Thursday
Mar162006
Iraq Dispatch Number 3
Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 3:00AM
By Richard Miller
Iraq Dispatch #3
Anyone genuinely interested in why an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a la Cong. Jack Murtha's proposal, is out of the question, need only ask Mr. Adnan Jasim Mohamad, headmaster of the school in the village of 14 Ramadan. I met Mr. Mohamad today while on a Humvee patrol with the 3-29 Field Artillery (which functions more like infantry than artillery these days), a unit which belongs to the 3rd Heavy Combat Brigade Team of the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson, Colorado.
Before relating Mr. Mohamad's take on affairs, I must first relate the circumstances of this meeting. These are important because they reflect not just how American units are grappling with this new kind of war, but how the war itself has transformed these same units. The 3-29 Field Artillery dispatched an infantry patrol (in Humvees) to recon the area—but the lay of the land they sought to discover was not topographic but social and political. Accompanied by personnel from Psy-Ops and Civil Affairs (all of which are resources available to the 3rd Heavy Combat Brigade), the unit's mission was to talk to Iraqis and ask some simple questions: For example, do you have clean water? Is your local council making available adequate resources for your needs? Has the Iraqi Security Forces [ISF] or the Iraqi Police [IP] been around?
Mr. Mohamad, a neat, earnest and polite man whose concern for his 207 pupils would be recognizable to anyone who has stood before a class, was finally asked this question: Do you have any objection to the IP or ISF coming around for a visit to the school? The soldier asking these questions, tall, burly Master Sergeant First Class Tim Berger has been dealing with local Iraqi concerns for years, and understands that this is a sensitive issue.
For the first time during this interview, Mr. Mohamad shifts uncomfortably followed by an awkward pause in what had been a businesslike discussion. He finally clears his throat, and through the Army's translator, makes this request: That ISF and IP forces not stop at the school unless they are accompanied by the Americans.
His reasons might make sense even to the editorialists at the New York Times. "Sometimes terrorists come," he explains through a translator, "and use the uniform of the Iraqi Army or Police to attack local people." Simply put, he doesn't yet trust central authority—at least not around the children who attend his simple, two story, cinder-block school.
When we came to Ramadan 14 we were not greeted as liberators (I had one truly bizarre experience from one of the older boys who angrily insisted, "America is Yehudi! America is Yehudi!" [America is Jew, America is Jew] For all I know (although I very much doubt it), Mr. Mohamad is of the same opinion. But for now, he needs us and he knows it. We also need him, if Iraq is to emerge as something other than one more failed state. Those who (foolishly, in my view) insist that Iraq is on the verge of civil war need consider this—if they truly believe it, then they also have the means to prevent it—keep U.S. forces in-country in sufficient quantities in order to prevent one.
Iraq Dispatch #3
Anyone genuinely interested in why an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a la Cong. Jack Murtha's proposal, is out of the question, need only ask Mr. Adnan Jasim Mohamad, headmaster of the school in the village of 14 Ramadan. I met Mr. Mohamad today while on a Humvee patrol with the 3-29 Field Artillery (which functions more like infantry than artillery these days), a unit which belongs to the 3rd Heavy Combat Brigade Team of the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson, Colorado.
Before relating Mr. Mohamad's take on affairs, I must first relate the circumstances of this meeting. These are important because they reflect not just how American units are grappling with this new kind of war, but how the war itself has transformed these same units. The 3-29 Field Artillery dispatched an infantry patrol (in Humvees) to recon the area—but the lay of the land they sought to discover was not topographic but social and political. Accompanied by personnel from Psy-Ops and Civil Affairs (all of which are resources available to the 3rd Heavy Combat Brigade), the unit's mission was to talk to Iraqis and ask some simple questions: For example, do you have clean water? Is your local council making available adequate resources for your needs? Has the Iraqi Security Forces [ISF] or the Iraqi Police [IP] been around?
Mr. Mohamad, a neat, earnest and polite man whose concern for his 207 pupils would be recognizable to anyone who has stood before a class, was finally asked this question: Do you have any objection to the IP or ISF coming around for a visit to the school? The soldier asking these questions, tall, burly Master Sergeant First Class Tim Berger has been dealing with local Iraqi concerns for years, and understands that this is a sensitive issue.
For the first time during this interview, Mr. Mohamad shifts uncomfortably followed by an awkward pause in what had been a businesslike discussion. He finally clears his throat, and through the Army's translator, makes this request: That ISF and IP forces not stop at the school unless they are accompanied by the Americans.
His reasons might make sense even to the editorialists at the New York Times. "Sometimes terrorists come," he explains through a translator, "and use the uniform of the Iraqi Army or Police to attack local people." Simply put, he doesn't yet trust central authority—at least not around the children who attend his simple, two story, cinder-block school.
When we came to Ramadan 14 we were not greeted as liberators (I had one truly bizarre experience from one of the older boys who angrily insisted, "America is Yehudi! America is Yehudi!" [America is Jew, America is Jew] For all I know (although I very much doubt it), Mr. Mohamad is of the same opinion. But for now, he needs us and he knows it. We also need him, if Iraq is to emerge as something other than one more failed state. Those who (foolishly, in my view) insist that Iraq is on the verge of civil war need consider this—if they truly believe it, then they also have the means to prevent it—keep U.S. forces in-country in sufficient quantities in order to prevent one.
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