Transformation of Yathreeb

Yathreeb, Iraqi-
The town children call him “Mister John”. He kneels to talk to them and they ask him when he’s bringing soccer balls. The local armed citizens know his face. Lt. Col. John Dunleavy and his Personal Security Detail regularly patrol these streets. They smile and wave. It wasn’t like this several months ago.

“It’s all happening right now,” Dunleavy, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division said. “Lots of folks are moving here, (Yathreeb area) because it’s a good area now.”

It’s hard not to believe a commander who patrols the same streets with his soldiers.

“I told my guys this is the year that changes the world,” Dunleavy said. "Even the Iraqis are saying this."

It’s the slow momentum that's been building for years and months into what some might call a tipping point. Yathreeb Central, a town of 6,000 and a larger area of 100,000 mostly local farmers, used to be a dangerous place.

The city council which began operating as a functioning government office in January is now busy five-days a week with local citizens popping in and out to get official paperwork signed. Last year the mayor’s office next door was bombed by insurgents. Its crumpled shell is to be one of the mayor’s first reconstruction projects.

The foundation to all of these improvements is security. Concerned Local Citizen (or Sons of Iraq) checkpoints began being set up here last August. Immediately insurgents attacked the new local force. There were several big battles between insurgents and the CLCs, said Yathreeb Mayor, Shauket Ahmed.

“We captured the big names, killed some,” Ahmed said, “We still have few bad guys, but we’ve achieved a big success. It was unexpected to all of us, even U.S. forces.”
(Lt. Col. Dunleavy talks with Yathreeb mayor, Shauket Ahmed outside the city council office.)

Mr. Ahmed, who has an excellent command of English and has been mayor since 2003, said before August the insurgents dominated the area. But “we were serious. We picked the right guys and after five years people are tired of chaos.”

“We faced many obstacles,” Ahmed said. “What we achieved, we deserved based on sacrifices.” They didn’t receive much support from the central government, which acted very slowly, Ahmed said. But they were supported by coalition forces. “Now we have the governor coming and he hasn’t been here before.”

This week local forces captured 30 insurgents, some of whom may have recently attacked an Iraqi Police checkpoint. Nine insurgents were sent to a terrorist court in Tikrit.

With the security in place, Mr. Ahmed is planning six new projects including a new school, rebuilding the mayoral office, a shopping center. A new water purification plan serving 20,000 people will be finished in three months and housing projects are planned for 2009, he said.

Lt. Col. Dunleavy, who regularly sits in on the Yathreeb city council and the local council in Shia-dominated Al Dujayl, is looking ahead to provincial elections. He said whereas before Sunnis refused to participate or were afraid to, citizens now have a legitimate channel to funnel their grievances

Dunleavy tells a story of a nearby Shiite town where the locals were complaining that their representative never came around to hear about their problems. We had a representative show up, Dunleavy said and the representative said that the locals didn’t vote, which some later admitted.

“What’s good about that story is they wanted a city council rep,” Dunleavy said. “When city government is informed, things improve. Look at our (U.S.) government's history. The state and provincial governments developed much quicker than the central one.”

(Children crowd around a cultural advisor (center) who lines them up to distribute clothes and toys.)

The 2/320th's philosophy for the past seven months has been to get out and walk the local streets to meet Iraqis and hear their grievances. "Some hadn't ever seen a coalition force soldier and talked to him (face-to-face) because everything here is based on a hierachy of power," said Command Sergeant Major Edward Estep, who Wednesday visited a Bank in Al Dujayl and encouraged the manager to bring his problems back to city council.

"We get out and walk around," the Sergeant Major said. "That's probably been the biggest return on our investment- ask people what they need and bring in back to city council."

But it's a delicate balance. "We need to find their way and influence their way through an Iraqi face," Estep said, meaning if soldiers do a large humanitarian drop they prefer to bring an Iraqi powerbroker along to represent the goodwill rather than it always coming from the Americans.

The next big challenge is economics. Dunleavy said the new Iraqi Business Zone initiative headed by the 76th Indiana National Guard, though in its infant stages, is important because of perception. “But we have to produce, which is why Col. Carr (of the 76th) is focused on injecting things now.”

Things are far from perfect. Some CLC checkpoints are still regularly attacked when insurgents come in from the orchards under the cover of darkness. Local intelligence gathering can be confusing when some CLCs say that an insurgent attacked them and the coalition forces believe that same insurgent had already been arrested. Still most Iraqis agree the bigger-time insurgents have mostly all been apprehended in this area.

(A CLC explaining how their checkpoint in Al Zour gets attacked at night.)

Perhaps the most telling sign is the anti-coalition graffiti has been replaced by scrawls against Al Qaida. Whereas children used to yell insults at soldiers and run into their houses, they now smile and crowd around looking for gifts.

“Two months ago we couldn’t walk down these streets,” said ‘Rommel’ a long-time interpreter, who seemed to be smiling at all the changes.

But this is a very poor rural area supported mostly by subsistence farming. Some farmers have opted to work on the LSA base because they can’t afford seed or to pay for the generators that pump water to their crops. And they still have difficulty getting to the market in Balad because of security. (Two children who help run their parents convenience shop in Yathreeb said that their customers can't pay them until the end of the month when they get paid.)

“Everywhere I go people ask me for a job,” said an Iraqi-American cultural advisor originally from Baghdad. “Some families tell me they haven’t eaten in days. There are a lot of orphans. Mothers tell me they have to keep their children out of school because they need them to work.”

Lt. Col. Dunleavy said what he and his soldiers do is not unique. It's what every line unit is now doing in Iraq. "You see them checking in on city government, partnering with the Iraqi Army. Sergeants are doing jobs more common to the state department and tonight we're conducting an air assault," he said. Checking in on all these areas in a day, Dunleavy said, "that's what's unique about this fight."