Carson unit gets new assignment

Settling into the wide swath of southern Iraq they'll patrol for the next year, a brigade of Fort Carson soldiers has been struck by how peaceful it is.

Many of them are veterans of past tours in Iraq, but the area, which centers on the city of Diwaniyah 100 miles south of Baghdad, seems too quiet to be Iraq. The soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, haven't seen an attack in a month.

And what trouble there is in the mostly-Shiite region is being handled well by Iraqi army and police forces which are in charge of keeping things quiet, said Col. Butch Kievenaar, the brigade's commander.

"When I was in Baghdad, I got used to 100 incidents a day," Kievenaar said in a telephone interview from his headquarters Friday. "So far we haven't seen one."

The soldiers from the Colorado Springs post took over last week for a Polish army unit that had been handling security in the region along with other international forces.

Americans haven't patrolled much of this area for years, and moving in has required improving conditions at little-used outposts.

The colonel said he wants his soldiers to have air-conditioned living spaces, good food and phones and Internet-connected computers to contact loved ones. "That's the minimum," he said.

Later, the soldiers may get exchanges to buy American goods and other niceties that have turned bases farther north into virtual U.S. cities, complete with hamburger joints and espresso stands.

One battalion of Kievenaar's troops, the 1st Battalion of the 67th Armored Regiment, was chopped away from the 3,800-soldier brigade and sent to help police in the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk. The balance are settling into terrain that's a mix of lush river valleys and deserts with sand that's as fine as baby powder.

As they build a home in southern Iraq, the brigade's soldiers are working as advisors to their Iraqi counterparts. Kievenaar said the soldiers are working with the Iraqis on some of the more complex lessons of insurgent war, including identifying targets and commanding troops across large areas.

What his soldier's aren't doing is going out and looking for trouble.

In places like Baghdad and Mosul, Americans are charged with rooting out insurgents and conducting raids.

While the Americans can defend themselves from any attack in the brigade's region, the Iraqis make the decisions about offensive missions.

"We don't do unilateral operations," Kievenaar said. "They do the operation and I support it."

That support in the coming months will mean helping the Iraqis keep the peace during provincial elections designed to give locals more say in their equivalent of a state government. Those elections, and national elections that will follow next year are seen by American leaders as a way to heal rifts that have led to unrest in Iraq.

"That is the next big piece for the Iraqi people," Kievenaar said.

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Contact the writer: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com