Baquba

This is from early June.

Hello everyone,

I have spent several days at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Warhorse, which is in the city of Baquba. Baquba is located northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province. Diyala is one of those provinces in the north that is still somewhat volatile. Having said that, just about 18 months ago, Diyala was more than just volatile – it was a massive killing field. As the US surge began, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) began heading north out of Baghdad. As they moved north, they set up slaughter houses all throughout Diyala. Diyala is a mixed Shiite/Sunni province, and it is split with about 50% of each sect living there. Baquba is the largest city in the province, and it is also split evenly between Shia and Sunni. AQI was obviously targeting Shiite victims, and the Shiites began to go after Sunnis in return. Over 100 people per week were being murdered in Diyala during parts of 2006 and 2007.

As the US forces moved into Diyala 15 months ago, AQI began moving further north. Diyala was one of those provinces where the Sons of Iraq (SoI) citizen groups began to stand up, which was a large reason that AQI left the area. The SoI in Diyala were mainly Sunni at the time, and this lack of support by their own sect made it tough for AQI to stick around. They still have a small presence in Diyala, but they haven’t been able to create too much trouble there. They are hard at work trying to recruit female suicide vest wearers, and they have managed to find a couple of “volunteers” for that task in the past couple of months.

The main Shiite criminal elements in Diyala are the al-Mahdi army militants. Sadr city sits on the northeast edge of Baghdad, so the al-Mahdi thugs don’t have all that far to go to get up to Diyala.

During my trip to Baquba, I spent time with another Police Transition Team (PTT). This one was the 202nd Military Police (MP) Company out of Ft. Eustis, Virginia. They are responsible for training all of the Iraqi Police (IP) in Diyala province with the exception of a few stations in the northeast tip of Diyala. They are a busy group of MPs.

I went with one of the PTT squads as they patrolled Baquba, which included a visit with a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) station and a regular police sub-station. QRF police are a little better trained and equipped than are the police at the regular stations. Unlike many of the regular IP stations, this station had functioning staff officers in place, such as an armorer, a training officer, a supply officer, etc. The chief was an ex-army officer, so he runs a tight ship as far as discipline. He even brought one of his police officers in to chew him out in front of us for not being in proper uniform. I didn’t understand a word the chief was saying, but it was clear that this officer was getting a thorough tongue lashing.

Like the chief in Mosul who I met, this chief had a decent sense of humor as well. Apparently one of the most important pieces of equipment to these police chiefs is their TV set and satellite TV hookup. When we went into this chief’s office (Chief Hussein), he was watching the Blue Collar Comedy show – the one with Larry the Cable Guy and his buddies. The chief thought that I was a wimp for not smoking his cigarettes with him. I did the chai tea and I even ate a hometown Baquba apple, but I wouldn’t go for the cigarette. So I guess I’m a wimp, or whatever the corresponding trait is in Arabic.

The big internal challenge that the PTT teams face is the lack of qualified translators. It was painful to listen to the translator struggle with his English and then try to communicate to the IP in Arabic. Some of these chiefs understand English better than some of the translators, and the PTT members say that the chiefs will have to correct the translators on occasion. The best translators are those who are US citizens and who have returned to work for the US here. Meanwhile, these translators who are recruited locally have to be watched carefully. One of them stood there on Warhorse and called in rocket fire on the base using his cell phone. The dope is lucky that he didn’t get hit himself, but he is now in US custody.

Although Diyala province is one of the more active northern provinces, I need to put that in perspective by pointing out that the enemy activity is down to a few of contacts per day between them and IP or US forces in that province. The situation is similar to Mosul in that the heavy presence of police and army checkpoints has severely limited the ability of the insurgents to plant IEDs or to move freely around the cities, so they have resorted to suicide vests and cars packed with explosives, although there haven’t been all that many instances of those types of explosives recently. A suicide bomber tried to drive his car into an IP station a couple of weeks ago, but with the better protection that the police have put in place for their stations, the driver had to blow himself up outside of the barriers. Unfortunately, he did manage to kill one IP who was outside at the time. One of the police officers showed me a plaque in the QRF station that listed names of 169 police officers from that station alone. These were all of the officers who have been killed by terrorist activity since 2003 from just that station. The station has 475 officers right now, so you can see that they are literally making sacrifices by holding down these jobs. Most of those police deaths occurred in the 2005-2006 time period.

The calming of Diyala has been accomplished in large part due to a good US operation combined with a very determined Iraqi police commander at the provincial level. The large US Brigade in Diyala is departing next month as part of the surge drawdown, leaving a smaller US presence in the province. The commander of this US Brigade had two years to prepare for his deployment, so he did some smart training during that time period. He put hundreds of his soldiers through intensive Arab language training, so that proved valuable with the lack of translators. He had his junior leaders conduct ride-alongs with the police in the Ft. Lewis, Washington, area to get a feel for how to get information from the public and how to earn their trust. COL Lehr and his staff also met regularly with mayors and city managers back home to learn the basics of running cities and towns so that they would be better informed on how to teach the Iraqis the basics of city management.

The US Commander also regularly used the carrot and stick approach with the communities in Diyala. Despite the new existence of elected government officials in the cities and towns, the Sheiks still have great influence all around Iraq. Anytime attacks against US forces or civilians in an area would begin to rise, COL Lehr would cut off money for the local projects or electric power to the towns in that area. He would also conduct what is called “terrain denial fire” in areas that have been hot with attacks on US forces. He said that before long, the local Sheiks would come in and tell him that they have put a stop to the attacks and they would ask him to please turn on the power and resources again. The higher levels of security have given the people a chance to get businesses running again and the police have had a chance to become a little more proactive rather than strictly reactive. As business has picked up, people are making money off of the economy rather than by participating in the insurgency.

Although Diyala has a governor, the man who is making a difference in the province is named General Ganum. He is the head of law enforcement in the province. He tends to have a strong concern for the people and they know it. There are a couple of towns in Diyala that went without power for a long time, and the Iraqi officials in Diyala kept promising that power would be in place by certain dates. GEN Ganum got fed up with the false promises, so he arrested the top three officials who were responsible for the power projects in Diyala. He told them that as soon as power was being provided to the towns, he would release them from jail. Electric power was running to these towns in no time, and GEN Ganum even paid these arrestees for the work that was finally completed. I’m not sure that this technique would go over so well in the US, but hey, this isn’t the US.

During a bridge opening ceremony, while others were applauding the bridge that the US engineers constructed over the Diyala River, GEN Ganum was looking at the water level of the river. He noticed how high the water was flowing, and he ordered that irrigation equipment be brought in to route a good portion of the water to the farmers in Diyala, who have been suffering through a drought. He scored huge points with the citizens, which is pretty important in a counter-insurgency fight. On top of this, GEN Ganum is relentless in his push to get the captured insurgents convicted of their crimes. He is another ex-Saddam era military officer.

As far as the Iraqi operation in Mosul, it is moving along nicely. Iraqi army commanders have been asking what they should do as AQI members approach them and ask to surrender. They have never seen anything like this (except when their army was surrendering to us), so they weren’t sure how to handle this. The Iraqi army is literally conducting door-to-door house searches in Mosul to confiscate weapons and evidence of insurgent supporters. Their intelligence has been pretty good as far as identifying the insurgents up there. They have been finding weapons dumped in trash bins, and they are uncovering massive weapons caches. One cache contained over 1800 rocket propelled grenades, which will be 1800 grenades not fired at our guys. AQI types seem to be laying low for awhile until they can figure out how serious the Iraqi army is. The Iraqi general in Mosul is realistic in that he understands that AQI will try to return as soon as the current operation ends, but they have lost a lot of arms and ammunition (and supporters) to the operation so far.

The attached pictures are from Baquba. One is just a traffic circle in town. The other one is obviously a couple of Baqubian kids – future allies or future terrorists? We didn’t stop to give them candy, so they were probably leaning towards terrorist that day.
Take care

The Sand Rules

This was sent in mid-May:

The sand does rule out here when it decides to take to the air so I have been stuck on Camp Speicher for the past week as the sand storms keep driving through. No trips to write about this time around and life can be pretty “normal” here on camp. Some of the locals do try to keep everyone’s senses alert as they sneak in under cover of sand and pop off a few rockets in this direction during the storms. Everybody appreciates them thinking of us and giving us samples of Syria’s ordinance.

The biggest event up here in the north right now is the kickoff of Operation Lion’s Roar. Lion’s Roar is an Iraqi planned and (so far) Iraqi led operation to hit al-Qaeda in Iraq and their Islamic Sons of Iraq (AQI/ISI) brothers up in Mosul. AQI/ISI have vowed that they will never be pushed from Mosul and the Iraqi government has vowed that it will finish AQI/ISI off once and for all. My educated guess is that the result of the operation will be somewhere in between those two promises.

I will start by saying again that it is a big deal when the Iraqi Army takes the initiative. Whether this operation turns out to be a 100% military win for the Army or not, the first success was that these guys put this plan into motion and they are executing their plan. Not only that, but the plan involves the local and national police as well, so this is good for the security forces in general. To top it off, they have even included the air assets that they have, including their helicopters. (The operation has now been ongoing for several weeks).

When this operation started, the commanding Iraqi general announced a total curfew for the city. That curfew was partially lifted after a couple of days, and hundreds of arrests have been made by the Iraqi forces. Lion’s Roar has been more of a round up than an actual military battle so far as there has been very little fighting. The Iraqis are uncovering dozens of weapons caches in the area based on some good tips by the locals. Let’s hope that the arrests that are being made are arrests of the right people, but a lot of these AQI types are laying low. They really can’t afford to engage in a head-on fight right now, so I imagine that they will try to make themselves heard when this operation is over.

I know that it would have been great if after the 2003 portion of the war, the Iraqis would have immediately understood how to operate a democracy and immediately understood how to develop industry and a work ethic and a competent police and military force, but that didn’t happen. Years of socialist oppression obviously took a toll. Let me share a few positive signs that may point to a little brighter future for this country.

The push by General Petreaus to get US forces into the neighborhoods of ordinary Iraqis is having a big impact on how the Iraqis view Americans. They have always been taught that we were the bad guys, and when our forces stayed behind walls or in their armored vehicles, that made it easy for the insurgents to continue to portray our guys as the bad guys who don’t care about the people. The group who is showing the most outward signs of having a growing trust in US forces is the youth. More and more, it is the kids who are providing the truthful tips on locations of IEDs and weapons caches. It bodes well that this generation of kids is seeing the good side of the US and not the bad that their parents have always been taught. By the way, they are also feeding intelligence to their own army and police as well, which in some ways is an even bigger step for them.

A couple of weeks ago, several politicians from the Iraqi Parliament held a protest march in Sadr City to protest the violence. So what – there are protests every day in Washington D.C. Can you imagine a protest march in Iraq six years ago when Saddam ruled this country? It would last approximately one block until Saddam had time to get his firing squad lined up to end that march. While the Iranians were busy trying to keep the al-Mahdi Army firing at the Green Zone, these politicians were marching for an end to the violence. A simple act like that is another leap forward in this country.

I have mentioned that AQI is attempting to get women to “volunteer” to be suicide bombers. I may be wrong, but there do not appear to be all that many takers on that offer. On the other hand, women are volunteering to be part of the citizen forces that are fighting the insurgency. Out in Fallujah, there is now a “Sisters of Fallujah” organization. These women are providing security and they are very useful when it comes to searching other females, which is timely with the elevated female suicide bomber threat right now. The Fallujah sisters are a Sunni outfit, and south of Baghdad, a group called the Daughters of Iraq is a Shiite group of women formed for the same purpose. While the US has been funding these concerned citizen groups, the Iraqi government is now moving to take over the payments. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the US is beginning to hand over the responsibility of the payments to the Iraqi government. I think that they will sit back and let us pay forever if we want to.

Iraq’s president al-Maliki gained tremendous credibility with the Sunnis in this country when he took on fellow Shiites in Basra and Sadr City. The Sunni legislators had accused him of only focusing on the AQI threat, and they were actually threatening to boycott Parliamentary sessions to protest what they claimed was a very one sided government. This move by Maliki against the Shiite militia groups has caused the Sunni block to rejoin the political activities in Baghdad. I already mentioned that in Sunni provinces, the expected voter turn out is expected to be fairly high. They have decided that if they can’t shoot their way into office, they want to vote their way in. I call that progress. (The Sunni law makers have recently threatened to sit out the political process once again, but we will see how far they take that threat).

One more piece in this Iraq puzzle that is beginning to take shape is that the security forces are beginning to show some resolve. Some of these US soldiers who have been here in the past have watched as Iraqi police or army units would literally turn and run away from the sound of gunfire. That isn’t happening anymore. Although the security forces are targeted, they are standing and fighting now. They have a ways to go in many respects, but they are engaging the enemy now. The constant mentoring and training by the US forces and by the US civilian police officers who are over here is paying off, particularly in the area of professionalism (of course, one of our military police officers joked that we should pass a lesson learned from the streets of the US onto the Iraqi police - that lesson being that you should always make sure that there are no helicopters with cameras overhead before you begin to beat on your unarmed suspect).

Anyway, there is plenty of work to be done in this place, both by the US and by the Iraqis themselves. The borders of this country are too wide open and too easily crossed by foreign insurgents. The Iraqis are beginning to get tired of the meddling by these people, and that is a good thing because they are not being welcomed to hide in the communities.

The picture is actually one of the sunny days at Speicher. The sand makes it presence known even then.

Take care.

Mosul

I initially sent this one out to my family back in early May, and quite a bit has happened in Mosul since this time with the Iraqi Army taking the initiative up there:

Imagine yourself flying across Iraq in the middle of the night in an Army helicopter to join the battle of Mosul for a couple of days. Now that is living.

I returned early Monday morning from a couple of days up in Mosul. There is a lot going on up there right now with Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) trying to make a tough stand. Let me add a few more acronyms to the list here so that I can use them in this email to save me from having to spell everything out. There is now a new acronym to go along with AQI. It is now called AQI/ISI. ISI stands for Islamic Sons of Iraq. AQI was getting upset that people keep accusing them (accurately) of being all foreigners, so they added a little hometown flavor to their name with the ISI piece. When I write “IA,” that stands for Iraqi Army; IP is Iraqi Police. ISF is Iraqi Security Forces. PTT is Police Transition Team.

My trip to Mosul was to spend some time with the PTT team up there. PTTs are US Military Police (MPs) whose purpose it is to teach the Iraqi police how to function as a professional police force. Part of my assessment is to determine how close the IP are to becoming self sustaining. I was actually surprised at what I learned.

Mosul is a city of about 1.2 million people up in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq. It is split down the middle by the Tigris River and it is a typical congested urban area. Up until about 2005, Mosul was actually a fairly stable and peaceful city. In 2005, AQI moved in to try to prevent an orderly election process there, and AQI has not yet willingly left the city. The Iraqi Army has two separate armies in the area, one being to the east of the Tigris, the other being to the west. The army to the east is heavily Kurdish, the one to the west is heavily Sunni. AQI being Sunni, guess which Iraqi army unit is doing a bit better at taking on AQI/ISI? Along with the 2 Iraqi army units, the US has some 3rd Armored Cavalry units to the west, and some 1st Infantry units to the east.

The US 1st Infantry commander has done a tremendous job with his side of the city. Just a few months ago, AQI dominated the streets of eastern Mosul. The 1st Infantry went in and set up Combat Outposts (COPs) right in the heart of the worst neighborhoods. The commander ordered his troops to shoot on sight anyone laying Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). No chasing, no arresting, the orders were to shoot. AQI does not emplace its own IEDs. What they do is walk around and offer people money to “go put this in that hole over there and walk away.” After the 1st Infantry showed up, people became very unwilling to put big metal objects into holes on the east side anymore. In addition to the 1st Infantry tactics, the Iraqi army on that side of town has worked very well with the IPs to locate and attack AQI elements. AQI has sworn never to lose Mosul, so no part of the city is out of the woods yet, but AQI is in a fight and it knows it.

I went out on patrol with the PTT team into Mosul. The IP have check points all around town to try to limit the movement of AQI elements. These check points are frequently targeted by AQI. We were checking up on some of these check points and visiting a couple of IP leaders. We stopped in at the police station of the commander of the southeast district of Mosul. His name is Colonel Hussan. This man is one of the top police commanders in Mosul in that he and his men are pretty effective. COL Hussan is very charismatic, intelligent, and very funny. Since I was the highest ranking US officer present, and since Iraqis are very attentive to rank, I got to play the part of special guest for COL Hussan. We sat and talked and sipped Chai tea for two hours. We covered some pretty weighty topics and some not so weighty topics. COL Hussan had nothing but positive remarks to make about the US Army and his PTT trainers. We discussed his training and equipment needs, we discussed security issues, we discussed politics (his, not ours), we discussed maps and Google Earth (he wanted us to tell the “satellite people” to update it), we discussed the upcoming Iraqi elections, and we discussed accountability of his people (IPs keep “ghost police” on their records. These are police who have been killed but whose families keep getting paid to take care of their needs; it is hard to determine actual police numbers when they do this).

Hussan did not have much positive to say about the Ministry of Interior (MOI), under which the police fall. Hussan said that he gets very little support from the MOI. He runs out of fuel the third week of each month because he says that someone from MOI sells a week’s worth of fuel on the black market for personal gain. While the Iraqi Ministry of Defense is doing a fairly decent job of equipping the IA, the MOI is not doing much for the police.

Another issue for Hussan is his own court system. He complains that many of the people who are arrested are soon released without going to trial. He believes that the judges are corrupt. Here is the problem he faces. There are US attorneys and judges here in Iraq teaching judges how to follow their own law. They are further ahead in their training than are the police. The police are busy dealing with the insurgency. There are very few detectives conducting criminal investigations because everyone is busy fighting AQI. Hussan and his men will make an arrest and turn the prisoner over to the courts. The judges, being newly trained on how to be honest judges, notice that the police brought no evidence with them to use against the defendant. Therefore, following their own law, the judges have to release the prisoners. Hussan doesn’t quite understand this. He says that everyone knows that some of these people are criminals or terrorists, so why would the courts let them go. You can see the dilemma. Hussan is probably correct about many of these prisoners. They probably are criminals, but the new standard is for there to be evidence of a crime. The IPs in Mosul are nowhere near proficient enough in investigative work to collect and retain evidence at this point, so that is the next big task for the PTT teams. For the record, the Iraqi court in the Tikrit area is convicting terrorists right and left. The security situation didn’t get as bad as it did in Mosul, so there was ample opportunity to teach investigators how to investigate.

After we ended our conversation, Hussan wanted to go on patrol with us. It is his district, so that was his choice, and the PTT teams are trying to play a support role rather than a lead role. Hussan chose not to ride in our armored vehicles, so he rode in his Ford pickup truck. There is a particular check point in Mosul that was getting hit by AQI at the same time each night, so we were going to set an ambush there on our way back in to camp, but Hussan, not knowing what our plans were, went there with a whole armada of flashing red and blue police lights to keep AQI away from his men. AQI chose not to show up that night.

It was a very informative trip for me. Hussan feels that he can fully handle the security situation if only he receives support from his own government. Until that happens, he does not want the Americans to leave. I was surprised in that I thought that the police would be in a little more disarray up there, but considering their lack of equipment and supplies, they are holding their own. If the army gets the insurgency in check, that will speed up the training of the IP quite a bit.

A couple more notes as I wrap up. There is plenty of concern about these local citizen groups in Iraq who we are arming to help in the fight against the insurgency. Are they for real or are they just taking our arms to fight us? AQI seems to think that that these groups, (now called Sons of Iraq, or SoI), are for real. AQI is fretting about the lack of volunteers for suicide bombing missions and the lack of support that they are receiving from Sunni Arabs. They are also upset that many of their own have returned to Syria. The fact that they are actively targeting SoIs indicates to me that they feel threatened by them. As for the lack of suicide bombers, now up in Mosul AQI is calling for its members to convince their girlfriends to become suicide bombers. I’d love to hear those conversations. As for the SoI, there are nearly 100,000 in Iraq now, and they are having a very positive impact on their communities. The US commander in Mosul will not allow many SoIs in that town. We will have to wait and see if that turns out to be a good decision or not.

Take care.

Who is in Control?

Here is another Iraq update. I first sent this back on 29 April. Remember, this is a lazy man's way of catching up to date rather than re-writing everything that has been happening in the past 2 months.

It may sound as if I am starting this email off with a little negativity, but when you see the figures, you will understand why that is the case.

Since last weekend, there were nearly 40 shootings in one of the northern cities of the country alone. In the past two weeks, there have been 19 murders in that particular city, with five bodies discovered dumped in one trashed house. Can you declare a country “civilized” or able to conduct self government when this type of violence occurs? Where are the police during times like this? They obviously do not control the streets or neighborhoods where this violence is occurring. Are they responsible for this condition, or are events simply too out of control for them to be able to have any effect? We think that the police are receiving top notch training, but apparently they are not able to deter these types of crimes. There appears to be plenty of corruption in the police force and in city hall. Is this violence a problem that the US military should be able to step in and fix, or is this type of violence at the city level something that the local authorities should be able to handle? Do we blame the national government for the failure to stem the violence, or is it caused by a culture of violence that the government can’t change overnight? There are people in these big cities who hate other people simply because someone belongs to a different group or wears the wrong color of scarf or bandana. Do we walk away and allow them to kill each other, or do we have some obligation to fight this violence to help the majority of people in these towns who simply want to be able to go to the store without fear of being attacked or killed? In addition to the problems up in this northern city, the southwestern border is equally out of control. Gangs of bandits cross the border at will and wreak havoc in the small border towns. The military is nowhere to be found on the border, and the few border police who are out there are doing the best that they can in between gunfights. From the border, these people are moving throughout the rest of the country, committing murders and other violent crimes. As soon as one thug is arrested, there is another one coming along to take his place.

Is the country out of control? Do we throw up our hands and walk away and allow lawlessness to rule, or do we make an effort to stand and fight?

Those are great questions, and I don’t have the answers. Since I am talking about the US (Chicago in the north and the Texas-through-California border in the southwest), you tell me what we should do. When I read these press reports of what is going on over there in the US, it makes me wonder if it is safe for my family to take that cross country trip this summer or not. Who is in control over there anyway?

I guess that is what happens when all someone knows about a situation is what one reads in the paper.

I am not going to downplay the enemy out here and pretend that all is well. These guys are ruthless and medieval in their desire to kill. What the US doesn’t have to deal with in its streets are IEDs and suicide bombers. For all of you women out there, you will be happy to know that there is a push from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to give women equal rights in their group. The equality that they offer is the equality of being able to blow themselves up just to kill other people. Women are the suicide killers of choice right now over here. I shouldn’t even use the term “women,” because AQI is using young girls younger than 16 to do their work. A few weeks ago, a young girl blew herself up in front of an Iraqi couple and their two children up in Mosul. During that same day, the US 3ACR was fighting some AQI elements near a mosque (not IN the mosque, NEAR the mosque). Two AQI were killed in a house next to the mosque. The press was hounding our public affairs people about the damage to this holy mosque that could have occurred from this battle right outside its doors. No mention of the Iraqi suicide killer who killed 2 Iraqi kids and their parents.

I am honestly not being facetious here, but while men are being recruited to the suicide bomber ranks with promises of 72 beautiful women on the other side, no one has figured out what the women are being offered. It is looking as if these girls who are being used are generally very low IQ girls. The bomb vests are often being detonated by someone else using a remote control. In addition to using women, AQI is using little kids. A driver asked some Iraqi soldiers to allow him to park his car near a market so he could keep an eye on his two sleeping children in the back seat while he quickly grabbed some produce. The guards saw the kids and let the car park near the market. The driver got out of the car, walked away, and blew up the car with the two kids in the back seat. It turns out that he had kidnapped the kids to use as tools for his killing.

Both the Sunni Al Qaeda and the Shiite Mahdi Army (with their Iranian counterparts) are facing a slight dilemma at the moment. While both groups continue to declare that the US is the great enemy, these same groups keep killing their own civilians to prove that the US and Iraqi governments are not maintaining security. People in the north and in the south are starting to figure out that when the Americans are in their neighborhoods, they are not being shot and killed or blown up. When AQI and Mahdi elements are around, people get killed. AQI is beginning to try to target Iraqi police and military forces more than civilians, and they are trying to hit US forces in the north. Down in Baghdad, the Mahdi are directly confronting US troops, and they are loosing a lot of their own fighters by doing that. Iraqi citizens generally do not get a good feeling when they hear that Iranian agents are in their country influencing events, so Muqtada Al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi bunch, went on TV to announce that there was absolutely no Iranian influence over him or the Mahdi army at all. Of course, he broadcast that speech from Iran, and everyone on the streets knew it.

Here are a couple of other news items from Iraq. Again, there is still plenty of fighting going on, particularly up here in the north, but these are just some other happenings that you probably don’t hear about.

One of the big challenges that US trainers have when training Iraqi military leaders is to get them to take the initiative. Remember, they came from a culture where if Saddam or his sons didn’t tell you to do something, then you had better not do it. The big Basra fight from a month or so ago occurred after an Iraqi general was given the green light to take the initiative and he took his forces to Basra to fight the rogue Shiites who are aligned with Iran. The US wasn’t completely informed of the operation, and the general, so proud that he was taking the initiative, forgot to inform the US military that he was carrying out this operation. At least he took the initiative.

There were a couple of bright spots from that operation. President al-Maliki fired 1300 soldiers and police who left their duty stations. Also, an organization called the National Police went in and cleaned house. The National Police are not the city police and they are not the army. The National Police intentionally recruit a mixed Sunni/Shia/Kurd cross-section from all around the country to become officers. They are trained to be loyal to the law and each other, and not to their sect or tribe. Since they are recruited nation wide and since they don’t operate in their home regions, they are becoming very effective. They are the guys who arrested the locals and soldiers who abandoned the fight in Basra. Their role is to deal with the insurgency. This organization is growing slowly but surely.

I don’t know if the US press told the complete story from Basra, but the Iraqi government sent in new leadership and took Basra back. An article from Basra begins with this: “CD shops sell love songs again. Some women emerge from their homes without veils, and alcohol sellers are coming out of hiding…The changes in recent weeks mark a surprising show of government sway – for now - after an Iraqi-led military crackdown…”

Progress is being made in incremental steps over here. It is a big deal when Iraqis take the lead and achieve some success. Their military hasn’t won anything in quite a few years, so each little victory is a proud moment for them.

Life on Mars

I have obviously not been able to post in quite awhile, so I will do what I can to catch up. I have been sending a series of emails to family/friends over the past couple of months, so I will copy those emails on this blog every few days until I catch up to what is happening today. Bottom line is that I will be compressing the last 2 months into about a 3 week period on this blog, so some of what you read will have to be understood in the (slightly) past tense.

For openers, I am based out of COB Speicher mear Tikrit, Iraq. I am attached to Multi-National Division North (MND-MN), and our main insurgency problem up here is a Sunni problem. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is the largest and most vicious of the groups, but none are afraid to kill. There is some Shiite activity down around Diyala Province, which is in the southeast sector of MND-N. AQI is fighting hard for its last stronghold up here, which is in Mosul. The following was first sent out to my list around late April:

Hello everyone,
If any of you ever had the desire to live on Mars, come here to Speicher on a day like today and you will be pleased. The attached photo doesn’t do justice to how red the day was with this massive sandstorm. It blew in Wednesday night around midnight and it will be going strong until around noon on Friday. It actually got worse as the day wore on after that picture was taken.

I spent the week adjusting and attending briefings to get a good grip on what is happening in the region. Someone back home asked me about rockets, and if we were receiving rocket fire like the troops down in Baghdad. The answer is almost entirely “no.” Speicher sits in open desert (hence the massive sand storms). In the past, the insurgents tried to get close enough to hit Speicher with rockets or mortars. Due to the normally great visibility for miles around the camp, these insurgents were easily spotted and they didn’t manage to live long enough to do much shooting. Somebody occasionally fires a round in this direction, but they usually land in open desert. Relatively speaking, the Tikrit area is fairly stable. Being the home town and home tribe of Saddam Hussein, the people in this area are fairly educated and not prone to run around fighting. As I mentioned, the areas to the north and east of here are a little livelier, in military terms. The locals do not necessarily like the US in Tikrit, so they will not pass up the opportunity to do damage when they can.

As I was making contacts the other day, I went to lunch with an Iraqi-American interpreter (Isaac). He works for our Civil Affairs section. They are the people who go into the community and perform outreach duties. Isaac used to be a college professor of economics in Tikrit before he left for the US. He told me that the reason that he volunteered to come back to Iraq is because he loves his country and he wants it to be successful. He paused for a minute and then said, “I’ll bet you think I am talking about Iraq when I say that I love my country.” Of course he was correct – that is what I was thinking. He was talking about the US, though. He said that he loves the United States and that he will do all that he can to help in this battle. He feels that the downfall of Iraq really accelerated during the Iran-Iraq war. He says that corruption is the norm here and that it will take a generation before that changes. Isaac wonders why the US keeps handing out US money and not Iraqi money to make Iraqis invest in their own economy. He invited me to come out with him in the future to meet some local leaders. By the way, Isaac is a Christian who points out that his Christian ancestry goes back in this area much further than does the Islamic religion which has forced him and his family from the country.

Another Major from Civil Affairs had lunch with us as well. He is part of a team that holds town meetings to listen to claims from Iraqi citizens who claim to have been injured or had property damaged from US military operations. The Major said that the stories these people tell to get money are unbelievable but very creative. His instructions are to do what he can to make the people happy. He said that he keeps getting into trouble because he turns down more requests for money than he grants. He believes that these people need to be taught that corruption is not OK. The Major is going to have me attend one of these meetings with him up in Mosul, and he is going to have me be the person hearing the claims so that I can see for myself what he is dealing with. I figure that this will be easy. I will just educate these Iraqis on the true value of a dollar bill these days and they will be thanking me for not paying them in US dollars.

Here are a couple of other tidbits of information before I sign off. The majority of forces helping the Iraqis are obviously from the US, and we are criticized for going it alone. We are joined here by Britain, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain, Denmark, El Salvador, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania, Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and South Korea. Each of those countries has lost soldiers in battle. Sure, they don’t have thousands of troops from each of their countries, but most of them don’t have huge militaries in the first place. They are doing what they can to participate in the effort. Notice that we don’t have most of our NATO “allies” in country. I would suggest that this might not be a bad thing. Look how NATO has been handling their part of the mission in Afghanistan.

I wish everyone the best, and I will be posting again soon.