Sitting Around a Map

Another crowded, smoke-filled room with forty or so people gathered around another long table with a projector at the end throw up a picture of a map on a too-small screen. From my position, the whiny fan on the aged Canon digital projector obscures the voices coming from the other end of the long, rectangular room.

Today at the command center, many of the provincial players from nearby Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) gathered at our weekly meeting. Normally used to discuss the previous weeks SIGACTS, or Significant Actions, the agenda from this week was to highlight the impact of the ISF ongoing turf wars. Now, these are not turf wars where one group encroaches on the territory of another. The problem here is ISF units in our areas are hesitant to engage outside of their given Area of Responsibility.

The cloud hanging over the table is the assassination of another influential sheik the previous night. The enemy, conveniently dubbed as al Quada, uses a policy to alienate the highly successful Sons of Iraq contracted-militias from ISF and Coalition Forces. The strategy is clear; alienate the people from the Government of Iraq and Coalition Forces by attacking a linchpin of Coalition support.

Areas of Operations, or Areas of Responsibility, are pieces of land handed to us by our higher headquarters with the intent of preventing conflicting operations between friendly forces. In a perfect world, all the Areas would bump up against each other to provide maximum coverage to throughout the province. However, this is not a perfect world, and the Areas do not bump up against each other.

As each representative from the Iraqi Army, various Iraqi Police departments, and the National Police go to the map and draw their Areas, it become apparent that there are 1) a lot of overlapping areas and 2) a lot of gaps with no one claiming responsibility. Not surprisingly, the murder of the influential sheik happened in one of these gaps.

Also not surprising, is the use of these areas as enemy safe havens. Overlapping areas of responsibility appear to be in cities and on major highways. The gaps and enemy safe havens appear among rural areas and agricultural communities, well off the beaten path and difficult to access with the Coalition new, larger IED-resistant MRAP vehicles. By looking at reports of enemy activity and traffic through the province, we see that our enemy knows where the gaps are and is exploiting them to his advantage.

This is changing. All the professionals around the table now look at the map and see themselves hamstrung by poorly coordinated lines arbitrarily drawn on a map without much consideration for history or the enemy. The Coalition Force commander quoted Sun Tzu when he called this first step, "seeing ourselves."

Our next step is to take our maps and gaps and identify the enemy, his patterns, and his networks. This is called, "seeing the enemy." This includes sharing intelligence in a country where mishandling your 'source' could get someone killed. That portion will probably prove difficult given the turbulent history of distrust between the different Iraqi Security Force entities. Sharing will be a challenge.

We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Mending Fences

The Army is not all Kevlar and testosterone. Over the years I have come to the realization that people, not tanks and helicopters, make the Army go. Of course, it's the same as in the civilian world. You have to work with people in order to accomplish your objectives.

Over the last week, we had two objectives. First, we had to get out into our battle space and find where we fit in the grand scheme of things. Just tackling the weekly rhythm alone was a daunting task. There were meetings scattered all over the calendar and the map.

We quickly realized was that with a small, geographically isolated team you could not get everywhere for every meeting. If we did, we would spend all our time on the road going to meetings rather than performing our primary duty: advising an Iraqi Infantry Brigade.

That process is still ongoing. We're whittling the large list of meetings down to a few. We're figuring out where we need to plug in to maximize our effects. It'll be another couple of weeks, but it should pay off for us in the long run. The important part is trying to find the right forum for connection our Iraqi and Coalition counterparts. That's the key to success and will require additional work.

Our other objective was to get out and work on relationships. Before coming here, we were told that our primary problem would be lack of support from coalition partners In other words, don't bother asking for help because none will come.

The reality we discovered was very different. Coalition units have bent over backwards to provide the support needed for us to execute our mission. The primary difference between what I'll categorize as 'then-and-now' is simply personalities. We've made it a point of emphasis to get out there and shake hands with units throughout our area of operations. Already, the payoff is huge.

It is yet another reminder that an e-mail is never as good as a phone call or a handshake. Oh, and that you get more with sugar than salt.

Discovering Great Military Blogs

The past couple days I was privileged enough to trade links with a couple of well established milblogs: A Soldier's Perspective and The Military Observer.

A Soldier's Perspective (ASP) is privately operated and is designed to provide personal information, views and commentary about the military. CJ, Marcus and the guys provide great commentary from a Soldier and Marine point of view.

The Military Observer is owned and operated by Andrew Lubin. Andrew is a writer, author, speaker, and historian who follows events in the Middle East and Central Asia. This is more than just an academic exercise for him: Andrew's son is in the Marine Corps.

Both sites deserve more than a cursory glance and offer tremendous depth and insight.