Jun
13
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Sunday, 13 June 2010 |
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"Where are you flying today?" the Delta Arlines agent asked.
"Kansas City to Atlanta, Atlanta to Paris, Paris to Dubai. Then I take a small regional airline to Kabul, Afghanistan."
"Sounds like the trip of a lifetime!"
I've made the trip of a lifetime several times. This will be my seventh trip to the wars in five years. One trip may be an outlandish mid-life crisis. Seven surely qualifies me for some type of clincal diagnosis.
I am certain that multiple trips to wars have changed me, but I am not sure what those changes are.
Every story, at least every narrative story people will actually pay attention to is about how a person changes. The 12 Steps of the Path of the Hero, also known as the monomyth, articulated by Joseph Campbell result in the hero changing. I am not a hero by any stretch, and luckily classical heroics are not required for the path, just the 12 steps, one of them being a change or transformation.
In the classic post-modern monomyth the transformation is Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi or Neo becoming The One. My transformation, if any, has been decidedly less dramatic--at least from my point of view. Sure I've dodged a few bullets, but I just dove to the ground rather than doing the limbo in slow motion.
The path of the hero is also called the monomyth because the basic steps apply to every story ever told by humans--at least the compelling, entertaining stories people actually cared to remember. Without a few of the steps, the story falters and becomes much less enjoyable.
The 12 steps of the path of the hero, include:
1. Hero In Natural Environment
2. Call to adventure
3. Reluctance
4. Encouraged by wise man
5. Cross Threshold
6. Tests and Helpers
7. Cave
8. Supreme Ordeal
9. Sieze the Sword
10: Transformation
11. Road Home
12. Elixir
Whether the human brain's preference for these steps is instinct or conditioning is a matter of occasional conjecture, but the fact is that for mellenia every enduring story has had the same basic steps--even non-fiction stories like Michael Lewis' The Big Short, a story about hedge funds that made billions in the mortage meltdown, follow the steps.
Our brains like the path so much we will rearrange facts and the sequence of reality to make things fit the narrative. In the social sciences this pheonomena is called narrative bias. An offshoot of narrative bias occurs in the news media when stories are ignored or spiked because they do not fit the predispositions of the reporters and/or editors.
The brain's bias for a story architecture that fits a sequence of steps is a problem for explaining the why and how of my multiple trips to the wars. The reality doesn't fit the narrtive your brain prefers and does not culminate in a transformation--at least not one that I can discern. (I've thought about inventing one, if for no other reason than to make a book proposal that will likely catch the eye of a publisher.) Without a clear transformation and triumph the story of the last five years of my life is without a point.
It hasn't been pointless, but there is not a clear, concise point. There has not been a clearly defined purpose or adversity to overcome. There has been no final gunfight, yet.
My adventures in the wars, like the wars themselves, do not fit the nice neat narrative the brain prefers. There was no final battle in Iraq and there will not be one in Afghanistan. Iraq is slowly fading and Afghanistan--the good war, the war of necessity--has lasted longer than the attention span of the viewing public.
The wars drag on, I keep going to them.
On this trip I'm going to try something different. Normally I fill this space with the usual point of view reports news/analysis reports, photos and travel notes. I will still do that, but I will also throw in more memoir(ish) material, thoughts, observations and reflections on five years of living in two incompatible worlds.
It has been the living in two worlds that has had the most profound effect on me. It is not a day-in-day-out effect. The effect usually manifests when a person discovers the life I live, where I have been, what has happened to me, what I have done. It is then that I realize how I live in the real world--the world of AK-47s, car bombs, beheadings, suicide bombers, poverty, filth and disease. I do not live in the plastic world of grocery stores, strip malls and orderly vehicular traffic. I visit the plastic world for long periods of time but I do not feel comfortable in it. I like the plastic world much more than the real one. I like airconditioning, reliable electricity, potable drinking water and food that won't make me sick.
When a person who only knows the plastic world meets me, I realize that there is something wrong with me. I put a lot of effort into going to the wars--a concept that even many soldiers shake their heads at.
I am now in the process of leaving the plastic world for the real world. I type this in the international depatures terminal of Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport. The nexus of the real world and the plastic world is in airports. Most people are traveling from plastic to plastic, but every so often they cross the path of those with the means to escape the real world or those who seek it out.
Time to board the plane to Paris, en route to Dubai.
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May
31
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 31 May 2010 |
In the Spring of 2007 as the Anbar Awaking began to spread downstream through the Euphrates river valley and Soldiers surged into Baghdad, a small outpost of paratroopers was under intermittent siege.
The paratroopers of Blackfoot Company, 1-501st, at OP Omar on the northern edge of Kharmah, Iraq 25-miles west of Baghdad, were fighting the last of the major fire-fights in Iraq. Every three weeks or so, Al Qaida in Iraq would assault OP Omar. The attack on March 26th, 2007 was supposed to destroy the outpost--if not for one man they might have succeeded and there would be 100 more white headstones with wreaths and flags on Memorial day.
The main building of OP Omar was a warehouse used for cold or dry storage of grains and vegetables before the war. The thick concrete walls originally designed to keep cold air in also kept bullets and shrapnel out. The exterior tan colored stucco has chipped and pocked, but the concrete held. Like nearly every other building in Iraq, it was surrounded by walls that successive units had reinforced. Gun towers and fighting positions had been added and improved over the years.
It was not an ideal location, but there is no such thing, it was merely the best among other options to use as a base of operations for 100 or more men.
I arrived at OP Omar at around 2 a.m. on the 26th on a slow-moving convoy of humvees driving by night vision goggles and feel. The Kharmah road had been notorious for improvised explosive devices for years. The last time I had been on that road was in 2005 and a humvee four vehicles back from mine had been hit wounding three Marines and taking a leg and arm from an interpreter.
The Humvees of 2007 were much more armored than those of 2005, but the bombs had gotten bigger too.
But Al Qaida was taking the night off and we arrived at OP Omar safe and tired. The 1st Sergeant showed me my bunk among the paratroopers and I slept in my clothes.
The morning broke cool and clear. March and April are mild in Iraq. The blazing furnace does not kick on until early May. I ate breakfast on patio surrounded by blast barriers and sand bags with a few paratroopers telling them why I was there, how I had been all around the area before and specifically requested to come back to Kharmah.
They thought I was insane.
The Sergeant of the Guard took me around the compound which is was only about the size of a football field with a dozen exposed spots where sniper fire could rain down. One of the Blackfoot Sharpshooters had engaged in a sniper duel a few weeks before. The Al Qaida sniper was good, going so far as to use a thermal blanket to disguise his heat signature. The Blackfoot Sharpshooter was patient waiting for days until a glint of the enemy scope gave away the position.
I was mostly in waiting mode. A large raid to track down some suspected anti-aircraft missiles would be kicking off soon. I settled in, getting to know the guys. In the dust I drew a map of their area of operations, telling them about the crazy things the Marines I was embedded with did in 2005.
They no longer thought I was insane--just suicidal.
The conversation was interrupted by burst of machine gun fire. Not a few pops from an M-4 crabine or AK, a burst of fire from the heavy M-240 machine gun.
Everyone paused, a space of only a breath.
Then the M-240 opened up again with a long, sustained stream of fire. A few paratroopers darted inside to the main building. Then the wind hit.
A gale of hurricane force wind pushed through the compound sending me backwards. Dust, rocks, dirt and debris biting into skin. Then the sound, a crack louder than a nearby lightening strike.
The over-pressure from a tanker truck loaded with more than 2,000 pounds of explosives produces a supersonic blastwave with shards of steel larger than a man's hand flying at more than 4,000 feet per second. If one of those shards hit a man a full velocity, all that would be left him would be his boots.
The echo of the explosion had barely faded when gunfire filled the air.
Sergeant Jason Stegall, the paratrooper who fired the machine gun at the tanker truck from the gun tower facing the main entry point, blinked open his eyes.
He was lying his back on the catwalk leading to the tower. The blast wave had blown him clear out of the tower. Another paratrooper leapt over him and started firing out out the gun port. Stegall gathered himself, scrambled into the tower and started shooting.
Within minutes, paratroopers and Al Qaida fighters were blazing thousands of rounds at each other. Paratroopers fired from the gun towers and firing positions along the walls, the AQI fighters from houses on south and west of OP Omar.
Another truck filled with explosives and driver bent an martyrdom rumbled up the road toward Omar.
The double suicide truck bomb attack was Al Qaida's most determined attack on OP Omar. AQI's plan was for the first truck bomb to breach and destroy the defensive perimeter on the south-west corner of the outpost. The second truck bomb would then be able to drive in and detonate inside the compound. The third phase of the attack would be a frontal foot assault by the fighters.
Al Qaida had been probing OP Omar in the previous attacks, testing, guaging. The attack on March 26th was supposed to overrun OP Omar.
Omar was isolated. Reinforcements by ground would be halted by IEDs. Air cover would take 15 minutes or more to arrive. Once the fighters were in the compound the remaining paratroopers would have to have to fight it out by hand or call in fire on top of themselves. There would be 100 more white headstones in national cemetaries today.
Al Qaida though did not plan on one quiet, un-assuming paratrooper from Alabama foiling their plan.
I met Sgt. Jason Stegall briefly a few hours before the attack during my tour of OP Omar. I shot a little video of him and he explained their duty that day--prevent anyone from making it through the entry point to Omar.
The asphalt road heading north out of Kharmah runs dangerously close to the west side of the outpost. A series of concrete barriers had been set up diverting Iraqi civillian traffic toward a gravel road 150 meters south of the outpost. Only US military vehicles were allowed to proceed through the barriers and the serpentine path toward the gate of the outpost.
Stegall was perched in the gun tower facing the barriers when the suicide truck bomb failed to turn and headed into the barriers.
Hundreds of cars and trucks approached the barriers everyday and turned to the right. The locals knew the drill. The water truck loaded with explosives slowed down and instead of turning, headed into the barriers.
Stegall jumped down and fired a flare at the truck.
It kept coming.
Stegall took the M-240 machine gun, braced himself and fired a burst into the ground. The truck sped up. Stegall then opened up a sustained burst into the grill of the truck. The truck turned right off the asphalt into the dirt and Stegall unleashed a hail of bullets into the cab of the truck killing the driver. It did not turn toward the outpost, it rolled east then exploded.
Al Qaida's deadly plan had been thwarted.
The second suicide truck bomb detonated inside the crater created by the first one. I ran up to the roof of the main building with a team of sharpshooters exposing myself for a few seconds to gunfire that almost killed me.
The mortar crew launched rounds at the fighters across the streets.
The fight raged for 20 minutes then it all fell quiet. Al Qaida retreated, blending back into population.
One paratrooper was evacuated by helicopter with serious wounds. He survived but is carrying large scars from that day. Many of the paratroopers are still carrying mental and emotional scars from the repeated attacks on OP Omar.
We all lived longer because of Jason Stegall.
Sergeant Jason Stegall served the rest of his tour with valor, distinguishing himself in combat on other occasions. He was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for his actions on March 26th 2007. Al Qaida, Jaish al Mahdi and other malevolent men tried to kill him many times and failed.
In December of 2009 Jason battled one final enemy and lost. He died of an illness and fever.
There are 100 fewer headstones with flags on them today because of Jason Stegall. One of those headstones should have been mine.
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May
11
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 11 May 2010 |
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Jules C. is starting a running series of reviews of two Iraq War memoirs--Rage Company and Kaboom.
I've thought about writing my own memoirs and even had conversations with literary agents, but I think I need to be finished running around the wars before I write a memoir about my adventures running around the wars. (Speaking of which I'll be jetting off to Afghanistan soon.)
The challenge with my memoirs would be utter idiocy of what I have done...imagine the blurb description on Amazon.
"JD Johannes quit a good job as a political appointee and campaign operative, bought a TV camera and ran off to Iraq with his old Marine Corps unit as an embedded reporter. He was pretty good at the work, combat didn't bother him much, so he kept doing it for five (or more) years. When the wars ended he got some dude elected to a down ballot state-wide office and resumed his mundane life. He also writes silly workout books."
Okay, maybe I could come up with something flashier than that but those are the basic facts I have to work with.
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Apr
19
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 19 April 2010 |
[Preface: This article is going to get me in trouble with people who do not read it and slowly and digest it.
Gunmen, fighters, insurgents--whatever you want to call them--are not complicated people to understand. Understanding them will go a long way to determining success or failure in Afghanistan and other war torn regions.
I have bumped into several insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years and understand their motives.
I understand them because in a few ways I am like them.]
"It is the best life on earth!"
Omar Hammami, Somali Insurgent
It was an exhileration I dare not try to match. I was driving down the interstate way too fast, the music playing way too loud as I headed toward home. The thrill was not from being back in the United States, but the realization I had just survived the most improbable adventure.
Less than 24 hours earlier I had been in Kabul, Afghanistan. In the previous weeks I went from trudging around the mountains with US Army Infantrymen to staying in a five-star hotel.
I lived the life described by Omar Hammami to his sister and published in the New York Times magazine .
"Sometimes I live in the bush with camels, sometimes I live the five-star life. Sometimes I walk for miles in the terrible heat with no water, sometimes I ride in extremely slick cars. Sometimes I’m chased by the enemy, sometimes I chase him!”
“I have hatred, I have love,” he [Hammami] went on. “It’s the best life on earth!”
Hammami was raised in Alabama and joined the Somali muslim insurgents where he found his identity and embraced the lifestyle of the gunman, the fighter, the insurgent.
War has a powerful effect on the psyche. The Hebrew military theorist Martin van Crevald writes of the effect, "By compelling the senses to focus themselves on the here and now [war] can cause a man to take his leave of them."
It is an exhilerating nothingness that is addictive to some.
"Just as it makes no sense to ask 'why people eat' or 'what they sleep for', so fighting in many ways is not a means but an end," van Crevald writes in his book 'The Transformation of War.'
"For every person who has expressed his horror of war there is another who found in it the most marvelous of all the experiences that are vouchsafed to man, even to the point that he later spent lifetime boring his descendants by recounting his exploits."
A fighter like Hammami finds a narcotic reality to war that cannot be found in any other form.
I have felt that powerful narcotic as well in the dusty villages of Al Anbar, streets of Baghdad and valleys of Afghanistan.
Asking an insurgent who is hooked on it to quit is like telling an addict to 'just say no.'
For many insurgents, the fight is a step-up in the world from subsitence farming or urban poverty. It also brings with it the most powerful force in human nature, the top of Maslows Heirarchy--self actualized identity.
“Out there I’m a useless guy, unemployed and cursed by my family,” one militant said. “Here I’m a commander. My words have weight.”
Pakistani counterterrorism officials say memebers of the Taliban describe the fight as "an addiction, a habit that made them feel powerful in a world that ignored them."
A young man from Peshwar, or Khandahar or Jalalabad with few prospects finds not only employment as a fighter, but purpose and status.
This is what van Crevald is referring to as as fighting as an end in and of itself.
This is also where my similarities with the insurgent end. I have experienced the dark elixer of combat and all-in adventures. When they are placed in front of me it is impossible for me to say 'no.' But for me being in harms way is not an end to itself.
I have a life and an identity in the United States aside from the war. I do not wholly define myself by my overseas adventures. They are a part of my identity, but they are not my sole identity.
The insurgent cadre define their identity by being a fighter. To them, there is no better life or option and if they become addicted to the exhilerating nothingness, very little of civil life will hold much appeal to them.
Many of the low-level fighters can be peeled off with simple options like a job. In Iraq, being paid by the coalition to staff a check point was a better option than being an insurgent.
The upper level commanders and leadership are more difficult if not impossible to mollify, but the mid-level leaders are the key.
The mid-level leaders will not go back to the farm or the urban poverty of Khandahar or be satisfied with standing around at a check point. But they may trade positions , like former members of the Lords Army in central Africa who have joined with the Ugandan military.
The mid-level cadre will want similar positions to satisfy their ego and maintain their identity. They will want to maintain their status and occasionally get the exhileration of the nothingness of combat.
Those who are truly devoted to the cause of Islam will never be peeled off, but most fighters, even those who are devout muslims, can be flipped. The die-hards, those committed to the cause or whose identities are fully invested in the cause, can only be slowly hunted down an eliminated.
Understanding the insurgent is not difficult. They are human and respond to the same motivations as every other human.
Flipping insurgents is just one line of effort among many and to flip an insurgent you must understand his motives for being an insurgent.
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Apr
18
2010
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Written by JD Johannes
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Sunday, 18 April 2010 |
Jules has a good review of the '2K' phenomenon , the obsession with the closing of the distant outposts in the Korengal and the build up around Khandahar.
If you ever get the pleasure of closely examining a tribal map of Afghanistan's Eastern mountains, you will see blotches denoting the primary Pashtun tribes and other blotches marked, Pashai.
Pashai, in the hard Pashtun dialect of Eastern Afghanistan means "hill billy."
If the Pashtuns are calling you a hill billy, you are probably too far gone to ever be brought into the fold.
Many of the distant outposts recently closed out were in Pashai territory and it was pretty common knowledge on the ground as early as August of 2009 that those Company sized outposts were going to be closed out.
Does closing them out give a free hand to the enemy in those distant mountain valleys? Yes.
But in Iraq the Coalition handed to open desert over to AQI. Given the open border between the distant valleys and the Pakistan Tribal areas that the Taliban already have as safe havens, the net effect will likely be marginal.
The allocation of force we are now seeing in Afghanistan is similar to the British tactics in the Malayan Civil War. Regular infantry worked the population centers with standard population centric counter insurgency. The SAS went deep into the jungles.
The Battle of Khandahar will not look like the Battle of Fallujah. It probably will not even resemble the slow moving block-by-block battle of Ramadi of 2006-2007.
It will most likely be a lot like Baghdad in the late Summer of 2007--US Forces out walking the streets 24/7 conducting census missions and precision raids as the opportunities presented themselves.
For those fretting about how long it is taking us to move on Khandahar, they would be wise to recall that the Surge was no real mystery. The Counter Insurgency Field Manual, the game plan of the surge, was published online by the Army. In Counter Insurgency you can tell your enemy exactly what the macro strategy will be.
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Dec
08
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Tuesday, 08 December 2009 |
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| JD and LTC Ahmed on October 21, 2009 |
LTC Ahmed, the commander of an elite
police unit in Salah ad Din province, was assassinated on by a
suicide bomber on Dec. 4th in central Tikrit, Iraq.
Ahmed was among the first to step forward
in 2003 and 2004 to work with Coalition forces in Tikrit.
From the powerful Jabouri tribe centered
North of the city, he quickly gained a reputation for being brash, fearless
and willing to whatever it took to eliminate terrorists.
I met him a few times this past October
while embedded with 2-32 Field Artillery, the US Battalion that worked
side-by-side with Ahmed.
And he lives up to the quotes about him.
"He was controversial, flamboyant,
brave, and effective," U.S. Col. Walt Piatt told the Associated
Press . "He single-handedly disrupted numerous enemy plots
during the last election - He was the go-to-guy in the province."
During a Joint Security meeting I sat
in on he puffed on double corona cigar and then joked that I should
be paying him for the privilege of having a picture with him.
"Angela Jolie wants her picture
with me," he joked.
We then talked about how after I finished
up my work with the Army I should spend a few days embedded with him.
(I have been known to take off my body armor and jump in a pick up truck
with an Iraqi officer to go for a drive around town .)
I took down his cell phone number and
told him the serious Inshalla--I'll spend a few days with you on this
trip unless Allah prevents it. I ran out of time on this trip
to embed with Ahmed but toyed with extending a few days to embed with
him. If I had, I could have been with him on Dec. 4th.
As I travelled around the province I
inquired with other Iraqi police about Ahmed and his reputation.
From Bayji to Dujayl, he was a legend.
The reports of him personally killing
250 plus insurgents/terrorists are not puffery. The number of
terrorists killed by men under his command is much higher.
Ahmed had a lot of enemies. The
conventional wisdom is that Al Qaida killed him. But the facts
are probably murkier.
Someone or some group didn't just want
Ahmed dead--they needed him dead.
Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, friend, warrior,
servant of a free Iraq--May peace be upon him.
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Dec
06
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Sunday, 06 December 2009 |
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I just returned from Iraq and people have started asking me what I think of the Afghan Surge. (I spent some time in Afghanistan this Summer.)
The Afghan Surge can work if Battalion Commanders on the ground fight the war correctly and if it lasts longer than one troop rotation.
As of this morning I am lacking in confidence on both counts.
Via Jules Crittenden I read about operation "Cobra's Anger."
As the headline to Jules' blog makes clear, it is a classic Hammer & Anvil operation and destined to be a waste of time and resources.
I participated in a dozen such operations in Iraq--sometimes clearing the same areas twice!
But don't take my word for it. In late 2005 I was introduced to the book that became the game plan for the Marines 'The Long Long War: The Emergency in Malaya 1948-1960' by British Brigadier General Richard L. Clutterbuck. Reading Clutterbuck is like reading the history of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but written in 1966.
Here is a telling quote:
"Initially, because of their previous training and experience, senior army officers were inclined to launch their units into the jungle in battalion strength--either in giant encirclement operations when a[n] [insurgent] camp was known to be in the area, or in wide sweeps based on no informatin at all. Neither of these types of operations had any success.
"The predilection of some army officers for major operations seems incurable. Even in the late 1950's, [near the end of the war], new brigade commanders would arrive from England, nostalgic for World War II, or fresh from large-scale maneuvers in Germany. On arrival in Malaya, they would address themselves with chinagraphs to a map almost wholly green except for one red pin. 'Easy,' they would say. 'Battalion on the left, battalion on the right, battalion blocking the end, and thena fourth battalion to drive through. Can't miss, old boy.' So a thousand long-suffering lieutenants, sergeants and privates would be launched on an operation described by some name as 'hammer and anvil' or 'splitting the disc' or 'rabbit hunt.'"
The Hammer & Anvil came up in today's New York Times as well.
"Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil....
"“We finally have an opportunity to do a real hammer-and-anvil strategy on the border,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who follows the Afghan war. “We’ve never done it before because we’ve had insufficient strength on both sides of the border or insufficient political will on the Pakistani side.”"
The Hammer & Anvil operation at the street level requires the Taliban to be stupid enough to actually get into a stand-up gun-fight with US Marines. The enemy, with the exception of a few morons with an extreme desire for martyrdom, usually gets smart, drops the AK-47 and fails to cooperate rendering the whole operation a waste of time and diesel fuel.
At the Strategic, country-wide level Hammer & Anvil analogies are absurd.
Any Company, Battalion or Brigade commader in Afghanistan would be well served by reading Lt. Colonel Jim Crider's paper published by the Center for a New American Security.
(I embedded with Crider's unit in 2007 and recently bumped into him in Iraq. He is now the G3 (operations officer) of the 3rd Infantry Division. Although he is doing important work in Iraq, I feel his experience and talents could be put to greater use in Afghanistan.)
There is no way to Hammer an isurgency to death. The best way to beat the Taliban is to strangle it to death by conducting a detailed census, building a huge database so you know who lives in each mud hut then going out and confirming the census data daily. The census data prevents the Taliban from hiding in plain sight forcing them to move on to another area or be slowly suffocated, cornered and then, finally engaged and killed or captured.
In Iraq, most of them just gave up or switched sides.
Squandering time and resources with Hammer & Anvil operation is bad enough--but the real flaw in the Afghan Surge is the lack of time.
For this lesson we go back in time 130 years and learn a lesson from another Brit, Sir Robert Warburton whose book "Eighteen Years in the Khyber" is essential reading to understand the tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Warburton writes about discussions he had with the leaders of the tribe around Jalalabad and their skepticism.
"Sahib, when Major Cavagnari first came here we joined him and threw in our lot with the British government, thinking you were goin to remain here for good. But you cleared out on the first opportunity and left us to our fate. For six months we lived with rifles in our hands, dreading every moment that our last day had come--not that Amir Yakub Khan oppressed us, but that our real enemies, our cousins, heirs to our landed property, were hounding on the Mullahs to attack and kill us because we had been friends to the Feringhi, [outsiders, non-muslims] so that our cousins might get hold of our houses, lands and possessions. You have come again, and we have once more joined our fortunes to yours. Tell us now what your government intends to do in the future. Are you going to forsake us once more, and leave us in the hands of our enemies?"
The Afghans are asking us the same questions they asked Warburton and when we say that the Surge is temporary what motivation is there to help NATO and US forces?
The Afghan Surge can work with the application of proper tactics and time--a lot of time.
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Nov
26
2009
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Written by JD Johannes
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Thursday, 26 November 2009 |
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Nov
24
2009
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 |
The blood debt is a custom in many cultures, but unknown to many Westerners.
In Iraq the tradition of the blood debt helped fuel the sectarian killing sprees that nearly plunged the country into a civil war.
In it is purest form, as described by Edward Gibbon in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it is truly an eye for an eye a life for a life debt.
Everyman, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of his own cause...the interest and principle of the bloody debt are accumulated; the individuals of either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometime elapse before account of the vengeance be finally settled.
But that is the most base understanding of the blood debt.
In Iraq and Afghanistan tribal leaders often negotiate the blood debt to a cash or property settlement. The family and tribe of the deceased agree to not seek blood if they are compensated.
Just yesterday I witnessed a highly formalized negotiation about the blood debt by the nascent Tribal Union in Dujayl, Iraq.
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| Dujayl Tribal Union meeting in a school auditorium |
The goal of the Tribal Union is to unify the tribes in this agrarian community so to have a unified voice before the civil government.
To do that, the any disputes need to be resolved quikcly and equitably. The leadership of the Union is proposing standardized procedures to resolve grievances.
Meeting a school auditorium and sitting on plastic chairs, more than 100 Sheiks took part in the open meeting of the Union.
The Tribal Union is a relatively new creation in Dujayl. In the early years of the war, US forces went looking for anyone and everyone who would cooperate with them.
In Dujayl a man who spoke English was the first to shake the hand of US forces. He said the right things and put on a good act. But he was not a real Sheik and had no real influence.
He did make a lot of money off the US though.
During the Surge and after, it became obvious that the Sheiks Council of Dujayl was populated by scoundrels. The US officers began to follow the tribal roots back to the real Sheiks. The fake Sheiks fled, the Council was dissolved and the Tribal Union formed.
US Army CPT Justin Daubert sits on the stage during the meetings, as a representative of the strongest and richest tribe in Dujayl, but does not take an active role in the open meetings.
CPT Daubert does his work behind the scenes with key leaders to steer them through the bureaucracy and encouraging the Sheiks to keep working on unification.
After a prolonged session of hand-shakes and kisses on the cheeks, the Sheiks took their seats and got down to business.
The first issue to be tackled--the blood debt.
A motion was put forward that if a member of one tribe kills the member of another tribe, the standard, the killer or his tribe or family should pay the victim's family 20 million dinar--about $20,000 US dollars.
Many of the Sheiks seemed to think the number was fair. There were proposals for a higher payment, up to 50 million dinar or for a sliding scale is the killer's family was poor.
The main topic of debate was who and how the case would be judged.
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A room full Sheiks
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Proposals were made on how Sheiks would be selected to ensure they would be impartial, who could represent the accused and the deceased and the mechanism to ensure that once a judgment was issued it was carried out.
All these matters were discussed in the presence of the Mayor of Dujayl, the Chief of Police and two members of the City Council. The Mayor even took part in the deliberations.
How the law of the government would interface with tribal law was barely touched on.
People are arrested, prosecuted and convicted for murder in Iraq. The blood debt is tribal version of a wrongful death suit that also prevents inter-tribal violence.
After the usual rounds of passionate sounding debate the issue was tabled and at some point in the future a committee will prepare proposals for the Union to vote on.
The next item taken up by the Union was all the bad drivers the need for traffic laws in Dujil.
All agreed that the young kids drive like maniacs and something needs to be done about it. When an Iraqi says you drive like maniac--you are truly a hazard to everything on the road.
The meeting adjourned, hands were shook, cheeks were kissed, the US Army officers were pressed by the Sheiks for more development projects.
The Tribal Union fills a gap between the rural population and the civil government providing some type of representation and voice.
In the upcoming elections, tribal groups could be the deciding factor whether there is a strong unity slate elected from Sala Ad Din or if they will continue to take their local arguments with them to Baghdad.
Once the US Army leaves, the tribes will become stronger. Tribal groups that are organized will be in position to negotiate directly with Baghdad and the provincial government.
The long term goal of the Union is to become the equivalent of a powerful lobbying group and voting block. Together, the tribes represent a lot of voters who could punish or reward politicians.
The success of the Union will be based on its cohesion and ability to deliver votes.
If the open list is used in the upcoming elections, then the single non-transferrable vote system will be in place. The groups that can turn out the most votes in the most organized fashion will be the ones to hold power in Iraq. The Union is on track to do that. But first it has to resolve all the tribal disputes and standardize the payment of blood debts.
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