MOSUL, Iraq — After a full two days of zigzagging this way and
that, picking up Blackhawk flights here and Chinook rides there, I
finally arrived in Mosul more than a bit disoriented. Army officers
were kind enough to take me immediately to the dining hall for
sustenance. (File under bad Jeff Foxworthy-esque riffs: You might
be a sissy civilian if you can’t bring yourself to use the words
“mess” or “chow.”) I was surprised at how thoroughly I was frisked
and then again at how closely my credentials and passport were
studied.
That is until I saw a giant, floodlight-lit granite monument to
the more than twenty killed here when a suicide bomber in a
purloined Iraqi Army uniform scaled a fence and blew himself up in
the middle of the lunch rush. I remembered seeing it on television
— the confusion of whether it had been a rocket or a mortar, the
possibility of an individual infiltrating a heavily guarded base
only coming up a day later — but had forgotten it occurred in
Mosul. I looked at the commemoration: It was the one-year
anniversary, a fact clearly not lost on a single soldier lining up
that night.
It’s more than a slab of granite that commemorates these
sacrifices, however. After a year that saw all too much bloodshed
— a near complete defeat of the (now reconstituted) Iraqi police
forces at the hands of insurgents, almost non-stop attacks on
American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, suicide bombers, and snipers
creating havoc — some hope is finally bubbling up to the surface
in Mosul. It still isn’t a place where a Westerner can exactly walk
down the street to buy a cup of coffee (or, more likely, chai), but
the frequency of attacks are down significantly, the city’s civil
government is slowly getting on its feet, civilian cooperation with
Iraqi and coalition forces is increasing, and when speaking with
either Iraqis (be they Sunni or Kurd) on the street or military
officials there is a general feeling that the terrors of today are
not forever.
“I think Mosul is probably going to be one of the first cities
we hand over to full Iraqi control,” Lt. Col. Alan Kelly, commander
of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, told me and he should
know — Kelly is the type of commander that spends most days in the
field, interacting with Iraqis and being intimately engaged with
the situation on the ground. His dual dedication to American
democratic ideals and heartfelt concern for ordinary Iraqis is
evident in any interaction. “There are pockets of westernization
that are expanding and having a moderating effect. The vast
majority of the people in Mosul are ready for the city to grow
beyond this conflict.”
IT’S A MORE COMPLICATED TRANSITION than it first may appear. As
violence decreases in the city the paradigm of how the military
approaches it must change as well. Reasonable people of most
backgrounds will give stricter measures and tactics some degree of
leeway in the middle of a guerrilla war. Keep those measures in
place too long after the threat has begun to diminish, however, and
the populace will quickly lose patience. The options for civil
control then devolve broadly into a form of an oppressive police
state or surrender to anarchy, neither conducive to a democratic
system, which, as we’ve all heard, is what the United States is
attempting to leave behind in Iraq. Mosul is a less dangerous city
than it has been in some time. What’s to be done?
Here’s a small example of what I’m talking about: In Mosul the
Stryker armored vehicles U.S. soldiers patrol the city in have for
some time now carried signs in Arabic warning other drivers that if
they come within a certain distance deadly force is sanctioned.
Whenever an Iraqi car came too close, the Stryker would sound an
ear-shatteringly loud horn to warn them off, before ratcheting up
into more extreme measures to defend against deadly suicide car
bombers. Now soldiers are holding back on the horns and even
sitting in regular deadlocked Mosul traffic with everyone else. On
one patrol the Stryker I was riding in got caught up in a large
chanting mob of students demonstrating against increasing fuel
prices. While the waves of angry people added to the tension of
sitting idle, the crew waited it out, and by doing so helped create
an environment where people are less afraid to express
themselves.
“We train hard to go hard, so it’s very challenging to get a
young soldier to slow down, especially if he was in a vehicle that
was hit by an IED the night before or if one of his buddies just
got shot,” Kelly acknowledged. “But it’s necessary. The cumulative
effect in the city of the little things we do on the ground to help
or hinder people can be tremendous.”
In other words, it pays to make friends, especially in a city
where human intelligence on insurgent activity comes almost
exclusively from local citizens.
“The challenges soldiers are facing here today are similar to
the ones soldiers had to face after the initial invasion when this
went from a full combat situation where everything that came at you
was a target to an insurgency that hides in the civilian
population,” Capt. Lawson Bell explained. “Now as the insurgency
hopefully winds down, building trust and bridges is going to
require some vulnerability on our part and less of an offensive
footing in some instances. You can’t gain trust if you never get
out of the Stryker.”
IT’S A TACTIC THAT’S WORKING. Ironically, the issue that might
prevent U.S. troops from withdrawing from the city as quickly as
they might hope is not lack of trust in American occupiers, but a
lack of trust in those set to replace them. In Sunni sections of
Mosul and elsewhere distaste for the occupation is oftentimes
tempered by fears of Iraqi Security Forces excesses. One of the
most frequent complaints I heard from Sunnis throughout Northern
Iraq was that they believed many Sunnis were being detained based
on false charges motivated by desire for revenge.
“Tonight, I’ll be going on a raid, looking for terrorists with
the Iraqi Army,” Captain Ed Matthaidess explained to one Sunni who
approached him with this concern during a patrol. The man gave the
thumbs up sign and nodded his head in vigorous assent. “There is a
legal process. I cannot just take someone in because I think he
makes bad chai. Neither can the Iraqi Army. We have to go to a
judge with evidence. And if we go, and I search the house and find
nothing, chances are they won’t be taken in. If we do find
something bad they will be tried by Iraqi lawyers and judges.
Captain Matt doesn’t put them in jail. Representatives of all the
Iraqi people put them in jail.”
“Let Americans arrest people, not the Iraqi Army,” the man said
without missing a beat. “Americans are better. They are fair.”
“The Iraqi Army has to follow the same rules we do,” Matthaidess
said. “Over time you are going to see less and less Americans
patrolling your streets, and you shouldn’t be afraid. Iraqi Army
and police are getting better everyday.”
The Sunni gave a half smile and crooked his head in a way that
indicated doubts didn’t just linger; they fairly danced across his
war-weary face.
While Captain Matthaidess is certainly right that Iraqi forces
are improving, few claim things are perfect or that Sunni fears are
completely unfounded. On raids and patrols, American forces still
are often reining in sometimes overzealous Iraqis. Kelly was
sanguine with regard to the progress and said some degree of
patience would be necessary.
“Culturally, we’re perceived as weak by a lot of Iraqis because
we talk things out and follow rules our enemies would never even
consider following,” he said. “That’s okay. It’s going to take time
to change the culture and so we just have to be the best example we
can be of the values we hold.”
ORDINARY IRAQIS ARE NOT ALONE in their distrust of Iraqi police
forces. While most American soldiers will have some measure of
praise for the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Police are typically spoken of
with considerably less praise. It probably didn’t help that while I
was in Mosul there was a rumor circulating that upon witnessing two
insurgents planting a roadside bomb during a patrol, a ranking
Iraqi Police commander in the city told his officers to stand down,
thusly: “Do not worry: It is not meant for us.”
“They’re more than happy to let some infidel Americans get
killed to keep the heat off their backs,” one soldier grumbled.
“The Iraqi Army would never just let that go. We couldn’t get a lot
of these police officers to show up to work six months ago. Now
they’re reliable? Many of them probably are, but not enough to keep
me from worrying about what the rest are up to.”
The overarching theme of his tenure in Mosul, Kelly said, is
that while securing the present is paramount, a true victory in
Iraq will require keeping one eye on the future.
“So much of our focus when we’re out on the streets is on the
kids,” Kelly said, pointing out that on some days his men pass out
Beanie Babies or soccer balls more often than they fire their guns.
“We hope the next generation will look back on Americans and what
we did here, despite the unavoidable tragedies that occur in every
war, as something that improved their lives. Those kids growing up
now are the ones who will really embrace democracy and make Iraq a
place that flourishes again if we do our job right.”
