Role-playing puts Strykers in touch with Mideast culture
Published Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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FORT IRWIN, Calif.— The National Training Center is known for its quick pace, but sometimes waiting is the hardest part.
The men of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery, arrived at the fictitious town of Abarlayla about 10 a.m. Tuesday, but they didn’t dare step foot in the town until the arrival of the actors playing the Iraqi army.
The 2/8th, part of Fort Wainwright’s 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team, waited for nearly four hours. They passed the time with conversation, chewing tobacco and gallons upon gallons of water. The water is perhaps the most important thing on a day like this where the temperature hovers around 100 degrees, and they say the equipment makes it feel another 10 degrees hotter.
In another time, perhaps even just five years ago when the Iraq War was still in its infancy, the men might not be so cautious, but this is a different kind of conflict, which requires a different kind of training.
“The last couple of wars, it wasn’t about cultural awareness, it was about shooting people in the face,” Sgt. Frank Dow of Charlie Battery said bluntly. “Now, you talk to him to find out who to shoot in the face.”
Dow, a 12-year Army veteran who has previously served tours in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Somalia, will face his sixth foreign deployment this fall. It will be his second trip to Iraq.
While the artillery still has the firepower on hand to level nearly any objective, the 2/8th say its role has changed to more of an infantry unit in recent years.
“It’s not World War II,” said Sgt. Robert Moore, also of Charlie Battery. “You can’t throw artillery around.”
Dow puts his own spin on the artillery’s new job.
“In theory, we shoot howitzers,” he said. “In reality, we run around the desert like monkeys without a purpose.”
To be fair, there is a purpose to the missions the 1-25th runs at NTC, it’s just much more complicated than in past conflicts.
Once the Iraqi army arrived, Col. Matthew Anderson, commander of the 2/8th, led his company, a translator and a small contingent of Iraqis through the dusty and eerily empty streets of Abarlayla.
Their mission for the day was to meet with the Sunni mayor of a predominantly Shiite city. The mayor may have recently upset the delicate balance of power in the city by firing the entire Shiite police force, who he claimed were working with insurgents.
To put it very simply, the differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam are similar to the differences between Catholicism and Protestant Christianity, but such differences are the source of most of the current conflict in Iraq.
After meeting with the mayor for more than 30 minutes, Anderson convinces him that it is in the best interest of the city to hire an even mix of Sunni and Shiite when he next hires Sons of Iraq, a sort of armed neighborhood watch that protects the infrastructure of many Iraqi villages.
But understanding ethnic differences is just part of the cultural awareness soldiers go through before deploying to Iraq.
While troops who have been there before understand some basic cultural values of Iraq, new recruits often make mistakes such as not offering an Arabic greeting of “peace upon you,” said Mustafa, Saleb, an interpreter for the 2/8th at NTC.
And while it’s polite to offer such a greeting and a handshake to a man, it is rude to offer a handshake to any woman.
“It sure takes a few months for them to get it,” Saleb said.
Other common Western gestures such as asking someone to come forward with one finger or telling a person to stop with an open palm are considered impolite in Iraq.
“It’s easy to offend people,” Dow said. “It’s much harder to please them.”
Contact staff writer Chris Freiberg at 459-7545.
Community Discussion
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This is a great new story -- better late than never. If, as a result of these past 5 years, Americans can come away with a greater understanding and respect for Muslim Arab culture, we and they will gain a great deal. That's the first step towards mutual respect -- and also helps us to understand the motivations of the minority among them who would do us harm. That's a "victory" I can stand behind.
Pinhead-
Judging from the comments here on the DNM website, I'm going to have to disagree. There is no way folks have a "...greater understanding and respect for Muslim Arab culture..." Sad.
oh the bluntness!!!
I am just curious. Does anyone know when this program started?
What amazes me is that people classify military people as a buncha uncouth heathens that just want to beat on things - with higher up commendation, even. Whether you agree with this war or not, classifying our military this way is an assumption, at best.
Pinhead - we can understand the motivations of the minority among them that would do us harm; it does not mean we have to accept the consequences or condone the reasoning.
"The last couple of wars, it wasn’t about cultural awareness, it was about shooting people in the face,” Sgt. Frank Dow of Charlie Battery said bluntly. “Now, you talk to him to find out who to shoot in the face.”
Strange, Dana, that Dow did not say, "...whether it is necessary to shoot someone or not." That quote alone does a lot toward making the U.S. military seem like "uncouth heathens" alright. It sounds as though Dow is itching to shoot someone in the face.
zo6lady, The role playing piece at NTC started in OCT/NOV of 2003. It has been very successful, in training soldiers for what to expect in Iraq.
Also most of the Iraq Americans there (while being paid well) do it out of sense of duty for their adopted country. They want to see the military succeed and create a more stable Iraq that they can go back to and visit. A lot of them are ex-pat's from the Sadam era.
Imusuallyright, you can't really judge us all by the one man. SGT Dow is a good warfighter, but he's not the one you put in front to talk to the Iraqis - or civilians. Things we think of as joking around, other people might not take as such. The Army undergoes a tremendous amount of training to determine whether or not we should shoot or not shoot, and the Iraqis have learned our rules of engagement well enough that someone who breaks them is pretty much doing it on purpose.
With the bit about learning to ask who to shoot in the face, well, yes. We do learn to interact with the Iraqis. Our mission there is to get 'em on their feet, so our primary job is to get some spirit and discipline into the Iraqi police and army. We let the IPs and IAs do most of the interaction to put an Iraqi face on things. We don't step out entirely, but we want the people to know that when we're gone, they can step up and do the job without us there to pull security. Most of the soldiers going through NTC have a greater understanding of Mideast culture than when we arrived there. As for respect... that takes time actually seeing the culture and learning what there is to admire about it. I mean, how many Americans really think of anything more than jihadists and deserts when we think of Islam?
To the article itself: SGT Dow was an eleven-year veteran of the Marine Corps infantry. He's spent the past couple of years in the Army artillery after transferring over. Not a twelve-year veteran of the Army.
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