Christmas in Iraq

Wow, what a day we had yesterday.

It all started out about 11 PM (2300) on 23 DEC 08, we had to go up to Bagdhad to draw 2 new vehicles, replacing two of our 1st generation MRAPs. Because we were bringing two vehicles back and couldn't leave our old vehicles up there we had to hitchhike on a late night convoy up to Bagdhad and spent the night there. We ended up getting there about 4 am, and had to draw the vehicles at 0630, so really short night. The vehicle draw went just fine, the vehicles are the latest and greatest things for anti-IED protection and even had the new car smell to them.

After we had the vehicles, we decided to crash for a couple of hours, naptime in Iraq. Most of the major bases have transient quarters (tents with cots, mattresses and that is about it) set up for soldiers wandering around, so we just crashed in one of those. We had chow, and started to head on back to the country when we one of our new vehicles sprung a leak. It is kind of strange when you are up on a different base because you don't know anyone there and don't have your normal support units around. We lucked out though and found a maintenance unit that is attached to our parent unit (maintenance unit = HHC, 1st Battalion-6th Infantry Brigade; parent unit = 2d Brigade 1st Armor Division) and the mechanics there found the problem and fixed it in about 45 minutes, great support to be honest, we have been other places that didn't help us out as much.

We got back on the road and started to hustle back south because: Traffic can get pretty crummy about 5 PM, it was getting dark (crazy things happen at night and driving is a little more difficult at night) AND the General had Christmas Eve Dinner ready for us and our Task Force (1st Battalion, 35th Armor Brigade - - the TF 1-35 in my mailing address). For those of you that read my blog regularly (thanks mom, Julie, Melissa and Aunt Faye), you will remember that the General had been raising 4 turkeys for Christmas Dinner.

Before:

After (this is the big one):

It was actually a whale of a party, the General normally throws a pretty good feast, he had all of his staff and commanders there. We had the team and a lot of the TF 1-35 staff folks as well as the commander of the Task Force. Check out the decorations, the General went all out.

I gotta be honest though, I really wanted to go back to our building and crash. After the party we stopped off at the TF base and picked up mail, water and went on back to our side of the compound. In the mail we pretty much got Christmas: Most everyone got a package (thanks Dad and Sheri for the dried fruit, nuts and beef jerky) and Superman's wife (Mrs. Superman? Holly?) had sent each of us a present for Christmas, which was very cool and thoughtful. We also got some packages from OPERATION GRATITUDE, an organization that sends out holiday packages to soldiers that are deployed, pretty cool.

After that, we finally got to crash, and I slept til 9 AM on Christmas morning. Merry Christmas!

News and Notes

Target Number One has been captured, he was scooped up in a raid north of Bagdhad. We now have a new Target Number One, believe it or not he is supposed to be working at another Ministry. I am not sure what is up with that, but tribes and religions run deep here, one side may think that these guys are criminals while the other side thinks they are the next true patriot. The hard thing about a civil war is there are two sides, if you are on the wrong side at the end, it will be bad unless you happen to have lost to Abraham Lincoln, Douglas McArthur or someone with a reconciliatory mindset.


Yesterday was Smooth's birthday, even though he tried to deny it. You just can't hide from Army records yah know. We got him a cake, sung him Happy Birtday and made it a point to put an Iraqi fireworks candle on the cake. He was a good sport about it all, turned 37 which is about the average age on the team, only Savant is a bit younger.


I am attaching some other photos that I took recently. The one that I thought pretty much summed up the American Soldier's ability to sleep anywhere was this one. I have no idea who this person is, but he is pretty much dead to the world. He is racked out on top of his faithful HMMWV, in the motor pool while the whole world moves around him. There are vehicles being worked on, other vehicles being driven around, folks walking by but he is perfectly happy to just catch a few winks deep in his sleeping bag. Something like that you just figure he is where he is supposed to be, probably just got done with one of those all night sort of missions, had to stay up during the day to figure out the next day's mission and caught a break when he was told to take his vehicle to the motorpool and got a few minutes to catch up on his sleep. I think most everyone took his photo, including the Task Force Commander (LTC M) and even he just let sleeping soldiers lie.

Yesterday was also our first volleyball match against our National Police Brigade. I was not there, so I can't give a play by play analysis, but the 3-1 NP BDE takes their volleyball very seriously, we umm, did not take it as seriously. I had warned the guys that the national sport in Afghanistan was not soccer, but was volleyball, and that the General had told me that their team had been practicing regularly, so there was a bit of over confidence came into our game. The quote of the day came from 6.5: "We were in trouble when they showed up in uniforms." The first game was against one of the battalion teams, and we won. The second game was against the General's own team, and umm, it was close, but they beat us. I am pretty sure there will be a rematch.

Hmm, what to write, what to write . . . .

To be perfectly honest, there hasn't been an exciting or noteworthy event in the past couple of weeks. Not that I am complaining . . . . That means there have been no IEDs in the area (good job National Police), there have been no tribal scuffles (good job National Police and tribal leaders) and the Sons of Iraq are doing their job.

We have just got done with Eid, a huge Muslim holiday. It is a 4 day celebration, it started on Monday (if you were a Sunni) or Tuesday (if you were a Shia). Eid marks the end of the Haj to Mecca and is a family celebration based on Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Allah, at the last minute, Allah switched Abraham's son with a lamb as a reward for his faith. All across the Mid East, lambs were sacrificed and served up. The tradition is that part of the meat of the lamb goes to your family, part of the lamb goes to your neighbors and the rest of the lamb goes to the poor families that you know of. Beings how we are in the security business, there was a huge concern about security - - Eid is a 4 day period of celebration with a lot of large gatherings at mosques (kind of like Christmas and Easter for Christians - - if you aren't a regular church goer, those are the times you go to make up for the year of slacking) so even non-religious Muslims made their annual appearance at the mosque. Nothing happened in our sector. Most of the National Policemen went home to their families as did most of the insurgents.

Shoe Throwing

This was probably all over CNN or Fox or your news station of choice. Outside of someone getting off two shoes at the President without a fast Secret Service reaction, this was not a big deal to me (just shoes, and to be honest, the man did invade their country). The General was genuinely depressed. Backing up a day . . . the General knew George Bush was going to be in town before we did. We received an order to ask the National Police to clamp down on the two roads leading into Bagdhad that go through our AO. The only thing the order said was a "very, very important person" was visiting Iraq. When I called the General up the night before to ask him to increase his security, he asked me what was going on, I told him a "very, very important person" was visiting Bagdhad and he said " . . . Oh, is George Bush coming to visit again?". Next day, right there on CNN, George Bush was in Bagdhad. The man is smarter than me.

Back to the shoes, the general was very concerned about how the world would look at Iraq after the shoe throwing incident. I gave him the normal song and dance, no harm no foul, freedom of speech, these things happen from time to time . . . He said, yes, in the US these things can happen. In Iraq, the security for an event like this has to be extra intense and someone that had the idea to throw shoes at the President should not be allowed to even think about going in the room, especially because the world is watching. Despite being the man that sparked the invasion of Iraq 6 years ago, plunging this country into a very violent sectarian/civil war, George Bush is respected here for what he has done for Iraq.

The List

Every area of operations (AO) has a list of most wanted individuals. Some areas they are genuine insurgents on the list, some are just common criminals. On our list we have one genuine insurgent. Code Name: Target Number One. Each area has an Iraqi list and a US list, developed by each respective force. Over the past two weeks we have begun to compare lists and cooperate a lot more on arresting these individuals. The US list had Target Number One at the top of our list (naturally, he is after all Target Number One), the Iraqis did not have our Target Number One at the top of their list, but understood his importance to the US and over all security, so they moved Target Number One to the top of their list as well.

Yesterday, the General was summoned one of the Ministries to talk about some buildings that the National Police and US forces are using that belong to the Ministry. Interestingly enough, Target Number One has just gotten a cushy job at (yup) the Ministry. Jokingly, the General said he would have his guys go through the building and look for Target Number One, he was laughing a bit when he said it, so I didn't think he was serious. During the meeting, the General was really smooth, interacted with the Deputy Minister, cajoled, praised and pretty much had his way with the man. The meeting went from "You National Policemen and your ilk must leave our precious buildings" to "Of course you can stay in the buildings, why, we will even have our crew come in and clean them up for you." after about an hour. Pretty smooth on the Generals part, probably used the Jedi mind trick on the minister, I just didn't see him move his hand . . .

As we were leaving, the General was literally giggling as we waited for the elevator. I asked him what was so funny, he said "He wasn't here." Like a moron I said, "Who?" and he laughed and said "Target Number One". The whole time we were talking to the Deputy Minister his security detail was fanning out in the office building asking for Target Number One. When you think about it, it was kind of funny. A pile of National Policemen, armed to the teeth, travelling with a pack of Americans, also armed to the teeth and wearing a pile of body armor and radios, pulls up in front of a quiet, academic sort of building and goes on in with an Iraqi General no less. There you are, peacefully going over your bureacratic piece of paper, reviewing your TQC reports when in walks an Iraqi National Policeman who politey asks you if you have seen Target Number One. It was a good day.

Other notes:

I am resigned to my fate in fantasy football. I will probably finish near the bottom of pile, if not on the bottom of the pile. Tragically, both of my brothers in law will pass me up and I will have to listen to them for the next year. Next year I will draft some good wide receivers, will not fall for the lure of Terrell Owens, diversify my team a little and will check into some new players. Sigh. To think, last year I finished off in second place and now this.

Running:

I am up to 27 miles a week, over three days, on the treadmill. Normally a 7 miler on monday, a pack of intervals on Wednesday and long run on Saturday mornings. I will have to find a race sometime when I get back to see if I was able to maintain any sort of training form.

Dynamics and Condolences

Condolence Ceremony

Today was a Condolence Ceremony (I will post some pics in a few days) where the Coalition Forces make Condolence Payments to Iraqi civilians that have been affected by Coalition Force action. It is an interesting process where we work with the Iraqi National Police to allow civilians to make claims for damages - - their car was blown up during an airstrike, their house was damaged when we blew up an IED on the street, a member of their family was wounded or killed as a result of Coalition Forces action.

I was kind of expecting a lot of loud, angry emotion, but that was not the case. Most of the civilians were grateful that the Coalition Forces were around and understood that sometimes in conflicts like this accidents and mistakes happen. I was trying to imagine how this process would happen in the US - - it would probably involve lawyers, TV News and a lot of teeth gnashing and wailing, here in Iraq a father who's child was wounded by US mortar fire actually thanked the US for the action that took place and told us that he understood why the US was firing mortars. His final comment was he hoped that the insurgents were killed in the action and was happy his town was freed from terror. All in all there were 4 claims paid for today - - the wounded child, a car that was damaged, a husband that was killed and a gentleman that had his leg amputated. For the amputation and wounded child, the US evacuated the casualties to a US hospital for treatment. The wounded child was actually sent further back to Germany for specialized treatment.

Dynamics

This is something that has amazed me in Iraq, just the dynamics of getting something done here would overwhelm most folks. At the bottom of the dynamic heap is the family, in the US families are normally who is living in your house or apartment, maybe the kinfolk that are close to you. Here in Iraq the family is huge and members of the family remember what happened to that family 5, 10, 100, 1000 years ago and which family caused that event. One step above the family is the tribe. Each tribe is represented by a hierarchy of sheiks, some tribes are huge - 200,000 people, some are only a hundred or so. Some families may have members in different tribes.

The Tribal Support Council works out issues between tribes - - member of tribe A killed a member of tribe B, so some sort of reconciliation has to happen, that normally involves money. In a case like that there is an independent mediator agreed upon by the Tribal council who mediates the settlement. In Iraq families and tribes are old and are used to having the power to solve problems and the sheiks are the ones that have the power concentrated in their hands.

With the introduction of a representative government, the families and tribes are a little confused about who has the power. In the old days, the tribe would figure out how to get electricity to the village, now the government does that. Instead of the sheik giving his people a new road, it is the government that puts in the new road. There are also several layers of government - - Nahia (county), Beladia (city), regional and national government.

When you throw in religious affiliation (Sunni and Shia) it gets pretty frustrating. There are Shia and Sunni families, tribes and the government of an area will normally be dominated by one of the religious sects. So, if a Sunni Tribe isn't getting electricity from the Shia town council there will be a sharp discussion at a city council meeting. The idea of reconciliation is starting to sink in, but not real fast. So the Shia Town Council may just smirk at the Sunni Tribe leader and say " . . . Well, when your people were in charge, we were getting hosed, now it is your turn to get hosed." (That exact exchange happened at the Center City Town Coucil Meeting two weeks ago, Sheik Q brought up a road project that didn't extend out to one of his villages and the Town Council had no sympathy for him because the Sunni were in charge a few years ago). The theory is that after a certain amount of reconciliation, things will improve.

It will take a few years to figure out how all of the dynamics are working, until then there will be some minor frustrations and challenges, but nothing that can't be worked out.

Fantasy Football Update:

Team Fritz made out good last week, but Marion Barber was injured. I am not sure if Team Wade has him or not. I need Drew Brees and David Garrard to throw the ball to the right team this week and things should work out ok.