Back to Iraq: A move from the fortress to the city

BAGHDAD - Long after sunset, 1st Lt. Dale Donaldson made the rounds on the potholed highway with a heavily armed column of Humvees.

Stopping every quartermile on the trash-strewn shoulder, he checked in with Iraqi authorities manning checkpoints.

The platoon leader from the Blackhawks, a Fort Carson company in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, asked an Iraqi cop, “How has your day been?”

The officer smiled between puffs on his cigarette. “Good,” he said through an interpreter. “Everything is good.”

It was the same at every one of Donaldson’s stops along the route used by Shiite pilgrims marching south for the Muslim holy day of Ashoura, which culminated Saturday.

Just one shot was fired a day ago in Husseiniya, a bedroom community of Baghdad that the pilgrims passed through. No injuries and no further violence, the authorities told Donaldson with no small measure of pride.

Locked down by Iraqi authorities and U.S.-backed armed groups the Army has dubbed “concerned local citizens,” the region covered by troops from Donaldson’s brigade has been calm for weeks. Even the holy day didn’t yield expected sectarian strife between its Sunni and Shiite residents.

Back at Joint Security Station Istaqlal, the Alamo-like American outpost south of Husseiniya where Donaldson works, Fort Carson soldiers in dusty uniforms said the quiet makes them optimistic.

Most of them have been to Iraq before and remain wary that progress usually precipitates a fall.

But working side by side with their Iraqi counterparts, troops say they’re seeing the best opportunity yet to rout insurgents and rebuild Iraq.

An American outpost

The security station is never quiet. Patrols run 24 hours a day, and their frequency was stepped up as authorities worked to ensure the safety of Muslims who walked in large groups south along what’s called “Route Dover” to holy sites south of Baghdad for Ashoura.

The station is part of a new American strategy that moves soldiers off the massive forward operating bases that dot Iraq and pushes them closer to the Iraqis they are here to protect.

Inside thick masonry walls, soldiers sleep eight to a room when they aren’t manning machine guns on the roof. The austerity of the place is contrasted by Internet cables soldiers use to reach their families back home and an eclectic Iraqi shop in the lobby that stocks everything from dollar-a-pack cigarettes to copies of the latest Hollywood DVDs.

Iraqi soldiers live and work here, too, and the police have a station next door.

During the day, locals drift in and out, often having hushed conversations with officers to tell them what’s happening across the plain in Husseiniya.

“If you create a castle, then you’ve defeated the whole purpose of the joint security station,” said Capt. Matt Jensen, a red-haired and reed-thin 31-year-old who runs the place for the brigade’s 1st Battalion of the 68th Armored Regiment.

Living with Iraqis has given his troops a new perspective when they go out and talk to Iraqis in Husseiniya, he said. That’s important because on every patrol, soldiers are required to get out of their bombproof rigs and greet the locals.

“It allows the soldiers to talk with them and be with them. That’s how you learn,” Jensen said.

Troops learn table manners

The 100 soldiers at Jensen’s security station get two hot meals a day from the American Army — breakfast and dinner prepared from a monotonous menu of prepackaged field rations that is the subject of much derision.

Most of the food is eaten standing up by soldiers too busy to find a seat in their close confines.

The best part of the day, soldiers say, comes at 12:30 p.m., when they are the table guests of Maj. Ali Mahmood Abbas, who runs a 300-man Iraqi unit at the compound.

Abbas and his soldiers offer a daily spread of local delicacies to their American allies.

Over lamb, chicken, rice and sweet tea, Abbas talked with Jensen about security, while encouraging the Americans, from privates on up to dig in.

The uninformed shy away. The rumor among Americans is that Iraqi food causes “Saddam Hussein’s revenge,” with symptoms ranging from discomfort to death depending on who’s discussing the affliction.

But the more experienced of Jensen’s crew bellied up to the table where they observed Iraqi customs by keeping their left hands at their sides.

As they ate using copious amounts of flat bread to scoop up ingredients, the soldiers questioned the Iraqis about their culture.

Abbas and his troops offered easy answers through interpreters, and seemed happy that the Americans were curious.

‘Away from the flagpole’

Soldiers say they like living at the outpost. Their reasons range from the money they save away from the temptation of fast-food vendors at the brigade’s headquarters on Camp Taji, northwest of here, to the ability to escape Army bureaucracy by getting “away from the flagpole.”

“It’s quiet out here,” Spc. Donald Yates said. “You have to depend more on each other.”

Yates remains in the Army months after his planned separation date — one of hundreds in the brigade who was sent involuntarily to Iraq under the Army’s “stop loss” rules that hold soldiers in their units for war deployments.

Yates said he was initially upset over staying in uniform for more than a year after he hoped to return to civilian life. But he’s stopped griping.

“It really wouldn’t help, so there’s no point in crying and complaining,” he said.

The long deployment, the separation from families and the weariness of life aren’t talked about much in the packed rooms at the security station, said Sgt. Jeremy Madrid, a Colorado Springs native who mans a machine gun here.

“I don’t think there’s a soldier here who doesn’t experience it,” he said. “It’s on your personal time, when you’re alone. That’s when it hits you.”

On his third tour, Madrid said the difficulty of family separation doesn’t grow easier with experience.

“People say you should get used to it,” he said. “But you can’t get used to it.”

Work is therapy for soldiers

Soldiers said they battle loneliness and frustration by burying themselves in their work.

Time on patrol passes quickly, they said, while time at the base crawls by.

“As I would say, you embrace the suck,” Madrid said.

The threats in this region are at the top of every soldier’s mind when they are on patrol. Soldiers from other units in recent days have died in bombings just outside the brigade’s area, and the palm groves along the Tigris River are thought to be a hideout for insurgents and their equipment.

At the security station and on the roads, jobs are performed with practiced perfection and little emotion, Staff Sgt. Josh Larosee said.

“That’s because it’s resignation. Burned-out resignation,” Larosee said.

But the three-tour Iraq vet said there’s optimism, too.

The Iraqi authorities who work at the security station are the best-trained and -disciplined he’s seen. It will take years to rebuild their nation, but Larosee said he sees a future where the Iraqis will need less and less American help.

“They do a good job,” he said of the Iraqis. “They care.”

But he and other soldiers here worry that Americans are tired of Iraq and won’t give soldiers a chance to let progress continue.

“The American public tends to forget that it’s not instant gratification in Iraq,” he said.

Jensen said he’s happy that his soldiers understand that the way they can win the war is by fostering growth in authorities here while trying to befriend Iraqis rather than just defend themselves.

“I’ve been here two weeks, and we have not had contact with the enemy,” Jensen said. “But, I tell you what, we have had a lot of contact with the people.”