‘Outlaws’ vs. insurgents is familiar face-off in Rawah
The Outlaws are actually decent guys.
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2383976.php
RAWAH, Anbar Province, Iraq — Nov. 25
When they are on patrol in this Sunni town that juts out on a peninsula into the Euphrates River, they show respect to the locals, and the locals abide.
The insurgents still attack when they can, but the Outlaws know the war in Iraq will end if the people choose them and the Iraqi forces over the insurgents. It’s not an easy proposition.
The Outlaws — Delta Company, 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division — have been in Anbar since late September. A platoon lives in the remnants of a government building on the edge of Rawah now known as the Joint Coordination Center.
Since the Outlaws have been here, the JCC has been hit with mortars, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and a suicide car bomber that would have demolished the whole building.
“A motivated lance corporal with about 100 rounds of 7.62 stopped him,” said the company executive officer, 1st Lt. Frank Wilson.
Insurgents did succeed in destroying the Rawah mayor’s office right next door. Disguised as workmen, they planted explosives that crumpled the building into a pile of junk.
The Marines live in the JCC with a small group of Iraqi army soldiers and Iraqi police. The building itself is a wreck. Sewage flows into small streams in the backyard. Food arrives in boxes carried from nearby Combat Outpost Rawah by light armored vehicles, known as “pigs.” They didn’t get much for Thanksgiving, but they did spot an improvised explosive device at a nearby intersection. When they went back to it, the bomb was gone.
When the Outlaws came to town, they replaced an Army cavalry unit. The Marines began a census, going house to house for information on the populace. It turns out the town is full of former regime members. Saddam had a vacation house on the tip of the peninsula.
The insurgent campaign has been aimed at the Marines, but the Outlaws also found three IEDs around the local schools. A few weeks ago they, went on a 10-day sweep west along the Euphrates toward Syria that turned up massive caches of ordnance and information. Three Marines were killed and several wounded in the operation.
With a strategy in Iraq that relies on turning over security and government to the citizens, the Marines have been working closely with the Iraqi police and army. But their efforts were crippled by an intimidation campaign against the local police officers. Insurgents killed and dismembered family members of the police, leaving severed heads on public display. The campaign whittled down the police force to a handful.
“There were some pretty heinous things going on,” said Maj. Sean Quinlan, company commander.
A Marine officer also lives at the JCC solely to work with the Iraqi forces. Rawah has its insurgents because of pressure downriver in cities like Ramadi and Fallujah, said the officer, who asked not to be identified.
The insurgents come up to places like Rawah looking for sanctuary, but the Marines are here to meet them. The intimidation campaign scoured the police force of local officers the Marines call the “sons of Rawah.” Officers brought in from elsewhere do not know the town like someone who grew up there. They’re not neighbors like the former officers.
“To put it bluntly, we are at ground zero,” he said. “We are just starting.”
The key to peace in places like Rawah will be local support to counter the insurgency.
“If we don’t have them on our side, it becomes an impossible dream,” the officer said.
On a foot patrol with a platoon section led by Sgt. Benjamin Fiscus on Saturday morning, the locals kept their distance and waved politely. Some kids were happy to see the Marines. Others were not. One tyke stubbornly shook his head when the patrol tried to get him to move off a side street and onto the curb. Another heaved a massive rock at the patrol.
As they moved through the town, the Marines kicked the stacks of hay and bags of cement that could hide an IED. Feral dogs and cats roam the outskirts where sheep and cows are penned up. The ground is littered with orange rinds, empty paint cans, wrappers, old sandals, anything that than can be thrown away. But certain refuse gets a second look for possible bombs. Each open barrel gets a peek.
The Outlaws go through town several times a day, usually on foot, sometimes in the pigs. On the way back to the FCC, they’ll often stop at the market to buy a kebab for lunch or a sack of potatoes, eggs and onions for meals back at the JCC.
Afterward, Fiscus said the people of Rawah are not overtly hostile or overly buoyant. As the patrol walked through town, many barely noticed the Outlaws. They went about watering their yards, working on their houses or chatting by the side of the road.
“It’s like we’re not even here,” he said. “They’re so used to it by now.”