In the Gray Area

by Seth W. B. Folsom

  I went outside the wire of COP South for the first time on 4 March. As part of our turnover, the team leader had planned a series of driving tours to cover 3rd Battalion’s area of operations (AO) in and around Al Qa’im. Along with Captain Hanna, Master Sergeant Deleon, Lieutenant Bates, and 2nd Lt. Joseph Davidoski (the team’s intelligence advisor), the major and several of his Marines and I piled into the team’s Humvees for the daylong trip. A ground intelligence officer straight out of school, Joe Davidoski was the most junior officer—and one of the youngest Marines—on the team. A military brat from Virginia Beach, Virginia, Davidoski had at first been a mystery to me. He rarely talked about his family or his background, and initially I was not quite sure where he was from because he never listed his home of record on any paperwork. A bookish graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, he had traveled throughout portions of the Middle East and Central Asia before earning his commission as a second lieutenant. As is typical for those who are unfortunate enough to have complicated last names, he became known as “Lieutenant Ski,” or simply “Ski.” He was a rabid fitness enthusiast, and his addiction to the CrossFit exercise program and his proclaimed hatred of fat people led several Marines on the team to think he was a robotic health fanatic. But his enthusiasm as a young officer was contagious, and his youthful exuberance and frequent naïveté often reminded me of myself following my entry into the Marine Corps.

  Our small convoy drove northeast toward the Euphrates River, pausing briefly on several occasions to navigate Iraqi Police (IP) checkpoints along our route to the Jibab and Almari peninsulas, home to 1st and 2nd companies. In reviewing our planned route for the tour I had misjudged the distance we would be traveling, and it wasn’t long before I realized just how far away from the battalion the two companies were located. First Company, garrisoned at Battle Position (BP) Okinawa on the Jibab peninsula, was more than sixty road kilometers from COP South. Second Company, stationed at BP Vera Cruz on the Almari peninsula, was only twelve kilometers closer. The challenges associated with supporting the two companies were daunting. I would later learn that each company was responsible for conducting its own logistical resupply each week with the battalion headquarters at COP South, and communications between the two units and the battalion command element were spotty at best. The cell phone, rather than traditional VHF or HF radios, had become the principal mode of communication for the battalion. And it wasn’t unusual for the Iraqi officers and soldiers of the two remote company outposts to feel as if they had been abandoned. Fuel supply was also a significant challenge for the two companies. It was not uncommon for them to run out of fuel before receiving their monthly resupply from the battalion, and as a result the two companies tended to rely more on foot patrols than on mounted vehicle patrols to cover their significant battlespace. It was easier for the two Iraqi company commanders to run their soldiers into the ground with grueling twelve-kilometer foot patrols over rough terrain than it was to request and receive additional fuel for their Humvees. All this I learned from the team leader as we made the monotonous road trip to the two battle positions. They were significant obstacles to the battalion’s eventual success, but the major spoke of the issue as if it were no more important than deciding what was on the evening’s dinner menu. It had been a long seven-month deployment for his team, and it was quickly becoming apparent to me that challenges such as fuel delivery were merely a drop in the proverbial bucket.

  The distance to Almari and Jibab presented another challenge for the team: the danger of IEDs along the protracted route. Although the intelligence briefings we had received en route to COP South had indicated a minimal IED threat in our AO, the simple fact remained: on every trip we made to Vera Cruz and Okinawa, we would be on the road for a long time. Long road marches meant long periods of intense observation for each vehicle crew, and experience told me that the Marines could remain vigilant in their vehicles only for so long. Over the years the insurgents had adapted their tactics and IED-emplacing techniques, with the primary initiation device in the AO now being the pressure strip. We knew that our electronic warfare systems, which were designed to counter radio-controlled IEDs, would be ineffective against pressure strips. But the team leader and his intelligence officer alleviated some of our concerns; there had not been an IED strike in our AO south of the Euphrates River in anyone’s memory. Most IED discoveries and detonations had been confined to the routes north of the Euphrates, and the last Marine to have been killed by an IED strike in the Al Qa’im AO had died in October 2007. It was a comforting fact, but we were warned to remain alert regardless. All agreed that the moment we let down our guard, the enemy was likely to hit us.

  BP Okinawa was a newer outpost, and its condition and martial cleanliness made me think we were rolling into a Coalition camp. Crushed gravel blanketed the compound, tactical vehicles were parked in orderly rows along the HESCO walls, and there was a general absence of the blowing trash and garbage that seemed everywhere once we left the wire. The 1st Company commander, Raad (Major) Muthafer, welcomed us, and his tentative grasp of English made communication with him easier for all parties involved. We shared a meal with him and his troops, and the team left the battle position with an elevated but false sense of confidence in the two distant outposts.

  Our bubble burst as we headed west and entered the entry control point (ECP) of BP Vera Cruz. The clean and professional appearance of BP Okinawa had been the opposite of what we had expected, and our arrival at Vera Cruz brought us back down to earth. The compound—which in the past had been occupied by numerous Marine units before being transferred to Iraqi army control—had since fallen into disarray and seemed to be disintegrating before our very eyes. In the preceding years BP Vera Cruz had been subject to almost daily mortar bombardment, and all of the billeting and work spaces had been reinforced with lumber and sandbags to provide some measure of overhead cover for the troops garrisoned there. One indication of the earlier violence in the AO appeared on the inside of a wooden hatch to one of the bunkers. In a display of gallows humor, some nameless Marine from 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines had recorded with scribbled drawings each time they had taken direct fire and mortar fire; each instance when they had either discovered an IED or a weapons cache; and every time they had been struck by an IED. The door’s face was filled from top to bottom with crude stencils of AK-47s, mortar rounds, and circular bombs.

  There was no doubt about it—the place was a shithole. Open refuse pits overflowing with garbage and plastic Aquafina bottles festered along the path leading into the compound, and a sour smell hung low over the encampment. We were overwhelmed by flies the moment we exited our vehicles, and when Marines wandered off to relieve themselves they returned quickly, gagging and cursing. A makeshift outhouse had been erected in one corner of the camp overlooking a steep wadi, which in turn ran into a valley that sloped toward the Euphrates. The outhouse overflowed from constant use, and the wadi into which it emptied similarly spilled over with human feces and thousands of empty Aquafina bottles. The stench was overpowering, and it drifted in an invisible, choking fog throughout the camp. Major Za’id, 2nd Company’s commander, was the soft-spoken and diminutive leader of a troop of unmotivated and undisciplined officers and soldiers, and the challenge that faced us as the incoming mentors for such a group was an overwhelming one. The differences in abilities between Muthafer and Za’id were obvious, a fact most clearly demonstrated by the striking dissimilarities between the two camps. While it was true that Vera Cruz was significantly older than Okinawa, the disorganization and general filthiness of Vera Cruz was a direct reflection of Za’id’s lack of leadership.

  We returned to COP South, the trip back as uneventful as the one to the battle positions earlier that morning. Our first trip outside the wire had been no different than any of the patrols we had conducted during our predeployment training, and despite the mottled landscape you would have never guessed a war was still going on. The ordinary convoy underscored the words of the current
MiTT’s intelligence officer, who had told us the previous day that Al Qa’im was “the safest place in Iraq.” But there was still cause for concern. There had been a rash of new IED discoveries in the AO recently (including radio-controlled devices), and the last thing we needed was to allow ourselves to become complacent just because it had been so quiet lately. After all, we had just gotten there.

  That evening the team leader took me to meet the man who would become my counterpart for the next seven months. Muqaddam Rukn (Staff Lieutenant Colonel) Ayad, the 3rd Battalion commander, was a portly, round-faced man whose congenial appearance reminded me of a younger, jollier version of Saddam Hussein. A member of the Al Karbuli tribe from Ramadi, he had been an officer in Saddam’s army, evidenced by his insistence on routinely donning the khaki service uniform of the old army. In time I would learn that Ayad was firmly entrenched in the old way of doing things. But during our first meeting he preached about the importance of empowering junior officers and NCOs. He smiled a lot, and throughout our conversation he acted genuinely happy to meet me and to have my team aboard. I fell for the act, and at the conclusion of our meeting I left thinking how fortunate I was to be working alongside someone of his caliber.

  I wasn’t the only one getting to know a new Iraqi counterpart. While the major and I conversed through our interpreter with Ayad, Lieutenant Bates was in the process of meeting his counterparts in the battalion’s S-3 (operations) section. Bates was more fortunate than I; his counterpart, Naqeeb (Captain) Al’aa, was a self-taught English-speaking officer. Tall and wavyhaired, Al’aa could typically be seen sporting outsized aviator sunglasses whenever he was away from his hut, which was not often. He usually spent most of his time ensconced behind his computer monitor chatting with the love of his life, a woman in Baghdad named Nadia whom he had found online. The word on the streets was that the two had never actually met in person, but you never would have guessed it from the amount of time he spent communicating virtually with her online. A product of the new Iraqi army, Al’aa believed in exercising initiative and conducting proper planning and coordination, but he lacked the trust and confidence of Lieutenant Colonel Ayad. While at first Bates tolerated Al’aa’s obsession with Nadia, eventually it became necessary for him to put his foot down. As time wore on, Bates was frequently compelled to tell Al’aa, “Say good-bye to Nadia, sadie [sir]. We have work to do.”

  Al’aa wasn’t the only English-speaking officer. Mulaazem (Second Lieutenant) Anwar, the 3rd Company XO, was another young, intelligent officer who spent a significant amount of time hanging out in Al’aa’s hut. He shared many of Al’aa’s “new army” ideas about leadership and planning, yet like Lieutenant Colonel Ayad he was a veteran of the old Iraqi army. I would later learn that Anwar had fought the Marines in 2003 along Highway 1 near Ad Diwaniyah, the same stretch of road my company had rolled through during the war’s launch. Once that information got out, a rumor began to circulate within the battalion that my company and I had fought against and killed Anwar’s men five years earlier. Although factually incorrect, it was a rumor I wasn’t inclined to quash. The existence of such stories was an unspoken reminder to the Iraqis that I had been there before under less cordial and friendly circumstances. Who among them knew whether I would unleash hell on them again if they didn’t cooperate with me and my men? Power was everything in the Iraqi culture, and such stories would perhaps bestow power upon me. I needed any edge I could get, so it was folklore I was willing to keep alive.

  Bates’ meeting with Al’aa and Anwar was essentially no different than a group of American junior officers hanging out and shooting the shit together. A television tuned in to an inane Iraqi channel called Smash TV blared nonstop American music videos in the background, and the group smoked cigarettes and drank glass after glass of hot, sweet chai tea. It was the way business was done, and in time it would differ little from my own meetings with Ayad. Turnover discussions with the outgoing team indicated that our working relationships with the 3rd Battalion officers and SNCOs would be formed during nightly meetings such as these, and little to nothing would ever be accomplished during the hours of daylight. When asked about the best way to cope with such a situation, one officer from the outgoing team simply replied, “Learn to stay up late.” We were in their country, on their time, and they expected us to adapt to them, not the other way around.

  It was going to be a long seven months.

  Chapter 10

  IAs

  Although I have been in Iraq previously, my experience with the Iraqi army (IA) before becoming an advisor has been limited. There was a brief interaction with the fledgling Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in 2004, but beyond that my only view of the Iraqi army was through my weapon’s sights during the war’s invasion. Now my team and I live with them, and as each day passes I learn something new about them. I don’t always like what I see.

  The junood come in all shapes and sizes. Most are short, scrawny boys who look barely out of their teens. They wander around camp wide-eyed, unsure what they are supposed to be doing. Their AK-47s are monstrous in their arms, and I often wonder if they will know how to employ them when the time comes. We know that most of the soldiers have never even fired their rifles, and despite our pleas to the commanders of the battalion and brigade to authorize live-fire training we are constantly snubbed. Ammunition costs money and must be accounted for, and the senior Iraqi officers are unwilling to expend the personal energy required to properly train their men.

  The soldiers wear frayed, baggy uniforms that hang on their slight frames like limp sails, billowing out when a strong wind blows through camp. Some show off equipment they have managed to scavenge over the years: U.S.-issue boots and gloves and ballistic glasses. Others wear aging, olive-drab magazine bandoliers and berets—holdovers from the old Iraqi army days. There is no uniformity to how they dress, and their mismatched uniforms and body armor reflect the inability of the Iraqi army to properly outfit its troops. The result is the appearance of a ragtag band of children playing war, not really understanding how to act or what is expected of them.

  The Iraqi officers also seem to adhere to no particular uniform dress code. Most wear old American tricolor camouflage—both woodland and desert patterns—while others don British camouflage, or tan flight suits like the MiTT team. One day at a regional security meeting (RSM) I count twelve different uniforms sitting at the table, and on another occasion a senior Iraqi officer from 7th Division shows up at our camp clothed in a set of Marine Corps pixilated desert camouflage. I am angered to the point of speechlessness. The MiTT team is not authorized to allow its interpreters to wear this uniform, yet no one higher in the Coalition chain of command does anything to stop this senior Iraqi officer from wearing it. Apparently some standards are flexible for our Iraqi counterparts.

  Red berets are the norm, and almost every officer wears parachute jump wings on his left breast even though it is commonly known that few—if any—of them have actually been to jump school. I know that there is nothing we can do about the uniforms. Perhaps one day the Iraqi army will get its act together and standardize what its troops wear, but in the meantime it will remain low on the priority list. There are bigger fish to fry.

  When the junood aren’t going on patrol or standing guard duty they are talking on cell phones. As each day winds to a close and the sun dips toward the horizon, the berm that encloses the camp fills with the squatting silhouettes of soldiers calling friends and loved ones on their cells. They don’t always wait until the day is over. From our team’s COC we watch the tower guards through our observation camera. Few actually stand guard. Instead, they chat on their phones, sit, squat, or sleep. When we alert the battalion’s Sergeant of the Guard and show him these transgressions on the video monitor he becomes furious and storms out to the guard towers. He collects the offenders, shaves their heads, and throws them in jundi jail, a makeshift camp prison that is nothing more than an empty, guarded hut with no air-conditioning. With the installation of th
e camera we are constantly able to identify soldiers shirking their duties, and on each occasion the offenders are placed in custody. After a while so many soldiers have been put in jundi jail that we wonder if there will be anyone left to stand guard.

  The junood also spend their free time playing soccer. Although they frequently mope around camp and sluggishly perform their duties with no vigor or motivation, as soon as they hit the soccer field they become energized. They dart back and forth across the field, shouting, kicking the ball to each other, knocking down their opponents, and releasing their pent-up frustrations. One day they challenge the MiTT team to a soccer match, and it isn’t long before they are wiping our asses all over the playing field. The Marines are in top physical shape, yet the junood run circles around them and mock them. Many even play in their bare feet, negotiating rocks and divots that are strewn across the hard-packed dirt field. The soldiers know that on the battlefield the Marines are unmatched, but on the soccer field they can be defeated.

  The Outlanders quickly learn that the only way to get anything done with the IAs is at night. During the day the IA officers retreat to their huts to sleep or surf the Internet. Most only work at night, and even then their work competes with blaring televisions and stereos. We sit with the officers, drinking glass after glass of steaming-hot chai tea. The tea is served in tiny glasses, and the spoons that come with the tea stand up straight in the thick silt of sugar that rests at the glass’s bottom. The tea is usually served to the officers by a “chai boy,” some poor bastard of an enlisted man whose only duty is to act as an officer’s manservant. The officers act as if the chai boy doesn’t even exist, and they forget themselves when they are talking. The chai boys say nothing but hear everything, and so anything that is discussed in the officers’ huts is soon repeated throughout camp. Operational security is nonexistent. The only time the officers speak to the chai boys is when the tea is cold, or when the food is not cooked properly. The Marines cringe at the display of personal servitude.