another entitled “Assassination at a Workplace.”)

How well might the AQ igniter system work?  There is at least one clear answer to that, based on data. But we won’t share it. The points here are not about efficacy of one particular improvised system or another, but how about bomb-manufacturing knowledge can move, and some of the potential sources for this proliferation. 

So far the FBI has said that one of the perpetrators had sworn allegiance to the so-called Islamic State. But details in law-enforcement documents, public and not yet public, suggest that the couple behind the rampage in San Bernardino may also have gleaned specific technical instruction from a very recent issue of the prominent Qaeda magazine.  There are grounds for thought about what that might mean.

More, on the NYT.

[cjchivers]

Podcast: The Red Mercury Myth.

Michael Moore of the Landmines in Africa blog (and founder of the Campaign Against Red Mercury) visits with Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk. 

A discussion about the lethal consequences of the persistent hype surrounding a supposedly valuable substance that -- let’s say it again -- does not exist. 

Questions of origins, moral responsibility and the cruelty of the myth upon desperately poor people who search for the substance inside landmines and mortar bombs. “Why couldn’t the myth have been that you find it dildos instead of in landmines that blowup and kill you?”

Listen to the podcast here.

Read The Doomsday Scam here.

Illustration by Boris Pelcer.

[cjchivers]

Danger! Do Not Open! Red Mercury Inside.

Since last week, when The New York Times Magazine posted the on-line version of The Doomsday Scam, an article about the enduring red-mercury-as-W.M.D. meme, several peers from varied beats and news organizations have contacted me about their own encounters over the years with red-mercury scams.  One of the exchanges is worth distilling and sharing here, as it included a set of photographs that can be added to the red-mercury record.

Have a look of the pix below, which were shared (with permission to post) by Jennifer Janisch, an investigative reporter for CBS News.

 These pretend to show the very dangerous (and, no need for spoiler alert) utterly fictional substance known as red mercury.  Perhaps this is what red mercury would look like if distributed by a maker of bowling tournament trophies. But what is interesting here is not the laugh. It’s the text on the container. If you look closely, you’ll see some of it appears lifted from an equally unconvincing vessel of red mercury purportedly confiscated during a HAZMAT operation in  2004 in a bunker in Iraq. (cf, below.)

Here is how Ms. Janisch (thank you for sharing) said the upper two images came to her possession this summer, while she was investigating antiquities trafficking in the region.

These images were sent to me in August via Whatsapp by a Syrian smuggler who said he was based in Mersin, Turkey. I had contacted him through a source as I was investigating the illegal trade of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities. He sent me a few photos of artifacts - many of which were fake, according to experts who reviewed them - and he also sent me these photos of red mercury.

Remember: Red mercury is a hoax, and in certain circumstances the pursuit of it (as in southern Africa, where according to local urban legend it can be found within landmines and other conventional ordnance items) can be fatal. Please feel free to recirculate word of the scam, and the upper two images, to help spread awareness about the perils of a persistent myth.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATION

By Boris Pelcer, for The New York Times Magazine.

[cjchivers]

ISIS and the Mad Race to Get W.M.D.

On the The New York Times Magazine, the Doomsday Scam -- a chase by an ISIS commander and purchasing agent to get their hands on a set of rare and expensive red-mercury warheads.  Pic of the red-mercury fill for one of the coveted warheads, below.  There is a reason they have failed. 

[cjchivers]

A Quick Analysis of the ISIS Soda-Can Bomb.

Channeling EOD techs. The Islamic State, aka Daesh, claims this bomb was used to down the Russian passenger jetliner over Egypt.  There is no publicly available evidence confirming the claim, which may be a Daesh information op.  Nonetheless, the bomb shown is interesting. The takeaway, though: It is not especially impressive. Or, as per the NYT copy: 

The device depicted is nothing new or surprising, and it would not be hard for an experienced bomb maker to build.

More here.

[cjchivers]

Data Sharing: The Effects of Blister Agent on Civilians

Last week The New York Times published a report on an Aug. 21 blister-agent attack by the Islamic State on Marea, a rebel-controlled town astride the front lines in northern Syria. The article was accompanied by video clips and photographs made by an exposed family and by Bryan Denton (@bdentonphoto), an independent photojournalist on assignment for The Times.  

Before publishing the report there was a discussion inside The Times about whether to include the unsettling photograph that appears now on this blog post. Ultimately the paper decided to withhold the photograph, considering it too graphic for a family newspaper. It is not too graphic however to show here, and as it is an important visual and evidentiary artifact of the attack, we are posting it to add to the public record of chemical warfare in our times.

The photo shows some of the fatal effects of the chemical exposure on Sidra, a newborn infant who was inside a home struck by a blister-agent shell. Sidra, whose surname we are withholding at the request of her surviving family members, who fear retaliation from the jihadists, was born on Aug. 16. She was exposed to sulfur mustard on Aug. 21, and began showing symptoms of the exposure later that day. She died on Sept. 4, and is buried in a cemetery in Gaziantep, Turkey. The available historical records indicate that fatalities from blister-agent exposure are unusual.  And since the end of the Iran-Iraq War and the al-Anfal campaign in the 1980s, blister agent attacks, largely banned by an international convention that came into force in the 1990s, have been exceedingly rare. Sidra is perhaps the first blister-agent fatality in a quarter century.* Let her be remembered as the last.

*Reliable data on chemical warfare attacks is limited and hard to obtain; governments that have it guard it closely, and sometimes lie about it.  If anyone has information on other fatalities caused by blister agent since Baathist use in the 1980s, please let us know. [email protected]. For those who prefer encrypted communications, my PGP key is AE4C E7EA F09E 0A2B C995 4659 30A3 E36D 949C 4FC1.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

Sidra, shortly after her death. Provided by her father about ten days ago.