The Gazette April 09, 2004
Carson troops used cash for cooperation during stint in Iraq
By Tom Roeder
Faced with a growing insurgency, including daily attacks by foreign fighters, gunrunners and militiamen who wanted to control western Iraq, Fort Carson soldiers last year fought back with a tactic that used more $20 bills than bullets.
The war is different today in Iraq, where Marines are rooting out trouble in Fallujah with house-to-house battles.
In one of the largest home searches of the war, however, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment succeeded with payoffs.
The regiment rounded up more than 350 guerrillas and handed out more than $120,000 during 10 days in November. The work paid off by eliminating attacks for more than a month along the Syrian border and stopping the influx of guns and guerrillas.
Its unknown whether the approach would help calm the growing rebellion in central and southern Iraq that has killed about 40 American troops this week.
"It's just too tough to say this is the right thing to do," said Col. David Teeples, commander of the recently returned regiment.
The operation, at least for a while, undercut guerrillas in a large sector of Iraq's volatile Anbar province, where more than a dozen Marines have died during recent days.
The operation, called Rifles Blitz, started in a similar fashion to the Marine operation in Fallujah, with soldiers cordoning off about 100,000 people in three western towns and shutting down crossings to Syria.
For 10 days during the biggest holiday for the Islamic faith, Ramadan, residents of the towns targeted for the guerrilla round-up weren't going anywhere. Soldiers blocked roads, cut telephone lines and shut off power.
The regiment blew up vacant fields with bombs and artillery to show the locals who was in charge. Tough tactics were offset by a campaign to encourage cooperation and cash for homeowners who let soldiers search their houses for guns and guerrillas.
"There was a cancer in their community, and we told them we wanted to come in and cure that cancer," Teeples said.
Soldiers were trained to honor Iraqi customs and to treat Iraqis they met with respect.
"We tried to attain the goal of having the population no worse than neutral toward coalition forces at the end of the operation," Teeples said.
Before the operation, guerrilla fighters had discouraged cooperation with U.S. forces through intimidation and assassination. Teeples' soldiers won help from the Iraqis by reducing the threat from the guerrillas and handing out cash.
In a nation where a teacher or doctor might make $200 per year, $20 can go a long way. The operation wasn't bloodless, but it faced little organized opposition and didn't spark a large uprising.
Soldiers searched more than 8,000 homes and locked up hundreds of guerrillas.
The operation was paying dividends when the regiment left Iraq last month. Locals who had been silent before Rifles Blitz were tipping troops to trouble. The information was used to seize more guns and guerrillas, averting attacks.
Unlike current battles in Iraq, however, Teeples had an idea of who he wanted to root out because many of the guerrillas were foreigners and comparatively easy to find.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginiabased think tank that focuses on military issues, said that difference is what's causing trouble for soldiers in Iraq.
"We don't know who our enemy is," he said. "We don't know how many there are, or who is supporting them."
© Copyright 2004, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information
