Artificial Insurgents

By Nicholas Crabtree

Rachel had just dropped off her kids at school, today was like any other hectic day in her life. Wake up, wake the kids, serve breakfast, harass the kids into the car, drive them to school then off to work. Same old same old, nothing exciting happened in her life anymore.

 

Rachel had served overseas and suffered a catastrophic event when the Hum-V she was riding was blown apart from an IED. Rachel lost both of her legs. She now stumbled and strutted about on two prosthetic limbs.

 

She was driving along in heavy traffic; the traffic was moving at pace. The cars were equidistant from each other, front, back and side to side rolling along at sixty miles an hour. Traffic cameras in the helicopters looked down, the four-lane stream of cars reminded the pilot of salmon swimming upstream to spawn. That was until Rachel's day was no longer humdrum.

 

Rachel was driving a specially equipped Suburban, a little large for her taste but her husband had insisted. He told her he wanted her and the kids to be as safe as possible. Her experience showed that even in a heavily armored Hum-V she was not safe.

 

She focused on the traffic ahead until she did not. The helicopter pilot later described the scene as "Worse than the images of the road to Baghdad".

 

The war came home that day...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas Crabtree
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215556283

Book preview

This book is for my brother Tony, the brother I have looked up to my entire life. The best brother a brother could wish for.

Chapter 1

Ansir held his little sister tightly to him, the dust from the bombing was starting to settle but the ringing in his ears rang on. He had pushed a desk up against a wall. They both huddled together behind the overturned desk they could not control the shaking that rattled through them. In the moments when there was quiet Ansir would peer over the top of the edge of the desk. He was more afraid of who may come through the door. The explosions still resonated in the distance. War had been raging in his little world for as long as he could remember.

The silence shattered as an explosive device blew in the door. Part of the roof collapsed, and the desk crushed them up against the wall. Later Ansir would realize that without the desk they would no longer be alive. Ansir dug around blinded by a cloud of dust, he felt something warm and sticky as he blindly felt the ground and trash all around him. The dust cleared, his sister was unconscious, the lower half of her leg covered in blood. He wiped her face and cried, then the silence broken by people shouting, Is anyone here? call out if anyone is here. Ansir shouted as loud as his dry dusty lungs would allow. We are here, we are here.

Are you trapped? Shouted a man no more than twenty feet away. No, my sister is hurt. The man began to dig away some of the debris caused by the explosion. Ansir looked down at his sister. Her sandals were missing, her sock was still on her leg but torn and dirty. He reached down and saw that her left calf and shin bone were almost severed. It looked as though a large animal had taken a huge bite out of her leg. It must have been hit by flying shrapnel or crushed by part of the building as it collapsed. He carefully lifted his five-year-old sister in his arms and gingerly headed for the door.

The scene outside was one of utter chaos, people were running in all directions, there were bodies and parts of bodies strewn throughout the area. He held his sister close to his chest and shouted for all he was worth Help us, please help us. An older man approached them first and helped Ansir hold his sister, then a young woman came running up to them, she told them to follow her. At the end of the street was a white pick-up truck, in the back bed of the truck lay two people, at first Ansir thought they were dead. The young woman gestured to him to lay his sister in the back of the truck. The truck would then take them to a field hospital nearby. The young woman took of a scarf and tied it tightly around the thigh of Ansir’s sister’s leg. Ansir sat on the tailgate of the truck hanging on for dear life as it sped through the rubble filled streets.

The field hospital turned out to be the village hall, the local doctor was inside doing everything that he could. As the group carried the three new patients into the hall the doctor jumped into action. Then he looked up at the sky through a hole in the roof and muttered something. The group lay the three injured people including Ansir’s sister on blankets on the floor. Ansir’s sister had been caught in the crossfire, this was not her fight, but it had become her suffering.

His sister had suffered major trauma to her left leg. The trauma was so bad the doctor had to amputate her leg just above her knee. Ansir was only thirteen years old and now left with the responsibility of caring for his disabled sister.

In a similar incident the year before their parents had been killed leaving them both orphaned. The structure of the country was so decimated that no one paid any thought to the matter. Ansir and his sister were left to fend for themselves the best they could. Luckily, their parents had their own apartment, so they did not have to live on the street like many of their fellow citizens.

The doctor told Ansir that friendly fire could have injured his sister’s leg, most than likely a shoulder fired rocket. If you could call it friendly. A Taliban fighter fired the rocket, they had the reputation of firing off munitions without caring what they destroyed.

The coalition forces would normally use a drone strike to take out the militants but in the attempt to reduce civilian casualties they arrived in Hum-V’s and small tanks.

His sister’s disability would now restrict the type of work she would be able to do. Ansir was still young, but he had a mature head on his shoulders molded by circumstance and survival. He would have to think long and hard about his future. Stay and look after his sister or seek some kind of retribution.

The school was routinely used by the militant forces in an attempt to use it as a shield against the coalition forces. They relied on them not attacking a building that normally housed young children.

His hatred concentrated on the allied forces, but he also hated the local extremist militia. They were known to kill indiscriminately, anyone who got in their way or did not support their cause was either beheaded or tortured.

His hatred grew, not for the war, but for the tremendous waste, the waste of life and the waste of people’s futures for generations to come. Even at his youthful age, he knew that this war would rage on for an exceedingly long time, even forever. He only saw one side of the conflict and that was the brutality and the superior firepower that the allied forces could inflict on such a vulnerable resistance. Of course, his vision clouded by hatred and revenge for his parents and sister.

The hatred for the US forces especially ran deeply through his veins, they had come to his country in seek of revenge. They sought the so called weapons of mass destruction. A veiled excuse to seek vengeance on anyone to appease the American people. The attack on 9/11 fueled the need for any action even though Iraqi’s did not fly the planes. He had to find a way to appease his thirst for revenge, so he would not seek help from his compatriots, but help from further afield.

The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and various parts of the Middle East have been raging and smoldering for centuries. Ansir Dasat was born in the center of these conflicts. His parents and sister had become statistics in this never-ending conflict.

He was born at a time of internal strife between Sunni’s, Shiites Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Ansir saw hatred and rebellion all around him. Jihadi soldiers of faith swore death to their enemies. In some cases, the confused religious zealots could not figure out who they hated the most. This confusion was at the very core of the problem, one thing was certain, their particular religion endures ninety percent of the blame.

For now, he put those thoughts to the back of his mind, he had present to deal with, revenge would come later. He had a plan brewing in his mind, but he had far more important things to deal with at the moment. The well-being of his sister being at the front of the queue.

Ansir excelled in school, especially in biology and chemistry. Geography and history drew a picture of the outside world that he rarely saw. His landscape was mostly dirt, barren hills with little foliage. There were a few animals, but they were all kept far away from any population. That was until they were desperate for food, sheep and goat herders kept their herds as safe as they could. Dogs roamed the streets, untamed and often vicious. The bombings and constant mayhem created horrific wounds exposing parts of the human body. Ansir would often visit the local hospital or triage tents to study anatomy that had been rearranged by destructive forces. His interest was born from the wounds inflicted on his sister, for personal reasons he volunteered to see how he could help.

He would study these wounds and gather information for his own basic research. He was only fourteen and decided to volunteer at the local hospital. That is, if you could call it a hospital. The building was an old government building used initially for the local road works and general maintenance staff.

The main floor consisted of one large room about the size of a regular middle school classroom. This larger room housed all of the patients, thirty-seven or more at that time, although the numbers increased through more carnage or decreased by a patient dying. With luck and the care and skills of the doctors the vast majority of the patients lived to suffer another day.

Down the hall just off the larger room there were eight smaller rooms, each the size of a small office; these housed patients that were in critical condition. The doctors kept those patients separate from the others because of their challenged chance of survival. One of the rooms functioned as an office and a storage room for the meager supplies of medications and bandages.

Ansir’s volunteer job consisted of running for water, giving water to the patients, and doing laundry. On occasion he volunteered to help wrap the deceased in sheets. The deceased had to be taken to be prepared for burial. The work was dirty, smelly, and extremely distressing, he used the work as fuel for his emotions. It was strange, but he found himself fascinated by the patients that had lost limbs. He attributed that to the fact that his sister was in a similar predicament. He helped them with their everyday movements and set about to assist in their mobility.

He did this by taping crutches together and then placing their legs in between the crutches, he devised a sling from bandages and clothing to support the base of the amputation. By doing so a small percentage of the disabled were gaining a minimum mobility and were able to fend for themselves in a small way.

Amputees that had lost an both legs he would gather crates and screw wheels onto the bottom of the crate. Then he would place a chair in the crate and help the injured person onto the chair. It was an extremely basic form of wheelchair, but it gave the amputee some semblance of normality. They could only push themselves around with a stick, similar to rowing a boat. They could not leave the school building because the wheels could not manage the dirt paths and roads. In every case the wheels on the boxes were not always the same size. Anything helped in this desperate world

Ansir was becoming immensely popular amongst the nurses and the doctors; he was becoming a close friend to the patients. He worked in the hospital every chance he could, his sister by his side, mostly because there was no one home to look after her. He had designed and made her a crutch that fit under her arm but also hung by a strap around her shoulder. This allowed her to let go of the crutch when she needed to hold something with both hands but did not have to lay the crutch down.

He was now almost fifteen years old, and his schoolwork was starting to show even more promise than any of his teachers could have wished for.

His head teacher approached him a day after his fifteenth birthday and suggested that he should start to look for new schools further away that could take him on to the next level of education.

He focused on the medical profession. He had already realized that, where he was in Northern Iraq he was not going to get too far. He would graduate from his current school in a couple of months. Grades were not judged as part of an education where he was, just finishing school was enough. Very few achieved that simple academic success. He would have to get to a big city, Baghdad used to have good schools but the reigning chaos there caused those to be almost nonexistent. He would have to look beyond the areas of conflict for further education.

With help from the head teacher, and with his high recommendations, he was accepted into a further education program for two years. It was in another country, not too far but far enough that it created complications at home. His sister was still in need of his care, he would have to make sure she was safe before he could make any move. He felt he had a daunting task ahead of him, his head teacher gave him a brief list of the curriculum he would have to study. Biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and physiology and that was for starters. The list of supplemental courses seemed endless. He had not even thought about how he was going to pay for it all. He relayed his concern to his head teacher; he had no way of earning enough money to pay for the courses. He got the surprise of his life when his head teacher told him they would take him on an academic scholarship, the only requirement was that he must keep his grades at the top of his class.

His attention shifted to making sure his sister would be cared for. He did not need to worry as it turned out. She was aware of his plans, so she had made plans of her own. The doctors at the makeshift hospital had offered her a job as a nursing assistant, she would not get paid, but she would have food and a place to stay. She told Ansir that she would take them up on their offer and so a great weight lifted from within him,

The dictatorship that had once ruled his country was now gone, but the hatred amongst the tribes still existed. The country divided by religious beliefs, some mainstream, some extreme. Previous invaders over the centuries realized this and left. The country had not changed with these invasions, and it never will be, the religious zealots controlled the population with religious indoctrination. If that did not work, they just publicly eliminated any threats to their doctrines.

The political system was no better, it had been corrupted. There were political parties, but there were also other parties controlled by tribes and religion.

Ansir could not abide this, a good education was a place to start, he would grit his teeth and seek this education in a land he despised.

Chapter 2

Ansir decided that he must be patient, he would devote his time to developing his academic skills. Now his goal was to find a college that would suit these skills. Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia looked very promising. He sat back on his stool and decided this would be a good start. King Abdul-Aziz University fit his plans very well. They had extensive degree courses in biology and medicine. He was determined to stay focused.

He had read about and heard about Osama bin Laden a number of times, but he was not a follower. He was actually relieved when the US Navy killed Bin Laden. He was his own brand of freedom fighter; he did not want to be known as a Bin Laden disciple.

Ansir was one of a kind, a loner. Jihad did not come into his vocabulary. His driving force fueled entirely by revenge for his family. He could not remember where but once he had read that the purest kind of revenge comes through patience. This struck a chord with him.

He would take his time, plan carefully and strike viscously and without warning.

Abdul-Aziz University has a fundamentalist ideology of the way of Islam. Ansir was not interested in their ideologies, he had his own faith. He studied hard and worked on his grades until he found himself focusing on the physical side of medicine. The studies bored the heck out of him, but he persevered.

He also studied the basics of the when the crusaders occupied the Levant and the Holy Land.

He studied history as far back as Saladin the Kurd and the defeat of the crusaders from 1187-1192. How many defeats could one country endure, he asked himself.

He moved on; his only focus was to get to the doctorate that would give him the opportunity to move to the so-called free world.

Ansir, remembered the Russian invasion of his country in the late 1970’s, even though he was not born nor involved. He had listened to his parents; grandparents and their friends talk of the numerous invasions by empires. He had studied this part of history to see if he could find reasons for these invasions. He had not been able to find a defining reason except that the invaders tried to instill their religions on them. Surely this could not be the only reason. He pondered this subject throughout his early teens and now in his education. The Americans accused them of harboring and training terrorists. This was true to a small extent, but it did not reflect the feelings of the whole country.

His solemn hatred continued to be directed toward the country that had maimed his