I am slowly cathcing up to myself. I originally sent this in early June.
Hello everyone,
For my latest travels, I didn’t go all that far, but I did switch gears from the Police Transition Teams to a Military Transition Team, or MiTT. I spent some time with one of our MiTT teams just a little south of Tikrit in Salah Ah Din Province. The MiTT is housed at a little outpost called Forward Operating Base (FOB) Dagger, which sits on a bluff overlooking the Tigris River. To get to Dagger from Speicher, there was no air travel option this time. We went by ground convoy, which can be a little more interesting with the constant IED threat. The route from here to there is covered heavily with Sons of Iraq (SoI) and Iraqi Police (IP) check points, so the IED implanters are having a tougher time getting too many IEDs buried out there right now.
Dagger used to be a US FOB, but it was turned back over to the Iraqi Army (IA) a couple of years ago. In the one attached picture, you can see the old palace, which is now the headquarters for the 4th Iraqi Army Division, or 4IA.
One of the initial differences between being with a PTT and being with a MiTT is that there is a much greater level of trust between our soldiers and the Iraqi Army than between our guys and the Iraqi Police. The police units are much more infiltrated by insurgents than are the army units. When in an IP station, none of the US soldiers go anywhere without several other soldiers. On Dagger, it is common for our MiTT members to walk over to the IA headquarters by themselves without a problem.
When I arrived at Dagger, the MiTT Operations advisor showed me around camp. The Iraqis operate quite a bit differently than we do. The operations officer and I walked over to the Iraqi motor pool and we looked at a small privately owned car that had its front end blown off. The car belongs to the Iraqi Division Engineer, a full-bird Colonel. The Colonel was ordered by his commanding general to drive down the oil pipeline and check for saboteurs. In our army, the engineer would normally not be the first person chosen to go hunting for saboteurs, but more importantly, our guys wouldn’t jump in the old family car to complete that task. Lucky for the Colonel, he lived through the IED blast. The family, however, will be needing to look for other transportation.
The 4IA Division is a very large Iraqi division, but it is not a mobile unit. The 4IA soldiers are tied to an infrastructure protection mission, which keeps them in checkpoints along the oil pipeline that crosses Salah Ah Din, and it keeps them guarding power lines and highways. The fact that the division engineer takes the family car on missions with him probably makes it obvious that, unlike their sister divisions up in Ninewa Province who are engaged in the big AQI fight right now, these guys don’t move around a lot. The good news is that they are good at protecting the infrastructure, which is good for growing the economy, which is good for keeping citizens from joining the insurgency.
The 4IA leadership is fairly diverse, which should be a good lesson for other sectors of Iraqi society to emulate. The Commanding General (CG) is a Turkoman, his assistant is a Shiite, his Chief of Staff is a Sunni, and his Operations Officer is a Kurd. The CG tries hard to squash corruption in his forces, so he rotates his forces around fairly frequently. He thinks that if a unit is in one location too long, those with tendencies to start extorting money from the locals will start to do just that. By rotating his forces, he has actually run a pretty clean ship. If the 4IA was actually engaged in a lot of combat actions, it might not be such a good idea to shift people around like this, but these guys are essentially moving from one check point situation to another.
For my latest travels, I didn’t go all that far, but I did switch gears from the Police Transition Teams to a Military Transition Team, or MiTT. I spent some time with one of our MiTT teams just a little south of Tikrit in Salah Ah Din Province. The MiTT is housed at a little outpost called Forward Operating Base (FOB) Dagger, which sits on a bluff overlooking the Tigris River. To get to Dagger from Speicher, there was no air travel option this time. We went by ground convoy, which can be a little more interesting with the constant IED threat. The route from here to there is covered heavily with Sons of Iraq (SoI) and Iraqi Police (IP) check points, so the IED implanters are having a tougher time getting too many IEDs buried out there right now.
Dagger used to be a US FOB, but it was turned back over to the Iraqi Army (IA) a couple of years ago. In the one attached picture, you can see the old palace, which is now the headquarters for the 4th Iraqi Army Division, or 4IA.
One of the initial differences between being with a PTT and being with a MiTT is that there is a much greater level of trust between our soldiers and the Iraqi Army than between our guys and the Iraqi Police. The police units are much more infiltrated by insurgents than are the army units. When in an IP station, none of the US soldiers go anywhere without several other soldiers. On Dagger, it is common for our MiTT members to walk over to the IA headquarters by themselves without a problem.
When I arrived at Dagger, the MiTT Operations advisor showed me around camp. The Iraqis operate quite a bit differently than we do. The operations officer and I walked over to the Iraqi motor pool and we looked at a small privately owned car that had its front end blown off. The car belongs to the Iraqi Division Engineer, a full-bird Colonel. The Colonel was ordered by his commanding general to drive down the oil pipeline and check for saboteurs. In our army, the engineer would normally not be the first person chosen to go hunting for saboteurs, but more importantly, our guys wouldn’t jump in the old family car to complete that task. Lucky for the Colonel, he lived through the IED blast. The family, however, will be needing to look for other transportation.
The 4IA Division is a very large Iraqi division, but it is not a mobile unit. The 4IA soldiers are tied to an infrastructure protection mission, which keeps them in checkpoints along the oil pipeline that crosses Salah Ah Din, and it keeps them guarding power lines and highways. The fact that the division engineer takes the family car on missions with him probably makes it obvious that, unlike their sister divisions up in Ninewa Province who are engaged in the big AQI fight right now, these guys don’t move around a lot. The good news is that they are good at protecting the infrastructure, which is good for growing the economy, which is good for keeping citizens from joining the insurgency.
The 4IA leadership is fairly diverse, which should be a good lesson for other sectors of Iraqi society to emulate. The Commanding General (CG) is a Turkoman, his assistant is a Shiite, his Chief of Staff is a Sunni, and his Operations Officer is a Kurd. The CG tries hard to squash corruption in his forces, so he rotates his forces around fairly frequently. He thinks that if a unit is in one location too long, those with tendencies to start extorting money from the locals will start to do just that. By rotating his forces, he has actually run a pretty clean ship. If the 4IA was actually engaged in a lot of combat actions, it might not be such a good idea to shift people around like this, but these guys are essentially moving from one check point situation to another.
When I was getting the grand tour of Dagger, the MiTT Operations Officer and I walked over to the palace to look at the IA Tactical Operations Center, or TOC. A US Division TOC is a busy place. Representatives from each staff section are on duty 24 hours per day in our TOC. When we walked into the IA TOC, there was one Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) sitting behind the phones, sound asleep. We startled him, of course, and he jumped up, buttoned his shirt and put his shoes on. We said our hellos and moved on so that he could get back to sleep.
The next morning, we attended a battle update brief at the IA TOC, and it was full, although every one of the staff officers had his cell phone ring at some point during the briefing. After the briefing, the IA Operations Officer (called a G3), invited us into his office for Chai tea (of course). He had a lot on his mind and he wanted to share some of his thoughts, most of it dealing with the tactical situation with his forces. During our visit, the Deputy Commanding General (DCG) came into the office and he ordered another round of Chai tea for everyone. I am getting my share of Chai tea, which is OK because it is good stuff.
The DCG wanted to talk about my job and the Center for Army Lessons Learned. We just helped the Iraqis start their own lessons learned center a few months back, so he wanted to see if the Iraqi center was operating like ours. He thinks that his center has too many civilians working in it, so he is not sure how much they will know about military operations. The DCG had a pretty good grasp on the English language and he was very friendly and interesting to talk to. It shouldn’t be surprising, but they are just as interested in our world as we are in theirs, so we talked quite a bit about the US.
Our MiTT team feels like they are making slow but steady progress with the Iraqi Army. The Iraqis will never operate like we do, so the MiTT members have learned to not get frustrated by the Iraqi system. The Iraqi Army tends to be further ahead in their core competencies than the Iraqi Police, but again, they come from a very different culture than we do. Keeping in mind that they are engaged in a war, the schedule under which they operate is 10 days on, 10 days off for every soldier. Each soldier literally only works half a year under this schedule. This schedule includes the commanders and staff, so you can see the challenges in conducting a war this way. The Iraqis don’t understand the concept of planning to the extent that we plan. They tend to simply get up and go without really thinking things through too much, such as where they are getting their fuel or water. The MiTT teams used to cover all of this for them, but now they are making the Iraqis think through these issues or live with the consequences if they forget to include these issues in their “plan.” There is one request that the Iraqis submit any time they actually do plan, and that request is for Apache air support. I had to put that plug in for my old aircraft. Conducting a raid? They want Apaches; manning a checkpoint? How about some Apaches. They love our Apaches, and the MiTT members say that they actually fight harder when Apaches are providing cover for them. That shouldn’t be all that surprising considering the fact that our guys like the air cover as well.
I understand that this is war, but you have to find humor where you can. This probably falls into the category of pathetic humor, but you’ll get my point as you read about a recent event here.
The SoI at a checkpoint just south of Dagger stopped a water truck and asked to look into the tank, just as they are supposed to do. The driver reached down and offered the SoI a handful of money to let him drive through without a search. The SoI called for Iraqi Police backup for a suspicious truck. He then informed the driver that he was going to search the vehicle. As the SoI member walked to the back of the truck, the driver jumped from the cab, yelled something, and then blew himself up with the suicide vest that he was wearing. As I understand the purpose of a suicide vest, called a SVEST, it is supposed to be used to kill a lot of other people as well. Mass casualty vest is probably a more accurate term. Well, this poor AQI member took the “suicide” term literally, so he blew himself up with no one standing anywhere near him. One enemy gone. After this stunt, an AQI member jumped out of a hole on the top of the tanker portion of the truck, jumped over the side, yelled something, and then blew himself up as well. Two enemy down. As #2 blew himself up, he blew the side of the tanker open, exposing seven of his best AQI buddies to the SoI and Iraqi Police. The seven remaining AQI members started firing at the SoI and IP, but the good guys took out all seven without any casualties of their own. A US convoy was rolling past and was prepared to assist, but they didn’t have to. The SoI and IP performed very well with no US intervention at all. I hope you can see the weird humor in the hapless AQI actions at this checkpoint, but if you can’t, sorry.
The good news is the way that the SoI and IP performed. They didn’t call for US help, and it is a huge deal that the SoI member turned down the bribe. The insurgents often get around through bribery and threats, and this SoI member put his life on the line and became a real hero. No doubt these AQI members intended to kill a lot of people.
Over to our east in Kirkuk, the situation has stabilized to the point that one of our brigades is hosting a series of 5 soccer tournaments against local Iraqi teams. Soccer is fine, but when you hear that they are hosting football tournaments, then you will know that we have really crossed the Rubicon.
Our CG, who does not take 10 days off for every 10 days worked, pointed out to the Division that things are going well enough right now that it makes him nervous. He obviously doesn’t want complacency during the summer months when activity usually gets a little heavier. With the Iraqi election registration about to begin, I imagine that all of the insurgent groups will try to step it up a little bit in the coming weeks. We will just have to see how it goes.
The second attached picture is obviously me after a patrol, and the colorful picture is of the Tigris River running past FOB Dagger. It actually looks pretty nice down there.
No comments:
Post a Comment