Major K.

Iraqi Blogs

Many of you have commented that you enjoy hearing the real news from milbloggers like me rather than the MSM.  For the few of you that aren't already reading them, I must recommend the english-language blogs written by several Iraqis.  Their perpsective is invaluable.  My most recent and recurring favorite is Iraq the Model.  I have set up a section of links on the lower left of this site for you to check out a few of the better ones.  I will be adding to it frequently. 

The MRX

For the past 2 1/2 years, there have been several evolutions in building the new Iraqi Army.  It first started as the ICDC, then became what is now the Iraqi Army.  All over the country, this army has been being built from the ground up.  It started with basic training, where new soldiers were forged with better training than was given to the "Commandos" of the old regime.  By the standards of the former regime, every American Soldier would be considered to be "Special Forces" trained. 

These new soldiers have been built into squads and platoons, then eventually into battalions.  (A battalion is about 500-800 men.)  These battalions were just starting to come on line when I arrived in Iraq back in January.  Since then, several of these battalions have been combined into brigades.  Each of these battalions and brigades are at varying levels of proficiency and competence.  Some are running their own sectors of Baghdad with only a small American adviser team to continue coaching them. Others are still in their infancy, disorganized, and unable to conduct operations without being carried through it by American units riding along and doing most of the "heavy lifting."  All of these units were started at varying times and therefore have not had equal amounts of time to get their act together, so at this point, comparing any two Iraqi Brigades to each other is unfair.  I am currently on a team attempting to gather several of these brigades to form the 6th Infantry Division which will soon be the first operational division in the new Iraqi Army.  Our oldest brigade is our 1st Brigade, which has become quite the success story.  The other brigades are not up to their level yet, but I look forward to the day that they are. 

Right now we are in the midst of an MRX - Mission Rehearsal/Readiness Exercise.  It is basically a simulation of actual "battle management" to exercise the command and control abilities of the Division Headquarters and Staff.  I am currently running the LOWCON - Lower Control cell, where a group of soldiers and interpreters calls in events and submits status reports to the division HQ so that they can react, manage forces, and support the logistical requirements of their subordinate units on a simulated basis before having to do it the first time for real,  a dress rehearsal of sorts.  There are plenty of bugs to be worked out, but they are doing better than when we started two days ago.  We had a visit yesterday from a British Lieutenant Colonel who was getting ready to do the same thing with the Iraqi 10th Division south of here.  There are many disadvantages and frustrations in being the first ones to do this for the first division.  I hope he will benefit from our errors and snafus.  "Rome was not built in a day..."

Lost in Translation

The exchange of ideas can be a wonderful and fascinating process.  It can also be very painstaking and frustrating.  In training the new Iraqi Army, getting the message across is a very long and cumbersome process.  I spend most of my time training the Senior Officers of the General Staff of the 6th Infantry Division.  I am usually training men who are not only older than me, but of higher rank.  In this war, every soldier has to be a little bit of a diplomat sometimes.  I am now one most of the time. 

Back when I was with my Infantry Battalion, I dealt with Iraqis out on the streets from once to several times a week, but on average, most of my time was spent dealing with the soldiers of the battalion and pouring over data trying to extract actionable intelligence.  Back then, I also more often dealt with people from a position of trying to extract information, so the flow of ideas, was strictly one-way.  I was in receive mode, and my local Iraqi interpreters who had been doing the same thing in the same sector for two years, had become seasoned professionals, at knowing what I was trying to learn, helping me frame my questions appropriately, and translating the answers in the most efficient way possible given the line of questioning.

Now I am training Iraqi Colonels on the basics of American Military planning, tactics and leadership.  I am also using different interpreters.  They are all American citizen civilians, who are here one a one year contract with Titan Corporation.  Most of them are Iraqi expatriates who have lived in the US for many years, although one or two might be originally from Lebanon or Egypt.  Not only are they citizens but they have passed a security background check that is not required of the local Iraqi interpreters and are therefore given assignments such as this of a more sensitive nature.  While their english is better than most American-born college students nowadays, and their Iraqi Arabic is excellent, as civilians they do not speak military jargon very well.  As I struggle to learn the small amount of arabic that I have, they struggle to translate two languages into "militar-ese." 

The process of communicating as a teacher rather than an inquisitor-diplomat is much more challenging.  What would be a 2 minute converation between two english-speaking military officers or a 15 minute coversation working in an infantry unit through a local interpreter, becomes a 45 minute coversation going from english to arabic and back again through a civilian interpeter.  The process goes something like this:

American Officer tries to translate American militar-ese into english to his interpreter.

Interpreter translates the english translation into Iraqi arabic.

Iraqi Officer tries to translate the Iraqi arabic into Iraqi militar-ese.

This process is obviously not complete with only one volley, as each turn provokes questions and clarifications that are not only linguistic, but cultural.  The Iraqi military also has it's own way of doing things that is a whole other subject unto itself for another post.  The bottom line is that nothing in this process that the US military finds itself engaged in here is easy.  A two-page document translated from english into arabic still required a 90 minute conversation with one of the Staff Colonels here before he understood it, and it was already in his language.  I need to spend less time sleeping and more time studying arabic...

On the blink..

My Toshiba laptop is in the process of dying on me at the ripe old age of 10 months. The motherboard is failing to recognize the keyboard.  So, I just wanted to drop a quick line from the internet cafe here to say Salaam Alikumm.  I will type more later.

Backtracking Part III

There are many unusual tasks that can be assigned to infantry officers, and some of them are rather unpleasant.  Occasionally they are morbid.  About two weeks before changing jobs I came up in the rotation to do a "personal efffects inventory."  Several soldiers from the battalion had recently been wounded from another surge of IED's in our area, two of them bad enough to be sent home to recover.  While "out for the rest of the season" luckily they will both recover to full function.  One of them was a stranger to me.  The other, I knew, respected and liked.  So the task feel to me to go and unlock their barracks rooms, dig through all of their personal stuff, inventory it thoroughly, and pack it up to be shipped back to them in the USA. 

I was assisted by two soldiers from their company as it is a task that one does not want to drag out.  It proceeded with the usual military professionalism and respect, all the while feeling like we were violating their privacy by rifling through all of their stuff.  However, there is still the obligatory wise cracking between me and the soldiers as it helps to cover our sorrow.  The gear issued by the unit is separated out and redistributed.  Once completed, the effects are stored for later transport as I got to type up official documents to accompany them.  I had the easy part, I wasn't the one who would receive the effects.  It is a task that I hope I will not have to repeat as I hope it will not be necessary again.

Backtracking Part II

I have already seen plenty here that many people never get to see and some that no people ever should have to see.  I have also heard many stories that would be unbelievable if they were not true.  In many cases, I have seen the aftermath of many of these stories arriving after the part worth telling had taken place.  While Dup is still missed by his brothers in Charlie Company, there is another story from that horrible day that Dup was killed.  Dup was not the only one fired upon by the arhabi sniper.  A second shot was fired that hit SGT C. in the throat.  He was not grazed on the side, he was shot through the center of his neck.  SGT C. already knew at the time that his unit was under attack by a sniper.  As his men came to get him out of the line of fire he warned them to stay back.  He knew that one of them could be next, and he was unwilling to put his men at risk.  Well, they just wouldn't have it, and came forward anyway, pulling him back to a covered position where they administered first-aid and prepared to evacuate him.  Luckily, no one else was hit that day.  SGT C. was evacuated to the Military Hospital in the Green zone where he was pronounced the luckiest man in Iraq.  The sniper's bullet had passed through his neck and throat with an absolute minimum of damage.  It missed his carotid artery, jugular vein, spine, and spinal cord by millimeters.  He was offered the opportunity to fly to Germany and probably then on to the US to recuperate by the medical staff.  He turned it down.  He wanted to get back to his men and his brothers in Charlie Company.  While the news of Dup's tragic death made headlines in local papers back home, no reporter ever came by to learn about this.  They just regurgitated the military press release and called the family.  I could even give them a headline for the article: "THE RIGHT STUFF."

This is what it looked like...

About a week a go, we had a dust storm unlike any I have seen in the past seven months.  It was not quite a sandstorm as I could not feel myself being pelted with the large grains of sand.  It was the the fine powdery dust that gets into and all over everything.   We have had several of these since we got here, but never one as bad as this.  This time it was in the air as thick as any of the worst fog I had ever seen.  This first picture was taken at about 8am.  You will have to click on it and look closely, but there is actually a person standing in this picture.  He was standing about 30-40 feet away, and I could only make out his silhouette.  I knew something was out of whack that morning when I woke up and there was no light coming through my window.  I opened the door and stuck my head out into the brown pea-soup fog.  The other thing that I noticed was that the temperature was actually quite reasonable, maybe somewhere in the 80's.  I suppose having the sun completely blocked out will help even the worst heat waves.  This second picture was taken from about 75 feet away at 10:30am.  Visibility was was about 25 meters at best for most of the day.  This third picture was taken just before noon from about 30 feet away.  Most of Baghdad ground to a halt.   We, went about business as usual for the most part, but closed a few gates, and thought it wise to give our Iraqi counterparts the day off, as their commute was much longer than ours.  Even the US Media noticed when it caused the Constitutional Committee to take the day off.  Everyone on the FOB was wearing goggles and bandanas or dust masks over their face, and soldiering on.  As bad as it was, it was a nice break from the heat.  Although I was coughing crud up out of my lungs for two days afterwards.  Back to work...

The New Job.

As I mentioned earlier, I am now on a MiTT (Military Transition Team) training the Iraqi 6th Infantry Division.  It is a whole new set of challenges.  Dealing with the tribal/familial entanglements, the cultural differences and the language barrier are just a few.  The Iraqi supply and logistics chain is even worse than ours.  We are trying to stand up a Division Headquarters that will eventually control five Brigades in Baghdad.  Right now, only two of the five Brigades are operational.  The Division Headquarters is manned by less than half of the people that they should have.  The biggest problem right now is that we have the Senior Officers but not the complement of Soldiers, NCO's and Junior Officers that we should have.  It is a classic "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians scenario.  (I hope I don't get in trouble with the ACLU or the NCAA for using that analogy...) 

On a good note, my new boss, LTC D. (kneeling in front in the picture) and I got to visit one of the operational Brigades of the Division last week.  Compared to the not-yet-functional Brigade we worked with in the Nightstalkers, these guys were light years ahead.  We had the Division Chief of Staff and the G3 Operations Chief with us.  They are two of the better Officers in the Division Headquarters.  Seeing the Iraqi Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, known as the "Cobras," was heartening.  They were disciplined, professional and soldierly.  This, again, was a far cry from what I was accustomed to heretofore.  I figure if we can bring every unit in the Iraqi Army up to their standards, we can go home.  We can help, but it is ultimately up to them.  Another thing that I noticed was that their FOB was clean and in a fairly good state of repair.  Their Commander Brigadier General "J" was unabashedly proud of his unit, and he should be.  This is the Brigade that took back Haifa Street.  In fact, there were two guys there from the New York Times doing a story on the Brigade.  I kept my distance from them.

FINALLY! They are arguing over something important!

Republicans and Democrats are arguing over beer money.  I guess they are not as out of touch with their constituents as I thought...

Courage and Compassion Under Fire

About a month ago in an area of Baghdad not far from where I am now a little known engagement took place out in the street between an arhabi sniper team and a group of Soldiers from the Louisiana Army National Guard's 256th Brigade Combat Team.  They are appropriately known as the Tiger Brigade, and as someone who as served in the active Army in Airborne and Ranger units before coming to the National Guard, from what I have seen, these guys are pretty damned good.  This story is one example.  To my knowledge it has not made the MSM, but everyone around here knows about it.  I have omitted operational and TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) details for reasons of operational security:

During a routine patrol in Baghdad, these Soldiers were engaged by a sniper team.  Several shots were fired at the patrol.  One shot was direct hit center mass of the chest of one Soldier.  This Soldier fell, only to rise again immediately (probably cursing quite a bit) and returned fire in the direction of the sniper.  It was his lucky day.  Underneath his body armor, this Soldier had one heck of a large contusion on his chest, but the bullet did not penetrate.  Having identified the location of the sniper, the squad used fire and maneauver to close with the sniper team and capture them, wounding the sniper in the process.  Upon securing the location, the same soldier who had been hit in the chest, fell to stabilizing and dressing the wounds of the terrorist who shot him minutes before.  After loading the wounded sniper on to a MEDEVAC, they shifted into CSI mode, tagging and bagging all of the evidence of the attack, the weapons used and photographing the scene.  All the while they maintained 360 degree security against other attacks.  Their battalion section circulated a report on the engagement TTP's so that everyone could learn from it.

What composure.  What discipline.  What courage.  What presence of mind.  Being able to be around Soldiers is what keeps me in the Army.  I am amazed that I am allowed to wear the same uniform as this guy.