In the Gray Area

As the Outlanders grudgingly prepared their equipment and vehicles for the trip into Husaybah the omnipresent sandstorms kicked up again, forcing us to cancel all movement outside the wire. Our second attempt to visit the souq for our feast with the 3rd Battalion staff was thwarted, and I wondered if perhaps it was a sign. Watching the Marines unload the Humvees and begin returning their weapons and radios to the team’s armory, I pulled aside Master Sergeant Deleonguerrero.

“I don’t think this storm is gonna go away anytime soon,” I said, my eyes watering from the stinging airborne particles.

“Yeah,” he agreed, squinting. “It’s some nasty trash out here.”

“What do you think, Top?” I asked, my arms crossed. “Should we postpone the feast?”

“We need to just cancel it altogether.”

I thought for a moment. It was difficult to disagree with him. My heart wasn’t exactly exploding with goodwill toward Ayad and his staff at that point, but I wanted to hear the master sergeant’s opinion.

“Why?” I asked.

“Sir, those crazies don’t rate a feast right now with all the fucked-up trash they’ve been doing around here lately,” he explained. “The guards sleeping, the battalion commander leaving you guys yesterday, the jundi shooting off his machine gun. No one wants to cook for them right now.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I replied. “My ass is still chapped about yesterday too. All right, let’s postpone it indefinitely. Maybe we’ll do something for them before we leave this joint.”

The decision to cancel the feast was not protested by the Marines. No one’s heart was in it, and I sensed that, like me, the team’s amity and sense of benevolence toward the IAs was declining rapidly. And it was no surprise. The Marines had worked hard to put aside their distaste for many of the Iraqis’ cultural idiosyncrasies and instead had focused on doing whatever they could to make 3rd Battalion a better, more capable unit. Their efforts with their counterparts on the IA staff, however, were met with the same stubbornness and sense of entitlement by the Iraqi officers that I had encountered with Lieutenant Colonel Ayad. Their patience, like my own, was running out.

Shortly after midnight on 14 June a jundi had a negligent discharge while standing his post. The next day Corporal Fry delivered the details of the incident, and during the course of my nightly get-together with Ayad I presented the information to him. Fry and Staff Sergeant Leek had begun conducting random inspections of the camp’s posts and guard towers—often at great personal risk to themselves because of the junood’s jitteriness and questionable weapons proficiency—and I wanted Ayad to understand what was going on with his guard force and the risk it posed to my Marines. No one on his staff had told Ayad about the incident, and he was upset that he had had to learn about it from the Americans.

“So, sadie,” I said, “what are you going to do about it?”

“The jundi will be punished,” he told me. “That is unacceptable.”

“Well, from what I hear he’s already in jundi jail.”

Ayad nodded in approval.

“When junood mishandle their weapons, that is the punishment they deserve.”

“You’re right, sadie,” I said sardonically. “But if that’s the case, then why isn’t the jundi from your PSD who fired off his PKM in jail?”

“He has already been punished. He has to stand extra duty and his mujaas has been suspended.”

“That concerns me,” I replied, trying unsuccessfully not to sound like I was lecturing him. “The perception I think you are creating within the battalion is that you are favoring the junood on your PSD, and that they are not receiving the same treatment and punishment as the rest of the soldiers who screw up.”

Ayad was uninterested in my observations.

“The jundi from my PSD is new and inexperienced,” he explained. “He made a mistake and he will receive further training. The jundi on post was negligent with his weapon; it wasn’t a mistake.”

“How do you know that?” I challenged. “You didn’t even know about it until I told you. You don’t know if he was negligent or if he was inexperienced like the jundi on your PSD.”

“But I need that jundi on my PSD.”

The conversation had begun to go in circles, and I finally realized that nothing was going to happen. Ayad had dug in his heels, and he was not going to mete out justice to the soldier from his security detachment. For me it was just another battle lost in the long war to convince my counterpart to do the right thing.

A Marine had once told me when I was a second lieutenant that I wore my heart on my sleeve. It was a character flaw I had struggled with throughout my career. Those around me always knew when I was pissed off, when I was upset, or when I was happy. It wasn’t an admirable trait to have as an officer, and it routinely betrayed me during my time as an advisor. As June reached its middle, Ayad—apparently sensing my growing frustrations—invited me to lunch with him and Colonel Ra’ed one afternoon. As the three of us ate together, Ayad extended an open invitation to me to eat with him any time I wished. He also made it clear that the Marines were welcome to dine at the battalion chow hall. One of the interpreters had told him the Marines were eating out of cans inside the MiTT compound, and he was appalled.

“I don’t want you to starve,” he said magnanimously, reiterating the gesture the next evening after he had again invited me to dinner. “And while I am gone on mujaas you can even use my cook to make meals for you.”

I graciously thanked him for his offer, fully intending not to take him up on it. The potential impression it could create would be catastrophic. The Outlanders would harass me about it endlessly, and, more important, the battalion’s soldiers would merely think I had been corrupted by their commander. I had long known that Ayad, as the commander, received the best food in the battalion; the junood, in turn, received the leftovers. If I were to roll in during Ayad’s absence and insist that his cooks prepare food for me from their stores the junood would never trust me again. The Marines and I were on shaky ground with them as it was; we didn’t need to give them additional fuel for their suspicions.

As the weeks and months passed us by, Ayad seemed to be taking more and more personal leave—much more than the ten days each month the soldiers were officially authorized. Before his departure on 19 June he had told me he would be gone for fifteen days. He had to return Iha’ab to Ramadi, he told me, and he had some personal business at home. Ayad’s increasing leave presented a significant barrier to progress, as he never left anyone in charge of the unit in his absence. As a result, everything always seemed to fall apart in the battalion as soon as he left. His exit on 19 June was no different. That night, only hours after Ayad had left, another soldier standing post negligently fired off his rifle. As usual the culprit’s head was shaved and he was thrown in jundi jail.

Incidents of misbehavior and inattention to duty seemed to grow exponentially, and we soon turned to our new observation camera to assist us in policing the battalion. Originally designed to scan the area around COP South for enemy activity during both the day and the night, the camera became the team’s own “nanny cam.” It was perfect for monitoring the guard towers and the camp’s interior, and we began to notice immediately that the tower guards were doing everything but guarding the outpost. They slept, they sat in the shade, they chatted on cell phones . . . the list of infractions was endless. One day Leek—who as our advisor to 3rd Battalion’s Sergeant of the Guard had taken his role with deadly seriousness—dragged Warrant Officer Hameed into the COC to show him the soldiers sleeping in the towers. Seeing the infractions, Hameed stormed out of the COC and started throwing soldiers in jundi jail left and right. I thought once again, At this rate there’ll be no one left in the battalion to stand guard.

A pervasive gastrointestinal illness—universally known by Marines as “the shits”—spread throughout COP South, and after evading its clutch for months I finally succumbed to it on 23 June. Yet despite my weakened condition I insisted on accompanying the team the next day on a routine convoy to Vera Cruz and Okinawa. I realized my error in joining the Marines as soon as we exited the wire, and throughout the course of the trip I was essentially useless—drained of energy, nauseous, and, above all else, cranky and difficult to be around.

And neither visit to the two companies camped out at the battle positions made me feel any better. Captain Majid, the bumbling XO at Vera Cruz, explained to me and Captain Hanna that 2nd Company was only allotted enough fuel from 3rd Battalion to run their generators about eight hours a day. In a confused, protracted discussion—during which we struggled with deciphering a series of convoluted mathematical equations through our interpreter—Majid continued his tale of misery by claiming that his junood each only received one bottle (1.5 liters) of water per day. A similar conversation with First Lieutenant Ali, the XO for 1st Company, revealed similar life-support woes at Okinawa. Not enough fuel and water was being distributed by the battalion headquarters to the remote company positions.

Hanna, ever the analytical, balanced logistics officer, was clearly the more rational of the two of us. I, on the other hand, feeling under the weather and—more important—completely fed up with the situation, snapped the same thing at both Iraqi officers.

“Listen,” I said, exasperated. “I will only talk to your battalion commander about this if you promise to do the same.”

“But he won’t listen to me or Major Za’id,” Majid said, equally incensed. “He only listens when you talk to him.”

“Okay, look,” I said finally. “The MiTT team isn’t going to be here forever. What will you do when we are gone? You have to figure out a way to talk to your battalion commander without always going through me.”

Majid and Ali finally agreed separately to convince their commanders to raise the issue with Ayad, but I had little confidence they would follow through and honor our deal. As always, the long ride back to COP South gave me time to reflect on my visit to the two battle positions, and I couldn’t decide which troubled me more: the fact that Ayad’s company commanders relied on me to speak to him for them, or the possibility that the two companies were getting shortchanged on fuel and water during the middle of a very long, hot, and dusty summer. Both issues were potentially symptoms of more serious problems. If the company commanders couldn’t talk to their boss without my intervention, how could the battalion ever hope to succeed without the Americans’ assistance? And if it was indeed true that Ayad wasn’t properly allocating fuel and water to his companies, then their ability to accomplish the mission was severely hindered. A lack of fuel meant generators couldn’t operate. That meant that refrigerators couldn’t be run constantly. Food would be spoiled and water couldn’t be cooled. Air-conditioning units couldn’t be turned on. Rather than concentrate on their duties, the soldiers would turn inward and focus on their own misery in the stifling summer heat of Al Anbar province. Moreover, a lack of water for the junood was dangerous. They conducted multiple foot patrols each day, and while they weren’t burdened with the same amount of body armor and equipment that the Marines were, a liter and a half of water just didn’t cut it—in any man’s army, not just the American military.

Later that afternoon I found Hanna next to one of our Humvees, quietly seething about our visit.

“You know, sir,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “I’ve just about had it with this fuel game we’re playing. I don’t want to give any more fuel to 3rd Battalion for their fucking generators unless it is going to Vera Cruz or Okinawa.”

“Yeah, I’m with you,” I agreed. “This is total bullshit. No more daily allotment for them here at COP South.”

“Well,” he added, “we’re already on track to have them down to zero by the beginning of August. We’ll just speed it up and cut them off early.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“And I recommend we redirect what’s left for the next month to Vera Cruz and Okinawa. We can send out three thousand liters to supply both positions in a couple of days.”

“Good to go,” I said. “That should get them over the hump until I can figure out what the hell the real story is with Ayad.”

I later walked into the COC to find Hanna standing in front of a dryerase board filled with numbers and equations. He had done his homework. By calculating the monthly fuel allotment from the brigade and factoring in consumption by generators and Humvees he had determined that each company required approximately 8,000 to 9,000 liters each month to remain fully functional. The numbers he presented to me added up, and they were well within the limits of the 39,000 liters provided to 3rd Battalion each month. But that was the easy part. The trick would be to convince Ayad that it was the right thing to do, and sometimes convincing the IAs to do the right thing was like screaming in deep space.

The Outlanders had arrived at COP South expecting to find a battalion ready to conduct advanced training when it wasn’t performing routine patrols and operations. Such an expectation was yet another of many bubbles that had been burst shortly after our advisor mission began. Lieutenant Grubb, who was always champing at the bit to plan and lead live-fire marksmanship training with the battalion, quickly discovered that the proficiency of the junood was not what we had expected. That much was clear from the number of negligent discharges that had occurred in such a short period. And, after learning two months earlier that the battalion had not fired its weapons in recent memory, figuring out a way to get them to shoot had become an obsession with us.

The two obstacles to shooting—Ayad’s insistence on hoarding ammunition and a convoluted Iraqi military supply system that made it next to impossible to use live ammunition in training—finally seemed negotiable after the series of negligent discharges. Perhaps in a gesture to appease me, Ayad had promised before leaving on mujaas that the battalion would conduct a live-fire machine-gun shoot on 25 June. But a third obstacle to training suddenly appeared in the form of Captain Ali, the battalion’s training officer and Lieutenant Grubb’s counterpart. In the week leading up to Ayad’s departure he had assured me each night that the battalion would shoot, even in his absence. Ali, meanwhile, had spent that last week telling Grubb that the battalion did not have the ammunition to shoot. No matter how many times I tried to get to the bottom of it before Ayad went on leave, each man stuck to his story.

“Sadie,” I would ask, “is the shoot for next week still on schedule?”

“Yes,” he would say.

Later that night I would talk to Grubb.

“Ayad told me the shoot is on.”

“Sir,” Grubb would counter, “Ali says there is no shoot scheduled. He says they don’t have the ammo.”

I would then go back to Ayad.

“Sadie, Captain Ali says the shoot won’t happen because there isn’t enough ammunition.”

“No,” he would answer. “The shoot will still happen on the twentyfifth.” It was dizzying, and, as with the fuel allocation issue I no longer knew whom to believe.

Ayad left on leave. The shoot didn’t happen. I was pissed.

At midnight on 25 June Staff Sergeant Wolf radioed me from the COC.

“Sir, you need to come see this.”

Minutes later I walked in, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“What’s up?”

“The brigade MiTT just sent us a message,” he said, pointing to the computer display in front of him. “The tower guard at AQ reported a burst of machine-gun fire from a Third Battalion convoy leaving their wire.”

“What?” I said, suddenly awake.

“Oh wait, there’s more, sir,” Wolf said, smiling. “The IA convoy reported to brigade that it was the tower that fired on them.”

“Man,” I said, once again shaking my head. “What in the fuck . . .?”

I keyed my radio.

“Three, this is Six.”

“Uhnn, this is Three,” Lieutenant Bates replied, still half-asleep.

“Need you in the COC.”

Moments later Bates appeared, clad only in T-shirt and shorts and trying to adjust his eyes to the light—a mirror image of me just minutes before. I explained what had happened.

“Go get with Captain Al’aa and find out what the hell really happened.”

“Roger,” he replied. “When the convoy arrives, if they give him the same bullshit about the tower guard firing on them I’ll just tell them we’ll run a GSR [gunshot residue] kit over their weapons to find out if they’re telling the truth.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I cautioned. “You know we don’t have any GSR kits. If they call your bluff, you’re screwed.”

“No sweat, sir,” he assured me. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Thirty minutes later Bates returned. When challenged by Captain Al’aa the IA convoy leader had admitted that one of the Iraqi soldiers had fired a negligent discharge as they departed friendly lines. My patience had finally run out. Until that point the team’s advisors had merely recommended certain changes to their counterparts. Now, more than ever, our own safety was on the line; I could only tell the Marines to be careful around the junood carrying loaded weapons so many times. It was time to force the battalion to carry out our orders. I directed a mandatory weapons-safety stand-down the next morning. If the Iraqis couldn’t teach proper weapons handling, we would do it for them until they got the picture. It wasn’t the optimal way to do things, but necessity had forced us into that position. The last thing I wanted was for one of my men to go home in a bag after getting shot by an Iraqi soldier.