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In a Volatile Region of Iraq, U.S. Military Takes Two Paths
Col. Falah Salah Shimra heads the new police force in al-Furat, in Iraq's restive Anbar province. A U.S. Special Forces team persuaded an influential local tribe to supply recruits.
(Ann Scott Tyson -- The Washington Post)
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"He's young and doesn't know anything," Jubair scolded the team sergeant. "If you give him projects, I will close the city council and come here!"
For the Americans, such engagement is as vital as it can be maddening. "Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with teenagers," the sergeant said. "They even do the 'mom' and 'dad' thing with me" and the team captain.
It's also work that involves keen judgment and knowing when to cut deals. After the team arrived in January, it captured a former police colonel accused of stealing cars and $60,000 in pay and killing another police officer. But when the colonel was detained and sent to Abu Ghraib prison, sheiks Jubair and Hatem pleaded for his release. "They said you will increase your wasta and all that," the team sergeant said, "so we secured his release, a controlled release."
The compromise helped win the tribe's backing for a local police force. But it also heightened frictions with the U.S. Army battalion, whose convoy transporting the detainee had hit a roadside bomb.
A Clash of Cultures
Every night like clockwork at the U.S. military camp -- known as a forward operating base, or FOB -- outside Hit, a loudspeaker atop the Special Forces team house blasts an alert that the Army battalion is about to shoot off flares.
"Attention on the FOB! Attention on the FOB!" a male voice boomed one recent night. "There will be an illumination mission in 10 minutes. Go Cowboys!"
"I've tried to figure out a way to cut that wire," the team sergeant muttered as he stood on the roof, bemoaning the battalion's predictable tactics.
The clash of military cultures was apparent from the start in late January, when the Special Forces team captain, scruffy after days in the desert, arrived at the Hit camp and introduced his team's mission to Lt. Col. Thomas Graves, commander of the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment. Graves, a close-shaven West Point graduate from Texas, said nothing and walked away, according to team members.
"We grow our hair a little longer," the team sergeant said. "We wear mustaches, and the conventional Army doesn't want to deal with you because they look at you as undisciplined. We're the most disciplined force in the Army!"
To Graves, the problem boiled down to communication and his battalion's limited, or "tactical," control over the Special Forces. "It's not that they have long hair. I don't care if they're frickin' from Mars," said Graves in the camp's chow hall. "They have a responsibility to tell us what they were doing, but they refuse to do it."
Graves said the Green Berets and their Iraqi army scout platoon once shot at his tanks; he said he never investigated the incident but declined to explain why. Concern over his troops' safety led him to initiate steps to remove the team, he said, adding, "I don't care if you're frickin' naked, just don't shoot at my tanks!"
Training Iraqi Forces
At a desert firing range outside Hit, a squad of Iraqi army scouts attacked a line of silhouetted targets, emptying their AK-47 assault rifles and then switching effortlessly to pistols. Next, they practiced sweeping a room, pivoting through the doorway and shouting bursts of Arabic.
