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Marines adjust to an evolving Iraq

WESTERN IRAQ — This isn’t the combat mission these Marines expected.

Five years into a war that has brought relative peace to the once infinitely hostile Anbar province, 1st Platoon, Delta Company, 4th Tank Battalion, went home in early May without firing a shot.

And for the vets of multiple Iraq tours in the unit, that’s just fine.

Staff Sgt. Robert Navarro drove north during the 2003 invasion, and now, to spend a whole tour without bloodshed comes as a welcome relief. When schoolchildren at home in California ask him about war, he says he’d rather not have to answer the “How many people did you kill?” question again.

“They don’t know what toll that takes on a man,” Navarro said.

Operating out of Hadithah — under Regimental Combat Team 5, based at Al Asad Air Base — the reserve unit drove its tanks regularly on this tour, rather than leaving them behind until a show of force was needed.

“That’s like going out but leaving your weapon on your rack. When you need it, it’s too late,” said Navarro, a tank commander. Unlike how it was in the 2003 invasion, the tankers now dismount often, handing out candy and coloring books from the turret.

“We couldn’t come in guns blazing,” he said. “We had to search for and find the insurgents in the area. And the only way to do that is talking with the locals and find out who doesn’t belong.”

Lance Cpl. David Welch works at a Budweiser warehouse when he’s not a loader on an Abrams tank. He said he “didn’t know what to expect” on this, his first tour, but he learned enough Arabic to talk to the locals when he dismounted.

Welch, Navarro, Lance Cpl. Filberto Mercado and platoon commander Capt. Paul Krumenacker describe their tour as more of a “humanitarian mission,” but with tanks. If they have to come back, they want beefed up Arabic classes.

“There needs to be a whole lot more language training,” Navarro said. “The more that you get with the Iraqis, the easier it is to get the questions answered you need answered.”

The price of peace

That kind of close interaction with locals is part of daily missions, with the Iraqis still looking to the Marines for help with everything from turning on the lights to finding clean drinking water.

So when the Marines from 3rd Squad, 1st Platoon, Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines went into the little village of Ramiyah to hand out sacks of rice, flour and cornmeal, they waited for the mukhtar, or mayor, a man named Nouri Jassim Hammadi, to arrive.

Ramiyah sits between Fallujah and Ramadi, both of which are now unrecognizable as the deadly insurgent strongholds they once were. But like so many small communities here, Ramiya lacks the basics.

So once he arrives, Nouri first asks for water.

When a Marine pulls a single bottle from the back of an MRAP, Nouri doesn’t flinch.

“Not just one,” he tells the Marine.

With the counterinsurgency pushed down to the grass-roots level, there’s a gap now between what the government in Baghdad or the provinces can accomplish and what local leaders such as Nouri can provide for constituents. Until the echelons between them have the authority to distribute money and projects — possibly after provincial elections in the fall — the local Iraqis look to Marines in Anbar province for influence and solutions.

Nouri doesn’t complain about the water and food sacks, but he needs school buildings and functioning infrastructure.

“Iraq should do it, but the Americans are in charge,” he said.

Until he drove up, a mass of children swarmed the Marines, bugging them for chocolate, candy, pencils and their watches.

Sgt. Tim White, a company intelligence specialist, spent the wait handing out sweets from his drop bag.

“This is the most powerful weapon out here,” he said, appeasing the kids until they get shooed away by village men waving the lengths of stiff rubber hose they use to slap and prod sheep.

The food won’t cost the community any money, but there is a price. Ten adult males in the village must submit to identification in a biometric database being built, one individual at a time, by U.S. forces across Iraq.

This is not a problem for the locals.

As with his candy bag, White draws a crowd when he sits at a makeshift desk in the shade, entering the identities into the database.

Nouri clearly approves of the deal. “The Marines know our suffering,” he said.

His complaints are familiar around the country. The struggling government leaves men such as Nouri asking Marines for a few more water bottles and a lot more.

“In five years nothing has changed,” he said.

Many Marines would disagree.

Making a difference

Maj. Ben Wagner commands Golf Company, 2/24, a reserve unit based in Madison, Wis. When he’s not in uniform, Wagner manages a Home Depot and a family tavern.

Golf’s previous tour was through 2004 and 2005, in the area south of Baghdad known as the “Triangle of Death.” This tour is completely different, far “less kinetic,” he said.

Like any unit commander in Iraq today, Wagner attends regular local government meetings. He spent one morning with the Saqlawiyah city council, reminding the appointed leaders that Americans are not here to run the police payroll, set the price of gasoline or buy new furniture for city hall.

“It’s important the city council understand the importance of their decisions to prioritize the things they want to have happen,” he tells them. “My job is to maintain security so projects can get done. Without security, going forward cannot take place. Thank you.”

After the meeting, he said having the council simply sitting together in a room to talk represents progress.

“That’s a step. In 2004 and 2005, city councils didn’t exist,” Wagner said. “They have no budget. That’s why they come to us. We are the only ones with influence to get them money.”

And as Wagner and other commanders in Iraq have learned, rebuilding communities pacifies the Iraqis. “Money is a weapon here,” he said.

As of early May, the Marines of Golf Company had about three months to go on their deployment. There has been no enemy contact for the previous two months.

“The hope is that when we do leave, whenever that is, we’ve made a difference,” Wagner said.

Choosing change

Indeed, for the returning veterans, the change has been stunning.

Chief Warrant Officer John Walter has been to Iraq twice before, in Fallujah in 2004 and Ramadi in 2005 and 2006.

Now assigned to 3rd Combat Engineer Battalion, Walter and his unit oversaw the demilitarization of schools in Baghdadi, the town just outside Al Asad Air Base, and the construction of a new Iraqi Army outpost, using their own engineers and engineers from Marine Wing Support Squadron- 172, based in Okinawa, Japan.

“Last time I was here, I was pulling trigger, doing kinetic stuff,” he said. “Now, to do this kind of thing makes it all worth it.”

Likewise, Col. Patrick Malay has seen the new war emerge from the ashes of the old.

Now leading RCT-5 in western Anbar province, Malay previously commanded 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, and a battalion task force during the second attack on Fallujah known as Operation Phantom Fury.

Today, he said, former opponents admit to him that they were misled by insurgents and were simply wrong to oppose the Marines.

Malay went to see wounded Iraqi soldiers who’d just come from a firefight with foreign fighters in a remote desert area. He said an Iraqi, now under American medical care, told him, “Before when you came here, we’d fight you. We listened to the insurgents. The message they had was a lie. They were evil. We made a mistake to listen to them.”

He said the Iraqis now see the choice between how they used to live and how they can live in the future. The relative peace in western Anbar is the evidence.

“The death culture these guys promulgated starts to wane when these guys look at the portal of entry into the 21st century, for them and their families,” Malay said. “We’re going to stay here until someone determines that this country can stand on its own feet and can jump into the 21st century.”

And as much as untested Marines new to Iraq may be frustrated by the slow action, Malay said the often street-wise junior troops are quick to grasp the subtleties of counterinsurgency, as well as the warnings of the veterans.

“Be careful what you ask for,” Malay said. “Some may say a Combat Action Ribbon may not be such a great thing once they’ve seen the cost.”