Monday, November 30 2009 @ 08:53 AM MST
Contributed by: James Van Thach
Views: 522
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 Cadets and Cadre of the Blue Mountain Battalion -
I
hope this note finds you all well and getting ready for the Christmas
and the New Year. Since leaving the BMB in July, it has been a busy,
nomadic lifestyle for me. I was tasked to lead a team of American
Soldiers to Iraq to train, advise, and assist the Iraqi Department of
Border Enforcement in securing their border. The eleven-man team I
would lead was one of hundreds of such teams that are part of the long
term strategy to professionalize the Iraqi Security Forces (Army,
Police, Border) to the extent that they can stand on their own and the
Coalition Forces can go home.
My team was assembled from across
the US, from Florida (my Medic) to Washington (my Fire Support
Officer). We all traveled to Ft. Riley, Kansas for three month's
training. I was blessed with some superb Soldiers of all specialties
from operations and intelligence, to logistics, maintenance, and
communications. We worked well together as we tackled training tasks
such as conducting mounted patrolling, learned the art of
counter-insurgency operations, and practiced some basic Arabic.
Training culminated with a week in El Paso with the Department of
Customs and Border Enforcement (US Border Patrol) where they showed us
how they get the job done every day on the Mexican border.
After a 12 day
break, we deployed from Ft. Riley to Kuwait, and then to north of
Baghdad, stopping at both places for about a week each for additional
training. Finally, helicopters took us to our new home for the next
year: Combat Outpost (COP) Shocker. I am in charge of several
Transition Teams now on this small military outpost of several hundred
Soldiers in eastern Iraq about seven kilometers from the Iranian border.
On
a daily basis we try to spend as much of our time as possible off the
COP and partnering with our Iraqi counterparts. This can include going
on patrol with them, conducting training classes on a wide variety of
subjects, attending meetings and briefings, mingling socially, and
speaking privately with them to get their thoughts and expose them to
different ways of getting things done. As a whole, they have been good
hosts, very accommodating, and generally glad to see us. They are very
resourceful and socially adept, but their systems and environment have
long been overly centralized, bureaucratic, corrupted, and wrought with
mutual distrust as a result of the Soviet influence and then the
Hussein era. In a world where the two star general must sign a document
before the mechanic can get a new tire for his truck, nothing moves
expeditiously.
The land here is amazing. We flew out here in the
dark, and for the last 15 minutes of the flight there were absolutely
no lights down below, just open desert. There are a few small, poor
border towns near us, propped up economically by gravel quarries, the
black market fuel trade, and limited farming. The border to the south
is generally flat but cut by large wadis (dry river beds) in several
places. To the north, the land is extremely rugged, with mountains,
valleys and a dizzying array of wadis. This area was the sight of eight
years fighting during the Iran-Iraq war, and there is lots of what we
call ERW (Explosive Remnants of War - unexploded mines and shells) all
over the place. Last week one of the DBE trucks hit a mine and lost a
wheel (thankfully, nobody hurt). But because of the nature of the land,
the border is porous and the historic site of centuries of smuggling
activity.
To secure the border, Iraq has constructed hundreds of
border forts. They look like small, medieval castles, complete with
towers on the four corners and crenellated walls. The border guards
live in these castles and conduct patrols from them to catch or deter
potential smugglers. Iran has built opposing forts on their side of the
border, in most cases directly opposite the Iraqi forts. In some places
they are less than two kilometers apart, and keeping a wary eye on each
other. There are also legal border crossing areas, and we have the
busiest one in all Iraq. It process, searches and inspects cargo, fuel,
and people (roughly 140,000 in November) and one of my teams works
exclusively with this gateway. With the Hajj underway and the port of
entry on a direct line between Iran and Mecca, and a number of Shi'ia
religious shrines along the way, we can see many thousands a day coming
through, dressed in everything from western business suits, to turban
and robe, to black burka from head to toe. And somewhere in all those
thousands of people and hundreds of cargo and fuel trucks, and hundreds
of kilometers of border frontier, there are some people who still think
that they need to bring in weapons, explosives, or fighters. We're
working hard with the Border Police to find them and stop them.
We've
been here only a little while, and we're still learning the ground and
the people. I'll try to send an update to you later on to let you know
how it's going. In the mean time, I hope you are all having a great
year and that the new year is one of fulfillment for you. I miss the
BMB world and carry many good memories of friends there despite the
short year I was in Carlisle. Please pass this on to others who may be
interested and say hello for me. (and yes, that's the same red ROTC mug
I drank coffee from all last year).
With warm regards,
COL Kenneth T. Downer
Former
"Blue Mountain 6"
"Take the Mountain! |
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