Chapter 11

Growing Pains

We were barely three days into our turnover with the outgoing team before we were wishing they would move on and let us take over operations. I knew it was important not to rush the process. Despite all of the training and briefings we had received prior to our arrival we were still in the dark and needed all the turnover and exchange of information we could get. Advisor duty is far from an exact science, and word of mouth and relaying personal experiences and techniques is always better than reading it in a book. But after three days the camp was already becoming too small for two teams, and the strains were beginning to show.

During our training at ATG I had worried aloud to Ashley that I was not cut out for the independent nature of transition team duty. An instructor and previous advisor had curtly informed us that, among other things, advisor duty requires strong organizational abilities and a capacity to thrive in an uncertain, unstructured environment. An ability, he had proclaimed, to operate “in the gray area.” I, on the other hand, tended to flourish in just the opposite: structured working environments with an established daily routine and “battle rhythm.” But my concerns were brushed aside by my wife, who insisted that perhaps unbeknownst to me I actually possessed such abilities. As an example, she reminded me of all the previous moves our family had made since we had married in 2001. In six years of marriage we had moved five different times, and she noted that each time we arrived at our new home the very first thing I did was throw myself into organizing our household. Her observation further reminded me of my years as the child of a career naval officer. My family had, on average, moved to a new location every two years, and—as I would later repeat in my adult life—the first thing I would do at each new house was to put my bedroom in order. In the chaotic, uncertain life of a military brat it was one small way of controlling my surroundings. That obsessive trait had carried over into my adult years, often to my wife’s amusement.

Now, as a team leader, I realized I had been blessed with a group of officers and SNCOs who were perhaps as anal as I was, and they too became fixated with organizing the camp and implementing much-needed changes around our living areas. But our insistence on immediate change rankled the members of the outgoing team, and friction between the two groups of Marines began to surface early in our turnover process. At one point the team leader told me that his Marines were complaining about my team already making noticeable modifications around the camp (such as the kitchen remodeling that Marines from my team had undertaken). He implored me not to make any changes in the camp or the daily routine until the turnover process was complete and they were gone. Despite my desire to assume control of the camp and the mission I honored his request and passed it on to my Marines. “Wait for the old team to leave,” I told them. “After that, it’s open house.”

The growing pains we seemed to be experiencing with the outgoing team made it difficult for us not to adopt a superiority complex. It was common for inbound units to get sucked into the mind-set of “The outgoing unit is all screwed up, and we are perfect.” Conversely, it was just as common for outgoing units to think that the inbound unit was a bunch of idiots who would ruin all of the hard work and achievements that had been accomplished. But appearances mean a lot, as do first impressions, and our first impression of the outbound team had not been a glowing one. They were not bad guys, or bad Marines for that matter. On the contrary, many of them were genuinely intelligent and good at their jobs as officers and SNCOs. But the impression they had created upon our arrival was that they had gone native, an unforgivable sin that we had constantly been warned about in all of our predeployment training and briefs. Relaxing standards was always the commander’s prerogative if he deemed it so, but even that had its limits.

And the outgoing team members complained a lot, mostly about the Marine infantry battalion to which they were attached. They claimed the battalion never supported them, but instead routinely neglected them and their logistical and operational needs. As I heard the mantra repeated over and over again, I had to wonder whether their complaints were legitimate or baseless. Was it truly as they claimed, that the Marine battalion didn’t understand the nature of transition team operations? Or had the battalion over time developed the same impression of the outgoing team that we had in our short time working with them? Only time would tell.

 

As the team leader and I met with Lieutenant Colonel Ayad on the evening of 5 March it was obvious that the Iraqi commander was agitated about the state of the oil pipeline that ran east to west through 3rd Battalion’s AO. He had visited a stretch of the pipeline earlier in the day, discovering more than thirty locations along the route where the line had been tapped by oil smugglers. As he irately pointed at photographs on his digital camera, I noted how the fissures ranged from crudely formed hammer and chisel punctures to what appeared to be square, professionally cut holes made by skilled smugglers. There were believed to be two types of oil thieves cutting into the pipeline: common Iraqis seeking crude oil to use for their own homes, and professional smugglers who may or may not have been using the profits from smuggled oil to finance terrorist and criminal activities in the region around Al Qa’im. It seemed a stretch, but nevertheless 28th Brigade had directed Ayad to step up antismuggling operations in his battalion’s AO. He appeared to embrace the mission wholeheartedly, and I in turn volunteered my team’s services to assist his soldiers and staff in training for observation post (what the IAs called “ambush”) operations. Ayad seemed interested in what I had to offer, and I was pleased that the team soon would be gainfully employed.

As I spoke through an interpreter named Joseph, I gained my first insight into the challenges associated with working through foreign linguists. Our Arabic language instruction at ATG had been worthless, taught by an Iraqi dissident known only by his first name. Legend had it that he had been involved in high-level covert operations earlier in the war, and while he thankfully didn’t make a habit of regaling us with stories of working with Special Forces, he instead spent most of his instruction time spewing profanity-laden invective about working as an interpreter in Iraq. Accordingly, our learning of Iraqi Arabic suffered, and most Marines on the team departed ATG with little more than a bastardized working knowledge of basic greetings and salutations. We were forced to rely solely on our interpreters to communicate with the Iraqis, and with that came its own set of challenges.

Joseph was a native interpreter from Basra, and he had been assigned to 3rd Battalion since its inception more than three years earlier. A tiny, wiry, bespectacled man in his forties, he had been an educator in a previous life and spoke with a crisp but often disdainful tone of voice. I had not developed an opinion of Joseph one way or another, however, until my conversation with Ayad turned to my background in South Asia. When the subject of my language capabilities was raised, I noted to Ayad that the Urdu script was derived from Arabic and Farsi, and that many of the words I knew in Urdu were the same in Arabic. At that point Joseph chose to correct what I had said, telling Ayad that I was wrong and that there was no written language the same as Arabic. I felt the color rising from beneath my collar, and I restrained myself from correcting him. The last thing I wanted to do was engage Joseph in a semantic argument in front of Ayad and the outgoing team leader, and so rather than embarrass both him and myself I chose to keep my mouth shut. We had been taught always to keep our cool in front of the Iraqis, but we had also learned that interpreters are supposed to translate what we were saying, not what they thought we should be saying. Nor were interpreters supposed to speak off topic or offer their own opinions. Joseph had violated both tenants, and it incensed me. His actions caused me to suspect him and his abilities, and I resolved from that point forward to rely more on the three interpreters who had trained with us in the United States and accompanied us to Iraq.

The six interpreters we would inherit from the outgoing team were, like Joseph, all local nationals, and from the outset I had not been impressed with them or their abilities. Over time they had grown too comfortable with their life at COP South, and as we observed the outgoing team interact with them it often seemed as if the Marines constantly had to convince the interpreters to do their jobs. They ambled around camp dressed only in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, and they tended to monopolize the Internet stations and phones in the MWR hut. As a whole they rarely participated in daily duties around the compound, and they never seemed to clean up after themselves anywhere they went. Upon inspection of their hut I was appalled; their living spaces were filthy, littered with old food and cigarette butts. Yet they complained that the three interpreters who had arrived with us were “too good to live with them.” In general they acted as if they didn’t care about their jobs or what it was the transition teams were trying to do in Iraq. Instead, the sole source of motivation for them seemed to be an almost weekly insistence that they be allowed to go home on leave.

The interpreters who had traveled with us from Camp Pendleton brought with them their own unique set of challenges. From the outset they began complaining about what they considered to be “quality-of-life” issues aboard the camp. To them everything was inadequate, whether it was the quality of food, living spaces, or the hygiene facilities. They also seemed to resent our insistence that they participate in the daily cleanup and maintenance duties around camp. As Marines we were accustomed to living in austere conditions, yet life aboard COP South could hardly be considered austere. After all, we had beds, showers, satellite television, Internet access, and phones. There was also the fact that the three of them had volunteered to deploy with the Marines—not the Army—and I had made it abundantly clear to the team prior to departing the United States what we could expect in terms of living conditions once we were in-country. None of that seemed to matter to the three interpreters, though, and in the first days and weeks following our arrival I grew exhausted with their constant repetition of the phrase “My contract says . . .”

In the end their grumblings fell on deaf ears. The Marines too had all once signed contracts, yet none of them was coming to me every day complaining that shitting in a bag was a violation of the terms of their agreement. Life is frequently hard for Marines in the field; we were used to it.