Working with Iraqi Army- slow progress and cultural challenges

(Capt. Canning on a joint patrol with the Iraqi Army.)

FOB O’Ryan-
Captain Jeff Canning, 30, of Anchorage AK, thought he was leaving a war zone. After a year serving in Northern Iraq he waited at an Army air terminal. He waited a day, then another, no big deal for a soldier used to the variables of air travel here.

When we saw our connex boxes (storage trailers) coming back, Canning said, we knew something was wrong.

Instead of going home, Canning and his 172nd Stryker Brigade were sent down to Baghdad to quell the surge in violence there. They stayed four extra months.

Canning’s story of being extended is nothing new, but his volunteering to come back to Iraq to help train the Iraqi Army is unique.

He was enticed by the challenge of working for a MiTT (Military in Transition Team)- U.S. soldiers who embed with the Iraqi Army to help bring them up to speed so they can eventually take over for their US counterparts.

After five months Canning said there are still a lot of challenges, beginning with the cultural and language differences. “It’s like being on the outside looking in,” Canning said. If an interpreter isn’t around, U.S. soldiers won’t even know if a military document written in Arabic is actually the one the officers say it is.

Still there has to be a certain level of trust for the partnership to work. “You can’t put our system on their army,” Canning said.

But the Iraqi Army, while not lacking for bravery or experience, is top-heavy and often lacks logistical systems to take care of its own soldiers. According to a cultural interpreter, the Iraqi military has more of a severe pecking order than the U.S. military, and Iraqi officers are not accustomed to delegating as many responsibilities.

Lt. Col. John Dunleavy of the 2nd battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment said in contrast the US Army is very “NCO-centric”, meaning sergeants run the bulk of day-to-day soldier operations. But the Iraqis often lack a strong core of sergeant leadership to build upon.

Command Sergeant Major, Edward Estep said it’s about delegation. Officers need to delegate their authority to sergeants to build an effective core of non-commissioned officers. In turn, the Iraqi sergeants have to take their roles seriously.

“Some of them are just drawing a pay check,” Estep said, observing how a group of Iraqi sergeants were having difficulty getting information to their troops because they weren’t used to attending regular meetings or taking notes to pass on to their counterparts.

Whereas Iraqi officers eat separately from their enlisted soldiers in the mess hall, Dunleavy said they want to instill a culture in which officers sit and eat with their soldiers as they do in US dining facilities.

One of the biggest problems, Dunleavy said is the Iraqi Army lacks good logistical systems, so somewhere down the chain soldiers don’t get fed at outlying checkpoints, or they get only one bottle of drinkable water when they should be getting six a day. In some areas their Humvees break down from using recycled motor oil.

Obviously some of these supply problems are caused by corruption.

The Iraqi system has long been based on a power hierarchy, said Captain Jim Markham, another MiTT team advisor. There's a skimming off the top of the budget before the supplies get down to the soldiers.

The US Army tries to deal with problems in Iraq at the level at which the money is distributed- from budget officers dealing with their counterparts to US generals dealing with local governors to counteract corruption, but it’s a slow process compounded by cultural differences.

(An Iraqi Lt. Col. speaks with a U.S. captain through an interpreter at a security checkpoint they were patrolling together.)

The most important work is at the individual soldier level, Canning said, perhaps because it is where bad habits can most immediately be corrected. “The mindset and skills. What you don’t know in this job can kill you,” Canning said.

On a strategic level, “You need to get them preparing for the COIN (counter insurgency) fight,” Canning said. “It’s the PhD of warfare.” Just think of the years it’s taken the US Army to understand how to get local Iraqis to cooperate with the coalition.

And they need time to put methods into practice, which was why Canning and other MiTT officers go out with their Iraqi components on patrols to help coach them on interacting and supporting the Concerned Local Citizen checkpoints.

Recent meetings at these checkpoints ended with an Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel exchanging cell phone numbers with the CLCs, something U.S. Army patrols often do. This is integral to the process of getting the local intelligence gathering to flow through the Iraqi Army to create multiple sources of information on insurgent activity.

Admittedly the Iraqi foot soldiers lack some discipline and technique, but they also make up for these deficiencies in cultural awareness. And this is the key to the counter-insurgency fight.

It may still be years before US forces leaving the country for good, but there is progress. Canning said there’s been a 200 percent drop in IEDs in the southern part of this Iraqi Army brigade's area of operation.

As for Canning, he said it would be hard to settle into a desk job after two tours in Iraq. He likes taking pictures, and is thinking about learning to become a photo journalist. Something about being over here builds individuals who thrive on challenge.

(A girl runs to look at a 2/320th soldier on patrol in Al Dujayl.)