John West - Fry The Brain: The Art of Urban Sniping and its Role in Modern Guerrilla Warfare

Fry The Brain

The Art of Urban Sniping and its Role in Modern Guerrilla Warfare

When the Serbs failed in their attempt to overrun the neighborhood, they switched tactics to what they called Fry the Brain, a terror campaign meant to drive residents out. The Serbs shelled the area day and night, ringing the neighborhood with snipers, who killed everything they saw, especially women and children. They thought that killing kids would make the women, and ultimately the men, take flight.

- John Falk, describing the Serbs sniper campaign against the people of Sarajevo in Hello to all That

Fry The Brain: The Art of Urban Sniping and its Role in Modern Guerrilla Warfare

Dedicated to the American servicemen and women who fight their nations wars.

Front and back cover photo by www.dragunov.net

2008 SSI

Countryside, VA

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval devices, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Author: John West

ISBN: 978-0-9714133-9-9 (10-digit: 0-9714133-9-8)

Foreword

The year was 2005. I was in Baghdad. The sun was high above and there was a slight breeze. The merciless Iraq summer had not yet arrived and the weather was still mild. Our team was approaching an Iraqi military checkpoint. We had our identification cards out and our hands exposed, showing we were not a threat. Several Iraqi soldiers stood behind a row of dirt-filled protective barriers as they inspected us. Suddenly, a small puff of earth erupted from a barrier, several inches from one of the soldiers.

Sniper! I called out.

What are you talking about? One of our teammates hadnt seen the impact of the bullet and didnt hear a thing.

Naw, I saw it. At least our driver confirmed I wasnt crazy. Amazingly, the Iraqi soldiers remained oblivious to the danger, having missed the impact of the round, although the incoming bullet landed only inches from one of their men. Had the shooter calculated their shot just a fraction of an inch better, one of the soldiers would have been dead with a bullet in their chest.

We were in a slight dilemma. If we sped past the guards, they might open fire on us, thinking we were Al-Qaeda or a car bomb. We were trapped and had to act normal. So, we cautiously eased our vehicles through the checkpoint, hoping the sniper wouldnt take another shot. We quickly drove behind the cover of a nearby building. We got out of our cars and discretely surveyed the surrounding urban terrain. There were literally thousands of places the sniper could have fired from. And the shooter either used a sound suppressor or shot from within an enclosed space that muffled the gunshot. Thats why we didnt hear anything. We had no chance of finding the sniper, who was probably gone by the time we parked. Was this the work of the infamous Baghdad Sniper called Juba? Well never know.

We explained to the Iraqi soldiers that they were just shot at by a sniper, but they didnt believe us. We advised them to build a better checkpoint that screened them from potential snipers. They never did. They remained victims waiting to happen.

That was my introduction to the art of urban guerrilla sniping. The shooter displayed superior snipercraft and we had no hope of catching them in the act. I felt helpless. I also felt a little sick knowing that myself or my teammates could have had their heads blown off by an invisible marksman and we would have been powerless to stop it. That incident drove me to learn more about sniping and urban guerrilla warfare. It has taken me several years of work, but this book is my response to that day when a hidden guerrilla sniper had us in his cross hairs but missed.

From personal experience and research, it is obvious that despite the general consensus that guerrilla wars are the wars of the future, little is actually known about the specific methodology guerrilla organizations use to wage these wars. Experts in the field - and even the soldiers themselves generally dont understand guerrilla warfare because they are trapped in a world dominated by conventional militaries and their conventionally minded leaders. In the arena of military thought, the mind has become a prison. Because modern armies have invested so dearly in traditional concepts of warfare, from costly aircraft carriers to the latest main battle tanks, when they encounter a situation that does not fit their inflexible paradigms, they fall short.

For example, Great Britain fought the Germans to a standstill in the trenches of World War I and then helped win World War II. While there is no questioning the prowess of the British Navy or the skill of the Royal Air Force, how did Englands war machine fare in Northern Ireland against the Irish Republican Army? During The Troubles, England fought a thirty-year war against a microscopic guerrilla movement that relied on kidnappings, drive-by shootings, and ski-mask wearing snipers. This bitter war only ended in 1998 after the leader of the IRA, Gerry Adams, became a recognized, elected member of Parliament.

We can also look at the Soviet Union who wallowed in Afghanistan for a decade, from 1979 to 1989, unable to defeat a guerrilla movement of unsophisticated tribesman. Then, in 1994, Russia found itself stuck in the mean streets of Grozny, suffering severe losses from Chechen snipers. In another example, the U.S. military failed miserably after ten years of guerrilla warfare in the steaming jungles of Vietnam. Then, in 2003, almost thirty years after the last helicopter limped out of Saigon, the U.S. invaded Iraq, destroying Saddam Husseins entire military in less than three weeks. But, as of the writing of this book, the U.S. military was still confronted by a resilient urban guerrilla movement, which displayed the most sophisticated urban sniping techniques to date.

In these examples, we see conventionally built armies fighting unconventional enemies who refuse to follow the rules. In an increasingly urbanized world, militaries must be prepared to fight in major cities occupied by millions of inhabitants. Modern armies must accept an age where limiting infrastructure damage and preventing civilian casualties is just as important as engaging the enemy in combat.

While conventional armies try to maneuver their massive forces within the tight confines of places like Belfast, Beirut, and Baghdad, the guerrilla takes a different tact. Successful guerrilla movements embrace the urban terrain, manipulating the infrastructure and population to their advantage, fighting their clumsy enemies with deception, cunning, and precision. The embodiment of this urban guerrilla warfare is the sniper, a lone individual who moves among the people. They are a fighter that uses the city to their advantage, takes their shot under the noses of their enemy, and disappears into the population. The sniper is a precision tool, a scalpel the guerrillas wield to surgically target specific individuals with absolutely no collateral damage - either structural or human.

Resistance movements of all shades and stripes have employed the guerrilla sniper, from black pajama-clad Viet Cong fighters to the ragtag Somali militias in war-torn Mogadishu. From the perspective of the guerrilla, it is only natural. What better way to bloody a superior force than with an elusive shooter who takes a single shot and then melts away as quickly as they appear? The lone shooter is the hallmark of modern urban guerrilla warfare. While the worlds many resistance movements employ a variety of tactics like car bomb attacks, IED ambushes, and martyr operations, they all employ a universal weapon - the guerrilla sniper.