48 hours without sleep.

24 hours without food.

6 hours with little water.

It was the most successful mission I had ever been on.  Insurgencies are not beat with hammer and anvil clearing operations.  They are not beat with presence patrols conducted from the confines of humvees that resemble bank vaults or Bradly fighting vehicles or Strykers.

Insurgencies are beat with a piece of paper:  A Census Form.

The AO

On the West Bank of the Euphrates river, across the Blackwater bridge from Fallujah is an area known for its old Baathist ties.

The outsized houses are filled with modern furniture in the grandiose style befitting the beneficiaries of the old regime's largesse.

Filled with canals, narrow roads and flooded fields, the AO resembles a pizza slice, running from the desert mesa to the Blackwater bridge, down stream on the Euphrates to the New bridge then following a crumbling ashphalt road back to the desert.

The old Baathist symbols appear on the houses and every other house has a dump truck or a semi-tractor trailer parked out back.

This area has had U.S. Marines operating in it non-stop for more than two years since Operation Phantom Fury--the battle of Fallujah--but for the first time an infantry company is taking the first and most important step to taming an area--taking a census.

Weapons Company 3/6 moved into Combat Outpost Black on Wednesday.  On Thursday the houses were numbered and the lanes drawn.  In the moonless night of Friday the 13th, the infantry moved out and started knocking on doors--254 doors.

Who's Who

There isn't much of a DMV in Iraq.  There isn't really a phone book.  In fact, all the paper trail tools police detectives use to track people down are absent in Iraq.

As the jihadist groups in Iraq have broken down into smaller and smaller cells, the work of tracking down the ring leaders and foot soldiers has become a game of intelligence and information gathering.  Taking known data and tracking the social networks.

The foundation of an intelligence data base is a complete census of everyone in the AO.

Otherwise, infantrymen patrol areas without a concrete knowledge of who belongs in an area and who doesn't.

In the Malayan Emergency of 1948-60, the British wasted little time in kicking off a 100% census and ID card program.  

The coalition is taking a little longer to learn the utility of it.

The census conducted by Weapons Company 3/6 asks/obtains the following:

Name of every military aged male
Tribe
Subtribe/Clan
Age
Number of Wives
Number of Children
Description of Car
License plate on car
Cell phone number
Military Experience
Occupation
Whether any member of the household needs medical attention
When was the last time they saw an insurgent
If they would be willing to help the coalition

Digital photos are taken of the military aged males, the cars, the house and the main room of the house.  The photo numbers are tracked and then compiled electronically with the census data.  A 10 digit GPS grid of the house is listed as well.

After completion and data entry of the census tribal and clan areas can be determined, making it easier to assign patrol bases where the same infantry squad or platoon works with the same people every day and the same clan Sheik every day.

It also makes it possible to determine when someone who does not belong is in the area.

As trust grows between the Marines and the Sheik and the residents, it is easier to get intel and harder for the Jihadists to hide among the population.

Next:  Replicating Success

Support Independent Filmmaking in Iraq  BUY A DVD

Or donate using the button below

---