Things can't get better EVERYWHERE all at once. It took years of depraved indifference by Saddam to reduce his country to a negative entity except for the military. Even the infrastructure that was saved by careful bombing was looted (a planning mistake) leaving a larger than planned for rebuilding effort.
100 people at your Austin City Council and they quote a 15 year old. All the people had something better to do.....the Austin City Limits music festival.
Saturday, September 27, 2003
A foothold for self-rule in Iraq's proud north
The 101st Airborne has trained Iraqi forces and organized elections in the former stronghold of Saddam Hussein.
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• Iraq fragile in transition
By ANN SCOTT TYSON
The Christian Science Monitor
MUHALLABIYAH, IRAQ – It was one of Capt. Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchison's first forays into what he calls the Wild West, a remote stretch of territory his company patrols near the Syrian border in northern Iraq. Already, he was under fire.
The young officer was meeting with about 50 mukhtars, or headmen, in the ethnically mixed town of Muhallabiyah, and complaints were flying like bullets: Flour prices were too low. Roads needed repair. Weapons were everywhere.
As the voices swelled, two wizened elders stood up. Nothing, they declared, had changed since the invasion.
"Saddam! Saddam! We die for Saddam!" they chanted defiantly. All eyes turned to Capt. Hutchison.
"Great," the Kansan said with some effort. "If you see Saddam, tell me where he is!"
Apparently, composure paid off for Hutchison, whose mission includes nudging Muhallabiyah toward self-rule. Several weeks later in July, he helped the town pull off its first election. With a show of hands, 54 representatives from Muhallabiyah and surrounding villages voted into office a provisional town council and mayor.
To be sure, the process was far from perfect. An hour before the votes, Hutchison scratched the names of four top-ranking Baathists off the ballot and ushered them out. "That," he said, "gave me some heartburn."
Whether running a local council election or training a civil-defense force, soldiers such as Hutchison are on the front lines of U.S. efforts to bring a semblance of self-governance to Iraq. Armed with little more than M-16s and ingenuity, twentysomething GIs are engaged in thousands of daily tug of wars with the Iraqis they are ostensibly mentoring.
Many Iraqis bristle at the American supervision. Proud and often resentful, even some who are supportive of the U.S.-led occupation stress that they are eager to do things independently, their way. Americans voice frustration over what they see as a lack of honesty, civic-mindedness and initiative among some Iraqis.
Nowhere is the grass-roots push and pull more apparent than in northwestern Iraq.
Here, the 18,000-strong 101st Airborne Division commanded by Maj. Gen. David Petraeus has taken the lead in nation building. It has been the first to train a wide range of new Iraqi forces including infantry, border patrols and security guards. It has organized local elections in a majority of towns.
To stimulate business, Gen. Petraeus ordered the reopening of trade across the Syrian border and is facilitating the first major privatization deal outside Baghdad, a multimillion-dollar hotel contract.
The division has often acted ahead of the civilian occupation authority in Baghdad, which has had little presence in Iraq's 18 provinces.
"We've been a bit ahead of the power curve," Petraeus said. Some within the U.S. military worry, however, that as Baghdad asserts itself, it threatens to reimpose the bureaucratic structure that stifled initiative under former President Saddam Hussein.
The 101st was able to plunge into the nitty-gritty of putting Iraqis back in charge soon after it rolled into Nineveh province in April. Iraqi commanders surrendered, leaving the region relatively untouched by the war, and attacks on U.S. troops were minimal.
But the ethnic complexity, wealth and fierce pride of Nineveh's population make the work of transferring power challenging. Known for ancient trade routes, wheat and barley, the region is dominated by Mosul, a 3,000-year- old city of medieval shrines and walls that is home to about 2 million people, including Arabs, Armenians, Kurds and Turkmens. A primary recruiting ground for senior Iraqi Army and government officials, Mosul had influential ties with the Hussein regime.
Still, some 101st commanders are so confident in the North's progress that they question the need for multinational troops to relieve them when their rotation ends in February or March.
"I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that we won't need a coalition in the north," said Col. Joseph Anderson, commander of the division's 2nd Brigade, which oversees Mosul. In the end, much will depend on soldiers like Hutchison.
'Not a perfect process'
The Humvee kicks up dust as it passes over barren rolling hills toward Muhallabiyah. Wind blows in where the doors used to be. Hutchison took them off, to "shoot better and get out quicker."
As the town approaches, he scrutinizes two flags flying at the village entrance. One is Iraq's red, white and black national flag. The other is the light blue banner of the Turkmen Party, newly established here after the war.
"Flags are good, but we've got to make sure that the Turkmen flag is lower than the Iraqi one," he said. It is.
Almost everyone in Muhallabiyah speaks Turkish, and they outnumber the predominantly Arabic-speaking people in surrounding villages. Those demographics underlie the first complaint Hutchison hears about the local election: Only one of the six new council members speaks Turkish.
Down the street at the town hall, another grievance comes from Khaire Mohammed, the council secretary. It is unfair, he said, that the three largest families have only one member on the council, while a smaller family boasts three, as well as the mayor. He also complained that the mayor had actually campaigned.
"He made announcements. He said, 'I will be mayor, vote for me!'" Mohammed said.
"That's what politics is like, you have to form a voice," replied Hutchison, taking a swig of orange soda. "There's always the next election."
U.S. military commanders in Mosul admit that the local "elections" have been ad hoc, and sometimes faulty - but fast. "Do you want to have an 80 percent solution in a month, or wait a year for the 100 percent solution?" said Col. Michael Meese. "It's not a perfect process."
It was dusk when a joint U.S.-Iraqi foot patrol set out for a hostile neighborhood of Mosul. Days earlier, residents had taken paint donated to spruce up a school and used it to smear anti-American slogans on the walls.
Within a few blocks, youths started hurling rocks at the patrol. Repeatedly, Iraqi soldiers rushed at them with arms raised. But an American lieutenant called them back. "They really beat the crap out of their kids in this country, so I have to rein in these guys," said Lt. Brian Patterson of St. Louis.
Later, Patterson prodded the recruits forward. "Spread out more!" he said in a hushed voice as the squad turned down another dim street.
One of the recruits is Staff Sgt. Rakad Mijbil Rakad, who served 17 years in the Iraqi Army and quit in mid-April when his unit surrendered. He said he was fed up with the Iraqi army, its stale bread, bribery and abuse.
"I lived all my life with wars, from the Iran-Iraq War until now," said the Mosul native and father of seven. "It was just war, with no results. The Iraqi government destroyed the army."
Nationwide, a total of 20,000 Iraqis like Sgt. Rakad have signed up for new military units being formed by the U.S.-led coalition to eventually take over Iraq's defense.
In Mosul, Lt. Christopher Wood took charge in May of a platoon of 30 Iraqi soldiers who he said had no concept of U.S. military conduct. To them, detaining someone meant beating them. Weapons fire was often indiscriminate. "We'd show them how to target, and they'd say 'No, you just spray,'" Wood said.
Still, Wood learned he could not single out Iraqis for criticism as he would American soldiers. Upbraiding provoked intense embarrassment and hurt pride. Instead, he started to make up "bedtime stories" - fictitious incidents about, say, a soldier killed while chatting on a night patrol. "They caught on and would draw the right conclusions."
Today, Wood said his platoon has gone from "a hodgepodge, rag-tag group to a fairly efficient team of soldiers." He trusts them enough to patrol with them alone. They also visit mosques incognito to gather intelligence.
Rakad doesn't mind taking orders from a young U.S. lieutenant. "Americans treat their soldiers well, and they respect our religious beliefs also," he said. Despite death threats and accusations of betrayal from Iraqi citizens, he said he will continue to cooperate with Americans and defend them if necessary.
Still, doubts linger. U.S. soldiers question to what extent Iraqis are buying into their own future. For their part, Iraqi soldiers wonder how committed the United State will be in the long run to their nation's security.
"If it wasn't for the American Army, Iraq would be very bad. The strong would eat the weak," Rakad said. He hopes U.S. forces will stay a year or two. After that, "the one to take their place should be me."
Others in this series
Friday: Searching for order in the restive south. Read the story at www.ocregister.com under Nation & World.
Coming Sunday: In central Iraq, sorting out the influential groups from the old regime while establishing effective police and court systems. |
