WP: In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths

[Pirate Smile]

In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006; Page A01

AL-FURAT, Iraq -- With a biker's bandanna tied under his helmet, the Special Forces team sergeant gunned a Humvee down a desert road in Iraq's volatile Anbar province. Skirting the restive town of Hit, the team of a dozen soldiers crossed the Euphrates River into an oasis of relative calm: the rural heartland of the powerful Albu Nimr tribe.

Green Berets skilled in working closely with indigenous forces have enlisted one of the largest and most influential tribes in Iraq to launch a regional police force -- a rarity in this Sunni insurgent stronghold. Working deals and favors over endless cups of spiced tea, they built up their wasta -- or pull -- with the ancient tribe, which boasts more than 300,000 members. They then began empowering the tribe to safeguard its territory and help interdict desert routes for insurgents and weapons. The goal, they say, is to spread security outward to envelop urban trouble spots such as Hit.

But the initial progress has been tempered by friction between the team of elite troops and the U.S. Army's battalion that oversees the region. At one point this year, the battalion's commander, uncomfortable with his lack of control over a team he saw as dangerously undisciplined, sought to expel it from his turf, officers on both sides acknowledged.
The conflict in the Anbar camp, while extreme, is not an isolated phenomenon in Iraq, U.S. officers say. It highlights two clashing approaches to the war: the heavy focus of many regular U.S. military units on sweeping combat operations, and the more fine-grained, patient work Special Forces teams put into building rapport with local leaders, security forces and the people -- work experts consider vital in a counterinsurgency.

"This war was fought with a conventional mind-set. The conventional units are bogged down in cities doing the same old thing," said the Special Forces team's 44-year-old sergeant, who like all the Green Berets interviewed was not allowed to be quoted by name for security reasons. "It's not about bulldozing Hit, driving through with a tank, with all the kids running away. . . . These insurgencies are defeated by personal relationships."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401900.html

[wellst0nev0ter]

1. Sometimes, I Don't Think These People WANT To Win

and they wonder why they lost Anbar province to Al-Qaeda. Jeese.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. Yep, Some In The Army WANTS To Fail

From the article:

Training foreign military forces is a core Special Forces mission -- and the top priority of the U.S. command in Iraq. The Iraqi scout platoon, recruited from the Albu Nimr tribe and coached by the team in Hit, displayed an agility and confidence unusual among Iraqi soldiers. And the Americans fostered loyalty in the platoon.

"We've been to their homes, we've treated their children. They are our partners," said the team captain, an energetic officer from Los Angeles.

"We walk with them as brothers," said Mokles Ali Muklif, the Iraqi platoon leader.

But last spring, when the scouts spotted a roadside bomb during a solo mission and warned U.S. forces about it, they were detained by Graves's battalion, blindfolded and forced to sit in bitter cold for seven hours before the team could secure their release. "I was livid," the team sergeant said.

Later, when the Special Forces team offered to give advanced training to the entire Iraqi army battalion, Graves rejected the idea. Morale continued to drop in the Iraqi battalion, its manpower down to 60 percent after hundreds of soldiers quit over lack of pay, poor food and duty far from home. "We could have had the battalion conducting unilateral ops, and 1-36 could be sitting back at the firm base," the team captain said.

[arewenotdemo]

3. Somehow I don't think that in the end

it's really going to matter.

Americans aren't there "to build personal relationships".

They're there for the Empire on a mission fated to fail.