Mini-CENTCOM security report. TF Olympia ~ Bump!
Soldiers making friends, not warMICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
MOSUL, Iraq -- Capt. Eric Molfino is making his way through his weekly meeting with community leaders in Qara Qosh, a town of 26,000 about 15 miles east of Mosul.
How are the police doing, he asks.
"Good, good," the mayor, Nisan Kharomi Razuky, says through a translator. "Except we have a big problem, sir: sheeps."
"Sheeps?" asks Molfino, commander of the Stryker brigade's anti-tank company.
"Sheeps," says the mayor. Others in the room nod in agreement.
Authorities in Muhallabiyah, a town of 6,000 about 20 miles west of Mosul, report the same thing. Shepherds are brazenly letting their flocks nibble away at the new wheat and barley shoots in the region known as the breadbasket of Iraq.
"The problem is whenever the mayor and police send them away, the come back again, leave, and come back again," Razuky says through an interpreter.
It's to the point that the locals want the U.S. Army to intervene - one more item on the to-do list for Stryker brigade troops assigned to work with the villagers and townspeople of rural Nineveh Province.
Soldiers from the brigade's 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment and Molfino's C/52 Infantry company are responsible for hundreds of towns and hamlets ringing urban Mosul.
Each day they head out of the city and mix with the country folk over chai, cigarettes, bitter coffee and cold soda. Some days, there are luncheon feasts of fresh veal, rice and vegetables.
"Maybe next time we'll have lamb?" Capt. Torrey Cady suggests to his hosts in Muhallabiyah, a tongue-in-cheek solution to their problem with the shepherds.
The police say they used to throw them in jail for six months if they let their flocks graze on crops, but since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime the shepherds don't fear the police anymore. These days the cops will haul a shepherd in for a few hours until he promises not to do it again, but that's not working.
So soldiers from Cady's A Battery and Molfino's company will likely take to the fields for a joint shepherd patrol or two with the Iraqi police. Whatever it takes to keep the peace.
On the organizational chart, the artillery battalion's dozen 155mm Howitzers represent the brigade's long-range, big stick firepower. The C/52 company, attached to the battalion now, has a fleet of Strykers equipped with anti-tank missiles.
But there's not much call for the big guns, and absolutely zero enemy tanks to kill. So the units have the job of making friends and building local government institutions. Instead of FA - field artillery - they're doing CA - civil affairs.
Three of the battalion's four battery commanders and Molfino each have a sector of the donut-shaped area of operations.
"It's the most challenging thing I've ever had to do in my (19-year) career in the Army," said Cady, 37, a veteran of the first gulf war, Bosnia and Kosovo.
The goal is to get the local leaders to run things on their own. But they're not there yet.
The Iraqis mostly look to the Americans to solve their problems. Officials say that's partly because after 25 years of Saddam's rule, there is a culture of dependency, but also because the Army and the U.S.-sponsored Coalition Provisional Authority still control most of the resources.
And brigade commanders believe the local leaders are scoping them out to see if they can get a better deal than they got from the 101st Airborne Division, which ran the region for 10 months.
"We're all going to be tested," said Lt. Col. Steve Sliwa, the 1-37 commander. "We're the new guys in town. ... They're going to push us for all that they can."
In Mosul they complain that they can't get Baghdad's attention. In the countryside it's Mosul they can't reach.
When the Americans ask the small-town mayors and council members if they've asked Mosul for more money, more medical supplies, more anything, they're usually met with an awkward silence.
These wheels might need grease, but they're not squeaking much - at least not to the Iraqis farther along up the chain of command.
They're not bashful, though, about telling the Americans what they want.
Cars. Trucks. More money. More people to hire. A fence around the gas station. New school buildings. Tables and chairs for their offices. Permits to carry weapons.
"They want and they want and they want," Molfino says on the way out to his weekly meeting with the council in Qara Qosh.
But to be fair, the local governments all must get their funding from the provisional authority in Mosul, and many of the local leaders complain that it isn't always provided on time.
For example, at his meeting Sunday in Qara Qosh, council members said the region's sanitation workers hadn't been paid for January. Then someone added the police hadn't been paid.
"OK, is anyone getting paid?" Molfino asks.
Heads shake. "La, la," they say - no in Arabic.
"OK, I will definitely ask about this," the captain says, writing himself a reminder in his notebook.
"We need money," says Mayor Razuky, in English.
Perhaps the oddest request of the day is for a weapons permit on behalf of a local priest.
"The priest?" Molfino asks, incredulous.
Indeed. The good father was robbed of several thousand dollars at gunpoint not long ago, and would like to be able to carry a weapon for protection.
Cady is a little apprehensive on his way out to Muhallabiyah on Monday. He was confronted by an angry crowd on his last trip, the week before. They were upset at how the town's 100 or so provisional authority jobs had been dispensed - even though the hiring decisions were actually made by the local leaders.
All is calm and friendly, though, when his convoy pulls up outside the town hall.
But as soon as they're in the mayor's office, they're shown 27 little slips of paper on which the names of 27 local men are purportedly written. The visiting Americans are invited to draw some of the slips, and watch and the Iraqis there draw some others - 20 in all.
The interpreter explains that this is how Mayor Abdul Razaq Ali Mohammed and the council have decided to fill their remaining 20 local government jobs.
Apparently the officials believe that having the visitors draw the names by lot will assure all that the selection was fair. Cady noted that for all he knows, each of the slips could've said Joe Blow - the names are all written in Arabic.
No matter. He and Sliwa, who's with him for today's visit, go along, and the matter is settled. They move onto other business, and like Molfino the day before, they spend the better part of the next two hours sitting and talking about one issue after another.
These meetings meander. There is no consent calendar here, no agenda - at least not a published agenda, anyway.
The town's budget from the provisional authority was $800 a month but now it's $400, the mayor says. He needs more to run the local government operations, let alone buy tables and chairs.
They're still counting on U.S. funding for a veterinary clinic, a fire station, a fence around the gas station, and help collecting the trash. A new school would be good, he and the council members agree.
The people in Muhallabiyah also don't understand why they don't seem to be getting as much from the coalition as other towns. There was looting and violence in those towns, he says, but nothing like what occurred in Muhallabiyah.
After a while Mayor Razaq awkwardly adjusts the holstered pistols under his suit coat. Given the wave of attacks on Iraqis who work with the Americans, he's clearly taking no chances.
Outside, the soldiers in Cady's battery chat in broken English and Arabic with the locals and pull security on their humvees and trucks. Sometimes the townspeople bring them something to drink, and it's a constant struggle to keep the kids at bay.
"Mister, mister, give me dollar," they say, but they'll settle for just about anything from the soldiers.
The C/52 Stryker drivers usually park their vehicles inside the walled compound at the Qara Qosh fire station to keep the youngsters from climbing all over them. Dozens of young boys perch on the wall and call out to the soldiers.
"Normally I like the kids," says Cady's humvee driver, Spc. Jonathan Muyet, wearily as he's driving out of Muhallabiyah, "but today I'm sick so I just told them to stay back."
Sliwa and Cady leave for another sit-down, this time down the street at police headquarters. There they are welcomed like long-lost brothers by Sgt. Maj. Ali Khan Abdel Rahman Said Alagha, a giant of a man and father of 18 children, all by his one wife.
Police say the area is calm. It's home to three tribes, and they all get along. The locals keep a sharp eye out for strangers - just the other day the police say they went to a house where three men from out of town were said to be staying. They brought them into the station for questioning, and let them go after a few hours when they were convinced they weren't troublemakers.
"If it wasn't would you tell us? Say if some bad guys move into Muhallabiyah, would you tell us?" Sliwa asks.
"Of course," says the chief, Col. Abdul Mohammed Aliaz.
He adds he could use a little bit of money - $100 or $200 a month - to make his office a little nicer, buy some tables and chairs.
But more than that, the police say they need money to hire cops. They've got 40, but with all the things the coalition forces want them to do - traffic control points, patrols, manage case investigations - they need 120, the chief says.
And police cars.
And there's the matter of the sheep. Sliwa tells them Cady will come back out in another few days to ride the countryside with the police and tell the offending shepherds to move back up into the hills where they belong.
"If that's the No. 1 problem, life here is pretty good," says Sliwa.
And then it's time for lunch.
The hosts put out a huge spread in the police station courtyard. The rank-and-file cops eat standing up at one end of the long table; the guests, the mayor and the police leaders are seated at the other.
Ahmed Younnis, a leader of one of the local tribes, from al Hamidani, learns he's dining with a sahafey Ameriki - an American journalist. He grabs another chunk of veal off the platter and plops it on the newsman's plate, and does the same with a torn-off hunk of flat bread.
He asks if the reporter can see for himself that there's no trouble here.
"Don't listen to the bad news they tell you about Arabs. Outside they are trying to tell you we are bad," he says. "But look here. We are Muslims. We are Arabs. We are friends.
"We want to live with you peacefully together without problems. Democracy. Freedom. We want that."
Staff writer Michael Gilbert is embedded with the Stryker brigade in Iraq. Reach him at mjgilbert41@yahoo.com. For regular reports on the Stryker brigade, sign up for an e-mail newsletter at www.tribnet.com/registration.
(Published 12:01AM, February 13th, 2004)
Spc. Jonathan Muyet attracts a crowd of boys while pulling security duty on a Humvee in Muhallabiyah, Iraq.
Wish these "do gooders" would stop raiding my stash...
(groan, smacks forehead)
Sounds like a real "quagmire" over there.
