Riot control

I carve out a good ½ hour for myself at the end of the day. I go sit out back on our veranda, light up a Cuban and pop a near-beer...a little bit of heaven. We have a thermometer there and anything under 100 is comfortable to me now. Last night it was 94 and felt a bit chilly. If it’s dark and the moon is out, it’s really very pleasant. I’m not sure how that’s going to feel when we get back to Ft. McCoy in September, but looking forward to finding out.

My Arabic is getting better, but as soon as I think I’m getting a decent vocabulary, I have an interpreter tell me something different and I’m all confused again. They already know not to speak native tongues to me; no Kurdish slang, no Turkman, they’re under strict orders to just give me generic Arabic that everyone can understand. We have 4 full time Terps and another 8 that come in during the day. Each of them has their own favorite sayings.

I was practicing Arabic last night at our convoy launch and picked up a couple of stalkers. I was walking up and down the convoy (rottle) making sure everything was battened down and I asked these two young Jundee to ask me what time it was? Then, every 10 minutes or so, one of them ran up with a big grin to ask me what time it was. That got old, real quick, but at least I can tell time.

I can sit now with the Commander or his staff and drink Chai without an interpreter present and we can make small talk, albeit with a lot of arm waving. Concepts are still hard to discuss. I found out that two of the officers speak better English than they’d let on, so we’ve been practicing on each other. It’s language by immersion which is always the best way to learn. I do wish I would have been here for the entire year. It’s been a little over 5 weeks now.

We sent the convoy out for a long mission last night. Our sleep cycle is hosed for the next 3-4 days until they come back but that’s the easy part. I worry about our troops and the Regiment on the road. They only travel at night so every 2-3 hours I set my alarm and go check on them. We’re in contact thru radio’s (both Iraqi and CF) and I’ll go monitor the traffic that’s come in. Both sides have staffs there all night just in case something happens. They have GPS systems in the convoys and we can track their progress.

Last night they reported two incidents. The first one was just as they were leaving the main city and only a half hour into the movement. There was a dead animal with wires coming out of its body on the side of the road. That’s a fairly old TTP these days (tactic, technique or procedure) because the CF used to stop to drag the dead animal off the road and it’d explode. We like a clean country, you know. We don’t do that anymore. Then we started calling EOD to come and deactivate it. The enemy changed their tactics and the dead animal was used as a decoy with the explosive under it, targeting the EOD. So we don’t do that anymore, either. Now when we call EOD they either blow it up from a distance or blow it up from a distance. EOD is just too valuable. If it doesn’t blow, they’ll push it off the road with a dozer or robot or something. We can stay ahead of them using technology, but it’s a short learning cycle for them and we’re constantly adjusting our TTP’s.

The other incident was a fight in the convoy by two Jundee. The Regiment is carrying Jundee for a school and planned to drop them off at a FOB along the way. These two guys had been up all day, in the hot sun and had missed chow at the DFAC because they were doing something else. Long story short, they got into a fight in the back of this large open cargo truck and someone fired off a burst from an AK-47 to get their attention. It worked, but it got our attention too and everyone had to stop and get control of the situation. It’s a little unnerving to our guys when they do this and we try to get them to use other methods. We could limit their ammo to only critical people but that’s a last resort, we want them to be able to defend themselves if they have to. Their police routinely fire into the air to get people’s attention so this wasn’t a big deal to the Iraqi’s. We don’t like it and try to get them to use other methods.

I had Chai with Col Ali this evening and we compared notes about the day. He told me that the base commander, a 1-star general had summoned him this morning to ask him why he hadn’t been informed that the Regiment was convoying. Col Ali had to remind him that both he and LTC Murphy had been over to see him about 4 days ago, in fact he wrote it down in his book and nodded and smiled all the while. Col Ali and I laughed at that one; he wrote it all down and told no one. That was why they struggled to provide support for the Jundee’s that came in, they were supposed to feed and house them. Generals…

Col Ali and I were talking about the enthusiasm of the Regiment and how everyone’s excited to run missions, morale is high; we haven’t had massive AWOL’s or problems and the Regiment looks really, really good. He’s an outstanding commander and has years of experience in transportation. The Jundee adore him like a father and the Army is lucky to have him. He told me that when they go on missions with CF in the lead, there’s helicopter gunship support and we pave the way into FOB’s to get fuel, water, etc. If they run into problems they have us to fall back on and the danger is minimized because they know that if they get hurt, the coalition can have a medevac there in minutes. I reminded him that once the coalition leaves, the danger should go down and it would all be relative…it should be easier to drive down the roads even without all the bells and whistles that the CF’s bring. The interpreter, who I’ve really come to trust, didn’t even translate. He said it would get worse and the only reason it’s as secure as it is today (relatively) is because of the coalition presence. Then he translated and the Col agreed, they’re all worried what’s going to happen when we leave this country behind. They really are good people. They just want to make a good living and feed their family, not so different than any American I know.

So the convoy arrived safely today and I just got off the phone with them, they’re loading up cargo now. They’ll start their round-about return mission this evening. Its all bulk cargo from there on back, and they'll be free of the Jundee’s hanging out the back of the trucks waving at the citizens. Kids... More to follow; let’s hope they arrive home safely.

Best wishes from Iraq.