Thanksgiving with the Sheiks, Army Style

The Army goes all out for holidays when you are deployed. I remember in Haiti we would fly Thanksgiving Dinner to all of the teams in our sector, hang around for them to eat it, load up the turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pies and fly to the next team. Here in Iraq all of the chow halls have an unofficial competition to outdo each other on Thanksgiving. There are a ton of decorations, cakes, food sculptures and other food related paraphernalia (see the pictures, honest).

Thanksgiving started off with a Tribal Sheik meeting which was pretty, ummm, entertaining. All of the powerful tribal sheiks in the area got together to talk about local issues and how things are going, most of the times these folks get together they are pretty tame, this one got a little heated towards the end of the meeting. Most of the sheiks have warrants out for their arrests, but nobody enforces them - - - all of the warrants against the sheiks are sworn out by enemies of one tribe or another, one sect or another or just someone that doesn't like what the sheik is doing for his tribe. Pretty interesting, I will have to write about tribal justice later on. Anyway, all of the sheiks agreed that false accusations must stop and they would work to stomp out false accusations. After the pleasantries, folks started to really get into it, I kept getting flashbacks to the scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where the sheiks are all trying to decide how to rule the lands they had just taken from the Turks, throw in the confusion of interpreters and you have pretty much sheik overload. The General looked at me a few times and just chuckled. He gave the best speech of the day, he told folks they should look at themselves honestly, work hard to secure the area from insurgents, help Iraqis that have been displaced by the civil war to come back and support the Status of Forces Agreement, pretty enlightened.

After we were back in his HQs he talked to me about the dynamics of the Tribal Council. Basically, they are wise, but not highly educated, they understand their tribe and it's structure, but have problems seeing the whole of Iraq. I always enjoy talking to him about such things.

After the Tribal meeting, we had the traditional Army Thanksgiving meal, 1 each. All of the Sheiks dug in as did the security force leaders. One of the best ways to cement relationships is to eat together, if you eat with an Arab, you are on his good side for life. If you host him at your table, he remembers that.

Speaking if Internally Displace Personnel. . . . . Saturday was our next meeting and it focused on a small village to the north of North City. The village is basically rubble, but folks want to move back to their homes and get restarted. The General hosted another sheik council, a smaller one than the Thanksgiving one, just sheiks from the area around the village, and again, there was a lot of talking, but not much. The meeting started off with the usual pleasantries - - - folks are happy that the environment was so secure and they could begin to think about families moving back into the area. After about 45 minutes of small talk, the three main issues leaked out: Outlaws (insurgents from the area) must be captured, there must be social reconciliation and someone has to pay for all of this. After the three issues came out, there was an agreement for another three meetings on the subject. Long process, lots of talking . . . .

At each of these meetings the General normally turns to me and asks me to provide some coalition words of wisdom. The guys on the team have started to score my speeches on a scale of 1-10, they thought today's was an 8, I recognized a teenager in the crowd (a sheiks son, who was bored stiff) and told them that it was great that the younger generation of Iraq was being allowed to see how the new Iraq was going to be formed, with wise men working with the local government and the security forces to help people start their lives back. That bit of recognition apparently moved me from a 7 to an 8. Now that I know I am going to be scored, I will try to be more eloquent.

Other notes: The Huskers played a wild one, my Heisman vote is going to Alex Henery, 6'2", 175 lbs. sophmore kicker from Omaha Burke. He kicked a 57 yard field goal to put the Huskers ahead of the buffaloes 33-31. The Blackshirts sealed the deal with an interception return for a touchdown at the end of the game, and then sacked the heck out of Cody Hawkins on colorado's last series. Final score: 40-31. Pretty sweet game, even if I had to stay up to 3 am to watch it.

Fantasy Football: Team Fritz is off to a blazing start - - Brian Westbrook had 4 TDs, the Tony Romo offense was clicking and Dallas's defense finally showed up and held someone to less than 10 points.

News and Notes

Pretty interesting week this past week, we did our first night mission with the National Police and are getting ready for the holiday season.

The night mission was targeting three individuals with outstanding warrants for terrorist activities. That is the cool thing about the Brigade we work with, they only target individuals that have warrants. In years past, they could arrest anyone without really having any evidence, now that the General is using warrants, he has a lot of credibility with the people of the region, as well as the government, folks can't accuse him of being heavy handed or sectarian, it was the judge, enforcing the law, not the National Police, we are just doing our duty. The mission was to go after three terrorist suspects, the best time to go after folks is after midnight, that way you know they should be in their house. The National Police have gotten very good at this, they politely knocked, asked for the gentleman that had the warrant and looked around the house some for evidence. Unfortunately, the guy wasn't there and his mom said he was innocent (of course she would say that, all mom's believe their kids are angels).

The other two warrants were in a small town that we can't go into with out vehicles (very low hanging electrical wires). Technically, we could go into the town, but we would pull down every electrical wire in the town, and not make many friends. We have pulled a few down and it is quite spectacular when we do, especially at night: Huge sparks, puffs of smoke, that electrical smell in the air. Pretty cool, but not a good way to win the hearts and minds. After we had done this we asked the National Police about it they told us that the townspeople were pretty good at putting the wires up and that they get pulled down a lot by other things, not just the coalition forces.

Overall, we were 0 for 3 on arrests that night, but we got to see how the National Police operate at night and how they used the warrant system to their advantage.

Other team notes:

Every time we meet a sheik, he insists on inviting us to lunch or dinner, which as you know makes the team quake with fear. I will talk to the general about all these invites (he is normally with us) and see if he intends to take the sheiks up on it. I know it is part of their culture to invite folks, but as a cheapskate, I know they have to pay money for it and don't want to put them out, and I know the team will dread it.

This is Thanksgiving week, marking the official start of the military holiday season. If I were back at Bragg, it would be pretty sweet. Football/Lunch with Mike, Mary, Rachel, Kris and Mike's parents (Mary and Bob) as well as the most spoiled dog in NC, Dixie. We would follow that up with a Survivor session (it is on a Thursday, yah know). After that, the Huskers would square off with the buffaloes on Friday, and there would be a solid weekend of football on TV.

Here, it is a bit different: I am taking the General and two of his colonels to Thanksgiving Lunch at one of the larger Army dining facilities, then coming back here to eat dinner with my team and the neighboring unit to the south of us in their dining facility.

I explained Thanksgiving to the General, he was kind of interested in the whole pilgrim/Indian dynamic, the legend of the first meal, etc. When I told him about the turkey, he got an idea. His unit went out and bought 4 turkeys for us to have, they are walking around his compound getting fattened up. I asked him if we could save them til Christmas and he agreed. I explained Christmas to him (the Santa Claus legend) and we named the turkeys Santa (the largest one), Mrs. Claus (the female one) and the smaller two are called elves. Should be interesting.

Fantasy football update:

I picked up ten points on Wade, thanks to Drew Brees and Tony Romo having huge days, if David Garrard and Aaron Rodgers would have thrown the ball to their own teams I would have almost caught him. Team Mark is somewhere in between us, so, if I catch Wade, I will pass up Mark. Should be a good finish.

Husker notes:

Nobody will take a bet on colorado, so they must be respecting the Huskers a bit more. Should be a good game, I hope the Huskers get the W, 8-4 sounds soooooo much better than 5-7 (last year's results).

Pop's Birthday

OK, I blew it, again. Pop turned 68 yesterday (17 NOV 08 - - born in 1940, Pittsburg, KS) and I forgot to even send him an email.

I have a few pictures of dad, and one of the famed Arch in Kearney, Nebraska. The Arch goes over I-80 but is more of a museum of Nebraska's role in the United State's migration west. It covers the early pioneers, the railroad period and the building of I-80. It is one of the adventures me and pop went on. Probably one of the easier adventures, but an adventure none the less.

Some of the other good ones were: Family vacation to FT Robinson, MT Rushmore, the Blackhills of South Dakota and all points in between. A canoeing trip to the Charles L. Somers Wilderness Canoe base, a Philmont trip, a hiking trip along the Penine Way in England (including walking along Hadrian's wall and visiting the HMS Victory - - Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar where I stood on the section of deck where Nelson was shot. For the record, that was a pretty special trip), and about a million diving trips to the coast of South Carolina (not that good, thought he was a goner in the missile tube and on the wreck with all of the fish), Key West (OK), Cozumel (thought he was a goner in the currents, I always practiced the speech I would give the rest of the family when I came back from a dive trip without him, but he always came up), a couple of other carribean trips and a ton of trips to Roatan.

Me and Pop, adventuring in Cozumel.

Good shot of Pop getting ready to dive (just take the damn picture, will yah?).

Pop on the beach in Cozumel.

Hummingbirds in Roatan, never would have seen those unless you would have gone down there the first time, dad.

Pop, doing what he does best, finding little things on the reef.

Anyway Pop, I am glad you came up those times, life wouldn't have been as much fun without you. Happy 68th, and I look forward to many more birthday's that I forget.

Electricity and Water

Electricity and Water . . . . those were the two main complaints at the Northern City Council meeting yesterday. I was attending with the General yesterday, they are trying to lure internally displaced personnel back to a small village north of Northern City and the local sheiks requested he come to the meeting and discuss the security plan. The meeting started off with a recitation of all the projects that the city council wants to have done, water and electricity were the highlights of that list. I was feeling kind of bad because those are not easy things to do, and the city council has to try to take them on. In this region everything has to flow out of Bagdhad, including electricity and water. During the Saddam years Northern City was pretty much ignored, wrong party, wrong religious affiliation, bad location, etc. After 30 years of isolation, folks want to see things go their way right off the bat. For anyone that has an engineering sort of mind, or a basic understanding of water and electricity distribution, you know that is hard stuff to do (how do you establish and electricity grid in the middle of nowhere?), never mind the fact that there are no local public utilities organizations or corporations and your nation is 30 years behind the power curve and challenged in a million different ways.

Dealing with sheiks is kind of interesting, they lead a different sorts of lives. They are the head of their local tribe and have responsibilities to the members of that tribe. This is pretty much in competition with the local government, but not really. They know that they have to work with the local government in order to bring things to their tribes, so they maintain a careful balance between trying to be the tribe provider and talking down the government, and then working closely with the government. I think that most Iraqi government folks are used to the double sided nature of the sheiks, it is kind of difficult for Americans that are used to a smoothly operating system (trust me, it is) to understand the nature of getting stuff done around here.

After the town council meeting up north, we went down to South city to check up on some Sons of Iraq checkpoints that were involved in a firefight last night. The checkpoints are right on the boundary line between the National Police Brigade I work with and an Iraqi Army unit. The insurgents know where all of the boundaries are and are actively probing them to see if there is a weakness they can exploit. Last night they were firing from the Iraqi Army side at the SOI checkpoints to see their reaction and probably to get the SOI to shoot at the Iraqi Army checkpoints. Kind of devious, luckily nothing happened and the SOI took care of themselves.

We finished the day off by patrolling along the Diyalla River (one of the rivers that feeds the Tigris), it would be a nice drive, except for the fact this is Iraq and folks have been fighting for 6 years, there has been about 20 years of neglect and lack of services and the area is pretty poor. There were some really nice houses along the river, but they were run down from hard living. I would say that I would like to come back in 10 years and see how things look, but I seriously doubt I would want to leave the comfort and convinience of the US to come and see if Iraq has turned around.

Fantasy Football update: I probably won't be updating Fantasy Football for a while, putting all of my eggs in the Cowboy offense basket, making some bad trades early in the season pretty much doomed me to the basement.

Husker update: Smooth is now wearing my Special Forces tab and 6.5 pulled my radio watch last night. Nobody wants to bet on the Colorado game dang it.

OK, back to work here. I am having technical difficulties with the picture uploading, but I will figure that out.

Hatchet Job

The enemy of the people of Iraq is crafty and well placed. The battalion commander of the Northern Battalion was suddenly and suprisingly transferred to a border battalion (same as being sent to Siberia in the old Soviet days). There are two schools of thought on why this happened: 1. He was not towing the political party line (each of the Ministries is basically ran by a political party here) or 2. He was too effective. Either way, he was a patriot to the people of Iraq, and in only a month on duty in the Nothern city he had made some pretty good strides with clearing operations, operations with the Coallition Forces and had made some key insurgent arrests. I suspect the reason was he was too effective and one of the insurgent leaders talked to his buddy that was planted in the ministry and had him moved out of the Northern city. The general tends to agree with me and has noted that the insurgency is not only a shooting war against an enemy that won't fight, but is now an administrative war against an enemy that is well placed in the Government of Iraq.

That was how the week started off, we found out that the battalion commander had been transferred, it was supposed to be a great week with the SOI Pay Plan finally going into effect, but it started off badly.

We went and checked out each of SOI Pay Sites and were pleasantly suprised that every thing was going as smoothly as things in Iraq go - - there were no angry mobs, no disgruntled employees and the National Police was at its best. The enemy attempted to disrupt the operation by placing an IED in front of one of the SOI Pay Sites, but a sharp-eyed National Police Lieutenant spotted the IED and called in the bomb squad to blow it in place. There are two more days of paying to go, I think everything will go smoothly.

The IED marked the third IED that has been planted in our area of operation, all three of them were planted within a few kilometers of each other in the Middle Battalions Area of Operation. This was a bad sign for the Middle battalion commander. Yesterday afternoon the general stopped by the the Middle battalion commander's headquarters and gave him a royal ass-chewing, Iraqi style. Basically he told him to get him and his men out of the headquarters and get after the insurgents: Patrol, clear, keep them off balance and out of his sector. One more IED on one of his roads and it will be bad.

I really wish that Middle battalion commander would have listened. The general went out this morning to see if his orders were being followed, and they weren't. We patrolled through the Middle Battalions area of operation, stopping at most of the checkpoints and talking to some of the Sons of Iraq. Unfortunately, we didn't see any patrols. Middle Battalion Commander got a second visit from the general, it went about the same way the first visit went. I suspect we will be checking up on Center Battalion again here soon. More to follow.

Team notes: The team is starting to catch onto something: If we are near one of the headquarters (either one of the battalions or the brigade headquarters) around mealtime, we are going to get drug into the dining hall. I picked up on this and have started to time our visits so that we won't get caught near one of the headquarters at lunch. The devious Iraqis have figured this out as well and have shifted the lunch hours around. It is funny, I will be in the general's office about 2 PM, thinking we are safe, and he will announce that it is lunch time and we should eat with him. My guys, meanwhile are hiding in the vehicles, hoping they won't get drug into the meal. The devious (and generous) Iraqis figured this out and take some of the food out to the vehicles and eat with my guys out there. Kind of funny.

This morning we got trapped in a breakfast situation. After going out on patrol we stopped by Middle Battalion Headquarters, where the general lit into that commander again. I thought we were free and clear, but even after getting chewed out by the general, Middle Battalion Commander invited us to breakfast, amazing.

Fantasy Football update: Team Wade had a huge weak, I had a whimper of a week. I hope Tony Romo is the savior, I am in serious danger of being passed by Mark.

Husker bet update: With a Husker victory over kansas, balance to the universe is returning, and I won the first of my three bets. With a Husker victory over the wildcats of kansas state this weekend, I will win the other two.

Blog note: I installed a site visitor meter, it counts how many people visit my site, I am almost up to a thousand visits since I deployed, pretty interesting statistic. If you click on the sitemeter at the very bottom of my blog, it will give you all the statistics of who visits (location,, time, duration of visit, etc.).

What have we been doing?

This has been a pretty busy week, plus there is a wicked stomach thing going around and I caught it, so I haven't had too much time to blog.

We are still working on the SOI Pay Plan, I think the plan is in place and we brief all of the Generals later on today. Just imagine having a 3,000 man work force that just shows up on your door and now you are responsible for all of the administrative paperwork that goes along with it. Also imagine that you don't have the internet, a database, a computer, no checking system, no banking system and you have to track paying those 3,000 people in cash, by hand, with a pen and paper. That is the challenge facing the National Police these days. Previously, the Coalition Forces just gave a stack of money to the SOI leaders and let them take care of it. Now the Government of Iraq has absorbed the SOI into the Iraqi Security Forces and has taken over paying the sofwah and wants to do it straight to the individual, not to the leaders. Gonna be an interesting week next week when all of this goes into effect.

We also had a small ceremony to honor three Iraqi Patriots - - One of the National Policemen that was killed in the line of duty and two that were wounded. I thank my lucky stars everyday that I am in the US Military, as bad as folks think our veterans get treated, it is 1000% better than any other program. In the US, there is the Veteran's Administration as well as the Military Medical system to take care of wounded vets, and if everything goes wrong, you can call your congressman up, here, NOTHING. Basically, the wounded soldiers are given a pat on the back, a letter explaining that they weren't terrorists and they were in the National Police, a few dollars and they are sent on their way. One of the wounded guys had lost the use of both of his legs and the Iraqi government couldn't even scrape up a wheelchair (we think we have one coming from one of the US hospitals). Kind of sad.

We also executed a large operation designed to keep the insurgents off balance - - clearing an area that was suspected to be an insurgent stronghold, confiscating weapons and showing the National Police treating folks correctly. Very big deal. So, it has been a busy week.

In our AO there are three larger cites: One down south, one in the middle, and one way up north. From now on, I will call them South, Middle, North. Each of the cities has a National Police Battalion stationed in it and they are working on countering the insurgents in that area. Each of the National Police Battalions has a Coalition Force company working with it, so there is a pretty good relationship. Here next week, each of the NP Battalions will be absorbing several hundred SOI sofwah each, so they will be very busy, the first step is paying them, and then figuring out how to do everything else.

Husker Notes:

The Huskers are currently 5-4, with losses to respectable teams: virginia tech, missouri, oklahoma and texas tech. There are three games remaining against kansas, kansas state and colorado. Some of the Nebraska haters on the team have made a bet with me about how the Huskers will finish off. One of them (Superman) does not believe the Huskers will win another game and bet a pound of peanut M&Ms on it. 6.5 thinks they will only win one other game, as does Smooth. When the Huskers win 7 or 8 games I will win: One pound of peanut M&Ms, Smooth will be wearing my Special Forces combat patch for a week and 6.5 will be pulling my next shift of radio watch.

Fantasy Football:

Team Wade pulled a little closer and may get even closer or pass me this week: The Cowboy's, who are the basis of my fantasy football team, have a bye week. After that though, Tony Romo comes back. It will be an interesting finish.

Final note:

New pictures have been posted. They cover us leaving Kansas, going to Kuwait, going from Kuwait to Taji and our first few weeks here. Let me know what you think.

First Post in November

November, new month . . . .

Things are going ok here, nothing too special, interesting week though.

Most of Iraqi society revolves around the meeting. There is no good phone network, no internet, no good way to communicate outside of the face to face communications, so, I go to a lot of meetings. This week we met with the Iraqi Security Force leaders - - National Police, Iraqi Police, Emergency Response Unit - - to go over local security concerns, especially the second IED that went off last week.

Our next meeting was a formal meeting with the Sons of Iraq (SOI) leaders where they voiced a lot of concerns about the SOI being absorbed into the local security structure as part of the National Police. Their main concern is who is going to take care of their everyday needs. Outside of a pay plan, there really aren't a lot of plans for the other things a security force needs - - food, fuel, uniforms, vehicles, communications systems, checkpoint construction materiel, etc.

This will be a trying time for the SOI, especially the leaders. In Iraq the leader is everything and in order to get his followers to follow him he either bullies them (Saddam) or is benevolent to them, gives them stuff, uniforms, ammunition for their weapons, intercedes on their behalf with local government, etc. The SOI leaders have traditionally provided everything for the SOI so they follow him. Prior to 1 OCT 08, the SOI leader was paid by the coalition forces for each of his SOI, the SOI leader then paid his SOI soldiers (sofwah). Of course this was very beneficial for the SOI leader, he could skim a certain amount off the top for each sofwah and provide stuff for the sofwah. Now, the NP is paying the sofwah, and the SOI leaders are cut out of that picture, so there is a lot of turmoil and ruffled feathers.

After the big meetings, we had a break of sorts - - It was my general's birthday and also the day that one of our units was doing some tank training on the range here. So, we coordinated for our general to get a couple of shots on the tank. Pretty cool day, the Iraqis had some of their T-72 (Soviet era) tanks on the range firing right next to US M-1 Abrams tanks (pictures to follow, I swear). Right off the bat, you could see the huge difference between the tanks - - the US tank was HUGE, the T-72 was kind of small, the T-72 could not shoot on the move, the M-1 can, the T-72s sighting system was an antique and the M-1s sights were state of the art. Firing the tank was a big deal to my general, he was beaming from ear to ear when he got on and got back off, pretty cool.

We also had a small birthday party for the general, pretty cool event. He is actually a year younger than me, but looks about 5 years older. Rough life here in Iraq.

About my general: He started off in the Army as a tank platoon leader and worked his way up the chain the hard way - - by earning it. In Iraq the traditional way to make rank is to use family and tribal connections to advance anywhere. My general go there through hard work so he has no real tribal allegiance or family connections. He was a tanker in the Iran/Iraq war and I suspect in Desert Storm I and on the wrong side during this war. He was asked to come back into the military structure 3 years ago an has been kicking ass for those three years. I am kind of proud to be working with him.

About Iraqi Law:

This is a huge challenge for Iraq. There are actually two types of law here: Regular Iraqi Government Law and Tribal Law. Regular might say one thing, but Tribal law trumps it. Case and point: One local leader here in Iraq has been accused of murdering another local leader's brother in law. Now, in the US, there would be some sort of police investigation, the results of that investigation would be presented to someone and an arrest warrant would be issued. That is the way that the Iraqi government wants things to work, but tribal law trumps it. What the general wants to happen is to have the big sheik in the area meet with the sheiks from the two leader's tribes and "work" this out. I am not sure how that would be worked out, but things have to be worked out in order for the country to progress. In other nations that have faced civil wars there have been reconciliation efforts that have taken huge efforts to get folks like this to forgive and forget. Here in Iraq that will be a tough thing to do.

Husker update:

My beloved Huskers took it on the chin in Norman oklahoma. The sooners put the hurts on us this weekend, 62-28. I didn't watch the game (it wasn't on tv here), but I read about it - - three early turnovers led to a 28-0 lead early on. That is hard to overcome. I think the Huskers are still on track for a bowl game and maybe 7 victories this year.

Fantasy Football update:

The Romo-less team Fritz somehow scraped up enough points to pad my lead over Team Wade. Thanks to Drew Brees, David Garrard, Clinton Portis and my legacy pick Ricky Williams for coming through this week. Now if TO could just get back on track I would be good to go.