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Friday, November 25, 2005
Market buys security for GIs, Iraqis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Young Iraqi men sit Indian-style in their wooden booths here every day, hawking DVD movies and watches to passers-by.
They have learned U.S. military ranks and often use them to attract soldiers to their outdoor bazaar. “Hey, sergeant!” they shout excitedly. “Hey, private!”
They are even more aggressive with civilians, gesturing for them to come closer and reaching out to shake hands.
The vendors and the soldiers agree the market helps build goodwill between them and ensure the base is safe. U.S. military officials say there is a clear link between those jobs and the security here. But they worry what will happen after the troops pull out of Iraq.
“I keep telling them ‘What are you going to do when we leave?’ It’s not a matter of if, but when,” said Lt. Col. Randy Neal, 44, a Stone Mountain native who commands the Texas National Guard’s 3rd Battalion, 112th Armor Regiment.
Soldiers, civilian truck drivers and others spend up to an estimated $4,000 at the market every week, Neal said. Some Iraqis walk home with up to $20 a day, a big sum in this farming community 65 miles south of Baghdad.
Almost 300 other Iraqis work inside the base, filling sandbags, picking up trash and cleaning shower stalls and latrines. They are paid $6.25 a day, which is about average in this region, according to residents.
“Everyone in this area does very well off this base,” said Neal, 44, of Leander, Texas.
Neal’s unit is about to return home after nearly a yearlong stay here. Georgia’s 1st Battalion of the 108th Armor Regiment is taking over this base.
Scania is a major rest and refueling point for truck drivers heading north to Baghdad and points beyond. Soldiers say it’s the dividing line between the safer areas in southern Iraq and this country’s more dangerous regions. Scania got its name from a type of truck that bears its name.
On average, insurgents fire mortars at this base only once a year. Since January, U.S. soldiers have been attacked with six or seven roadside bombs in this area, Neal said, a small number compared with what the Georgia National Guard soldiers experienced during their previous missions north of here.
During a recent two-hour patrol outside the wire at Scania, the Georgians heard no gunfire and saw no bomb craters. One 108th soldier who had just moved here from Mahmudiyah in Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, dismissively called the patrol “boring.”
One of the reasons for the quiet is that the region is dominated by Shiite Muslims who generally support the U.S. military presence. But the Iraqis who work here say their jobs on base give them an extra incentive to shun insurgents. They said they don’t want anything to endanger their employment.
“Everyone who works here benefits from the market,” Hayder Sadq, 19, said as he sold DVDs from his booth. “We don’t do bad stuff.”
Sadq is working at the market to raise money for college tuition. He wants to become a math teacher and eventually buy a house for himself and his wife.
He and the other vendors can keep the market open and hold their jobs inside the gate, the U.S. soldiers warn, so long as they help keep the base safe from insurgents.
“That market buys us a lot of security, and the reason for it is they make so much money off of it,” said Neal, a software company sales manager.
But Neal and Lt. Col. John King commander of the Georgia battalion, don’t want the Iraqis to become too dependent on the U.S. military for jobs.
Neal has been pushing the Iraqis to start businesses together. So far, he said, he has seen no evidence of that.
Among the people Neal has been prodding is Ali Jeddan, who co-owns most of the land this base sits on. Jeddan and others collect about $150,000 a year for renting land to the U.S. military, Neal said. The United States has pumped more than $3 million into the local economy since January, he added.
Jeddan said entrepreneurs are afraid to start businesses because of this country’s violent insurgency and corrupt government.
“Have you thought about opening a date factory?” Neal asked Jeddan as they stood outside the bazaar.
Jeddan: “We’d like to do that, but …”
Neal: “But what?”
Jeddan: “We don’t have enough money.”
Neal encouraged Jeddan to join other investors and form a cooperative. But Jeddan said people are worried such a business would fail.
Instead, Jeddan is considering turning his land into a parking lot after the soldiers leave. He might add a restaurant. Or maybe a gas station. He brightened as he talked about the possibilities.
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Georgia gov. thanks troops in Mideast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue thanked Georgia troops in person Thursday for their service in the Middle East and brought Thanksgiving dinner with him.
Perdue said in a telephone interview from Kuwait City that he visited with members of the 116th Air Control Wing at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The wing is based at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, near the governor’s hometown of Bonaire.
“I came to say thanks to these troops and they gave me a blessing I’ll never forget,” Perdue said.
“They’d just come in off a 12-hour mission. For them to tell me firsthand that they’re making a difference and saving American lives, it was a great thrill and a real blessing to see them,” he said.
Perdue said morale was terrific among the troops as they ate turkey and dressing, prime rib, shrimp, corn, green beans, yams and mashed potatoes. He spent time in Kuwait City and Qatar and will move on “to parts unknown” today, he said.
Perdue also ate Thanksgiving lunch with troops from Georgia’s 48th Brigade, according to a statement from his office.
He visited Kuwait as part of a delegation of four governors, including Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who were invited by the Defense Department to travel to the Middle East.
The tour included briefings in Washington by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace.
Troops find cause for thanksgiving after brush with death
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ramadi, Iraq — The soldiers sat in stunned silence in the moments after a roadside bomb sent shock waves through their bodies and raked their Humvee with jagged shrapnel.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester peered at his men through the cloud of brown smoke mushrooming in his vehicle. They appeared shaken but uninjured.
Curtis Compton/AJC
Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester looks over a piece of shrapnel that was part of a roadside bomb that his Humvee on Thursday in Iraq.
“Drive forward!” Winchester commanded his driver.
He wanted to get his men out of the insurgents’ kill zone.
The Georgia National Guard soldiers were quiet Thursday morning as they sped away from the 3-foot-wide blast crater. Winchester turned to them again, grinning in a reassuring way.
“Well, fellas,” he shouted, “Happy Thanksgiving!”
Winchester, a 30-year-old Pepsi truck driver from Jesup, is one of thousands of American troops who had to go outside the relative safety of their bases in Iraq on Thanksgiving. Some manned lonely outposts in remote areas, skipping turkey and pumpkin pie. Others spent the holiday on patrol in areas plagued by insurgents.
Before the explosion rocked his vehicle, Winchester was heading back to Al Asad Air Base from a three-day mission to the Jordanian border guarding trucks loaded with fuel, food and water.
Bombs like the one that hit his vehicle are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. Soldiers refer to them as IEDs, improvised explosive devices. They are often buried in dirt roads, planted in cement blocks or hidden in bushes.
The one that hit Winchester’s Humvee was in a concrete storm drain on the side of “Route Mobile,” a treacherous highway soldiers often travel from the border town of Trebil to Al Asad, west of Baghdad.
When Winchester and his men determined that there was no longer a threat, they returned to the blast site and found pieces of shrapnel the length of a man’s forearm. The bomb left gouges in the armored door of Winchester’s Humvee at the level of his head. It also shattered his side mirror, near where it says, “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” The soldiers did not catch the bomb’s triggerman.
“I’m just glad we’re alive,” said Sgt. Curtis Wilmont, 45, of Pembroke, Winchester’s driver.
‘They know it’s a holiday’
The men had started their day at 2 a.m. at a small U.S. military base a few miles east of the Jordanian border. Winchester and dozens of other soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team rolled out of their green cots, ready to escort the supply convoy under the cover of darkness.
Curtis Compton/AJC
After their convoy was attacked, Staff Sgt. Gilbert Sheppard of Millen and Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester have Thanksgiving dinner with sparkling grape juice at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq.
Winchester brushed his teeth beside his Humvee in the bitter cold. He climbed inside his vehicle and wondered aloud whether the insurgents would attack him on Thanksgiving. Perhaps it was too cold, he thought, for the enemy to go outside.
“Maybe he is staying inside, cooking turkey,” Winchester told his buddies.
Wilmont was doubtful.
“They know it’s a holiday for us,” he said.
Their 20-year-old gunner, Spc. Steven Riley of Savannah, also had a troubled feeling. He told his buddies he had just had a nightmare. In his dream, he said, insurgents were planting roadside bombs in his hometown of Headland, Ala. He remembered teaching his sister in his dream to avoid the explosives by driving in the center of the road.
“They were placed in my church parking lot,” he said.
Hours later, the explosion snapped Riley’s head back, dizzying him and giving him an intense headache. He said he heard shrapnel ricochet around his metal gun turret, sounding like “Tink! Tink! Tink!”
“It’s not the explosions that drive soldiers crazy,” he said. “It’s the anticipation that drives people nuts.”
Winchester, who is almost unfailingly cheerful, brightened his buddies’ moods in the hours before the blast by playing country music in the Humvee. One of the songs he played, Tricia Yearwood’s “Georgia Rain,” made him think of his wife, Tracy. He said he mailed her a copy of one of Yearwood’s compact discs recently. He misses her and his three young children. He keeps a family photo strapped to the inside of his helmet.
Thoughts of home
If he were home, he said, he would be rubbing butter on a turkey, sprinkling it with salt and pepper and then popping it into the oven. He would ride bikes and play baseball with his children.
He said he also often thought of his dog, Leo, an 18-month-old black Labrador retriever. Winchester said his wife told him Leo had been moping around their home since he left for Iraq months ago. So he sent his dog a postcard reading: “Ruff, ruff. I miss you.”
As he rode outside the gate Thursday morning and toward the insurgent’s bomb, Winchester passed a military sign that warns against complacency and asks: “Is Today Your Day?”
“All right. Happy Turkey Day. At least we’re alive,” Winchester said to himself.
“I’ll miss this year,” he said of Thanksgiving. “I’ll see next year’s. There is plenty more of them to come.”
He paused for an instant and then added: “I hope.”
