Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Weapon of peace: tea

U.S. troops get involved in neighborhood councils as a way to gradually hand power over to Iraqis.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 12, 2006

BAGHDAD - U.S. soldiers, automatic rifles buckled to their body armor, filed into a community center in a dangerous Shiite neighborhood of north Baghdad Saturday and for a few hours became social workers, cops on the beat and referees between feuding tribesmen.

Tea was passed around, notes were taken, local sheiks spoke in wise tones, heads nodded vigorously in agreement and mundane problems such as garbage collection and distributing electricity generators were tackled.

Maj. Michael Fazio, 36, from Warwick, N.Y., pulled out a cheat sheet - photocopied snapshots labeled with long tribal names that he tried to match with faces in the room.

"This is the battlefield of today," Fazio said, gesturing at the 200 or so assembled - half civilians, the rest U.S. and Iraqi military. "At certain levels we didn't know what we were in for, but we have adapted in our goal of trying to hand over Iraq."

When U.S. troops stormed into Baghdad and ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, few probably understood just how hard it would be to hand the city's security back to its inhabitants, who are in the midst of killing one another in a sectarian slaughter.

Part of a strategy

Neighborhood council meetings such as the one in Hurriyah on Saturday were a fixture before and after Hussein, but the United States is increasingly looking to them as part of a strategy to encourage Iraqi self-governance and communication between warring sects. To stabilize Baghdad, U.S. soldiers find themselves involved in solving local problems.

"We regularly share tea with militia leaders," said Lt. Col. Steve Miska, a 37-year-old native of Greenport, N.Y. "It's interesting, and it's important to maintain dialogue."

"Any day if we're shooting bullets, we're not winning," he said. "Money is more effective here, and the way to do that is dialogue. You need to bring Sunnis and Shiites to the table to get reconciliation."

Shiites have taken over Hurriyah, a formerly Sunni enclave where U.S. forces have seen increasingly sophisticated attacks. U.S. troops routinely patrol the neighborhood to try to control sectarian violence.

The neighborhood council meeting was four weeks in the making and progress toward healing the divides was halting. The session lasted 3 1/2; hours, sometimes disintegrating into shouting matches between neighbors or rants against U.S. raids in the neighborhood.

"It's insulting when we have women asleep and American soldiers conduct raids in the middle of the night." said Adnan Kadhem Juwad, a school administrator in Hurriyah. "We're a troubled community, and it isn't fair to break down doors at midnight. We need to draw lines."

Capt. R. Tyler Willbanks, from Gallatin, Tenn., turned to a reporter and asked in a rhetorical whisper: "Did he mention there were 25 dead bodies a day before we got here?" The Army's 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, 172nd Stryker Brigade took over security in Hurriyah in August.

Death toll reduced

The 35-year-old company commander claims he and his men have reduced the death toll in their section of Hurriyah to about three a day.

Miska, the lieutenant colonel, said he had found ways to gauge success.

"You measure it in terms of how many people show up, the nature of the dialogue and whether people continue to come - whether it looks like civilian leaders are taking ownership for decisions," Miska said.

A few U.S. soldiers who arrange meetings such as the one on Saturday are based at Hohenfels, Germany, where the Army has hired acontractor to train troops in conflict resolution.

But most are acting on instinct as they try to negotiate between religious factions, set neighborhood councils or rebuild shattered infrastructure.

[Last modified November 12, 2006, 01:34:29]