Glacial Change

Had a really good past couple of days. For about the past week or so, we hadn't made much progress with the Iraqi Army (IA). They seemed set in their ways and weren't open to new ideas. So we let them do it the IA way; sometimes it worked in its own goofy way, and sometimes it didn't.

Last night the Iraqi Brigade Commander decided to have a meeting on little notice, which isn't all that uncommon. Normally on Saturday nights we have a staff meeting; sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn't and the XO runs it, and sometimes it just gets cancelled. But this week he decided to have it anyway, he decided to show up, and he started off the meeting with an After Action Report (AAR) on the past week's Arba'een pilgimage. AARs are a very common thing to our Army, and they can get ugly in that people call each other out.

For the IA to conduct an AAR it is a pretty big deal, and they were even critical of their operations. I almost fell out of my chair. Seizing the momentum, later that night we also got him to realign his S2 shop (the intelligence guys) to make it more of an analysis cell. (IA S2s are still stigmatized as "direct action" guys: They go out and catch bad guys, where in the US Army S2s figure out who the bad guys are and then they make recommendations on what to go after.) Again, a huge cultural issue seemingly broken through. We had been holding this recommendation for a while, and yesterday the time was right, so we sprung it. We threw three more ideas at him, and they stuck too. I was on a roll. But I ran out of spaghetti to throw at him, so I ended the night with five big things we have been trying to implement in the "buy in" category.

I spoke with a very smart Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel today, who is also a MTT. This is his bread and butter, so I figured I'd pick his brain. He said MTT is four big things: Relationships, listening, patience, and timing. You can't pass anything with the Iraqis unless you have a relationship with them. You do it by drinking a lot of chai, listening to them to gain insight on their perspective, and you do your best to understand their culture and their limitations. New ideas have to be on their terms. Don't think you are going to make them do something. If they like it they will do it in due time.

He was dead on, and we proved his theory yesterday.

Here's a video of flying around Arba'een. There's a whole bunch of Arabs down there.

Hope you are well. Take care.

Ron