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Interview, Oct. 21, 2006

Multi-National Force-Iraq

Monday, 23 October 2006

INTERVIEW WITH MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM CALDWELL, USA, SPOKESMAN, MULTINATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ LOCATION: COMBINED PRESS INFORMATION CENTER, BAGHDAD, IRAQ DATE: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2006

Q One year's passed since the Iraqi constitution was in fact approved -- (off mike) -- you did touch upon the overwhelming numbers in favor of the Iraqi constitution calling it a sturdy display of Iraqis' desire for democracy, really like that. Now it's been a year of both violence and progress. Where is the Iraqis' desire for democracy today?

GEN. CALDWELL: Well, I'd tell you, (what is ?) really hard to see sometimes is when you turn on your TV, you look and you see the violence, you see the car bomb, you hear about the killing of some citizens within this country, and you miss the fact of the 27 million Iraqis out there, you know, 90 -- 90 -- 95 percent of them really want to have peace and security, and that's their overwhelming desire. When you look at the numbers that voted, you know, 12 million went out and voted for this Council of Representatives to provide them a representative government to represent their needs and their desires and to take care of them. So they very much are in favor of this democratic process, and they want to see it work, but we have these extremist elements on both sides, both Sunni side and Shi'a side, and then you've got the al Qaeda and the actual insurgency itself. And those elements keep trying to create tension between the two religious sects and cause tit-for-tat type of killings that will occur.

So if you go up and talk to the normal Iraqi on the street, he or she, they just want their water, their electricity, their sewer; they want to live in peace, they want to have prosperity, they want a job. I mean, they just want to carry on with their lives, and most of them still do now every day. They've got 18 provinces in Iraq; 14 provinces of the 18 literally enjoy relative security and peace day by day. The other four provinces is where 83 percent of the attacks occur on a daily basis, which has about 40 percent of the population. That means that the other 60 percent really do not feel or experience what you see on your TV on a day-to-day basis.

So they very much still want it. They -- in fact, they long for it, and they'll tell you they want to see this thing work. And even within Baghdad, where we're faced with some of the largest number of attacks that are occurring, we still find them forming neighborhood advisory councils and district councils for the first time ever, you know, in decades, literally 30 years, and trying to have a representative form of coming forth with their ideas. So it very much is alive and in the people here in this country, and they hope to see it succeed.

Q A question to Iraqis' government, a mere 150 days old, give or take an hour or so. One challenge: the recent recall of forces for retraining. AFN has actually aired some news segments in the recent past where coalition forces have commented on firsthand experience of -- on the challenges of that trust, that relationship between Iraqi citizens and IP, the Iraqi patrol forces and such. What would you say to these coalition forces about the need for such recalls?

GEN. CALDWELL: Well, what I would tell our men and women serving out there is, there is a great amount of trust between the Iraqi army and the Iraqi citizens, but it does not exist with the Iraqi police. And they need to earn that. It's not going to be given to them. They're going to have to display that by their professionalism and their conduct.

And so just recently what we saw was an Iraqi police brigade of national police pulled off line. And they're literally going through and purging that brigade.

They've pulled another one off line that they've got in training right through this whole month of October. And the intent is, when it finishes this one month of rebluing, so to speak, that their professionalism, their conduct, their loyalty will be greatly enhanced; and they'll be put back out on the street for further service to their nation; and from that rebluing, that they can then get out and work on gaining the respect, the admiration, the trust, the confidence back from the Iraqi people, which is not existent to the level that you'd would want to see it today. So it's going to take some time, but we see very positive signs occurring by these brigades being pulled off line.

We've also seen recently the prime minister state -- just, in fact, three days ago -- that he is going to set up a committee that's going to do a complete review of the Ministry of Interior, which oversees all the police forces in this country, and make some adjustments in the leadership there, too, because he understands that they have to be non-sectarian, they have to represent the will and the best of all Iraqi people, regardless of their religious sect. And until they do that and have a loyalty just to government and not to some militia, they're never going to be able to gain the trust back from the people.

So everybody's working it really hard. They're making the positive steps forward. They're doing the things they need to do to get there. It's going to take more time, but they're moving in the right direction.

Q And the last question: The quote just since -- you wrote of the violence and the progress here in Iraq.

The violence, easy to see. We do see that. Everybody does. The progress, requiring a little bit more of interpretation. You see a family, a market open, you see a gas station open, et cetera. Those are good small indicators of progress. What looms on the horizon, larger progress, something that we can all look forward to, taking into account the foreign investment in Iraq?

GEN. CALDWELL: Well, it is real hard, when you're down there in a squad, a platoon, a section, a battery, a company, troop, it's hard to see sometimes, other than your immediate surroundings, what's happening in this country. But the great thing is what we see the prime minister doing is he's bringing different groups of people together to have dialogue. He's bringing academia type together and religious types together and tribal types -- you know, this is a very tribal society here -- and political types, and he's having all these different reconciliation conferences, encouraging them then to have further conferences underneath them and to sit down and figure out how to handle their differences so that they don't take it out in violence but rather they do it in dialogue.

If you look at what just happened in Balad this week alone, you had an incident where 14 Shi'a were killed and then the very next day 24 Sunnis were killed. And when all the people up there -- the Iraqi people saw this, they realized, "We're not going to start this tit- for-tat cycle of violence." They immediately called a meeting.

The governor came in from the province, the deputy governor, they got the city council together, they brought tribal sheikhs together, they brought out religious figures, and they all sat down and talked about how they were going to stop this violence from taking off and they weren't going to allow a cycle of violence to start occurring up in that area.

And it very well could, because you have a town of Balad that's almost all Shi'a, and all around it is all Sunni. So there's clear lines of delineation where they could easily start going back and forth, but in fact what we saw was just the opposite. We saw the tribal leaders, the sheikhs, we saw the governor, we saw all the elected officials coming together having one conference, and then three days later a much more deliberate and thorough conference where they actually sat down and signed agreements that they would not allow violence to take over, that they were going to settle these differences, that they were going to find the perpetrators of those two criminal acts against the Sunni group and the Shi'a group and bring them to justice. And when you see that kind of activity occur by the people -- it wasn't military force that brought a resolution to this, it was the people themselves. When you see that kind of thing, you just have to have a lot of hope and realize that they're starting to understand the power of the people and what they can do to bring peace back to their country that military force alone cannot achieve.

You know, in the military we can set the conditions for peace, but we'll never achieve it.

The people have to do that themselves, and we saw that kind of definitive action taking place just this week in Balad. So the men and women in uniform should be very encouraged when that kind of action occurs, and we want to see that spread throughout this whole country.

(Break for direction.)

I guess one thing I'd tell you, Sergeant Newsome (sp), that sometimes our men and women may not always appreciate, especially at this time of the year, when we're having midterm elections back in the United States -- there's a lot of questions about a whole Iraqi policy and what's happening over here and whether we've got it right or wrong. The men and women in uniform, those who are serving over here as civilians in our government service should realize that what they're doing is absolutely wonderful. They're doing exactly what they're asked to do. They're dedicated. They're committed. There's nothing more we could ask from them.

And they should never think for one minute that as they hear this raging debate back in the United States that it ever pertains to them as a person to our institution as a military force. It isn't about us. It's about a political debate that's occurring in the United States. It's healthy that that occurs. That should take place. We shouldn't be disillusioned by it, because each and every time you talk to anyone back there, regardless of what side of the aisle they come from or how they feel about this war, they will always tell you they have a great love for those who have put the uniform on, are willing to come over here and commit themselves to something much higher and a greater calling than themselves. So to all the men and women, you know, you should feel that the American public absolutely loves you. They have great faith in what you're doing. They trust you implicitly. You have got all their respect and admiration, and you should feel very, very good about that.

END.