More from Craig in Iraq

Hello everyone,

As we enter the final week of May, the Cox family has departed Colorado on their 2 month trip around the country. If you have been following the major storms that have been striking the central US, those very storms have been following Tina and the kids as they head east. They had the pleasure of spending some quality time in a Subway restroom in Kansas while a tornado passed by just down the road. Nothing like starting the trip with some high adventure. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers as they visit family and friends out east.

I have spent the past several days at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Warhorse, which is in the city of Baquba. Baquba is located northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province. Diyala is one of those provinces in the north that is still somewhat volatile. Having said that, just about 18 months ago, Diyala was more than just volatile – it was a massive killing field. As the US surge began, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) began heading north out of Baghdad. As they moved north, they set up slaughter houses all throughout Diyala. Diyala is a mixed Shiite/Sunni province, and it is split with about 50% of each sect living there. Baquba is the largest city in the province, and it is also split evenly between Shia and Sunni. AQI was obviously targeting Shiite victims, and the Shiites began to go after Sunnis in return. Over 100 people per week were being murdered in Diyala during parts of 2006 and 2007.

As the US forces moved into Diyala 15 months ago, AQI began moving further north. Diyala was one of those provinces where the Sons of Iraq (SoI) citizen groups began to stand up, which was a large reason that AQI left the area. The SoI in Diyala were mainly Sunni at the time, and this lack of support by their own sect made it tough for AQI to stick around. They still have a small presence in Diyala, but they haven’t been able to create too much trouble there. They are hard at work trying to recruit female suicide vest wearers, and they have managed to find a couple of “volunteers” for that task in the past couple of months.

The main Shiite criminal elements in Diyala are the al-Mahdi army militants. Sadr city sits on the northeast edge of Baghdad, so the al-Mahdi thugs don’t have all that far to go to get up to Diyala.

During my trip to Baquba, I spent time with another Police Transition Team (PTT). This one was the 202nd Military Police (MP) Company out of Ft. Eustis, Virginia. They are responsible for training all of the Iraqi Police (IP) in Diyala province with the exception of a few stations in the northeast tip of Diyala. They are a busy group of MPs.

I went with one of the PTT squads as they patrolled Baquba, which included a visit with a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) station and a regular police sub-station. QRF police are a little better trained and equipped than are the police at the regular stations. Unlike many of the regular IP stations, this station had functioning staff officers in place, such as an armorer, a training officer, a supply officer, etc. The chief was an ex-army officer, so he runs a tight ship as far as discipline. He even brought one of his police officers in to chew him out in front of us for not being in proper uniform. I didn’t understand a word the chief was saying, but it was clear that this officer was getting a thorough tongue lashing.

Like the chief in Mosul who I met, this chief had a decent sense of humor as well. Apparently one of the most important pieces of equipment to these police chiefs is their TV set and satellite TV hookup. When we went into this chief’s office (Chief Hussein), he was watching the Blue Collar Comedy show – the one with Larry the Cable Guy and his buddies. The chief thought that I was a wimp for not smoking his cigarettes with him. I did the chai tea and I even ate a hometown Baquba apple, but I wouldn’t go for the cigarette. So I guess I’m a wimp, or whatever the corresponding trait is in Arabic.

The big internal challenge that the PTT teams face is the lack of qualified translators. It was painful to listen to the translator struggle with his English and then try to communicate to the IP in Arabic. Some of these chiefs understand English better than some of the translators, and the PTT members say that the chiefs will have to correct the translators on occasion. The best translators are those who are US citizens and who have returned to work for the US here. For reasons that are not all that clear, these quality translators are mostly sitting in higher US headquarters buildings. Meanwhile, these translators who are recruited locally have to be watched carefully. One of them stood there on Warhorse and called in rocket fire on the base using his cell phone. The dope is lucky that he didn’t get hit himself, but he is now in US custody.

Although Diyala province is one of the more active northern provinces, I need to put that in perspective by pointing out that the enemy activity is down to a couple of contacts per day with them and IP or US forces in that province. The situation is similar to Mosul in that the heavy presence of police and army checkpoints has severely limited the ability of the insurgents to plant IEDs or to move freely around the cities, so they have resorted to suicide vests and cars packed with explosives, although there haven’t been all that many instances of those types of explosives recently. A suicide bomber tried to drive his car into an IP station last week, but with the better protection that the police have put in place for their stations, the driver had to blow himself up outside of the barriers. Unfortunately, he did manage to kill one IP who was outside at the time. One of the police officers showed me a plaque in the QRF station that listed names of 169 police officers from that station alone. These were all of the officers who have been killed by terrorist activity since 2003 from just that station. The station has 475 officers right now, so you can see that they are literally making sacrifices by holding down these jobs. Most of those police deaths occurred in the 2005-2006 time period.

The calming of Diyala has been accomplished in large part due to a good US operation combined with a very determined Iraqi police commander at the provincial level. The large US Brigade in Diyala is departing next month as part of the surge drawdown, leaving a smaller US presence in the province. The commander of this US Brigade, COL Lehr, had two years to prepare for his deployment, so he did some smart training during that time period. He put hundreds of his soldiers through intensive Arab language training, so that proved valuable with the lack of translators. He had his junior leaders conduct ride-alongs with the police in the Ft. Lewis, Washington, area to get a feel for how to get information from the public and how to earn their trust. COL Lehr and his staff also met regularly with mayors and city managers back home to learn the basics of running cities and towns so that they would be better informed on how to teach the Iraqis the basics of city management.

COL Lehr also regularly used the carrot and stick approach with the communities in Diyala. Despite the new existence of elected government officials in the cities and towns, the Sheiks still have great influence all around Iraq. Anytime attacks against US forces or civilians in an area would begin to rise, COL Lehr would cut off money for the local projects or electric power to the towns in that area. He would also conduct what is called “clearing fire” in areas that have been hot with attacks on US forces. This means that he would have heavy artillery fire roll along in front of US troops as they moved into areas where there had been recent attacks. He said that before long, the local Sheiks would come in and tell him that they have put a stop to the attacks and they would ask him to please turn on the power and resources again. The higher levels of security have given the people a chance to get businesses running again and the police have had a chance to become a little more proactive rather than strictly reactive. As business has picked up, people are making money off of the economy rather than by participating in the insurgency.

Although Diyala has a governor, the man who is making a difference in the province is named General Ganum. He is the head of law enforcement in the province. He tends to have a strong concern for the people and they know it. There are a couple of towns in Diyala that went without power for a long time, and the Iraqi officials in Diyala kept promising that power would be in place by certain dates. GEN Ganum got fed up with the false promises, so he arrested the top three officials who were responsible for the power projects in Diyala. He told them that as soon as power was being provided to the towns, he would release them from jail. Electric power was running to these towns in no time, and GEN Ganum even paid these arrestees for the work that was finally completed. I’m not sure that this technique would go over so well in the US, but hey, this isn’t the US.

During a bridge opening ceremony, while others were applauding the bridge that the US engineers constructed over the Diyala River, GEN Ganum was looking at the water level of the river. He noticed how high the water was flowing, and he ordered that irrigation equipment be brought in to route a good portion of the water to the farmers in Diyala, who have been suffering through a drought. He scored huge points with the citizens, which is pretty important in a counter-insurgency fight. On top of this, GEN Ganum is relentless in his push to get the captured insurgents convicted of their crimes. He is another ex-Saddam era military officer.

As far as the Iraqi operation in Mosul, it is moving along nicely. Iraqi army commanders have been asking what they should do as AQI members approach them and ask to surrender. They have never seen anything like this (except when their army was surrendering to us), so they weren’t sure how to handle this. The Iraqi army is literally conducting door-to-door house searches in Mosul to confiscate weapons and evidence of insurgent supporters. Their intelligence has been pretty good as far as identifying the insurgents up there. They have been finding weapons dumped in trash bins, and they are uncovering massive weapons caches. One cache contained over 1800 rocket propelled grenades, which will be 1800 grenades not fired at our guys. As AQI members are turning themselves in, they are complaining that AQI is running low on funds and is not paying them. AQI leaders in Syria have ordered foreign fighters to stop crossing the border into Iraq for awhile until they can figure out how serious the Iraqi army is. The Iraqi general in Mosul is realistic in that he understands that AQI will try to return as soon as the current operation ends, but they have lost a lot of arms and ammunition (and supporters) to the operation so far.

Down in Sadr City, the Iraqi army is about to begin house to house searches to confiscate the big weapons caches down there. This operation should be interesting when we see if Iran can convince its Shiite fighters to confront the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army is leading the Sadr City operation as well with the US providing support as requested. So far, they haven’t requested any support.

The attached pictures are from Baquba. One is the Diyala River, so yes there are trees in parts of Iraq. The other one is obviously a couple of Baqubian kids – future allies or future terrorists? We didn’t stop to give them candy, so they were probably leaning towards terrorist that day.

That about wraps it up from Iraq for now. The weather is really heating up, but this is Iraq and it is approaching summer, so no surprises there. At least we aren’t having the tornado problem.

Take care,

MAJ Craig Cox
1AD CALL LNO
COB Speicher
DSN: 318-849-0295
sVoip: 318-778-2107
1AD NIPR: craig.w.cox@1ad.army.mil
SIPR: craig.w.cox@1ad.army.smil.mil

My Friend Major Craig Cox's Recent Post from Iraq

The sand does rule out here when it decides to take to the air so I have been stuck on Camp Speicher for the past week as the sand storms keep driving through. No trips to write about this time around and life can be pretty “normal” here on camp. Some of the locals do try to keep everyone’s senses alert as they sneak in under cover of sand and pop off a few rockets in this direction during the storms. Everybody appreciates them thinking of us and giving us samples of Syria’s ordinance.

The biggest event up here in the north right now is the kickoff of Operation Lion’s Roar. Lion’s Roar is an Iraqi planned and (so far) Iraqi led operation to hit al-Qaeda in Iraq and their Islamic Sons of Iraq (AQI/ISI) brothers up in Mosul. AQI/ISI have vowed that they will never be pushed from Mosul and the Iraqi government has vowed that it will finish AQI/ISI off once and for all. My educated guess is that the result of the operation will be somewhere in between those two promises.

I will start by saying again that it is a big deal when the Iraqi Army takes the initiative. Whether this operation turns out to be a 100% military win for the Army or not, the first success was that these guys put this plan into motion and they are executing their plan. Not only that, but the plan involves the local and national police as well, so this is good for the security forces in general. To top it off, they have even included the air assets that they have, including their helicopters. The operation began on Saturday and there have been US news agencies covering the events, so I am not giving anything away that can’t be told.

When this operation started on Saturday, the commanding Iraqi general announced a total curfew for the city. That curfew was partially lifted on Tuesday, and hundreds of arrests have been made by the Iraqi forces. Lion’s Roar has been more of a round up than an actual military battle so far as there has been very little fighting. The Iraqis are uncovering dozens of weapons caches in the area based on some good tips by the locals. Let’s hope that the arrests that are being made are arrests of the right people, but a lot of these AQI types are laying low. They really can’t afford to engage in a head-on fight right now, so I imagine that they will try to make themselves heard when this operation is over.

I know that it would have been great if after the 2003 portion of the war, the Iraqis would have immediately understood how to operate a democracy and immediately understood how to develop industry and a work ethic and a competent police and military force, but that didn’t happen. Years of socialist oppression obviously took a toll. Let me share a few positive signs that may point to a little brighter future for this country.

The push by General Petreaus to get US forces into the neighborhoods of ordinary Iraqis is having a big impact on how the Iraqis view Americans. They have always been taught that we were the bad guys, and when our forces stayed behind walls or in their armored vehicles, that made it easy for the insurgents to continue to portray our guys as the bad guys who don’t care about the people. The group who is showing the most outward signs of having a growing trust in US forces is the youth. More and more, it is the kids who are providing the truthful tips on locations of IEDs and weapons caches. It bodes well that this generation of kids is seeing the good side of the US and not the bad that their parents have always been taught. By the way, they are also feeding intelligence to their own army and police as well, which in some ways is an even bigger step for them.

A couple of weeks ago, several politicians from the Iraqi Parliament held a protest march in Sadr City to protest the violence. So what – there are protests every day in Washington D.C. Can you imagine a protest march in Iraq six years ago when Saddam ruled this country? It would last approximately one block until Saddam had time to get his firing squad lined up to end that march. While the Iranians were busy trying to keep the al-Mahdi Army firing at the Green Zone, these politicians were marching for an end to the violence. A simple act like that is another leap forward in this country.

I have mentioned that AQI is attempting to get women to “volunteer” to be suicide bombers. I may be wrong, but there do not appear to be all that many takers on that offer. On the other hand, women are volunteering to be part of the citizen forces that are fighting the insurgency. Out in Fallujah, there is now a “Sisters of Fallujah” organization. These women are providing security and they are very useful when it comes to searching other females, which is timely with the elevated female suicide bomber threat right now. The Fallujah sisters are a Sunni outfit, and south of Baghdad, a group called the Daughters of Iraq is a Shiite group of women formed for the same purpose. While the US has been funding these concerned citizen groups, the Iraqi government is now moving to take over the payments. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the US is beginning to hand over the responsibility of the payments to the Iraqi government. I think that they will sit back and let us pay forever if we want to.

On the issue of the citizen security forces, commonly called Sons of Iraq (SOI), there is a transition occurring with these forces as the security environment improves in the provinces. Infrastructure repair and construction is a big task that will take several years to complete, and as the security improves and the need for SOI to assist decreases, the SOI are being transitioned into jobs in the construction industry. These are people who stood up and put their lives on the line to defend their neighborhoods; they are now being rewarded with continuing employment and training to rebuild their communities. (They are being paid with Iraqi funds as they make the transition).

Iraq’s president al-Maliki gained tremendous credibility with the Sunnis in this country when he took on fellow Shiites in Basra and Sadr City. The Sunni legislators had accused him of only focusing on the AQI threat, and they were actually threatening to boycott Parliamentary sessions to protest what they claimed was a very one sided government. This move by Maliki against the Shiite militia groups has caused the Sunni block to rejoin the political activities in Baghdad. I already mentioned that in Sunni provinces, the expected voter turn out is expected to be fairly high. They have decided that if they can’t shoot their way into office, they want to vote their way in. I call that progress.

Our commanding general was up in Mosul for some meetings with several cabinet officials from the Iraqi government as they observed the Lion’s Roar operation. He said that he had an interesting conversation with one of the cabinet ministers on a topic that would have never crossed his mind unless the minister had brought it up. The general said that the minister thanked him for setting the example on how to go out and visit other regions instead of always expecting officials from those regions to have to come to Baghdad to meet. Our generals held what they called a United & Strong conference up here in the north, and they flew in all of the big wig Iraqi leaders from Baghdad. The Iraqi minister said that they all thought that this traveling out to see first hand what is happening in their own country is a great concept. The Prime Minister and his staff have been all over this country since that conference and they have been motivating their forces and their citizens throughout their travels. This is something new for the citizens out here to see their leadership coming to them to motivate and take an interest in them.

One more piece in this Iraq puzzle that is beginning to take shape is that the security forces are beginning to show some resolve. Some of these US soldiers who have been here in the past have watched as Iraqi police or army units would literally turn and run away from the sound of gunfire. That isn’t happening anymore. Although the security forces are targeted, they are standing and fighting now. They have a ways to go in many respects, but they are engaging the enemy now. The constant mentoring and training by the US forces and by the US civilian police officers who are over here is paying off, particularly in the area of professionalism (of course, one of our military police officers joked that we should pass a lesson learned from the streets of the US onto the Iraqi police - that lesson being that you should always make sure that there are no helicopters with cameras overhead before you begin to beat on your unarmed suspect). 1,000 new Iraqi police officers graduate today from the Iraqi Police Academy in the north. That is a lot of newly trained officers for the north region alone.

Finally, after all of the fighting in Sadr City, Muqtada al-Sadr called another time out. My personal thought on that concept is – Why do we always grant him one when he calls for one? I doubt that he is calling a time out because he is whipping up on us, so I’m not sure why we play along every time. Oh well, I’m obviously not in that decision loop.

Anyway, there is plenty of work to be done in this place, both by the US and by the Iraqis themselves. The borders of this country are too wide open and too easily crossed by foreign insurgents. The Iraqis are beginning to get tired of the meddling by these people, and that is a good thing because they are not being welcomed to hide in the communities.

That is it for now. Let’s see what the next week brings our way (both here and there).

Take care.

MAJ Craig Cox
1AD CALL LNO
COB Speicher
DSN: 318-849-0295
sVoip: 318-778-2107
1AD NIPR: craig.w.cox@1ad.army.mil
SIPR: craig.w.cox@1ad.army.smil.mil

Black Robbed Tyrants Re-Define Marriage

As someone who helped to pass the 2000 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), this ruling that saw 4 arrogant tyrants overturn the will of 61% of the California electorate, is especially hard to fathom.

While it will help the current effort underway in California to see DOMA codified into the California Constitution, it nevertheless reminds all of us that our laws (not to mention 6000 years of human tradition) are subject to nothing but the current desires and wims of the leftist/collectivist class.

http://blogs.wsj.com/politicalperceptions/2008/05/19/gay-marriage-ruling-helps-mccain-hurts-obama/?mod=WSJBlog