Embedded News-Miner reporter Margaret Friedenauer filed this story after returning to Alaska from Baghdad. It ran on Oct. 23, 2006.
If nothing else, the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team’s move to Baghdad has put the first 12 months of deployment into perspective for some battalions.
“You don’t realize how successful we were up there until you come down here,” said Capt. Dave Bedard of Anchorage, with the 4th Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment of the Stryker Brigade.
“Up there” is where the 4-11 was stationed before the brigade’s extension, about 60 miles south of Mosul. The unit was responsible for 4,700 square miles of battle space. Now it patrols about 500 square miles in an area around Taji, just north of Baghdad.
And it does so with a distinction unique in the 172nd Stryker Brigade: The 4-11 is built around the Humvee rather than the highly regarded Stryker vehicle, making it the one combat battalion in the 172nd that does not use Strykers.
Yet its personnel patrol in largely the same manner and face the same military, human and social obstacles while making their rounds through their area of the Iraqi capital.
Near Taji, the 4-11 has seen as many attacks from insurgents during its first month here as it did the entire 12 months up north. The 4-11 and other U.S. forces in the area saw a spike in attacks in September surrounding the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and a video released from al-Qaida leaders.
But in October, soldiers said attacks have dropped in this specific area by more than half, even though overall in Iraq the month has proved deadly for the U.S. military.
“We weathered that storm for those two weeks,” said Col. Scott Wuestner, speaking from the passenger’s seat of a Humvee, leading three other vehicles along a four-lane main route through Taji dubbed Tampa.
The attacks come mostly in the form of improvised explosive devices planted along main routes in the area. Previous explosions leave stark reminders on the road, with chunks of asphalt surrounding a sizable crater, clearly not an ordinary pothole. The roadside is littered with skeletons of burned vehicles and dark
splotches where fuel spilled or where fuel trucks were damaged or destroyed.
In the north, armored Humvees worked well for the extended drives soldiers had to make across their large area of responsibility. But after the brigade was extended, the 4-11 had to leave those Humvees near Mosul for the incoming unit. Instead, the 4-11 was issued the newest armored version of the Humvee. Many soldiers said the newest version, with its thicker armor, has served them well.
Staff Sgt. Elton Williams, 27, from Yakutat, was in a Humvee recently when it hit an IED. He was riding in the passenger seat when the IED detonated under the front tire on his side, destroying the front end of the vehicle but leaving him and other soldiers inside unscathed.
“If it was one of the old ones, we would have been dead,” he said while the soldiers were stopped at a Iraqi police station.
Avoiding IEDs is a constant task. Soldiers keep eyes strained on the road as they drive, looking for disturbed earth where IEDs could be buried and for wires or suspicious items that could conceal the explosives. Looking for the telltale signs is not easy along roads with high reeds and trash strewn about. A convoy of Humvees often slows or stops to peer through binoculars at suspicious points before making the call to either continue or investigate.
To try to control the attacks, U.S. forces routinely fill old holes left by explosions. Wuestner said forces plan to clear reeds along the sides of roads and continue putting deterrents, like jumbles of barbed wire, around prime target spots such as culverts, where IEDs are sometimes placed out of view of the road.
“You can see what a rat’s nest we’ve tried to create,” Wuestner said while pointing to one popular area of attacks that has now been lined with wire and is constantly patrolled by forces.
Diplomacy
Wuestner, a 45-year-old gregarious Pennsylvania native, calls Taji a “truck-stop-type area” where insurgents like to travel through and attack but not necessarily stay. Still, the residents are easily silenced by insurgents.
Wuestner, the colonel in the 4-11, said the area consists of two conflicting mentalities among the mostly Sunni population and “hard-core Saddamists.” Many residents believe the only solution to peace and stopping the attacks is to get the United States out of the country. But most are too scared to turn in those who attack U.S. forces.
The 4-11 spent a year playing diplomat up north, spending hours in the homes of local leaders and residents, sipping chai, smoking cigarettes and fostering relationships that Wuestner and his soldiers counted on to help them root out insurgent activity. Up north, it worked. It netted mostly dependable Iraqi forces who provide security for a mostly agreeable citizenry. But here, near Baghdad, the 4-11 has to revert to pre-diplomatic days.
Wuestner describes three stages of dealing with the insurgency: the clearing phase, or initial stage of combating the insurgency; the hold phase, or the point that attacks decrease enough and citizens feel secure enough to allow for the final phase; and the build phase, when Iraqi forces are able to take over from coalition forces. Near Mosul, Wuestner said the area was primarily in the hold and build phases. Here in Taji, it’s still firmly in the clearing phase.
“I’ve not had a cup of chai since I’ve been here,” Wuestner said in describing the hostile and skittish nature of most residents. Soldiers have adapted, though, to the change in activity.
“You adapt and survive, or you don’t and die,” Wuestner said.
On Oct. 14, Wuestner once again donned his diplomat’s hat after being brought into the fray of a disagreement about the arrest of seven local men for supposed terrorist activities. The arrests were made by police north of the area who residents said were overstepping their jurisdiction. They complained to Wuestner that the seven men had been arrested for no reason and that Iraqi forces were aggressive toward women and children during the arrests and destroyed items in the homes of the men.
Wuestner spoke with three men from the area who were relatives of some of those arrested. He said he scheduled a meeting with leaders of the Iraqi forces that arrested the men but cautioned that he was not guaranteeing he could get the seven men released, just that he could check on their condition and status and find out what evidence the forces had against the men.
The next morning as Wuestner and soldiers traveled to the meeting with the Iraqi forces to discuss the men’s arrest, the convoy came upon more than 200 demonstrators who were blocking the road and halting the convoy. The disturbance irked Wuestner. As he confronted the organizers of the march, soldiers quickly formed a perimeter around the colonel to protect him and their Humvees from the crowd swelling toward them.
“I was on my way to a meeting, to sort this out. I told you I would help you sort this out,” Wuestner said, raising his voice over the chanting crowd to one of the organizers. “Now, I have to stop and deal with this because you just couldn’t be patient. Now, I might miss this meeting.”
Ever the diplomat, Wuestner, directed the organizers to tell the crowd to disperse and that he would meet with a handful of leaders at a nearby police station.
As he wrapped up that meeting, Wuestner told the leaders about the 4-11’s experience in Iraq and how the unit had been extended to help with security around Baghdad and what he and his soldiers could do to help. Mostly, he said, he needed the residents to work with him and to find the courage to report insurgent activity.
But even with the soldiers’ presence and the decrease of attacks in the last month, Wuestner said his brand of diplomacy doesn’t net quick results, and he knows it.
“If I had something to tell people, it would be this war isn’t going away,” he said. “It’s not like your bad relatives you just don’t invite to Thanksgiving dinner anymore. I just believe we have a lot of things to do.”