Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Hearts and Mines: Images from Northern Iraq, 11-05-2003  

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Boot on back



Cornered



Going in



Huddled



Sufaya Oil Fields



Lt. Col. Christopher Pease



Discuss

Kevin 8:39 AM

Hearts and Mines (Part I)  

We arrive around dinnertime at the 101st Airborne 1st Battalion's base in Tallafar. Noone is in a particularly good mood. Many of the men are feeling angry and betrayed -- there was an ambush the night before. A popular staff sergeant lost his leg to an RPG and is now struggling for his life.

"It was a sophisticated op," says one non-com, "some of them were in a ravine and t let loose with an RPG and AK fire on the patrol. When our guys returned fire they stopped shooting. But then a second RPG was fired from -- from behind the patrol. It slammed into the rear wheel base and then into the staff sergeant."

The young specialist who was driving the vehicle is now standing against the wall trying to balance his cardboard tray of chow with one hand while smoking a cigarette with the other. He looks about 16, but is actually 20. He seems still mesmerized by the events he has experienced. Joe Raedle (a shooter from Getty Images) and I clear a space so he can sit down and eat.

"It was unreal sir," he says, when I ask him about the ambush. "Everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do. It was automatic."

"Yeah, but it had to be pretty frightening at the same time, right?"

"Oh definitely, sir. You just can’t believe its happening."

"So how you coping," I ask.

"Well sir, it’s been a rough deployment. This -- then the stuff at home -- my wife’s probably cheated on me 15 times," he shakes his head and takes a long
drag from the stub of his cigarette.

Many of the men we see tonight are doing a version of the same thing, smoking -- shaking their heads.

"I looked around town today," one lieutenant told me, "I was hoping to find someone doing something bad, somebody I could hurt -- but there wasn't one. Just people that needed my help."

It’s just that kind of mission whiplash that has confused and demoralized so many troops in Iraq. Soldiers are ordered to go on a night patrols or raids--where danger can lurk at every corner or behind every door -- and life and death decisions have to be made within the hair-fraction of time it takes to pull the trigger on M4 assault weapon – then the next day they're told to monitor the selection of a new local mayor or to rebuild a school.

"It’s not that they don't want to win hearts and minds," says 1st Battalion commander Lt. Col. Christopher Pease. "If you told my guys the way to get home faster was to sweep every street in Iraq -- they’d be out there with brooms 24 hours a day until the place sparkled. But it's not necessarily what were trained to do."

Pease is tall, powerfully built 46-year-old who at one time had been a state champion wrestler with Olympic dreams. A bad knee ended that, but he still applies the lessons learned from the sport as a part of his leadership philosophy.

"Wrestlers are disciplined. No one is out there on the mat but you so you have to push yourself and train hard. I always try to hire former all-state wrestlers in leadership positions," he smiles, "I know they’ll get the job done."

Pease himself is a doer and a prime example of a soldier squeezed into the role of a diplomat. He’s a man who admits he doesn’t like to read much, gets
bored easily. You can imagine him smiling uncomfortably, drinking pot loads of tea and enduring small talk and other requisite niceties in all his
meetings with sheiks and local tribal chieftains. He'd rather be out on raids with his men -- leading and giving orders rather than sitting and listening.

But one of Pease's missions is to provide stability in his AO or area of operations, which includes the city of Tallafar, primarily occupied by Turkmen. The Turkmen were no friends of Saddam Hussein and in this area, were largely neglected by the regime. So when Pease came in, like other U.S. military commanders, bearing cash captured during the war that could be spent at his discretion, the population was fairly welcoming. But now that those funds for schools and clinics are drying up he says violence against his troops is on the rise.

For his 1st Battalion, part of stabilizing the region requires protecting a large stretch of the two major oil pipelines that run through northern Iraq. One is the Iraq-Syrian pipeline the other the Iraq-Turkey pipeline. The pipeline to Syria is working but only at half capacity. The Iraqis pump 4500 barrels of oil a day from the Al Sufaya pumping station into Syria and in return the Syrians send 39 megawatts of electricity down the grid to Iraq.

This barter was going on before the war and started up again -- once coalition forces repaired oil fields and refineries, strip looted after workers abandoned them during the war.

"The barter has reduced blackouts to just six hours a day," Pease says, "before the oil started pumping again the electricity went out every one or
two hours."

But the Iraq-Turkey pipeline is a different story. It has the potential to pump $30 million a day or nearly a billion million dollars a month into the shell-shocked, post war Iraq economy, but so far there’s not a drop flowing in either direction. With 60-percent unemployment nationwide, the revenue loss is nothing short of maddening. But Pease says the pipeline can't, won't pump until it's secure.

The exposed parts of the pipeline have already been targets for saboteurs -- who army officials say want to derail coalition efforts to rebuild Iraq. At a juncture twenty minutes north of Tallafar, soldiers show us where a recent attack left a gaping three by four foot hole in the 48-inch diameter pipeline.

"You can see where the bomb was probably placed," says Sergeant Jeffrey Wells, pointing at the damaged section. "The explosives just peeled this back." The half inch thick metal is rolled back like the lid on a can of sardines.

The pipeline wasn’t pumping at the time, but had enough residual oil in it to create a fire that burned for five days.

"Oil is how this country is going to be rebuilt." Pease says. "There is no other revenue source. Pease knows that because that mission is so critical
to Iraq’s future he and his men must continue their dual roles, working to enable the local elements of the population that will work with them -- fighting to disable those that won’t.

But these multi-layered contradictions in today’s Iraq are illustrated by both the occupiers-- and the occupied. The next night -- Pease leads his men on a raid against a suspected financier of the resistance. His troops swarm in on the multi-house compound in the dark, chill of 4 AM.

The owner is forced faced down on the floor and bound with plastic cuffs. Boot on his back. He’s stood up and held in a corner of his own house with M249 light machine gun pointed at his chest. His wife and children huddle under thick blankets in the next room.

The house is searched. No weapons or cash are found. The man is released just as dawn is breaking. And because it is the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, neither he nor his family will eat or drink anything until sundown.

Yet as Pease and his men load up their humvees and prepare to head back to base -- the man, who only moments before had been held at gunpoint, now invites his captors to stay for breakfast.

Discuss

Kevin 8:30 AM