Election Victory and Other Notes

Wow, it has been almost two weeks since my last post, we have been busy as all get out helping our unit get ready for the election. I am hoping that you all have read about the election, the criticality of it to Iraq's future and how it marks a turning point in the countries history. From our little corner of the country it showed that peace and security have defeated violence, the people want to move on and the National Police unit here is a very respected institution. I honestly hope that folks that got elected can get some momentum towards solving the real problems in Iraq: Basic services that a well funded government should provide to it's people - - Clean water, electricity and sewage removal. If you read modern Iraq's history it is littered with governments that did not get that message or were not given enough time to get those things moving for the population.

This was the Provincial election. The parties and candidates elected during this election will fill provincial councils (state and county government positions), mayor and city council positions and they are supposed to be given local budgets for projects. This is a first in the country, prior to this all money flowed from Bagdhad - - if you wanted something done in your town you had to go the big city, figure out the bureaucracy and fight for the money. I honestly hope this is different. Iraqis are really good people, I haven't met one that strikes me as mean or evil, I am sure there are a few out there, but the ones that I see pretty normal.

Election Notes:

There were 54 polling sites in 33 schools (some schools had 2 or 3 polling sites). Every Iraqi that is eligible to vote had to take his or her ration card and national ID card to their designated polling site and vote. After they voted they folded their ballot, put it in the big box and stuck their finger in purple dye, signifying that they had voted. It was interesting to see ladies in their abyah (the head to toe black dress muslim women wear here) sporting their purple fingers.

The weeks prior to the election (I gave this run down to pop) we attended about a million meetings and rehearsals with every Iraqi general that outranks BG E. At each one the huge difference between old Iraq and new Iraq showed. Old Iraq, some ancient general would stand up and drone on and on and on about minuscule things - - make sure soldiers check voters, we need your full participation, blah, blah, blah, stuff you would expect from an old style figurehead executive that didn't know what else to say and was out of touch with the reality of his job and the soldiers he was supposed to lead.

New Iraq, BG E, would stand up at these meetings and give a complete rundown of his polling sites (54 polling sites, 25 in North City, 29 in and around Center City), exactly how his soldiers will secure the sites (occupy the sites, take the roofs around the site, search every house in the vicinity of the polling sites, ask the people to remove all vehicles from around the site, use concrete barriers - - about 350 of them - - and concertina wire - - 600 rolls of it - - (good job Sprint, SFC R and XO on getting all of that to the NP on time) to seal off the sites and get the voters in line and organized, one line for males, one line for females, both lines going through the metal detectors (which his soldiers were trained by Superman and 6.5 on how to use and employ), searches by hand if there were any questions. He was ON IT.

Old Iraq rehearsals consisted of calling all officers to Bagdhad and going over the same list of information that they went over at the last rehearsal, then having lunch. New Iraq rehearsals consisted of BG E driving to each polling site last monday, walking through the site with the LT or CPT in charge of the site giving guidance and generally raising hell if things weren't moving in the right direction. One poor LT reported to BG E without his helmet and weapon - - fired on the spot, big mistake. The rest of the LTs for the rest of the day all had their weapons and helmets. BG E reviewed everything - - commo plan "LT, get on your radio and call your headquarters right now . . . " medical plan "where will you take any casualties if the enemy gets an IED past us?" "why does your ambulance only have half a tank of gas? how can you take care of the citzen's of Iraq like that?". During the first rehearsal he pretty much tore it up.

Second rehearsal (friday before the election), thing were squared away. His BN CDRs had spent time with their soldiers, LTs and CPTs were ready and things looked as good as Iraqi's can make them look. New Iraq went around and encouraged his soldiers, asked them if they needed anything ("Saedi, my vehicle doesn't have enough fuel right now, my BN ran out . . ." Saedi (the term of respect in Arabic, like Sir in English) looked at his S-4 and told him to get more fuel for the trucks. No yelling, just encouragement. Just like the football coach before the big game, tear it up all week, build it back up at the end when things look good. I didn't have to do a darned thing, outside of telling him he was doing the exact right thing, and get more fuel for the S-4 that knew Old Iraq bureaucracy would probably tell him no (Sprint and the XO made this happen).

Day of the Election

New Iraq, BG E, was visibly nervous. First of all, his first line boss, Major General Q, was camped in his office, holding court. BG E wanted to get to work, but when the boss is in your office you have to be nice. MG Q was doing battlefield circulation (moving around, checking things out). BG E snuck out of the room to "go check on something", about 10 minutes later I left also, BG E was up in his operations room with two cell phones and his motorola smoking, pretty much controlling the fight. It was pretty awesome to watch, about 30 minutes later other folks wandered up to look for him, MG Q wanted to go up to Norhtern City, BG E let him know that he was going to stay at the BDE HQs and take care of a few things. MG Q got the hint and left, BG E went back to his cell phones and kept doing what he does best. After MG Q left, BG E calmed down a lot. He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon travelling around with a news crew from Iraq that wanted to do some interviews (BG E loves being on TV, btw, I call him the rock star), after touring around Central City (where most of the Shia population in the AO lives, and was prior to last May a hot spot) we came back to the HQs where everything was really calm and quiet. Of course Saedi was on pins and needles, hoping that everything would go right and the insurgents wouldn't sneak one by his boys, but everything was ok. The prime minister lifted the vehicle movement ban so more voters could get to the polls, and extended the voting window for one one hour so more folks could vote. After 1800, with no incidents, the only thing left to do was get the ballots back to Bagdhad, which happened this morning at 1130.

Victory picture:

LTC M, my coalition counterpart and BG E's partner unit commander stopped by at the end of the day. His guys had been out for the past 3 weeks working with the National Police to make sure the sites were secure, helping the units out anyway they could - - combined patrols, even more concertina wire, coaching, teaching and mentoring. There might be a few units better than TF 1-35 Armor, but I can't imagine that. Piece of cake to work with, they love the mission and respect BG E and his BDE as much as we do. Anyway, he stopped off at the end of the day and we took a victory picture, commemorating the great day.

All in all, 66, 724 folks in our AO voted out of about 100,000 eligible voters. 66% voter turnout in a truly landmark election. Take a couple of minutes to read about the election somewhere, it was incredible to be a part of, I was very proud of my team, and to be associated with the NP for this event.

Other notes:

Caprice Classic update - - these things are everywhere. We were out in the sticks (Northern City) and saw a beat down old one, so even out next to nowhere, there are Caprice Classics.

Superbowl Prediction:

Neither the Cardinals or Steelers are on my list of teams to cheer for - - Pittsburgh because they took it to Roger Staubach and the boys in the 70s too many times and the Cardinals (huh, what? did the rest of the NFC just lay down and quit?). I guess if I had to make a pick it would be the Steelers, after they sack Kurt Warner about a million times.

Caprice Classics, the Rest of the Story

I had a talk with Sheik Q at a meeting with the US Commander of the Bagdhad Province (more on that later) about Caprice Classics. According to him, the Caprice Classic was THE car of choice in Iraq several years ago. Now, it is a second tier car because they are older, hard to get parts for and get very poor gas mileage. The last part, the gas mileage, threw me for a loop, even though Iraq is sitting on oceans of oil, getting gas is hard here, just like everything else. There is no distribution system, few refineries that produce gas and the black market is huge. Even though it is a second string car, we saw 16 of them in a couple of mile stretch of highway that we travel on regularly. That is a lot of Caprice Classics, I will try to get a few photos of them. Sheik Q, for the record, drives a Chevrolet Envoy, he says it is ok, but not as powerful as the Caprice.

Reconciliation Round #3

Reconciliation was breaking out all over our region, there were two huge reconciliation meetings this past weekend, and the mother of all reconciliation meetings is this afternoon at the General's headquarters. The team asked me why reconciliation was such a big deal, I pointed at the map. If you look at Bagdhad it is broken down into several chunks, each chunk of terrain is controlled by a US Task Force partnered with an Iraqi Brigade (either Iraqi Army or National Police). When I read through the significant activities (SIGACTS) report (translation: IEDs, Car Bombs, Suicide Vest Bombs, mortar or rocket attacks) all of the regions around our area had multiple SIGACTS. The area directly to our north has 18, to our south 3, over across the river in Bagdhad there were 8 in one area, 2 in another area, 5 in another area. Our area, ZERO. In 5 days we will have gone one month without a SIGACT. Most SIGACTS are caused either by genuine terrorist activity, by petty crime or by tribal conflicts. With all of the reconciliation going on, the tribes can stop worrying about each other and focus in on what their young men are doing - - eliminating all three areas of concern. If the tribal elders are watching the kids, the kids don't get involved with terrorists, don't do petty crime and there is no fighting between the tribes. The only thing left to do is go out and get a real job and build the country.

The General is instrumental in all of the reconciliation. Every meeting we go to the tribal elders praise him and fight to be allowed to sit next to him. Pretty cool, I just sit back and watch. The two reconciliations this weekend were one for Northern City and a second round of the reconciliation from two weeks ago. We were all set to attend the Northern City one, which was the most important one, but a US General was coming to round two. The General switched to round two to escort the US General. This was the US General's first faisal (the arabic word for the meetings) and he was blown away. Being an old hand, I was not blown away and took part in the reconciliation amount pool that the other old hands put on. If you remember from two posts ago or so, a gentleman lost 4 houses, 7 cars, 3 fish ponds, several cows and his farm fields when he was chased away. He was reconciling with another tribe, the folks that actually did the chasing away (the last tribe was the tribe that ordered him chased away). He was asking for 500 million Iraqi Dinar as compensation. There were 6 of us in the pool, I thought he would walk away with 50 million Iraqi Dinar, based on last reconciliations percentages. The final settled amount was 120 million Iraqi Dinars.

What is a US General worth?

During the negotiations, the sheik of the plaintiff's tribe stood up and said that since a US General took the time to attend the faisal, he would lower the amount they were asking by 50 million Iraqi Dinar. So, 50 million Iraqi Dinar.

What was the General worth?

During the final negotiations, the General went outside to the sheik huddle and addressed the sheiks. At that point, the agreed upon amount was 150 million Iraqi Dinar, the General said that was pretty steep and the defending tribe would have problems paying that much so he asked them to reduce the amount. They did, by 30 million Iraqi Dinar.

Northern City reconciliation

The reconciliation up north was about 40 displaced families returning to a small village that had been destroyed by the insurgents. The General has been trying to get the families to move in up there for 3 months now, and was planning on attending the reconciliation up there. The Tribal Sheik Support Council (all the powerful sheiks in the area, including Sheik Q and Abu A) all attended the Northern City reconciliation. All parties agreed that the families should be moved back to the village, which will happen sometime after the election.

What, Elections?

Yup, election time in Iraq. This causes a lot of extra security work for the Brigade. The General told me that his head was so full of information it was about to explode yesterday. We are working with our higher headquarters, the Iraqi chains of command, the local election councils, the SOI and tribal leaders to make sure the elections go off without an incident. This election is for provincial leaders, this summer is national elections and in OCT 09 they have the local city council elections. Should be an interesting month.

Reconciliation Redux

Last week there was a series of reconciliation meetings, basically, two tribes that had issues. One tribe (a shia tribe) chased a member of another tribe (a sunni) away from his house during the insurgency. The theory is that the sheiks of the tribes will sit down together and figure out a way to make things normal between the two tribes, and that normally takes cash. The victim (pictured in Iraq #7) basically stated his case before an assembled group of sheiks, who listen patiently then discuss if the victim was truly wronged, and if so, what will it take to have everyone reconcile and promise to get along.

The victim ended up losing 4 houses, 7 cars, a tractor, and two pools of fish. He was asking for compensation of 1.5 billion Iraqi Dinars ($1.25 million dollars). His sheik stated that everyone should reconcile, and they should be able to walk out of the negotiations with their heads held high, for the price of 1 billion Iraqi Dinars. The other tribe (just happens to be the largest and most powerful tribe in the region) stated that the victim was truly wronged, but asked how you could put a price on reconciliation, after all, wasn't admitting past wrongs and moving along the biggest part of this process? Back and forth for two hours (never drink gatorade and tea before you go into one of these things, it is tough to get up with all your stuff and walk out without being noticed). After two hours, the assembled sheiks decided that reconciliation was more important than money, and the victim will get 1.5 million Iraqi Dinars (125,000 dollars) for his suffering.

In order to force the reconciliation meeting, the victim had sworn out 18 arrest warrants for members of the opposing tribe, so he had a little leverage. In exchange for the money, being allowed back on his land and the promise of reconciliation, he agreed to drop all of the charges. Pretty interesting process to watch develop, there was the large forum of sheiks, after the haggling was done there, a small group of sheiks (led by Sheik Q) went outside and huddled and came in the room with the final settlement. After the final settlement was announced, all the sheiks got together and pledged on a tribal flag to reconcile. After the flag ceremony there was only one argument left: Who was going to pay for lunch. Everyone demanded that they be allowed to pay for lunch, I was going to offer, but I only had 70 bucks on me. The big tribe sheik told everyone that if he wasn't allowed to pay for lunch, he would divorce his wives. He got the check.

I have to be honest, the whole thing was cool and all, but it really reminded me of an episode of the Soprano's, where two rival mob gangs have a sit down to discuss mob violations. Just like in the Soprano's, it all came down to money being passed around.

Reconciliation Redux

Only one snag - - there were 18 warrants for arrest, that the Government of Iraq wanted to be enforced, that same week. The General was ordered to go do some arresting, which made him look pretty bad considering he gave a good speech supporting the tribal reconciliation process during the meeting. All in all, 4 folks were arrested, they will be detained until the victim goes and sees the judge to withdraw all of his statement and warrants.

Other Notes

The team is dreading the next few months: College football season is over, the pros are almost done and the only thing between March and August is NASCAR. After March Madness there won't be too many good sporting events to talk about. I am partial to NASCAR, but nobody else really speaks that language or has absorbed that culture, so I may be watching a few races solo. No big deal, but I will certainly miss my surround sound system and big screen TV, there is nothing that says NASCAR like a surround sound, volume cranked race as the cars scream around the room. Very cool, sigh.

Speaking of cars, we are starting to notice that a lot of folks over here have a taste for Caprice Classics. It all started during one of our patrols when a car was getting a little goofy with our convoy. Normally, folks pull over and get the heck out of our way, which is cool. There was one car about 3 weeks ago that didn't move over and almost cut between two of our vehicles, which is quite unacceptable. The confused driver was waved off by using a green laser pointer, and he pulled on over. He was driving a brown Caprice Classic. Ever since then, we have been noticing that there are a lot of Caprice Classics on the roads, Iraqis must appreciate the soft luxury and huge engine that comes with an early 90s Caprice Classic. Today alone we counted 11 of them as we were cruising around.

Very cool blog posting: Check out the Sandbox web page for yesterday, there was a posting on "how to prepare for a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan", pretty funny. Link:

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

Good Week

This is another good week, just some random blog notes, no particular order (photo link: Iraq #6 goes along with some of this post):

Endless Holiday:

This time of year is pretty much an long holiday in Iraq. It started off with Eid and is now in the Ashura Muharram time frame. Ashura Muharram is the timeframe of an ancient battle that took place between Husayn ibn ‘Alī (a revered martyr who fought tyranny) and Yazid I the Umayyad caliph. He rose up to create a regime that would reinstate a “true” Islāmic polity as opposed to what he considered the unjust rule of the Umayyads. As a consequence, Husayn was killed and beheaded in the Battle of Karbala in 680 by Shimr Ibn Thil- Jawshan (cut and pasted straight out of Wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_Ashura

Basically, each of the first ten days of the Arabic New Year are supposed to be religious history lessons, remembrances and celebrations. This translates to a lot of time off (Jazza) for the NP and some relatively peaceful times (only one small IED in the AO, no damage, just a shattered windshield for an Iraqi Police truck). This also marks a time when a lot of folks do religious marches to commemorate different aspects of the holidays. The NP are all over the marches, show up to make sure they are secure and that nobody tries to get out of line or use the march for no good. The interesting thing is that on the 10th of Muharram, all of the people cook up meals for the marchers and serve them up in their neighborhood. The culmination of all the holidays is 20 FEB 09 or so, including marches to Karbala. Pretty big deal for the Shia, not sure about the Sunni significance.

Fantasy Football:

Teams Wade, Fritz and Mark didn't do so well. We finished in 20th (Wade), 22d (Me) and 24th (Mark). Wade came out on top, victory goes to him, but really, we all got smoked. I am not sure that Grandma M was in the league, but she would have kicked our butts, even with her Cleveland Brown loving picks (she hung with the Browns for several years, always holding out that faint glimmer of hope, kind of like me and the Cowboys). Next year we will all have to do better to make sure the family honor is not drug down to the depths of Fantasy Football.

Husker notes:

The Huskers pulled out a Gator Bowl victory yesterday, I was able to watch the game thanks to Armed Forces Network TV. I gotta say, Joe Ganz (he tied for my Heisman vote with Alex Henery) really can make a game interesting. During the game the Huskers basically spotted the clemson tigers 21 or so points (a couple of Ganz turnovers - an interception return for a TD and an option pitch picked off and run back for a TD, plus a muffed punt turnover that resulted in a TD drive by the tigers). That was the bad side. The good side was that Joe Ganz rallied the team to score a pile of points in the second half (including 4 FGs from Henery) to take a 26-21 lead. The Blackshirts (who pretty much owned the clemson offense) held up at the end of the 4 quarter and the Huskers came out on top. 9 wins. Bowl victory. Pretty good season, I was thinking that 7 or 8 wins and any bowl game would be just fine after suffering through 4 years of bill callahan and carl peterson, but Bo Pellini and the Huskers came through big time, next year will be interesting.

Oh, yeah, that work thing:

The past couple of days have been pretty slow - - the General was on Jazza, and the deputy isn't as dynamic as the General. The General came back today, just in time to go to a Sheik Tribal Council meeting with his boss, Major General AK, the head of the 1st Iraqi National Police Division. A few things before the meeting: We knew MG AK was coming, but the General was a little antsy. He wanted to make sure everything was set up for the MG AK, so, he disappeared for a few minutes to go get things going in the right direction. While he was gone, one of his aides came in and sprayed the room (including me, Superman and 6.5) down with perfume, so the General didn't smell anything bad. Kind of funny. The tribal council meeting was a good one for the General, all of the tribal leaders sung his praise and MG AK reinforced the party line that BG Emad has been saying all along: The National Police are here for security, not to run the district, the local government should be doing that. Reconciliation is important, the tribes must agree to get along with each other and absolutely must support the local government.

Sheik Q was in attendance today, he is easily my favorite sheik to watch. He is a local businessman that has done very well, an early supporter of the coalition and never hesitates to lay into the local government when he gets the chance. The most interesting thing is that he is running for a seat in the provincial council this year, if he wins, the shoes will be on his feet and he will have to listen to angry sheiks yell at him about how slow he is to get water, electricity and roads to their little towns and villages. That will be interesting, I would vote for him just to watch him wrestle with those huge problems.

Final Note:

6.5 is no longer CPT 6.5, he was promoted yesterday in a small ceremony at the National Police headquarters. His first choice was to have Mrs. 6.5 join him in Bagdhad (she is also in the Army and is currently deployed) for a promotion ceremony, but she was unable to come down. His next choice was to be promoted at National Police Headquarters which flattered the heck out of our National Police brothers. Promotions are a big deal in Iraq, and they were proud as all get out to be part of the ceremony.