Doug Grindle

In Afghanistan, Much Money Spent with Few Effects

2010-04-29T07:19:00.000+03:00

Shah Wali Khot district, southern Afghanistan - In this district named Shah Wali Khot lying a few miles north of Kandahar, 11 of 13 schools sit idle. In Spin Boldak district a few miles east of Kandahar city there are few schools at all.
These places are rural and underdeveloped. High walls surround mud huts, fronted by rickety doors. Fields outside villages bear a fringe of green on thick soil, as the winter's cold takes hold and people sit aimlessly, doing small chores around the village, and waiting for the next growing season to begin.
Poorly dressed, often dirty, dignified with the mark of hard labor upon their faces and clothes, these people enjoy few of the things we associate with civilization. Health care is sporadic. Electricity generally nonexistent. The government that could help these people is not in the villages, it has never been in the villages, and at this rate never will be in the villages.
Governing here is difficult, because the country has so little. Iraq is an order of magnitude better, with satellite dishes, cell phones, cars, highways, health clinics, and the infrastructure of modern life. None of that is here, except in the cities.
The irony here is that the "coalition" in Afghanistan has plenty of money to spend. America is pouring its treasure into the country in vast quantities, even though other countries are having a difficult time following suit.
The US is spending $15 million to Spin Boldak district just to improve agriculture and life in the rural villages. It is building and shipping armored vehicles named MATVs to patrol the rugged Afghan terrain. Each costs over a million dollars. Containers of food, supplies and ammunition arrive daily by the... container load.
In this context the $40,000 to set up a clinic a school is trifling. The pay for a teacher should be slightly north of $1000 a year. That's equal to about 40 trips to the dining facility for the typical US soldier, or in other words, the meals for one GI for two weeks. It is equivalent to a whole year's salary for a teacher.
So a little money goes a long way in Afghanistan.
But the money generally isn't making it into the villages, sadly.
Villagers say much of the assistance they would like to get is siphoned off by officials working at the provincial and district level. They complain that the village elders become wealthy and move to the cities, where they live off their accumulated landholdings and take whatever handouts meant for their village for themselves.
The corruption we hear about in the media is a real concern in the villages. They get angry about it. It is not an "Afghan disease" tolerated by villagers. They downright hate it.
The coalition is just this year trying to get a handle on it, as the embassy threatens the Karzai government with unknown, unspecified sanctions if it does not clean up its act. It is a hollow threat, because everyone knows the US has nowhere else to go besides Karzai, the newly elected legal president.
Perhaps even worse for the US effort is the policy that is the flip side of the anti-corruption drive that never goes anywhere. It is the determination US and coalition civilians to put the "face of the Afghan government" on everything. That means the US cannot do a project; it must try to "tie in" the Afghan government and let Afghan officials do the work themselves.
Which makes perfect sense behind the 15 foot walls of the embassy compound in Kabul. But it makes no sense in a district like Spin Boldak that has minimal government presence in the villages, or none at all in Shah Wali Khot. The restriction just means the US cannot spend the money with abandon where it's needed most. It is possible to persuade the people that the government and coalition cares about it, but not if the aid projects never arrive at the village. So the US spends plenty of money, but it flows into the dining halls of the bases, not into the villages of ordinary Afghans.
This all adds up to progress that is very, very slow. The lack of infrastructure, the petty corruption, and the rules that hamstring the US from spending its plentiful supplies of money all conspire to tie the US in knots.
Add to that the slow pace of expanding the Afghan forces, and the lack of training being set aside for them. It makes for a real mess, whereby the administration's summer 2011 deadline to assess progress and decide whether or not to get the troops out becomes absolutely laughable.
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In The War Zone, A Toolbox Is Best

2009-04-03T17:03:00.001+03:00

For technicians clearing landmines left over from previous wars, there
is a thing called a 'toolbox' approach to getting rid of the old
buried weapons.
At one time deminers used a pointy probe and a metal detector.
Then they tried dogs. Then flails, which rotate chains and bash the
ground and cause landmines to explode on contact. There are all sorts
of things to lift landmines (of which there are probably 35 or so
million left in the world).
But nothing works better than the toolbox.
The toolbox is simple - it just means using all of the methods
above and more. Use whatever you can get hold of, and don't be picky
about what technique it is, because combinations of techniques work
better than a single-serving approach.
As with landmines, so too with Iraq. The military started by just
killing insurgents. Lots of them. Then it progressed to also
offering reconstruction projects at the village level. Later added in
a lot of unmanned aerial drones. Ended up by paying the Sunni and
Shias insurgents to fight with the soldiers and not against them.
Also added in political reform and a few other measures. And finally,
paid for new security centers in villages manned by local militias,
and more police stations.
It has worked a treat so far in Iraq (where only a handful of
areas remain to be pacified). But not because one thing worked; in
the end it worked because everything in concert worked together.
So now to Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the Americans, until now
Afghanistan has been the opposite of a toolbox.
The country was fragmented; the Americans had one sector, the
Europeans and Canadians another. There was little coordination.
Their approaches differed. The British lacked money to pay for
village-level projects. The Europeans lacked the political willpower
to hunt down insurgents. The political reforms was slow in coming
(and though they are coming, thus far less than a dozen reform-minded
governors have been appointed).
The Afghan police were neglected, undermanned and underpaid until
2006, and even now are pretty bad. And until 2008 or even 2009, even
in US-controlled areas, many districts in insurgent-infested provinces
received scanty military attention because there has not been enough
manpower.
But now it looks at last like that could all change. Maybe.
General David Petraeus took over as the Central Command commander
last fall, and immediately let it be known that he wanted the Afghan
tribes to be armed, and militias formed to fight al Qaeda. This
mimics the Sunni militias that were armed in Iraq.
And the US forces now come under a unified command, which is
supposed to clear up the US/European disconnect, though so far that
seems to have had limited effect.
And thousand more soldiers are heading to Afghanistan.
So the beginnings of a toolbox mentality under Petraeus are now
faintly visible.
The problem with the old approach is it's too simple. Soldiers
build some wells in a valley and hope the locals will push out al
Qaeda and the Taliban in grateful return, which was the past US
strategy. Often the villagers would agree, but then it wouldn't
happen. How does an Afghan farmer face down a dozen armed insurgents
who visits his house? He doesn't.
Now instead there would be a militia, more US troops nearby, and
the next valley over would likely have more US troops too, so it
wouldn't be an insurgent stronghold infecting the neighboring valleys.
Many analysts say the likely increase of US forces from 30,000 to
60,000 would be window dressing. That the Soviets deployed 120,000
people and they lost. 30,000 extra people would make no difference,
goes the complaint.
These analysts are wrong. An extra 120 people, or even 30 people,
in a valley can make all the difference. 30,000 people is a lot of
valleys and villages. And the Soviet operations were inefficient and
often poorly led.
The main US bases such as Bagram and Salerno and Jalalabad have
thus far sucked up thousands of US forces. Luckily there is hardly
any room for more people on Bagram, which holds over 15,000 military
and civilians. The new troops will have to go into the field.
It's all part of a toolbox approach, without which American forces
in Afghanistan are going to continue to experience the long, generally
lonely and often unimaginative struggle that has previously been their
lot to suffer.

US troops Are Iraq's Insurance Policy

2009-03-01T10:18:00.001+03:00

Al Asad, Anbar Province, western Iraq - Like a rash that refuses to
fade, violence persists in Iraq. Mosul in the north, Baghdad and
areas north of Baghdad see daily attacks, though most attacks are
aimed at the Iraqi security forces.
The toll of American combat deaths, which was once a flood reaching
125 a month, is now a drip of less than half a dozen a month. Officers
say driving accidents are more likely to kill troops than the enemy.
In northern Iraq and here in western Iraq, where it is quietest,
hundreds if not thousands of US troops wonder why they are here and
complain they have too little to do. The biggest complaint here at Al
Asad, a large Marine base near Syria, is that the Marines spend too
much time in the gym because their patrols have been cut down. It is
no big secret that the Marine top brass has been trying to exit Anbar
entirely and shift their forces to Afghanistan for over a year.
Still fighting in Iraq are remnants of Al Qaeda, remnants of the Shia
militias, remnants of Sunni Islamists and Sunni nationalists. Add in
localized tribal fights. Add in local retribution against the Iraqi
government or the US military for the occasional missteps, such as
accidental shootings of Iraqi civilians. Add in the organized
criminal elements, many of whom were spawned by the legitimate
political insurgents. The violence in Iraq has fragmented, which is
both good and bad.
It's bad because no one group laying down its arms will quell a whole
mass of fighting. The Sunnis gave up in November 2006 and the effects
were enormously far-reaching. But that won't likely happen again on
such a massive scale.
Then again it's also good, because as anyone who has watched tag-team
wrestling on television will know, opponents operating piecemeal are
much easier to cut up than those who fight as a unified team.
So the question remains, just why does America still have 130,000
plus troops in Iraq if many of them are wondering what they are going
to do today, tomorrow and the next day to justify their (generally tax
free) pay checks?
They are here because America is Iraq's insurance policy.
If the Shia militias reorganize, as analysts in Baghdad say they are
(unsuccessfully) trying to. If Al Qaeda manages to kick off sectarian
violence again (as it is likely trying to do, with the recent killing
of dozens of Shia pilgrims heading to Karbala). If Sunni nationalists
feel the Maliki government has stuck it to them, and want to stick it
back (as is the fear, with the government's avowed aim of dismantling
the widespread pro-government Sunni counter-terrorism groups, named
the Sons of Iraq).
If any of these things should happen, US forces are ready to step in
and do what the Iraqi security forces may or may not be able to do for
themselves.
General Petraeus reportedly has sent a plan calling for a 23-month
withdrawal from Iraq to the White House. That's longer than Barack
Obama's repeated 16-month preference. Most likely the withdrawal will
never be down to zero at all, despite tough talk by the Maliki
government and the White House, and few people in Iraq I've spoke to
expect the US military presence will ever reach zero.
Officers of the Iraqi security forces say they still need US support,
moral as much as material, as they slowly improve. Above all, America
provides the moral fiber that gives the ISF the psychological edge
over their well-armed, determined, though now battered, opponents.
These are the forces at play in Iraq.
How soon America can draw down its troops without upsetting the
delicate balance of these forces is the game that will be played out
for the rest of 2009 in Iraq and Washington.

The Afghan Mountain War

2008-11-09T09:27:00.001+03:00

Pech Valley, northeast Afghanistan - Afghanistan is a mountainous
country, with hills of the south giving way to mountains of the Hindu
Kush in the northeast. Here in this northeastern province named Kunar
it is incredibly rough and rugged. Only 13 percent of the
countryside is arable, says its governor. The rest of the province is
steep mountainside - good for woodcutting and lousy for pretty much
every other kind of living. (And even the wood is dwindling at an
alarming rate)
If this country is mountainous, then the war in this country will be
won in the mountains. But how do you win a war in the mountains? Why
in the valleys of course.
Some valleys the war is being won, in others it's not.
Example number one is a valley where the war is not being won.
In Kapisa province northeast of Kabul there is a valley named
Afghanya, after one of the villages near its mouth. It is a wild
place, where the security forces now fear to tread.
But this past spring, a small force of 50 or so national guardsmen
from Pennsylvania did tread that valley, which is 12 or so miles long
and has a couple of side valleys. These guardsmen walked it because,
they say, walking valleys is the best way to pacify them. You get to
know the locals, they get to know you, and it is coincidentally safer
than driving Humvees, which are vulnerable to roadside bombs.
In Afghanya the guardsmen walked, and the insurgents fought back.
About 100 insurgents live in the valley, and they had reinforcements.
Many of the firefights started when the guardsmen walked or drove up
the valley, and were ambushed on the way back.
Over the course of 4 months and about 40 firefights about a third of
the guardsmen were wounded, several seriously. No one was killed.
The insurgents suffered several hundred killed, from a combination of
air power and ground fire.
By the end, the guardsmen pushed the insurgents farther back into the
valley, and started talking to the villagers about bringing in
projects, such as wells and roads.
Then the guardsmen switched out and were replaced by roughly 350
French soldiers. The French soldiers are nice, personable people, but
they stopped going into the Afghanya valley. They don't like to walk,
and they seemed afraid of getting their thinly armored vehicles blown
up by roadside bombs.
With that number of soldiers the French should have put in
observation posts, pushing a permanent presence into the valley, say
the guardsmen, but they didn't. Instead they now concentrate on
patrolling the main road that runs through the province, rather than
venturing into the valleys like Afghanya that branch off that main
road.
Now the coalition is not welcome in Afghanya valley. The insurgents
have regrouped and no security forces ever go more than 2 kilometers
inside.
The guardsmen say it's a crying shame, but there isn't much they can
do about it. They were reassigned to protect a group of soldiers that
coordinate projects such as wells and schools in the same area. They
say security there is currently hopeless.
That is one failure.
The Korengal valley, a few miles from this base here in the Pech
valley, Kunar Province, is currently another failure.
It is nightmare. The locals dislike any foreigners, though they
tolerate the Taliban. The tiny US bases in the Korengal are under
constant attack. The US goal of pushing a road into the Korengal has
been on hold for 90 days, say the soldiers.
The road would connect the Korengal to another valley farther south,
bringing trade and prosperity, but it is stalled. The official plan
calls for the road project to be finished in 18 months, but the
reality will be more like 7 years, says the local US commander. He
says the Korengal isn't important enough to get too fussed over, and
is not the key to the region.
The Korengal then is failure number two.
In contrast, the Pech valley is the main valley from which the
Korengal runs. The Pech valley is doing well. It received a paved
road about 2 years ago, running its entire length. It runs on the
north side of the river that flows down the valley. A second road is
now being built on the south side of the river. Five US and Afghan
bases run along its length. These days the insurgents sit on the
slopes of the surrounding hillsides and lob down mortars and rockets
onto the bases. But they rarely hit anything worthwhile, though the
noise is impressive.
Despite the insurgent activity, the Pech and the town at its mouth,
Asadabad, is seeing a vigorous infusion of trade because of the road.
The villages at the valley are quiet, and more wells, roads, and water
projects are going in. Progress is being made.
The Pech then is a limited but growing success, and it has only been
about 2 years since development first arrived.
War in the valleys is tough. It requires manpower, both Afghan and
American, to build bases, establish security and then it requires
money to bring development, roads, wells and schools to villages.
(The next step is stamping out the corruption that the first wave of
government presence inevitably brings with it.)
It is all time consuming and costly. In Kunar, province-wide the US
spends $80 million on civil projects in a heavy year, and $50 million
on an average year.
Where bases, security, and development all coincide, the locals do
respond. Where they do not, the war grinds on.
In a mountainous country, the war is won or lost in the valleys.
America needs to hope that there are more winning valleys like the
Pech and fewer losing ones like Afghanya or the Korengal.
Success takes time, money and troops. For 6 years, from 2001-2006,
the right elements were too scarce here. That may now be changing.
More troops will be needed, and plenty of cash too, to make it all
work.

Afghanistan Is Improving Slowly

2008-10-17T18:25:00.001+03:00

Pech Valley, northeast Afghanistan - As much as the news from
Afghanistan tends to be bad these days, some bright spots are already
faintly discernible on the horizon.
As I have mentioned, things in Afghanistan are no piece of cake.
Attacks are up about 30 percent this year. For the first time the
generals have said the situation in Pakistan will need to be solved
before the war in Afghanistan can be won.
And the war is getting deadlier. More than 130 US soldiers dead so
far this year. Roadside bombs, used to such deadly effect in Iraq,
are now well and truly part of the Afghan scene. The Afghan defense
minister said the other day bomb makers, sophisticated enough to know
how to blow apart coalition vehicles, are forsaking Iraq as a lost
cause and flocking here instead.
And the drug trade continues, often under the protection and
sponsorship of the Taliban. Corruption is rife in the government and
security forces.
Whew! How bad can it get over here? It's pretty bad.
And yet.. and yet.
Some of those hopeful signs are starting to emerge, and they are
going to get bigger as the time goes on.
- Development is the keynote of the strategy to win here. Here in
the Pech Valley, I am typing this on a small base by a river on the
valley floor. The Pech used to be terrible from one end to the other.
About 2 years ago the government (paid for by the US) ran a paved
road along the bottom. Now the Pech Valley is pretty quiet on the
bottom, and the insurgents spent most of their time in the hills above
the valley, dropping in mortars and rockets on bases like this one.
The moral: development works. Too bad it will take another year
before roads go into the side valleys, where the same peace-making can
be expected to take place. Some places will never be peaceful (the
Korengal, a side valley of the Pech, is one example). But overall,
development works.
- In the northeast the US military is now moving to arm the local
tribes to fight the insurgents. This is the same strategy that
General David Petraeus (now commander of US Central Command) used in
Iraq to win the support of the Sunnis. Which won the war there.
Essentially, you pay the tribes to act as militiamen. For a wage they
fight the insurgents. It is the earliest of days yet to see if this
will work here (about 2 weeks in). But we know unemployment causes
instability. 10 percent of the population is poor enough to want to
fight for their supper. This strategy ought to work here as it worked
in Iraq.
- Corruption is plenty lousy. But the government is finally
beginning to fire people who have their hand in the till. Five
provincial governors are "reformist" governors whose backgrounds are
working for NGOs. They are the antithesis of warlords, who are
universally corrupt. A body called the Independent Directorate of
Local Governance has been set up to appoint provincial government
officials, who are generally not corrupt. Still, all too often
corrupt officials are let off. Or they are "fired" and promoted. But
there are Afghans out there who will resist bribery at its worst. The
earliest steps have been taken.
- The economy is getting better, slowly. People are still
desperately poor. Prices are rising. But the number of cars in Kabul
has risen approximately four-fold since 2001. There is money in the
markets of provincial capitals. As roads are built trade invariably
increases. The process is just beginning
- Afghanistan can expect a mini-surge of US troops. Some analysts,
such as the British ambassador to Afghanistan, believe foreign troops
are the problem not the solution. Not so. A surge of troops into the
northeast, which can insulate Pakistan's restive tribal area across
the border, will bring much of the stability needed to build more
roads! This is a good thing, even though many other provinces will
not be covered by the surge. And even though the money for roads too
limited, even here near the border with Pakistan.
- The Afghan National Army (ANA) is supposed to double to about
125,000 men within 5 years. At last. The ANA is good, and this
should have happened years ago.
- The Pakistanis are arming their own tribal militias across the
border. It could well be possible to foster a split within the
Taliban, which is becoming a criminal conspiracy at heart, if the
right pressure is exerted long enough.
So in all, the news from Afghanistan is grim. It is terrible. But
for the first time in months, it looks like the news from Afghanistan
could be much improved by the middle of next year.

The Intelligence War in Afghanistan

2008-09-18T11:07:00.001+03:00

The war in Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency is above all an intelligence war - a matter of pinpointing the right targets at the right place at the right time so they can be captured or killed.
Intelligence matters because without it, the coalition effort is reduced to what the man in the humvee can learn about what's going on around him as he drives around. Often this seat of the pants, "feeling-out" intelligence, or lack thereof, results in a humvee hitting a roadside bomb, and people are often injured or killed. Good intelligence allows security forces to create a new way of doing things.
Then it is too bad that seven years into the war, much of the intelligence effort in Afghanistan is rudimentary and fragmented and bound by serious shortcomings.
There are in essence three types of intelligence used to stop attacks.
The most basic kind, called 'pattern analysis', charts past hostile acts and predicts when and where future hostile acts will take place. For instance, insurgents plant roadside bombs on this bend in the road during the full moon. So the next time the full moon hits, be wary of this corner or, even better, set an ambush and take out the bomber-setters when they arrive to emplace the bomb.
This is run of the mill, common intelligence; easy to collect and easy to graph, because bombs that hit friendly forces are easy to record.
The second kind of intelligence allows Americans and Afghans to kill High Value Targets (HVTs) - the people who plan and direct the minions who set the roadside bombs.
In order to be effective, intelligence needs to predict this HVT will be at a certain place at a certain time. This allows soldiers or special operations people to swoop in and capture or kill him.
In Iraq the problem was never knowing who was the HVT. It was predicting when and where he is expected to be somewhere to catch him. HVTs tend to move every night to avoid this trap. Many snatch raids came up empty because the HVT was not where he was expected to be.
This is called 'actionable intelligence' - the ability to predict he will be at his house at 11pm tonight. Plain old intelligence saying a man is an HVT is a useful start, but it is not 'actionable'.
So obviously, intelligence is not just information, it is secret information. If the HVT knows the Americans know he plans to be somewhere, he will change his plans. The information is useless if it is not secret.
In this scheme of things, the intelligence effort in Afghanistan is a mess.
On the simple matter of 'pattern analysis', of predicting where a roadside bomb will be set, the Afghan forces are just beginning to set up a system for tracking past acts, in oder to predict future acts. The Americans already do. This is intelligence of the most basic kind. But because so few Afghans can even write, it is a major task for the Afghan security forces to get rolling, and is only just beginning.
On the more difficult matter of generating actionable intelligence, the nature of Afghanistan itself presents insurmountable hurdles. HVTs may be expected to stay overnight in the house of a village elder, but how do you identify the house if there are no maps of the village, no street names nor house numbers? How do you get in quickly enough if the insurgents can see the dust plume from your humvees ten miles off and run away? And how do you fly in more quickly if there are too few helicopters to run snatch operations at a consistently high level?
It would require an agent on the ground to walk up to the house with a GPS, get the grid coordinates, and then send in a helicopter team to snatch the target - that is, if you first knew he was expected that night.
Sadly, none of those elements are in place on a large scale in Afghanistan. So the HVTs can plot terror acts in comparative peace.
The Afghan National Army does have good contacts in the village, because many of its soldiers grew up in them. Identifying HVTs and the terror teams they "command" is no problem. Knowing who they are, though, is not enough. Knowing where they are, where they will be at what time in the future, and then doing something about it is currently an insurmountable problem in many parts of the country. So, in provinces you have cells of 20-90 men, under known leaders in specific districts, but there is little anyone can do about it.
Then there is a third level of intelligence - real intelligence. That is infiltrating a working terror network with an agent in place, who can send back reports on operations, intentions and capabilities.
That is what the US and the Soviet Union tried to develop against each other with varying degrees of success throughout the cold war. It is the ultimate aim and gold standard of intelligence.
And it appears American and the Afghan forces aren't even on the road to that destination, yet alone actually there.

Afghanistan Getting Worse

2008-08-25T10:22:00.001+03:00

Kabul, Afghanistan - The war in Afghanistan forges ahead. But a new reality is setting in. Unfortunately, it looks like things are likely to get worse before the situation can get better.
How much worse? Attacks by insurgents are up by 40-percent over a year earlier in many areas.
NATO commanders are calling for more NATO troops. Forces are stretched thin in the farthest reaches of the Pakistan border areas.
Better equipment is needed. More mine-resistant vehicles are being deployed (though that's not a miracle cure, as the high center of gravity on the vehicles on mountain roads can lead to roll-over problems).
More Afghan troops are needed. The Afghan National Army, with its 70,000 man force, is fighting the Taliban and a half-dozen or so other insurgent groups, including al Qaeda. This year the US has finally agreed to pony up billions more dollars to expand the army by another 50,000 men. By contrast, the police force for New York City is 48,000 officers.
But the biggest and most important change of all is one you won't see mentioned too often: suddenly Pakistan matters.
Up until now, the official line went roughly that the border was unsealable, and the war needed to be won inside Afghanistan instead. The strategy was to win the war by enticing Afghan villagers to reject insurgents after they crossed the porous border and arrived in the villages.
The army's plan is to offer better security, better local Aghan government and a heap of local aid projects (schools, roads and power plants) to persuade the villagers to side with the Kabul government. The war would be won despite the border areas over in Pakistan continuing to host terrorist sanctuaries.
Now Army officers say that strategy is probably not going to be enough.
"I don't think there will be a successful conclusion to the war in Afghanistan until there is a successful conclusion to the issues along the Pakistan frontier," said Brigadier General Mark Milley, the deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division at Bagram, the unit in charge of many of the border areas.
That assessment bodes especially ill because Pakistan is, frankly, a mess.
Now that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has resigned, a weak government rules Pakistan.
The Pakistan military consistently loses its battles with terrorist in the tribal areas.
Al Qaeda and other militants are becoming more entrenched in the border regions.
The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, helped blow up the Indian embassy in Kabul last month, according to US intelligence. Hardline ISI officers continue to help the terrorists, as long as they focus on destabilizing Afghanistan.
In short, the situation on the Pakistan side of the frontier is bad and likely to get worse.
Change in Afghanistan is slow, but its remorseless.
The US Army's strategy is an awfully slow one, because it takes literally years to build the roads, schools and hydro-electric plants that are the key to the plan.
Opposing the US, Al Qaeda is slowly putting more effort into Afghanistan, even as it scales back in Iraq. Terrorists are slowly but steadily getting better at killing western soldiers, by using roadside bombs and improving their ambush techniques. Casualties among western soldiers are set to be the highest ever this year.
Something needs to be done. Something is being done. But that something is likely to be dependent more than ever on what happens in Pakistan - where the American military is banned from operating.
So the latest news from Afghanistan is not good.

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Buying Security in Iraq

2008-05-18T17:11:00.000+03:00

(Kirkuk Iraq) - America is taking the next logical step in Iraq to cut violence.
Too bad it's about 4 years late.
Until the latest spike in violence, insurgent activity had dropped off dramatically, to about 40 American deaths a month. Partly because renegade religious leader Muqtada al Sadr declared a ceasefire. But mostly because the Sunnis for the most part threw in the towel. Al Qaeda's barbarous acts against the very Sunnis who most supported them drove those same Sunnis to turn against the insurgent group and throw them out.
Now many of the Sunnis are manning checkpoints, riding around in cars and generally keeping the peace in their own neighborhoods across the Sunni areas.
Now American patrols routinely stop at these checkpoints, talk and joke with the Sunni "fighters," hand out some water, and find out what the insurgents are up to in the area.
It's a remarkably effective way to quell violence. If someone lays a roadside bomb, it's these neighborhood security groups that have the local knowledge to find the perpetrator.
For this the Americans pay the Sunni fighters the princely sum of somewhere between $125 a month to $250 a month per fighter, depending on the area. In this part of northern Iraq there are 12,000 of these fighters. Upward of 70,000 across the country.
It is probably the best bargain America ever made. One of the reasons the al Qaeda message was initially so attractive is because al Qaeda paid good money. For an unemployed Iraqi man, especially one with a family, getting $100 in return for firing a gun at America forces or helping to lay a roadside bomb is a meal ticket good for a month.
Many American officers knew as far back as 2004 that the economic incentive was a major factor in quelling the insurgency. That's not surprising. Counter-insurgencies are waged at the level of the village, neighborhood and household. That meant sergeants, lieutenants and captains knew what was going on better than the generals.
But that knowledge didn't flow upwards. To take away the economic attractions of al Qaeda meant the Americans needed to spend money on a massive scale and spread it around in small chunks. Like a 1930s-era Works Projects Administration.
That essentially is what these US-funded Sunni security groups do - they pay American dollars to military-minded Iraqis to stay away from al Qaeda. We out-bid al Qaeda for their services and we won. Violence is down. It works.
Finally and at last the military is taking that idea and extending it. A new program called the Civilian Service Corps (CSC) is being created. It aims to get thousands of people into job training and into viable construction companies, and give them a guaranteed paycheck for about a year, courtesy of the America taxpayer. It will bring economic stimulus to large areas of Iraq.
The idea, essentially, is to let the Iraqis eat their way out of the insurgency. As ideas go it's a winner.
But the problem with ideas like this is they are not "sexy." Economic training and jobs programs are... yawn... boring. Sadly, they are also much more effective than kicking in doors and shooting people.
This massive jobs program didn't happen in 2004 because the American military leaders didn't have the ability to take the information from below and develop something like the CSC. And because the rules governing the military's use of funds for civil projects actually prohibited spending money for programs like the CSC.
It will be interesting over the next year to see if the CSC works. If it doesn't work it won't be because it's not a good idea - it's probably the best one of the past year. It will be because the idea is so gosh-darn unbearably boring that no one will take it seriously.

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Fighting The Shia Militias

2008-04-14T02:57:00.001+03:00

       Years of sweeping one of Iraq's biggest problems under the rug has finally come home to roost.
    Since Sunday, reports indicate 19 Americans have died in Iraq. That's the worst week in Iraq this year. It is up significantly from the average of casualties over the past few months, which have been running at just under 40 per month.
    Conventional wisdom holds that violence in Iraq is bad. But in this case, perhaps that's not as true as usual.
    Much of the fighting is centered on delivering a major blow to the Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army, run by renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This is no rag-tag militia of no account.
    Estimates have held steady for years that the militia has between 70,000 and 80,000 members. Al Sadr is supported by Iran politically and almost certainly financially. And Iran almost certainly gives the Mahdi Army and other militias the worst type of roadside bombs, called "explosively formed projectiles", or EFPs, which are highly effective in killing Americans.
    The Mahdi Army is bad. It is out of control. Last year, for several months in mid-year, half of the American casualties in Baghdad were caused by Shiite militias; of them, the Mahdi Army is the biggest and most dangerous one.
    In this context, a reckoning is long overdue. Reports indicate that reckoning was originally scheduled for June by American and Iraqi forces, but was precipitously brought forward by the Maliki government more than two weeks ago, when Iraqi soldiers launched an assault on Shiite militias in Basra.
    That rush was not without cost. Any assault in Basra was almost bound to fail without meticulous and extensive preparation, given that the British moved out of the center of Basra last year and retreated to the city's airport, allowing Shiite militias and organized criminals to assume creeping control of the place.
    In Iraq there have only ever been two main opponents. The biggest, most urgent security threat came from the Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies. That threat has fallen away as tens of thousands of Sunnis switched to the side of the government, which has put their erstwhile al Qaeda allies in a real bind, as they have been pushed farther from Baghdad into Diyala Province and Mosul in the north.
    The other main opposition was always going to be the Shiite militias, of which al Sadr is by far the most notorious and violence-prone leader. America and its Iraqi allies either would not or could not address this problem - until now - the thinking being that it was too difficult to fight both Shias and Sunnis at the same time, and the Sunnis took precedence.
    Instead the Shia problem was put on hold. Policy makers seemed to assume either the Shiite militias would fade away, as the legitimate Shia government co-opted them into the political process, or would eventually require a military solution when spare troops became available.
    It appears that with the Sunni insurgency on the wane, the Maliki government feels those extra forces are now available.
    As the casualty figures flow in, one hopes the cost of the recent fighting will not be too high. But one hopes even more fervently that this spasm of violence will bring about the true denouement of the al Sadr problem, and that his ultimate reckoning will not just fizzle out. The problem cannot be allowed to fester, to reappear again another day. If it is not solved now, when will it be?

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Afghanistan Strategy Shifts Again

2008-03-17T21:06:00.000+03:00

As the war in Afghanistan grinds on, the US Army continues to try to figure out how best to win it.
It's been seven and a half years since the Americans went in and the Taliban was thrown out.
Since then, America has changed its strategy several times to deal with the ongoing insurgency.
Officers say in the early years, the army simply tried to win by fighting - essentially, win by killing enough Taliban and other insurgents that the problem would go away. They report that strategy was unsuccessful.
The strategy for 2007 centered on economic development. Essentially, build enough roads, schools and water points and the villagers most at risk will love the Americans and the central government enough to turn against "strangers" (insurgents) when they appear in the far-flung villages and throw them out or inform on them. That takes time to work, since roads can take 2, 3 or even 4 years to build in this mountainous country.
For 2008 the buzz-phrase is "political development".
Almost all villagers, the thinking goes, reject the Taliban and their authoritarian, regressive, oppressive and extremist rule. By something like a 94% to 6% margin, according to polls.
In practice, "political development" means that the magic ingredient will now be the government itself.
The thinking goes, inject the elected (or appointed) officials who represent President Hamid Karzai in Kabul into far-flung districts, and show the rural villagers the government "cares" about their plight and is interested in their participation in government (and in their economic development).
This will cause the villagers to side with the government and, again, kick out strangers and insurgents who come wandering through villages brandishing arms and demanding food and supplies.
Time will tell if this calculation is in fact correct.
This year the corollary buzzword to political development is "corruption," which is universally recognized as being very bad and getting, if anything, worse. American officers in eastern Afghanistan say corruption is their number one headache, ahead of the war-fight itself, because "political development" is dramatically weakened when villagers are forced to pay for building permits, vehicle passage, and anything to do with the government. Villagers resent the unlawful demands for payment, and their desire to back the Kabul government is undermined.
One reason corruption has become imbued in the fabric of society is not because Karzai is corrupt (though his cronies are considered almost uniformly to be). It is that he is too fearful to rein it in, and fears a backlash from powerful armed men with something to lose, which could lead to his early assassination.
Another reason corruption is rife is because the police agencies were allowed for 6 years, until fall of 2007, to be paid less than half a living wage for a family of five - about $60 or $80 per month instead of the $160 or so it actually takes to live. For many of the Afghan police forces, corruption was necessary to survive and is now ingrained.
So it is with hope, optimism and a feeling of deja vu that we head into the 2008 fighting season.
Of course, this strategy ignores the massive sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal areas that serve as recruiting and training grounds for an enemy that will literally be out of a job if he lays down his arms. Those areas are untouchable.
All in all, this year should be an interesting one.

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When Does The Level of Violence Become Acceptable?

2008-02-28T15:55:00.001+03:00

The night convoy supply run in Iraq isn't what it used to be.
Tonight we are doing the run between Camp Anaconda (40 miles north of Baghdad) and Camp Scania (about 125 miles south of Baghdad).
The risks of doing this run are:
IEDs (improvised explosive devices - aka roadside bombs); EFPs (explosively formed penetrators - charges that blast molten metal through armor effortlessly); and small arms fire.
The drivers, huddled behind thick armored glass, peer into the night. All three crewmen in each humvee - the driver commander and gunner - focus intently on the 25 yards of road lit up by the glare of the headights, looking for bombs.
It is a testing time, for both the powers of concentration as well as basic human courage.
These people (men and women, for I am with B-Co, 297th combat support battalion, which includes women, including the woman driver in our truck, Pfc Jimenez, known as "Jimmy") do this almost every night. They will continue to do this in coming months before rotating home to Alaska in the Spring.
Almost every night something happens on this road, called Tampa, which is the main supply route leading north from Kuwait, and along which flow masses of supplies - tires and bullets, ice cream and eggs - that an army uses to fight. A couple of weeks ago one of the trucks of this squad was blown up (no one was killed) doing a similar run. These soldiers drive all over Iraq, escorting supply trucks.
But despite the present danger, this run isn't what it used to be.
Its been two years since I first covered (another unit) driving this stretch of road. Simply put, this run sees a lot less action than before. There used to be more bombs, more small arms fire, more of everything, up until as recently as last June. These days the army's techniques are better, the insurgents are fewer in number. Attacks are down.
In recent months the army is running about one casualty a day. That's just under 40 a month, down from casualty counts of over 100 a month in mid-2007.
At some point Americans and Iraqis are going to have to contemplate the next step in the war (unless things reverse and get dramatically worse) - when does America call victory and go home? How many casualties per month does it take before a war becomes something less than a war? One American a week? Two a month? 70 Iraqis a week, both civilian and security forces?
For now this question doesn't affect daily life here. These soldiers driving the main supply route in the dead of night will keep on, until they head home in a few months.
For the soldiers, if you are part of a squad that takes a hit, even one casualty per year is almost certainly way too many.

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The Mystery of The Sunni Switch

2007-11-13T12:50:00.001+03:00

Al Asad airbase, western Iraq - As you know, Anbar Province in western Iraq is now pretty quiet. It used to be about the worst of the worst, and the bastion of the Sunni insurgency. Now there is about one tenth as much violence as before. It is pretty close to the "acceptable level of violence" that is the goal here.
It has happened because the Sunnis have allied themselves with the Iraqi government and US military, and booted out al Qaeda.
But how did it happen? How did the Sunnis decide to fight against al Qaeda and throw in their lot with their sworn enemies?
This question is important. Very important. It is the final score card on how to fight these kinds of wars, how the US did here, and what to do next.
There are two very different answers as to what happened and why. One is right, one is wrong. I don't know which is which, but here are the versions and the evidence.
Scenario 1 - The Marines (who run Anbar) did such a great job the enemy just gave up. The combination of ferocious attacks coupled with civil affairs projects (building schools, wells, roads etc) convinced the local Sunni sheikhs, who make the decisions, that the game wasn't worth the candle. Why endure the hurt when the US Marines and subordinate units instead will offer economic benefits and then go home? So they joined the US and Iraqi government and went against al Qaeda. This scenario portrays the Marines as increasingly in control.
Scenario 2 - The locals got sick of al Qaeda and unilaterally decided to get rid of them. They fought al Qaeda and then allied themselves with the Iraqi government and the US military, which were seen as the lesser evil. The sheikhs realized the US would eventually leave. In this version, al Qaeda essentially controlled the province for years, but their tyranny became too onerous. Cutting hands off for stealing, summary executions for trivial offenses, killing popular local sheikhs for petty transgressions, forcing marriages between the daughters of local sheikhs and al Qaeda cadres. It was unbearable and so the Sunnis rose up.
The evidence is this:
- The Marines spent some money but not a huge amount on local aid projects. I don't think I saw one in 2 years of being in Anbar. There were a good number, but there just seemed to be less than in other areas.
- The local Sunni sheikhs told US Army soldiers that last November (2006) they got sick of al Qaeda and started to fight them. The extremists were too out of step with mainstream Iraqi culture, which is actually quite permissive. The Sunnis fought al Qaeda from November until January, when the US military noticed what was going on. By March the US military was cooperating with the Sunni "rebels", even on operations. By June it was over and the Sunni sheikhs won, al Qaeda lost.
- The conventional wisdom was that Anbar was a province that could be held but never converted. It would just eventually go along with developments in other parts of Iraq. The "win" would be gradual. But in fact, within six months the change was 180 degrees, and the war was mostly won here. The flip was relatively quick - and not a gradually increasing ascendancy over the area predicted by the US military's own estimates.
So that's the evidence. And those are the theories.
This all matters because the Marines now want to "take over" the war in Afghanistan, using their "highly effective" methods developed in Anbar.
That's a good idea if you believe the Marines won in Anbar - after all, they won because they know how to fight counterinsurgencies.
It is a lousy idea is you believe the other scenario - that al Qaeda was not only in control, but in such authoritative control that the local Sunnis were forced to take matters into their own hands. And the Marine methods created essentially no victory in the war. Al Qaeda did that all by themselves.
Personally I think the Marines ought to stay out of Afghanistan.

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Shias The Problem In Southern Iraq

2007-10-22T09:54:00.001+03:00

Tallil, near Nasiriyah, southern Iraq - Another day another dollar in the so-called war on terror.
Our humvee grinds its way across a bleak landscape of the southern Iraqi desert, near a major base at Tallil. We jolt across furrows in the ground. The sand stretches away on either side. It is beige - intensely beige. As beige as beige could ever be, with the bright sun burning down and reflecting back into the blue sky.
It's only 95 degrees, which makes me glad I wasn't here in the summer, when it routinely reached 125, 130, 135 degrees.
But of course I have been here in the summer time. I have been here in the winter time as well. Then the bright beige of sun-drenched sand gives way to a cold greyish tan, as the weather turns often cloudy and rainy.
This week is the beginning of my tenth trip to Iraq. Time flies, as they say.
My first trip was in July, 2004, just over a year after the invasion.
Back then the insurgency was beginning to hit really its stride. Back then we often rode in humvees with jerry-rigged armor, likely as not. Back then, on my first night in Iraq, I drove from Baghdad north to Taji on one of the worst stretches of roads in the country, with a 1st Sergeant still recovering his nerve from being almost blown up a few weeks before.
Some things have changed, some have not.
That stretch of highway is still one of the worst stretches of road.
Gone now are the official denials, the story line that the insurgency is in its last gasp, that the continuation, uptick and tenacity of attacks is a sign of an insurgency "in its last throes." That is replaced by a watchful eye on the body count, both military and civilian, which is the grim but accurate indicator of the state of the war.
Some major improvements: The success in Mosul, a city once in very real danger of being lost. A big win in Anbar, due mainly because the Sunnis cannot abide the dead, Orwellian hand of Al Qaeda on their throat, dictating even the mundane details of daily life.
Some major disasters: The hands-off approach taken by the Americans that has allowed Iraqi government ministries to be taken over by the Shias and thereby deny essential services to many ordinary Iraqis. The continuing gangster nature of Iraqi life. The stupidity that allowed a painfully slow re-constitution of the Iraqi Army; the failure to pay the police enough and its subsequent problem of rampant corruption; the failure to fire corrupt police and public officials. And the hands-off approach that has seen the Shia militias develop to the point that half of the US casualties around Baghdad are caused by Shias extremists.
That said, it is heartening to look on the map and see whole swathes of the country that used to be just terrible now "enjoying" an "acceptable level of violence." Anbar. Tikrit. Mosul.
Not so heartening is the fact that 2 years ago, here in Tallil in southern Iraq, this area was quiet - dead quiet. The local Shia sheikhs used to keep a lid on any violence. It's a Shia area and any arrival of Sunni insurgents was reported quickly to the security forces.
No more. Now this area sees sporadic violence. A Romanian soldiers was killed a few weeks ago on a nearby road by a roadside bomb. Now the violence is caused by the Shias.
Rockets hit this base. They are transported from the Shia areas around Basra to the south (where the British are slowly pulling out). And the roadside bombs are exclusively the nasty, deadly EFPs (platter charges) once seen only in east Baghdad, fabricated from Iranian components and Shia in character.
The US cannot do everything at once. But as our humvee bumps across the sandy desert pan of southern Iraq, it seems here the biggest long-term threat is from the Shias extremists, not the Sunnis.
This threat has yet to be addressed seriously.
Three years, ten trips.
If that's "sufficient" progress I'll eat my hat.

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Afghan Police Delayed For Years

2007-10-07T19:32:00.001+03:00

Spira District, Khost Province, Afghanistan - There is a vicious chicken and egg cycle at work in Afghanistan, just now being reversed.
Too few resources are allocated to police.
Low pay makes it tough to recruit police. So there are too few policemen to do the job. So the job does not get done. So the people dislike the police and recruiting drops off even more. And so it goes on and on.
Would you risk your life for $60 or so a month? That's what a policeman has been paid for the past six years.
Would you risk your life as a policeman when you know the Afghan National Army foot soldiers are getting $120 a month or more for doing a similar job?
Would you risk your life as policeman when instead you can make $110 a month cutting wood in the mountains?
No, you wouldn't. Neither do the Afghans.
American soldiers here say the police are undermanned. They cannot attract enough recruits.
But finally, at last, there is pay reform and things are starting to change and wages boosted.
When reconstruction kicked off six years ago the coalition divided up the responsibilities. The Americans took over training the Army, the Germans the police, and so on.
The international community in its infinite wisdom decided that $50-60 a month is a living wage for an Afghan policeman. They were wrong. It's not.
It's taken the coalition six years to realize their mistake and in the next month or two pay is going to be boosted to the same level as the Afghan National Army soldiers.
Way too late.
The police now have an image problem. They are seen as corrupt and ineffective by the populace.
For years they have been reduced to taking bribes from gem smugglers, taking illegal "tolls" from passing trucks, and often taking hand-outs from insurgents. And they don't attract recruits either.
One morning in Spira district, American advisors stop in at a district headquarters. Except there is no headquarters here. The old police station has been knocked down to make way for a district center that is half built. The new police station will probably, maybe, be built next year.
Meanwhile the police and district sub-governor are squatting in the schoolhouse. Lord knows how they will all cope when the school year starts and the snows come in a few weeks
The American advisors are here to meet with the police chief and sub-governor to check in on progress. There is little progress to report. The police have only 8 policemen on duty here. There are a reported 500-to-5000 (yes 5-thousand) insurgents in the hills nearby. Pakistan is only 6 miles away. Spira is a major infiltration route into the country for the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other insurgents.
The police want to do what's right, but are powerless. They lack even enough gas for their brand-new Ford Ranger pickup trucks.
And the police are important. Properly employed, they are the eyes and ears of the other security forces.
The next time the conventional wisdom expresses concern that the war in Afghanistan is dragging on, consider the case of Spira district.
And thank the international community for setting up the Afghan National Police to fail thoughout Afghanistan, through low wages and a sad lack of resources.
And thank the Americans for allowing it to happen without ever rocking the boat.

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A Quiet Ride

2007-06-02T07:07:00.001+04:00

Gardez, eastern Afghanistan

We fly in from FOB Salerno (FOB is forward operating base).
The helicopter skims the mountains ahead of a front of weather that will cut
off our flight so I am glad we get in while the getting's good.
Goat tracks criss cross the tops of the highest mountains on the pass we are
flying over. The peaks look like a well-worn cow pasture, with many
parallel tracks worn by cloven feet. The pass is not that high - probably
9,000 feet or so. But the Afghans are a rugged race if they feed their
goats this high often enough to create this many tracks.
Our door gunners keep a sharp eye out but they aren't expecting anything and
of course nothing happens. Being a door gunner must be the dullest job in
the world - watching the scenery go by for a whole year with nothing to do,
except scan for threats that seldom materialize and help keep the helicopter
in flying shape. Same scenery, different day. Still, its that kind of a
job where dull is good.
Gardez is pretty quiet. Quiet means very little happens here, and it would
be a surprise if something did.
Quiet is also in the eye of the beholder. There was a suicide car bomb
attack on a compound downtown last week. This is Afghanistan, and the
wartime version of quiet is nothing much generally happens except that
sometimes it does.
Down the road about an hour from here, fighting is going on 5 days out of 7.
The Taliban is trying to take over a smaller FOB which houses over a score
of Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and a couple of US trainers and their
Oregon National Guard guards. But no one attacks our own base, nor does
anyone expect the Taliban to. Hundreds of ANA soldiers live and train
here, and the Taliban lacks the numbers to atack them.
The base used to be rocketed but the Taliban cut that out about 6 months
ago. Though whether it was Taliban or just disaffected locals doing the
rocketing is unknown.
Here is another example of the Afghan version of quiet:
A couple of days after arriving in Gardez, I leave on a convoy. Our convoy
is driving through the city back toward Kabul, when a guardrail falls off
the back of a 5-ton truck (a ten-wheeled Army truck) ahead of us. Our
humvee stops to pick up the rail. We fall behind the truck, which rolls
slowly forward.
We get back underway quick enough and our driver and gunner tear up a street
and around a traffic circle, honking and yelling at traffic to get out of
the way, desperate to reunite with the receding truck.
It makes some sense - separated vehicles are easy targets.
But it makes you wonder if things are so quiet why we need to have a cow if
we fall behind a lousy 150 yards.
The Gardez - Kabul road is also considered "quiet". Nothing happens on the
trip, of course
But all the honking and yelling makes you wonder what one of the active
roads over the southern passes feels like, when attacks really happen all
the time.

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Bodies On A Highway

2006-10-27T09:34:00.000+03:00

Baghdad - October 2006 - The shots ring out, and are clearly audible inside the Stryker I am sitting in. Four of the roof hatches are open and the firing can be heard thumping away in a steady rhythm. They are mostly 7.62mm rounds from a single machine gun nearby. Outgoing, luckily. None of the Stryker's weapons are firing, which is a good sign.

Our patrol of Strykers is straddling two lanes on a main highway in southwest Baghdad. The firing comes from an Iraqi National Police machine gun. The INPs are upset, for good reason.

The INP vehicles are clustered along the median strip of this four-lane highway. They have a handful of pickup trucks and Toyota Land Cruisers with light bars. The Strykers are parked amongst them. Two bodies, bound and shot in the head, lie on the side of the highway nearby.

The INPs got here first, on a routine assignment to recover the bodies which had been dumped earlier by a death squad. When they arrived they went to move the bodies. A grenade went off under one of the bodies and two INPs were injured immediately, they say. Then gunmen in a line of nearby houses started firing on the exposed cops. The INPs took cover behind their vehicles and returned fire.

That's when our Stryker patrol rolled onto the scene by chance and stopped in the middle of it. The bulky green-painted steel armored cars shifted the balance sharply in favor of the INPs, who kept firing anyway. The Americans saw no targets to engage and so held fire.

The Americans say it is likely the booby-trapped bodies were placed to draw in the INPs, and the hidden gunmen then fired a full clip from their AK-47 automatic rifles at the INPs and fled. A full clip for an AK-47 is 30 rounds, and between the grenade going off, the wounded INPs and scores of bullets headed in their direction, it is no wonder the INPs started firing back and didn't stop.

Eventually the firing died down. Sheltering behind the Strykers from a possible reappearance of the gunmen, the INPs and Americans strategized how to recover the bodies. It looked like it would take too long for an EOD (explosive ordnance disposal team - the bomb squad) to arrive. In the end three American soldiers drove up to the bodies in a Stryker, hopped out, tied a rope to the bodies, hopped back in and tugged them a few feet, checking for any more explosions.

Those were brave men who didn't know if more explosives might have detonated by a radio remote control when they stepped close to the bodies.

The Americans helped roll up the bodies in body bags and threw them in the back of an INP pickup to go to the morgue.

The soldiers and policemen headed off and traffic started driving down the highway again.

The random bravery of the Americans who pulled the two bodies, and the INPs who tried to recover them originally, is unmarked on this highway and will be soon forgotten. Such random acts of bravery are a common occurrence in Baghdad.

That is in contrast to the bullies who snatched the two young victims, almost certainly unarmed, and put bullets in their heads. There is little honor in the death squads which inflict harm as widely and randomly here as possible to spread terror amongst the people.

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Baghdad Death Squad

2006-10-24T21:13:00.000+03:00

Baghdad - October 2006 - The Stryker I am riding in accelerates quickly (as best the 20-ton armored beast can). We are pursuing a speeding convoy of six vehicles dead ahead. Four Ministry of Interior unmarked Toyota Land cruisers. Two Iraqi National Police white-and-blue Chevy 3500 pickup trucks with light bars on the cab.

This is an illegal Iraqi Shiite death squad.

The vehicles have abducted two men from a Sunni neighborhood. One of the kidnapped men - a fat man - hangs out the window, waving at the Strykers behind. Suddenly his kidnappers push him out the door of the speeding SUV, shooting him three times in the chest as they do so, thinking the Strykers will stop and they will get away.

The Strykers meant to stop - or one of them meant to - but that didn't happen and the high-speed pursuit continues. But soon the Iraqi vehicles escape anyway. It's tough to catch the smaller high-powered Iraqi law-enforcement vehicles.

The Stykers go back to where the man was dumped. The locals have taken him to the hospital already.

Score for the day: 1 Iraqi kidnapped and presumed killed, 1 kidnapped, shot and dumped. Iraqi death squad 2, Strykers 0.

In the next two hours the soldiers track down the wounded man for information. They know winning this war of sectarian violence is going to be a long haul.

They won't be here to see the end of it. They are shipping back to the States soon, probably in December 2006.

The involvement of Iraqi government vehicles irks them. The vehicles could have been rented by a crooked motor pool supervisor to the kidnappers, or they could have been real policemen and MoI lawmen. This American battalion just dismissed an entire Iraqi National Police brigade in this area for being corrupt and colluding with death squads, if not actively participating in them.

They will spend the next two days interviewing people, asking them to report if they see the vehicles again. The SUVs came from outside the neighborhood, and the soldiers stress to residents that the only way to get through this is to band together and report and resist incursions.

This is thin gruel for Iraqis liable to kidnapped by a dozen heavily-armed death squad members at a time. But it's the only answer the Amercians can give right now, until the information starts to flow.

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IED Patrol

2005-11-19T08:23:00.000+03:00

near Radio Relay Point 3, Iraq

130 miles south of Baghdad

November 11, 2005

with Charlie Co, 142nd Infantry, Texas National Guard

Early morning on the main supply route running south from Baghdad to Kuwait. The soldiers based at Radio Relay Point 3 (RP3) are out checking the highway near their base for improvised explosive devices, called IEDS, which is the official name for the roadside bombs that do so much damage to American forces.

This area is relatively quiet. There have only been a couple of IED attacks on this stretch of road in the past six months. Usually what happens is the insurgents come through the area, lay the bomb and then get out. The locals are not generally cooperative. The soldiers say a local who shot a mortar bomb into the nearby American base, called Scania, was caught buy the local sheikh, who beheaded him and stuck the head on a pole. The sheikh didn't like the loss of business caused by the local market shutting down after the attack.

On the other hand IEDs are no joke. More than half of American casualties in this war have come from roadside bombs, according to one study. A vehicle-borne bomb at a checkpoint about 10 miles north of here took out all the soldiers at a checkpoint this month. Improvised bombs are bad news.

The soldiers drive steadily down the road, looking at the sides. They look for anything with wire sticking out of it. Parcels, packages dead animal, anything that the insurgents might stuff with an IED. This highway is asphalt, which helps, as the insurgents would have to burrow under the surface to get the bomb close enough to vehicles to do much damage. A fanciful threat, but real. They�ve taken out vehicles in other parts of Iraq doing just that.

The soldiers stop at each bridge in their area. They scan underneath the bridges. Insurgents like to place bombs tucked up under the ceiling of the overpass, because the blast can more easily get at the gunner standing in the open-topped turret of any vehicles passing underneath. They check the road surface on top of the overpass as well. Many of these roadways on top have holes dug along the edges, required for some inexplicable Iraqi construction technique. All must be checked. One humvee tackles the west two lanes, another humvee takes the east two lanes of this four-lane highway.

They are complementing the specialized anti-IED vehicles that also make the morning patrol looking for roadside bombs along this route. The Buffaloes and other South African vehicles, manned by Americans, are ugly but highly effective, developed over 20 years fighting the African National Congress in their own guerilla war that finished in the '90s.

The soldiers drive down the road and stop near an abandoned car. This deserves special attention. Vehicle borne IEDS are among the worst, because a car can easily carry 500 pounds of explosive, enough to probably destroy a humvee. This car is propped up on a jack, its left rear tire missing. A soldier looks inside anyway. Better safe than sorry.

The soldiers roll on, and talk with two Iraqis standing under a bridge. They see these two men often, and chat on most days. It�s not exactly hearts and minds, because the Iraqis are willing to talk and its no great effort. More like an easy exchange borne of familiarity rather than forced fellowship.

Then the patrol reaches the end of its terriroty, turns aroudn and passes back up the road, heading for another days work in their area. They'll be on this same road several more times today.

All eyes in the humvee watch for IEDs every time they are out, on this main supply route or on the back country tracks surrounding their base. The threat is that strong, and no one wants to be the dummy who gets killed and becomes an example to other soldiers about the dangers of complacency and letting your guard down.

Radio Relay Point 3

2005-11-19T08:22:00.000+03:00

at Radio Relay Point 3, Iraq

135 miles south of Baghdad

November 10, 2005

with Charlie Co, 142nd Infantry, Texas National Guard

Soldiers here with Charlie Company have spent 11 months at this small base, called a radio relay point or RP It lies next to the busy north-south main supply route, with plenty of traffic pushing past on the highway half a mile away. This place is less than an acre, and holds only enough men to man the radios and patrol the area around the RP.

For the men who live here there is plenty to keep them busy. There is guard duty, radio duty, and patrols which the soldiers run out of here three or more times a day, both day and night.

Most soldiers in Iraq never get off their base. On a large base like Anaconda in Balad, or even Victory in Baghdad which surrounds Baghdad Airport, the majority of soldiers never go outside the wire. Except for their two-week leave midway through their year-long deployment, those soldiers are, in effect, in prison.

On larger bases life is not easy, since there are attacks by mortars or rockets in many areas, and the soldiers live in trailers, four to a trailer, and the work hours are long. But on a large base there are comforts, such as a huge supply of varied food served four times a day, not to mention ping pong and movies and PXs. Despite that many soldiers feel imprisoned on their large base for their year in country.

Soldiers at RPs have a situation both similar and completely different. Instead of 20,000 soldiers there might be a minute fraction of that; instead of covering 10 square miles or more, their base covers an acre; and of course the idea of a PX is laughable.

But it turns out most of the soldiers who have been here on RP3 for 11 months prefer these small bases to the standard-size ones. Sounds incredible - more work, fewer amenities, less space.

But the soldiers here get off base regularly, on patrol and an occasional trip to their local large base, a transport hub called Scania. And though they have a limited exposure to people outside their unit, that cuts both ways, because personality clashes are tempered by the absolute necessity of getting along. And when it comes down to it, most people in a unit would often hang together anyway.

Soldiers here make their own breakfast, lunch and dinner, preparing it from frozen and boxed supplies given to them back at Scania.

What could easily be considered to be a narrowing of horizons - cutting their view down to the acre area inside their wire, behind the razor wire and fortifications that ring their compound - life here is in fact the opposite. The number of patrols these men have to do ends up opening up their daily routine. Whereas many people on a larger base go to the PX for variety, out here there is an enforced variety of scenery dictated by the need for near-constant patrolling in local Iraqi villages and towns.

No, it�s not as relaxing as being on a large base. But, for most soldiers (and this is not true for all) this enforced rigor is, well, invigorating. They prefer the RPs to bases like Scania. That's the reason a small number of men can spend 11 months on a base the size of an acre, and end up liking it, while for other soldiers a year inside 40 square miles still feels like being in prison.

These guys at RP3 should know - they�ve been here long enough to get the full flavor of it, and they'll be going home at the end of their tour in the next couple of weeks.

Street Patrol in Suma

2005-11-19T08:19:00.000+03:00

near Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq

120 miles south of Baghdad

November 9, 2005

with Charlie Co, 142nd Infantry, Texas National Guard

Soldiers stand in the center of the town of Suma. They are about 100 yards down the road from the police station. Beyond the police station is the market they have just driven through. In the road facing the opposite direction sits a long line of beat up old cars waiting for gas. The nationwide shortage of gas touches this part of the country as well. In many places people can buy gas without a wait from local fix-it men. But, depending on who you ask, the fix-it men here were kicked out by the local sheikh, who has an interest in the gas station, or there just isn't any gas. It�s hard to say.

The soldiers come through here about once a day. They patrol this whole area regularly. Its about 12 miles soth of the main base in the area, called Scania, a place where convoys plying the main supply route between Baghdad 110 miles to the north and Kuwait south 225 miles to the south can pull over, refuel and then keep going. Keeping the area around the main supply route quiet is key to supplying the rest of the US forces in Iraq, so these three humvees in the main street in Suma is, tangentially, helping the guys fighting insurgents in Ramadi, Fallujah, Samarra, Baqqubah or one of the other hot spots that make the news each night.

Here the soldiers seem to be pretty well known and even trusted. They are actually paying $103,000 to refurbish the school on this street. In Iraq, with an average annual income of $3,600, the US could probably buy the whole building for less than that, but the US is not in the school-owning business. So it fixes the windows, paints the walls and cleans up instead.

In some parts of this area soldiers receive blank looks and hostile stares. In this town that's not the case. There are occasional waves. Kids come up to a soldier standing beside a humvee and take handouts of candy. This is business as usual in this town, in this part of Iraq.

Suddenly shots ring out to the west, over on the other side of town. Two, three or four, no one is absolutely sure. A patrol goes a few blocks into town to take a look but they come back with no further information. That's common here. So are the gunshots. Every Iraqi male is allowed to keep an AK-47 assault rifle in his home, but is not allowed to take it outside. With everyone owning a gun, and the Iraqis notorious for lighting up for just about any reason, shots happen... a lot. It�s hardly worth bothering about, and the soldiers hardly bother.

Ten minutes later the soldiers are mounted up and driving off. Everything here is quiet. The local Shiite sheikh is pro-American, and like most everyone else in this area, he is not keen on the insurgency getting a hold here. This is the ideal way to wage a counter-insurgency war - to have a situation where hardly any of the locals is excited about fighting, where very few care to support insurgency or let it get established. This ideal situation is not so easy to develop, but these soldiers from Texas are surely benefiting from its existence in this town.

Triggermen

2005-11-19T08:17:00.000+03:00

Tallil Iraq

275 miles south of Baghdad

October 30, 2005

with E Troop, 108th Cavalry, GA National Guard

The soldiers of the Echo Troop of the 108th Cavalry from Georgia are taking a few days off. They are sitting in tent city here at Forward Operating Base Adder in Tallil. They arrived from Mumadiyah south of Baghdad a few days ago, and are taking some time off before taking over from a brigade from Texas which is heading home.

It has been quiet in this area near Tallil. It wasn�t quiet in the Mumadiyah area, where the troop had casualties. Each day was a running battle with insurgents, who laid roadside bombs, called improvised explosive devices or IEDs, pretty much every day on the approaches to their camp. The soldiers were mortared down there as well on their base. Small arms fire against their patrols was so frequent as to become something of a joke.

The insurgents called that area the Triangle of Death. The soldiers were just happy to leave and come down here, where they�ll be escorting convoys for the second six months of their deployment.

This company was lucky, or handled themselves well, or both. Either way their casualties were relatively low. But still the toll included 3 men killed in action.

The soldiers see this area around Tallil as a welcome relief.

But they are proud of the work they did farther north. They got so used to getting fired upon; they developed a technique for tracking down the insurgents' triggerman.

Generally if a bomb goes off on one side of the road, the triggerman will be waiting on that side as well. If he were on the other side the wires to the IED would run across the road and be exposed and the IED would be easier to find. The triggerman needs a clear line of sight to guage when to blow the bomb. He wants the vehicle to be passing broadside when it goes off. It helps to have a straight shot.

So if a bomb goes off, the cavalry soldier of E Troop would swing several of their humvees off the road on the side the triggerman would probably be on. They dismount two teams of soldiers. These men form two lines of a box. The humvees drive on, and form the two other sides of the box. Each element can see two other elements others. Now the soldiers start by foot and by vehicle to constrict their box. This takes time and patience. When someone pops up and starts running, that their man.

They figure this technique works more than half of the time.

Finding the triggerman is an art in Iraq. Most of the time an IED explodes, the triggerman gets away 95 to 99 percent of the time.

Most times the triggerman runs off even before people get collected and get looking for him. This is especially true in towns.

The cavalry soldiers have a pre-set plan, and waste no time implementing it, driving off the road immediately in search of the triggerman. They use a simple technique to search - if they run into a man of military age they search him. They try to question everybody.

Blowing IEDs is a deadly game that insurgents for too long have got away with, treating IEDs like a crime that has few downsides. A major key to eliminating IEDs is consistently eliminating the triggermen.

The soldiers of E Troop are glad to have the time off. They play video games and catch up with the folks back home. They are glad to be in Tallil and have a change of mission that hopefully will not require them being fired upon every day, several times a day.

But they regret their technique not being put to good use. They will from here on otu do convoy escort. If a convey they are escorting is fired upon, they will shepherd the convoy through the danger zone and keep going. Hunting triggermen not allowed. Priority one is reaching the destination.

They consider themselves the kings of this game in theater. They hope the army will adopt their tried-and-true methods. But for them the application of their theory has become theoretical; not practical. These hunters are hunters no more.

Night Convoy Northwards

2005-11-19T08:13:00.000+03:00

Tallil Iraq

275 miles south of Baghdad

October 30, 2005

with the 56th Brigade Combat Team, TX National Guard

It is past midnight when about twenty huge tractor trailer trucks roll out of the front gates of the base here in Tallil. We are going north, toward Baghdad. Elaborate precautions have been taken. Patrols sweep this road constantly, keeping it clear of improvised explosive devices. The civilian trucks are all in top condition to minimize breakdowns. Things are organized as tightly as possible.

This convoy will finish up in Baghdad; it is on the airport run. America�s biggest base in theater sprawls around the airport. This convoy will be making the run of almost 300 miles as quickly as possible, but it will likely arrive in daylight.

This area down here at Tallil is actually one of the quietest parts of the country. There are only a few ied's here, planted generally when insurgents come through and put them on the road. The population in this area is not sympathetic - the soldiers say the locals prefer making money and getting on with their lives than acting against the government. It helps that they are Shiite, and the bulk of the insurgency is made up of Sunnis. This area is far enough south to be away form the Sunni insurgency, but not so far south as to be caught up in the Iranian-inspired ruckus being kicked up by Shiites in the British zone around Basra.

The convoy grinds north. A lot of the soldiers have downed Cokes or Pepsis or more highly caffeinated drinks before hitting the road. The loud whir of the humvee, the occasional thump of the road, the darkness outside relieved by a wan moon. For myself I find it difficult to stay awake on these after-midnight humvee drives. I have seen soldiers stay awake all night in their turrets, and then slump once inside the wire on the other end.

Heading north things are quiet tonight. The convoy stops at Scania, a logistical base about halfway to Baghdad. Then it heads out the gate again. The going gets steadily more tense after Scania, 110 miles south of Baghdad. It�s all right for the first 30 or 40 miles, but then the convoy enters the Triangle of Death, so-called by the insurgents, a subset of the Sunni triangle that extends south of the city. Hilla south of Baghdad is roughly the turnover point. One starts to tense a bit more north of Hilla.

But this convoy arrives as scheduled, and a journey that takes an hour by air has taken more than 6 by road. This convoy is an unremarkable episode on an unremarkable day. As the soldiers here say, the best days are the ones where nothing happens.

Tank Patrol

2005-11-19T08:08:00.000+03:00

near Habbaniyah Iraq

45 miles west of Baghdad

October 31, 2005

110th Infantry Task Force Panther, PA National Guard

An M1 tank rolls down the road in central Iraq. It is midway between Habbaniyah and the town of Ramadi off to the west. The 15 miles separating these towns are literally the worst stretch of road in Iraq. Coalition forces say they have discovered over 150 improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in the past 5 months on this stretch of road.

Small arms fire is too common to really pay much attention. Suddenly a burst of four shots from an AK-47 assault rifle rings out and the soldiers in the tank hunker down and look out of their gun sights. It�s tough to see anything. Tanks are notorious for their poor ability to see out, and this is no exception. No one saw the gunman. He probably dropped below the parapet of some balcony within 2 seconds of firing; so even as the soldiers instinctively ducked he was already dropping out of sight. The soldiers keep a sharp eye out all the time, but it�s difficult to see people before they fire. It�s even more difficult to see them after they fire, unless the stand and fight. That is rare. The gunmen can easily escape into the maze of houses and, along this particular half-mile section which lies inside a village, alleyways, flanking the main road. To make matters worse, there are reeds and plenty of vegetation near the road because this is river country, with the Euphrates flowing close by.

These days the small arms fire problem has taken on more than its normal nuisance value. Generally the Iraqi attitude is to spray and pray - literally that if Allah wills the bullets to strike home, then they will. Thus most often this small arms fire is merely nuisance fire.

Except not anywmore. In this sector a real marksman has been operating lately. He has hit several soldiers over the past few months. He is a Muslim sniper, and soldiers here speculate he might be Chechen. He is worse than a nuisance, he is for real, and the soldiers keep their heads down, and try to extract information from the local populace as to his whereabouts to nab him.

But there are more pressing issues today. Down the road an ied is found and the team from EOD (explosive ordnance disposal, the bomb squad) is called in to dispose of it. It is a busy day for EOD. Another suspected ied site nearby ends up being a false alarm.

The crew of this tank is wary in this area. The local village of Mudiq has a mosque which sometimes hosts imams who preach against the Americans. This is the heart of the Sunni triangle, here 11 kilometers west of Habbaniyah. There is no love lost for Americans here, and little regular information comes out of this village. Opinion differs in the crew whether this is primarily because the populace is scared of appearing pro-American when insurgents hold so much sway here, or whether they truly hate Americans. Either way, no one is keen on the idea of getting out of the tank to test the sympathies of the locals. THey prefer to have a thick shroud of armor between them and any stray bullets.

The patrol ends as the sun is getting low. The tanks leaves the village behind and rumbles past the blown up mosque outside town, where a few months ago insurgents who were building roadside bombs under the mosque's dome blew themselves up along with the entire mosque. The dome lies drunkenly to one side on the shattered building, with a blast hole in the round roof. As the rumbles back onto its base artillery is firing a few rounds to support operations farther north. It�s another day gone by in the worst part of Iraq, and tomorrow promises to be much the same.

Cordon and Knock

2005-11-19T08:03:00.000+03:00

near Habbaniyah Iraq
45 miles east of Baghdad
October 30, 2005
110th Infantry, Task Force Panther, PA National Guard

6 kilometers east of the small town of Habbaniyah Iraq a patrol of infantry is knocking on doors of houses.
This area is midway between Fallujah and Ramadi and is about 45 miles west of Baghdad proper. This is not one of the worst areas of Iraq, this is the worst area of Iraq for insurgent activity. Regular small arms fire, improvised explosive devices (the roadsides bombs called ieds by the military), RPG rounds fired at vehicles. It is all here.
But amazingly enough in the middle of the worst area of Iraq there are quiet spots too. It is in just such a quiet spot that soldiers are knocking on the doors of houses and asking the residents if they have seen any insurgents, or have any information of use to the coalition (American soldiers in these parts).
A cordon and knock is simple. Soldiers of the 110th Infantry (Pennsylvania) task forces roll up to a houses or row of houses, surround it, and while some soldiers question the occupants other search the houses, the back yard and grounds.
In the first house the man is friendly. He talks to the soldiers, smiles and generally is cooperative. He says a few details that might be of use. Soldiers meanwhile check his house, walking past a nervous calf tethered in the back yard with a few scraps of grass strewn about.
Two young men run off into the grove of palms behind the house. This area is not friendly and their running is either significant or, then again, maybe not. Plenty of people fear the soldiers, plenty more hate them. This is the heart of the Sunni Triangle.
Whether the running is significant or not is something the soldiers will never find out, as the runners are off and away and the soldiers, burdened with 65 pounds of gear, are not likely to ever catch up.
The soldiers wrap this up, and head off to the next house, and the next and then they are done.
Soldiers say this is one of the best methods of picking up information. Insurgents cannot target the householders if they talk , because the soldiers visit so many people the source is concealed.
But then again, in this province meaningful information is not easy to come by. Incidents happen every day and the locals play dumb. For the most part it�s a brick wall of silence here. Those that are sympathetic are cowed. The Sunnis have little to gain from the new national government and are not well disposed to helping soldiers. This will be one of the last provinces to be pacified, and that day is a long way away.

CH-46 Night Flight

2005-11-19T07:59:00.000+03:00

near Ramadi, Iraq

50 miles west of Baghdad

October 29, 2005

with Marine Air

This time of year it gets cold waiting on the landing strip for your flight to the next place in Iraq. You wait hours for the bird to come in. In this part of the world you are in the hands of Marine Air. There are a few army helicopters flying - the ubiquitous Blackhawks - but mostly it�s CH-46 Sea Knights. These are huge beasts with twin rotors, which come swooping in with a tremendous blast of air, filling the night with the beat of their rotor blades.

Soon enough two do swoop down. There are a handful of people pile off and we pile on to take their places. It�s a rush in the darkness but the cabin lights are on and so you throw your bags on he floor and yourself on a bench and pretty soon the lights go out and the plane (helicopters are planes in this part of the world) lurches and pulls itself off the ground and drags itself into the air, reaching higher and higher into the nighttime sky.

These helicopters are not invulnerable, This same week insurgents down another Marine helicopter, a two-seat gunship operating at midday, not one of these cargo buffaloes flying at night. Blackhawks and Apache gunships have been lost. It ought to give us al line dup in the back on the bench seats pause for thought, but it doesn�t. Now you look out the portholes and see the ground floating by.

What you really think about are all those guys on the ground fighting it out with the insurgents. There is a continuous line of lights following the Euphrates which we are loosely following for a flight path to the next stop, Al Taqqadum, 15 miles away. This is heavy insurgent country. You wonder about the guys on patrol out there, driving down streets where they know insurgents will have left improvised explosive devices waiting for them. You know there will be firefights tonight. It looks awfully dark down there.

Up here the aircraft wiggles sideways, as the counter-rotation forces of its two opposite-turning rotors tug at the long hull in momentary discordance. The it does it again, and again. The CH-46 sort of crawls through the air like a dog worming toward its master, begging for a treat. But it's warm up here, and the cold of the tarmac is a memory. The darkness beckons out the half -open rear clamshell door, inky blackness out there. But it's warm in here. No shooting either. No you don't worry about being shot down. You're just thankfully, shamefully, glad you're not down there with those brave, long-suffering guys in the humvees, Bradleys and tanks, getting shot at for real.

Sniper Snatch

2005-11-19T07:57:00.000+03:00

near Ramadi, Iraq

55 miles west of Baghdad

October 27, 2005

with Task Force Saber, 172nd Armor, VT National Guard

The soldiers based here at Ramadi have a problem. A sniper has been working in the area, and he is good. One soldier has been shot. Tonight these soldiers are going out to get him, and his brother too.

And they are taking the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), also called the Iraqi Army, with them.

It is a dark night out. A convoy moves out near midnight. Two trucks are filled with ISF soldiers, and there are other humvees and an armored personnel carrier to back them up.

Other Americans are converging on the site on the ground.

It�s a funny feeling being out at night. This is one of the worst places in Iraq for insurgents. Its difficult not to think every parked car and every empty trash dumpster, might hold a massive roadside bomb, called an improvised explosive device, or IED. But nothing goes off and the ISF and Americans dismount at a block of houses where the sniper and his brother seem to live.

The ISF surround the place. They'll haul in every male of military age, and question them back home.

Things start to drag. A one-hour operation to clear 8 or so houses turns into 1 then 2 hours. Turns out the ISF have decided to question some of the men here, before taking them back. The Americans aren�t happy but there is little they can do about it - they are officially here as advisors, and they'll advise unless things turn hairy.

The problem with sitting around is there are only a few ways back out. The insurgents in this area have been known to place an ied within half an hour or less if they believe a patrol will be passing by. If the convoy is at this place and there are few ways to get out, so sitting there leaves the insurgents more time to figure that out and get an ied into one of the trash containers.

Some of the alternate routes out are so badly infested with IEDs that the soldiers won�t go on them.

At last the ISF bring their detainees out (it would be wrong to call them suspects when 15 or so people are randomly all caught up in the search).

The detained are pushed and lifted onto a flatbed truck. The ISF pile into their armored trucks, the Americans into their armored humvees and their APC and everyone moves off, retracing their route.

Twenty minutes later they are back at base. No incidents - this time.

Turns out the dismounted Americans caught the man they suspect to be the sniper. No word on the brother though.

One of the ISF lets off his rifle with an accidental discharge as he walks away form his truck. He gets a severe yelling from his sergeant. The Americans roll their eyes. Its the second AD of the night.

Its been one of those nights, and it's now turning rapidly into day.

Information Operation

2005-11-19T07:51:00.000+03:00

near Ramadi, Iraq
55 miles west of Baghdad
October 27, 2005
with Task Force Saber, 172nd Armor, VT National Guard

Soldiers hop out of their Bradley fighting vehicles and fan out.

This is a quiet sector in one of the worst parts of Iraq. That combination means extreme caution.
The soldiers are moving house to house in this neighborhood of well appointed houses. They talk to the locals, ask questions, ask if there are any signs of insurgents.
In this neighborhood there is no great support for the insurgents. But life is tough for the locals. It isn�t far from an American checkpoint on the highway. The large houses with courtyards, set among groves of tall palm trees look nice. This would be prime real estate for insurgents collecting money forcibly. Not all insurgent money comes form abroad, or was squirreled away by Saddam before the war started for an insurgency that would require money. A love of it now comes from ordinary Iraqis, at gunpoint. The insurgents have turned into an armed mafia, with political aims. Think Chicago 1920s, and those are the same rackets. Booze, protection and coercion.
That is all seemingly removed from this quiet neighborhood. A medic treats child after child who comes up needing help. One 10-year-old boy has hurt his wrist, which is swollen. A 4-year-old boy has a burn. This one needs an IV. The list goes on.
The kids know they on to a good thing. They congregate and ask for candy, which the soldiers hand over. The soldiers also hand over a soccer ball, with the idea the assembled kids might start a game. But the kid who gets the ball bolts immediately for home. He knows what�ll happen here if the game gets started - the older, stronger kids always keep what they get their hands on.
Appearances are deceiving. The soldiers man the rooftops looking for snipers. More than a month ago an insurgent shot at them here. They keep a sharp eye out wiht binoculars.
Then the soldier pull back to their Bradleys, tumble in and head home. No great strides. No drama. Just another day in Iraq.

Mosul Police Visit

2005-11-19T07:46:00.000+03:00

Mosul, Iraq
250 miles north of Baghdad
October 22, 2005
with 4/23rd Infantry, 172nd Stryker Brigade, US Army, Anchorage Alaska

The huge bulk of a Stryker vehicle pushes its way through the streets of Mosul, Iraq. It�s not too bad here in this part of the town, the southeast corner. The streets are reasonably wide, the crews well rehearsed in maneuvering in tight spaces. The streets isn�t as tight as the old city to the north. The crews don�t have to worry so much about narrow alleys. and they appreciate the armored car's tough hide. One of the Strykers in this patrol of three has been "blown up" by IEDs, or roadside bombs, three times. The damage was losing a couple of antennas, several blown tires and a ringing in the ears for the crew.
This unit has been here since September. The insurgents saw the big green Strykers and the new green army uniforms and thought 'easy meat'. Unfortunately for the insurgents the army carries out a left seat/right seat-ride changeover routine. Old units help the new ones get settled in. So when the insurgents attacked using relatively simply tactics, expecting to push over the inexperienced newcomers, they got a surprise because the older guys were in the big new green vehicles as well. That lesson lasted about two weeks of fighting.
Since then the insurgents� activity has dropped off. The soldiers say they have set back the insurgents, and that's almost certainly true, since the tempo of insurgents operations is much lower now than it was six months ago. But there is still a major insurgent problem here in Mosul, as the soldiers readily describe. This town is majority Sunni. A few miles away from here the Kurdish area begins, but here is a battleground that might as well be farther south in the Sunni Triangle.
The soldiers stop by an Iraqi Police station. This station is near the edge of town. It located in an area where the insurgents used to run the police out regularly, where old Baathists and retired military officers give money and support to the insurgents. These police ought to be in major trouble - the station has such lousy resources one corner is completely open to the elements. The roof isn�t even properly closed off. It�s a mess, and the regional government can't be bothered to give them the money they need to fix things up.
But far from run the Iraqi Police, or IPs, out of here, the insurgents are having a difficult time cracking this nut. Today eight insurgents are being held for questioning.
The police show the soldiers a sophisticated detonation device used by one of the suspects. It was placed about 10 feet form the bomb, and linked by a wire to the explosives. It included a Motorola talkabout, and is rigged to after receiving a signal from the triggerman it trips an attached egg timer, which counts down about 15 seconds before sending a current to the explosive. The 15-second delay makes it possible for the triggerman to walk innocently off before the thing blows up. The device normally lies far enough away from the explosion to be recovered and used again.
The IPs caught the suspects, confiscated the detonator, and are proud of it.
But they have little to work with, besides guns, ammunition, a few vehicles, and are doing alot of work with many fewer resources than they ought to have (everything is in short supply - generators, uniforms, and and virtually any supplies needed to run a station).
Yet the future relies on police like this taking charge of the country. The police in Iraq are notorious for being infiltrated by insurgents. Not so here. The IPs at this station are in a running battle with insurgents, have a good commander, and their morale is high.
The soldiers promise to deliver generators and other supplies. They then saddle up in their Strikers and move off to patrol the city.
They respect the police here, they say. They are impressed by the suspects, and the detonator. They will do what it takes to make them better and better.
The only way for these soldiers to get out of Iraq once and for all, is to help build a better Iraqi security force that can stand up to the insurgents in the toughest areas, and prevail.

Cordon and Knock

2005-11-19T07:38:00.000+03:00

Mosul, Iraq
250 miles north of Baghdad
October 21, 2005
with 4/23rd Infantry, 172nd Striker Brigade, US Army, Anchorage Alaska

The soldiers of the 172nd Striker Brigade have a problem. The insurgents in this town are stubborn, and the soldiers deal with small arms fire sprayed at their vehicles every day. IEDs, or roadside bombs, are set several times a week in this city, as the insurgents try to catch American vehicles in the blast of a roadside bomb. That's no easy matter, especially as these soldiers run the Striker armored cars which, contrary to media reports, have the confidence of these crews on the mean streets of Mosul, if not that of many commentators.
The problem is how to generate the information that will finally, successfully, undermine the insurgency in this area. The insurgency here used to be much more aggressive. Compared to six months ago, there is much less activity than there was. But there is still plenty of activity.
The operations officer of this unit, the 4-23rd Infantry, is taking as holistic approach as possible. There have been a number of successful counterinsurgency campaigns this century, including Malaya and Northern Ireland. Others such campaigns have been failures, think the (somewhat parallel) Vietnam or Rhodesia. These provide some guidelines on what and what not to do.
There is also the broader approach these operations-section soldiers are taking, like contacting university professors to find out what the dynamics in the city really are like. Yes, this unit is doing all this, and it�s a good start.
But more is needed than theory. The soldiers are trying to apply the right theiory to the area they cover in southeast Mosul.
Hard information is the goal of this effort, as well as that information's inescapable flip-side, the cooperation of the populace necessary to supply it.
And while most US givernment agencies are in town trying to dig out what is needed, the units here on the ground are the key interface between the theory and the local population.
So every day and night the soldiers knock on doors and talk to the people in their own houses. This sometimes yields good information, sometimes no information, and occasionally a sullenness and unwillingness to talk.
But the soldiers who walk into the front yard, knock on doors and spend ten minutes with Iraqi families inside the houses feel this is one of the best ways the war can be won. In the living rooms of Iraqi families, talking one on one.
The insurgents here don�t like it when the local Iraqis offer up information. They recognize this as their weakness. A popular 1-800 telephone tip line yielded so much information that the insurgents blew up the mobile phone towers around this hill-locked town, cutting phone service and, more importantly, access to the tips line.
Anonymous, accurate information is what's needed here. It's access and denial is the central battleground of this conflict.
For the soldiers based in Alaska, that mans visiting one house at a time, generating one anonymous tip after another that has to be chased down. Using this model this is going to be a long war. But until the operations people can dig out a better paradigm from the depths of military history, this is what it�s going to take.

Night Arrest

2005-11-19T07:35:00.000+03:00

near LSA Anaconda
45 miles north of Baghdad
October 13, 2005
100-442 Infantry Battalion, US Army Reserve, Honolulu HI

It is nighttime in Iraq. Soldiers run their humvees quietly along the street of an Iraqi village. They stop, slip out, and wearing night vision goggles surround the house of an Iraqi known to support the insurgency. Two soldiers hide out the back to catch anyone running away. Then the others pile in the front door.
The soldiers are not polite. But they are not threatening either. There is no shouting, no yelling, no shots. But there is plenty of adrenaline on both sides. The soldiers don�t know if they will be shot at. The Iraqis don�t know whether the force used will be deadly.
Turns out on this night the suspect is not home. That�s OK. The soldiers find evidence that he has been there. The residents deny everything, before, after and despite the evidence being found. The soldiers turn the place upside down looking for more evidence. It is done deliberately, not maliciously. But the soldiers are unapologetic. Talk and they won�t have to do it. Household items come out of drawers. Boxes are pulled from cupboards and emptied onto the bed and floor. The soldiers need a good picture of the suspect, and they are going to get it if they can.
The interrogator - a female - is forceful. No one likes being lied to.
The suspect most likely gives the insurgents money if he doesn't pull triggers himself. The soldiers arrest two men at the house for not cooperating and denying what the evidence affirms.
The war in Iraq is, at the cutting edge here, two parallel wars. One is the war on the roadsides - the coping with small arms attacks and roadside bombs. This war is the hunt for the trigger man who has just set off a homemade bomb (some are actually quite sophisticated).
The other is this - tracking down information about the insurgents and their supporters, the people without whom the 20,000 or so insurgents cannot survive, the people who signal, finance, and support.
Soldiers say they already know who the bad guys are. Where they live. Its catching them is the tough part.
The soldiers leave eventually with about $850 in Iraqi currency. Is it a fund for insurgents, or the household savings in a country with a poor banking system? Who knows, that�s what interrogators are for.
They leave after about 3 hours, and 8 kids sleeping in a couple of the rooms still slumber. The soldiers searching inches from their reclining forms never even woke them up.

Day Patrol

2005-11-19T07:34:00.000+03:00

near LSA Anaconda, Balad Iraq
45 miles north of Baghdad
October 13, 2005
100-442 Infantry Battalion, US Army Reserve, Honolulu HI

A vendor in a small village near LSA Anaconda, a major US base near Balad, Iraq, used to sell grilled chicken to soldiers that came through on patrol. He doesn�t any more - the insurgents came and told him they would kill him if he sold any more chicken to an American. His stand is locked and quiet.
This is the Iraq war in a nutshell. Set aside the problem of quelling insurgents, or those stopping the activities of those people sympathetic to them and help them.
The problem in Iraq is how to assist the Iraqis who want to help Americans. How to let them help Americans or even interact with them without getting killed in the process. How to help Iraqis resist insurgents that come into their homes late at night and demand help. Or threaten to kill entire families if any of them so much as talks to the Americans.
Soldiers here say they need the regular Iraqis; they need them to supply the information that will enable coalition forces to track down and pick up insurgents.
As it is, these soldiers face roadside bombs (called improvised explosive devices or ied's every day). Often the soldiers find the roadside bombs lying there. Sometimes they go off, and sometimes when they go off they hurt someone. Sometimes when they hurt someone the soldier is hurt badly, and sometimes he (or she) is killed.
So Americans patrol the roads, tracks, villages and towns around here. Information does come in. they do catch bad guys. But it isn�t easy.

Today in Central Iraq

2005-10-13T08:30:00.000+03:00

This is central Iraq and it's warm and sunny here.

No rain, which is a vast improvement on conditions on the east coast.

More mortars, though.