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A little more than a year ago, the Iraqi city of Kirkuk was a potential flashpoint. It was the weak link where a foundering insurgency hoped it might strike a blow that would end a nascent democracy.
Just before the holidays, a Fort Bliss armored brigade deployed to the area to train and assist Iraqi security forces. They were hit with homemade rockets and roadside bombs. Insurgents shot at the soldiers during hit-and-run attacks.
But most of the strikes were directed at Iraqi forces. Insurgents wanted to discredit that force, prove that its members - pushed together from all Iraqi sects and tribes - were incapable of providing stability or security.
A national election was approaching and minority politicians were shouting about a lack of representation. Violence seemed imminent.
Col. Larry Swift, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, and his soldiers were to turn chaos into organization. It was their mission to ensure a peaceful election. They had orders that complicated matters - keep a low profile and let the Iraqis lead.
Swift and his soldiers returned from their mission last month, just in time to spend this year's holiday season with families and friends.
"It was a blessing to get back for the holidays," Swift said one recent day as he sat in a conference room at Biggs Army Airfield. "We missed it on the far side."
Tyra Livingston's husband works in the brigade's public affairs department.
"It'll make me cry," she said when
He had missed his daughter's first birthday. Along with the anxiety of adjusting to her new home in El Paso, she worried about him.
"You wake up every day wondering, 'Will he be OK?' " Livingston said. "You never knew where he was because he was always out on missions."
Spc. Michael Hoagland, 21, exhausted his leave shortly after returning from Iraq. He will stay in touch with family through gift exchanges and the Internet.
In Iraq, Hoagland, a chaplain's assistant on his first overseas deployment, found himself doing other jobs. He watched for trouble from the guard towers of Forward Operating Base Warrior and patrolled the streets of Kirkuk.
"When we first went in, I wasn't quite sure what to be expecting," Hoagland said. "... Mortars did come in (to FOB Warrior) and some people got shot at. Our unit stayed together and did what we were supposed to do and came safely through it with no serious injuries."
In fact, the brigade did not lose a single soldier in combat. In large part, that was because of training, Swift said.
When Swift learned he would command the 1-1 Armored, he was serving in Iraq. So he flew to Kirkuk to get a measure of the situation. His soldiers would be performing counter-insurgency - gaining the trust of residents and pushing violent insurgents to the margins.
He knew his soldiers would need additional skills. They would be required to work extensively through translators and drink large quantities of a sweetened tea called "chai" as they established relationships with Iraqis. Those leaders and other community members would provide valuable intelligence if they believed the soldiers could help them. If there was no trust, they would fall back with the insurgents.
"I had to turn every soldier into (an information) collector," Swift said. "It's really warfare at the Ph.D. level."
His soldiers were responsible for a vast area with many of its 1.3 million residents living in mud-hut villages. Others lived in cosmopolitan Kirkuk, which was the area capital and the unit's center of operations. Swift started with nearly 4,000 soldiers. The number dwindled to about 1,000 in the final three months of the deployment, as the U.S. withdrawal progressed.
The soldiers also trained Iraqi security forces, which included Kurds and Arabs from different Islamic sects. They were teaching a range of skills, including proper treatment of detainees and military tactics. Residents had little trust of the native security forces, which often were divided along ethnic and sectarian lines.
"The worst was the political tension," Swift said. "We had politicians spouting off saying things that were very divisive and very incendiary. ... Everyday there were people trying to get it to spin out of control."
Sunni Arab politicians falsely claimed the Kurds were killing their policemen, Swift said. But it was a fact that men were going house to house in Arab neighborhoods warning occupants to leave or die, he said.
So Swift and his soldiers collected officials from the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, the local police and the Iraqi army. They built a consensus on how to move forward, even holding a news conference to denounce the infighting. "It never happened again while we were there," Swift said of the death threats.
But, as the March 7 election approached, intelligence indicated insurgents planned to place car bombs and suicide bombers where they could do spectacular damage. They wanted to show the population that Iraqi security forces could not protect them, Swift said.
"Insurgents were targeting Kirkuk to inflame ethnic tension," Swift said. "Violence in Kirkuk would be value added to spreading anarchy in Iraq."
And distrust still existed within the security forces.
"We told them, 'We are not interested in all this,' " Swift said. "We told them, 'First and foremost, we protect the Iraqi people.' They should be able to walk to the polling places on election day with their families without getting shot or blown up."
Weeks before the election, the U.S. and Iraqi forces began their own "disruption operations." They set up checkpoints around Kirkuk. X-ray systems and other bomb-detecting equipment were installed, Swift said. Military working dogs were employed. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs were intensified.
"They (insurgents) were fearful of getting through the checkpoints," Swift said.
Maj. Luis Rivera, was responsible for supplying FOB Warrior and keeping its convoys running. Rivera's crew also participated in security preparations for the election.
"Fifteen-foot concrete walls," Rivera said. "We had to surround schools where these Iraqi citizens were supposed to go voting."
On election day, vehicular traffic was restricted in Kirkuk. Iraqis were in traditional clothing, both Kurd and Arab, Swift said.
"They felt safe to do that," Swift said. "And there were no shootings, no acts of violence on election day."
Swift said that is not the brigade's most important accomplishment.
"The biggest legacy was the trust (Iraqis had in U.S. soldiers) and the positive effect we had on the police and the army," Swift said. "It's also the biggest challenge moving forward. They have the capability, but can they stay focused on that? There are certain ethnic and political pulls on them that cause them to be less effective and lose the trust of the people."
Soldiers in an infantry brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., replaced Swift's unit. They are sacrificing their holidays this year. And its soldiers are to be in Iraq until December 2011, when all U.S. forces are scheduled to leave the country.
Chris Roberts writes for the El Paso Times, a member of the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership, and may be reached at chrisr@elpasotimes.com; (915) 546-6136.
