When banter beats bullets
In Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers try new ways to gain support
In Baghdad's impoverished Abu Ghraib suburb, U.S. Army Capt. Scott Shaw picks his way on foot down the side of a rutted, sewage-filled street. It is after 11 p.m., curfew has fallen, and Abu Ghraib is dark save for a few fluorescent lights. The soldiers, members of the 10th Mountain Division's Task Force 2-14, peer through night-vision goggles, which bathe the streets in an eerie green glow. Their mission is to find hidden artillery shells, which insurgents use to mine the roads. But first, Shaw has another task: to pay a visit to a man whose son he arrested the week before.
After a 10-minute walk through the back alleyways, Shaw, a 30-year-old from Little Rock, Ark, arrives at the home of a man he calls Noori. A week ago, he found a cache of rockets on the property of the man's son. He raps loudly on the outer gate. An older, heavyset man opens the door. "Salaam aleikum, " Shaw says. "Hello, hello," Noori replies. As he recognizes Shaw, his face lights up. He grabs the American in an embrace and unleashes a barrage of Arabic. "All this area loves you," Noori says, according to Shaw's interpreter. "Tell him we are very good friends," Shaw replies. "Tell him we are cousins."
Crash courses. American officers train for years on infantry tactics, how to maneuver on an enemy and lead soldiers into battle. But some of the most crucial challenges for American soldiers today may be the human interactions for which they are often less prepared. In many cases, these have gone badly. Raids on Iraqi homes, for instance, have very likely generated as many enemies as they have captured. But the best young officers are finding ways, as Shaw has done, to turn even bad situations into opportunities. And, belatedly, the Army is adapting. Many of the officers most recently sent to Iraq have been given crash courses in how to work with local leaders to win their support.
It is a lesson the military has learned in part from its experience in Afghanistan. Although the insurgency there has proved far less virulent, military officers say successful partnerships with village leaders and efforts to bolster the central government may be the kind of experience that applies to Iraq. Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, who oversees day-to-day operations in Afghanistan, says the strategy has been to build goodwill for international forces and decrease support for the lingering insurgency. "It's classic counterinsurgency doctrine," Olson says. "It's separating the guerrilla from the population."
This winter, for instance, American forces in Afghanistan have found opportunity in adversity. Large snowdrifts and freezing temperatures created a humanitarian crisis. The United States and international forces shipped in aid that included 50,000 pounds of food, 50,000 blankets, and 33,000 clothing items, a count that does not include hundreds of boxes of private gifts distributed by soldiers. In addition to relieving the Afghans' suffering, the hope is that a careful approach to distributing the donations can bolster the power of village elders loyal to the central government and friendly to American troops.
Inside the Bagram Air Force Base, Capt. Matt Pintur, an Army reservist from Chicago who has been in Afghanistan for three months, pulls together a group of soldiers to pitch in on a humanitarian assistance mission to a small village nearby. Pintur's plan on this day is to form a tight circle with his convoy of vehicles and then bring in the Afghan villagers one by one to select clothing from a load of donated scarves, jackets, and pants. "The biggest problem is keeping people in order, keeping them from jumping all over us so we do not have a riot," Pintur cautions his soldiers as they prepare to head out.
Sure enough, soon after Pintur's team arrives in the village of Qaleh-ye Khawaja, anarchy erupts. A dozen children push into the center of the circle, eager to get a piece of clothing, private donations from soldiers' friends and family members back home. Hajj Qand, the village elder, raises a thin stick and rather futilely tries to push the children back. It was Qand, a former militia leader who has put down his weapons and taken up road building, who brought Pintur to the village and decided where the goods would be distributed. By deferring to Qand, Pintur hopes to bolster the elder's influence in the village and cement his loyalty to the mission of the American forces in Afghanistan. "I am thankful," Qand says through an interpreter after the soldiers finish handing out the clothes. "This fills a human need." Putting his hand on Pintur, Qand invites him to dinner. "Be my guest tonight," says Qand. "I will prepare a feast." Pintur begs off; there is another leader in a neighboring village he must visit before the sun sets. Qand smiles: "Be my guest anytime."
Wedge. Undoubtedly winning friends in Afghanistan while handing out clothes is far easier than winning friends in Iraq while arresting people's children. But the key to the task--finding officers adept at interacting with locals--and the overarching goal of driving a wedge between the population and the insurgency are the same in both places.
In Iraq, Shaw has proved to be a natural at making friends. From August to November of last year, he was assigned to patrol the largely peaceful villages south of the Baghdad airport and prevent rocket attacks on incoming flights. He found that the best way to hinder attacks on the airport was to make allies among local imams, tribal sheiks, and community leaders. Shaw's current stomping ground, the suburb of Abu Ghraib, is a far more dangerous place. Located near the now infamous prison, much of its Sunni majority is hostile to both the Americans and the new Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
This is where Shaw first encountered Noori in early February, when his company discovered the rockets on Noori's son's adjoining property. At the sight of his son's being arrested by the Americans, Noori clutched at his chest and fell from his chair. Soldiers trained in lifesaving techniques rushed in and began treating him, discovering he had spectacularly high blood pressure. A few days later, as anger over the arrest grew, Shaw arranged a meeting with neighborhood leaders and Noori. "I took out a notebook and said: 'What are your problems?' " Shaw says. Over the course of three hours, Shaw listened to their complaints and also told them about himself, showing off pictures of his own 2-year-old son, Aidan.
Afterward, Shaw went back to the detention facility, interrogated Noori's son, and determined he was not an insurgent. When he was released, Shaw offered to drive him back to his father's home. The normal human impulse might have been for Shaw to avoid the awkwardness of interacting with someone he had wrongly accused. But Shaw says the Army has to look for friends in every situation. "How do you arrest a guy and still be friends with him?" Shaw says. "You just have to work at it. . . . It is the only way to beat the insurgency. You cannot be the awful American." There was only one glitch--the jailers forgot to return the son's keys and identification card. Hence the nighttime visit. "I thank the coalition forces," Noori says through the interpreter, as Shaw returns the keys. "You have become my brother."
It is probably still the rare officer who has the mix of intellect and temperament to instinctively try to make friends out of enemies as Shaw does. But Gen. John Abizaid, the head of United States Central Command, says the best soldiers in Iraq have learned to handle ambiguous and complex situations with creativity. "Far from being rigid," Abizaid says of the young leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan, "they have learned to be very flexible in their thinking and dealing with problems."
For the American endeavor in Iraq to succeed, it will take as many flexible thinkers as the Army can find. Making allies out of enemies has helped win the war in Afghanistan and force the Taliban and militias into decline. The experience of soldiers like Shaw shows that even in the more difficult circumstances of Iraq, Americans can make friends and make progress. It alone may not be enough to make Iraq peaceful, but it may help push the country in the right direction.
This story appears in the March 7, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.