‘Money is a munition’ - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

‘Money is a munition’

COMBAT OUTPOST MEADE, Iraq — The first thing they pulled out of the ground was the mud-caked barrel of a heavy machine gun.

Examining it, Capt. Jim Trask calls back to headquarters.

“We’ve got something here. It looks like a barrel to something,” he says into his radio. “It’s shiny.”

Half an hour earlier, Trask — commander of Comanche Troop, 3rd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment — sat with community leaders in Tameem, a garbage-littered settlement five minutes from southeastern Baghdad across the Diyala River.

The meetings are what platoon leaders and higher do during the day, every day, in Iraq. They sip sweet tea, smoke, eat roasted chicken, and negotiate on how much the new playground will cost and who will get the contract.

“This is about as grass-roots as you can get,” Trask said during the meeting.

Though often tedious and sometimes chaotic, these regular conferences also yield valuable information. The local head of the Sons of Iraq, a go-to guy named Sheik Kareem, pulled Trask aside when the meeting concluded. He knows a guy who knows where some ordnance might be buried.

It’s not just nearby — it’s right across the street.

Trask and Kareem meet inside a scrap yard of destroyed Soviet-era armored vehicles. A pot-bellied local points to the ground where he saw “60 rockets” buried last summer, just before Moqtada al-Sadr announced a cease-fire.

The fat man did not lie.

For six straight hours, 3-1 troopers pulled 768 mortar, rocket and artillery projectiles and five Soviet-era bombs out of the muddy clay.

They had to pry Sgt. Jesus Toscano out of the Humvee-sized hole so he could take a break to drink water and eat dinner, which was actually just a packaged honey bun.

“I like digging things up because I’ve been shot at and blown up and I’ve lost three friends,” he said during a breather.

Just the day before, a tip to Iraqi National Police led the 3-1 Cavalry to a parked blue Mercedes truck at the side of the road.

Under its load of hay were 541 anti-tank mines and dozens of mortar rounds and rockets. The truck was intercepted on the way to Baghdad, 3-1 officers said.

Finds like that are the pay dirt.

Since arriving in March 2007, the 3-1 Cavalry, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, has spent $14 million in commander’s discretionary funds on infrastructure projects throughout their 10-by-20-kilometer area of operations. Under a new program called Marne Dauntless, 3-1 Cav will spend another $4.5 million on playgrounds, classrooms, clinics, landfills and water lines in projects managed by local leadership.

“Money is a munition. It really is,” said squadron commander Lt. Col. John Kolasheski.

The improved security provided by 3-1 troops and bolstered by the cooperation of members of Sons of Iraq — residents hired as neighborhood security and paid by U.S. forces — as well as visible U.S. efforts to improve quality of life, have made the locals comfortable enough to point out the enemy.

“It’s a human intelligence bonanza,” Kolasheski said.

hundreds of potential improvised explosive devices discovered by Trask’s soldiers would have stayed nestled in the earth and ready for future attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces if not for locals willing to come forward, and for the young equipment operator who earned $400 that night peeling back heaps of dirt with a front-end loader.

The momentum of the combined economics, governance and security appears to be building.

“At a certain point, they all feed on each other,” said Maj. Andy Koloski, squadron executive officer. “The governance and economics piece gets at the support of the people.”

Across the region south of Baghdad designated by the military as Multinational Division-Center, U.S. forces have used the increased combat power from the surge, the Sons of Iraq and a constant flow of infrastructure investment to deny sanctuary for insurgents, kill or capture them and rally the people.

“At this stage in Iraq, they really are at that pendulum right now,” said Trask, who was in basic training during the 2003 invasion but was now on his second, far more peaceful tour here. “The security has never been better and the projects are ready. The government of Iraq has the money. It’s just getting them to start spending it.”

Indeed, if all politics are local, so is the war being fought south of Baghdad and around Iraq today.

Living among the locals

Following the Sadr-inspired uprising in late March, commander Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch held a televised briefing in Baghdad on April 3 for the international press.

His four brigades are responsible for the region ringing southern Baghdad, including the patch formerly known as the “Triangle of Death.”

Rather than live behind the modern bastions that are forward operating bases, his troops are out in 57 frontier forts known as patrol bases and combat outposts, some of them beginning as nothing more than four armored vehicles parked like circled wagons. At one such site in southern Arab Jabour, the soldiers’ new neighbors bring over fresh food every morning.

“Seventy-five percent of my soldiers live with the population,” Lynch said. “These patrol bases went to places that the enemy owned.”

In a graphic that Lynch presented showing enemy activity over the past 13 months, the trend line dropped dramatically, with a slight bump for March 25-30, when violence flared in Basra, Baghdad and some towns in the area of operations overseen by Multinational Division-Center.

Lynch said the enemy during that period “came out of his hole,” and the “heightened tensions” resulted in U.S. and Iraqi forces killing or capturing 537 extremists.

“You can’t do attacks if you are detained or killed,” he said.

When U.S. units are not tracking down cell leaders or digging up their weapons, they meet with sheiks and government officials to put communities back together. Some areas were neglected by the Saddam regime for decades. Others were torn apart in fighting among Iraqis, the U.S. and al-Qaida.

Maj. Stephen Capeheart commands Chaos Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment. The 3-7, part of the 3rd ID’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, arrived in October and operates out of FOB Iskan.

“Nine or ten months ago, this AO was a firestorm,” he said.

His soldiers were not attacked until Easter morning, when a gunner named Sgt. Jevon Jordan was killed by an explosively formed penetrator on a road in Abu Jasim. Ironically, Sons of Iraq from a road checkpoint were the main suspects. But Capeheart has built a solid relationship with local leaders and residents, to the point that they all expressed condolences about Jordan.

Capeheart’s days are consumed with the work of an armor officer turned city planner. He sat down one afternoon with public works officials to talk about improving a traffic circle in Musayyib with solar-powered streetlights.

“I want to get this started next week,” he said. “This makes it look more like a city. If people feel safe, they are safe.”

The obstacle to the plan is a concern that, if not properly installed, the lights would block and therefore fail to show respect for a mural in the circle’s center featuring images of Shiite heroes. But by careful placement, the public works managers assure him, it will not cause problems.

They move on to talk about building a park along the Euphrates.

Capeheart pulls out color copies of several park bench designs.

“Today, I am talking about park benches,” he said. “Four days ago, I was talking about a lethal target set.”

The locals have also been bugging him about establishing a radio station and opening a discotheque along the riverbank.

Paving the way out

Chopper Company soldiers share a former potato processing plant turned combat outpost with an Iraqi Army battalion in Yusufiyah.

Part of 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Chopper Company is tasked as a military transition team that works in conjunction with an Iraqi Army unit. They teach the Iraqis soldier skills, moving through physical training and small-unit tactics, conducting joint patrols and checking on the string of “battle positions” set up throughout the once hotly contested area.

The Americans speak highly of the Iraqi soldiers, though clearly they’re far from U.S. standards. Staff Sgt. Nathan Beal, mortar section sergeant, has been training them on his “guns,” though some of the Iraqis are veterans who have surely hung rounds before.

“They’re the best group we’ve had. I’m very impressed with them,” he said during one session.

That night, he had the Iraqis shoot 60mm illumination rounds. They stuck around to watch the Americans shoot a 120mm mission.

“This is how we get the hell out of here,” Beal said.

One of the Iraqi leaders acknowledged that his army has a ways to go, but the danger of IA soldiers getting slaughtered while off-duty has faded.

At his battle position in Shubayshen, one young Iraqi first lieutenant said, “Some of the units have loyalty for the militia and not for the country. When we get these people out of the army, we’ll be able to take care of Iraq.”

Getting beyond past crimes by locals who now are cooperating or no longer fighting coalition forces remains key, both for the Americans and for the Iraqi security forces. The Jenabi village in Chopper’s area was essentially flattened during years of combat among rival neighbors, al-Qaida infiltrators and American forces. Bursting with rose bushes and mature date palms — and standing beside ruins of an ancient Mesopotamian city — nearly every home looks as if it had been demolished from within.

“The villagers who did this are over on the patrol base getting registered as Sons of Iraq right now. Ironic,” said company commander Capt. Mike Starz during a joint patrol into the village.

“Today is just a first step,” he told the villagers. “Today was a good day. No one shot at us. Little boys will be old men by the time this is all solved, but we have to look to the future, not the past.”

‘I almost shot you last time’

Five males, all related, sprawled face down in the dust outside a farmhouse in the countryside of southern Arab Jabour near the Tigris River.

While a route clearance team sweeps area roads for IEDs, a patrol from Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery, got a tip that the oldest of the group was at the house.

Two platoons descended from opposite directions. One didn’t make it because a lieutenant stepped on a pressure-plate IED, ripping up his leg. It was his first patrol.

Soldiers with white platoon pressed on. They drew their weapons and approached a house on foot, with guns drawn. As they cleared a low wall, five males ran off into the tomato fields. The soldiers chased them down and there was yelling, but no shots were fired.

The soldiers recognized them; one was a known IED planter.

“He’s definitely wanted,” 1st Lt. Andrew Gibbons told one of his troops, telling the soldier to get some zip ties from the Humvee.

Sgt. Kyle Nygaard had a close encounter with the main suspect before; “I almost shot you last time,” he told the man.

Gaining such familiarity took time. When Bravo first arrived, a small team of soldiers parked their Humvees at the intersection of two roads and two canals, living off of energy drinks and muffins for a month. But as the unit moved into the area and began building the combat outpost known only as Whiskey 1, an al-Qaida cell just down the road began circling the Americans with a “defensive belt” of IEDs, setting them by the dozen along the dirt tracks. The unit’s previous commander lost half his arm to a booby trap at what had been an al-Qaida operating base, a commandeered Shi’a enclave.

“Before, we couldn’t get combat power into these areas,” said Capt. Richard Aaron, commander of Bravo Battery, 1-9 Artillery, 2nd BCT of 3rd ID.

Now, local motorists wait for U.S. troops to clear the roads before they drive them.

the daily contact with the locals has paid off, bringing valuable intelligence such as the tip on the bomb planters.

Gibbons had confirmed their identities.

“They’re all al-Qaida,” he said. “It looks like today we got a good catch.”

Of the five suspects, the two youngest were released, leaving the other three sitting bound in the dust. As they waited for the soldiers to haul them to the base, family members sat around a television in a nearby house. They were watching Hollywood icons Brat Pitt and Angelina Jolie trade barbs in a movie, an action-comedy in which each sought to kill the other.