Photo By Cpl. Daniel Eddy | An Iraqi Army soldier searches Spc. Matthew Driggers (right), a tanker with Company D,...... read more read more
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BAGHDAD—A group of Iraqi Army soldiers conducted a simulated raid Oct. 13, after a three-week course taught by soldiers with Company D, 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Advise and Assist Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, United States Division – Center, at Joint Security Station Deason, Iraq.
During a three-week training course the Iraqis learned proper evidence handling and gathering, evidence documentation and handling a detainee, according to the Geneva Conventions.
With Operation New Dawn in full motion, the successful training of IA soldiers at JSS Deason is another example of Iraqis taking control of their country and becoming ready to train their own.
“We had a lieutenant and noncommissioned officers from the commandos go through training on individual tasks, squad phase, and platoon phase,” said Capt. Kevin Murnyack, commander of Company D, 2nd Bn., 7th Inf. Regt., and a Mentor, Ohio, native. “The goal for [this] training wasn’t to actually teach them [tactics], because it’s stuff they already know. It’s to show them what a good training program might look like, to teach it to their own guys.”
Murnyack said he knew the Iraqi commandos’ tactics were effective, but he wanted to see their ability to plan, execute and conduct a solid after action review. Afterward, he had full confidence in the commandos’ ability to train fellow Iraqi soldiers.
One of the classes the Iraqis were taught, and will teach in the future, is a crime scene investigation class on the proper ways to handle, bag and document evidence. The instructors find these classes to be advantageous to both Iraqis and Americans.
“I think it’s great,” said Sgt. Jason Hutchinson, a gunner and a CSI instructor with Company D, 2nd Bn., 7th Inf. Regt., and an Elizabethtown, Ky., native. “We are working ourselves out of a job; the more we do now, the less we have to do later. So I am all about getting these guys trained.”
Hutchinson said the Iraqis’ improvement is not always obvious. Instead, he looks at the details to see their progress. One sign of improvement is that the Iraqis have started using rubber gloves, whereas before, the practice was much more foreign to them.
Wearing the rubber gloves will help prevent the contamination of evidence and likely result in more convictions.
Ensuring the Iraqis are confident with the lessons taught is vital, because in the future, Iraqis will take the lead.
Murnyack said for the next iteration, the Iraqi commandos who have completed the class will be the primary instructors and the American soldiers will be the assistant instructors. For the third iteration of the class the primary instructors will remain the same, but the assistants will be the students from the second iteration—with no Americans present.
The Iraqis are continually progressing and by teaching their own, they are making independent efforts to build a more secure, stable and sovereign Iraq.
“In terms of sovereignty [the Iraqis] certainly are on a level where they haven’t been before,” Hutchinson said. “One of our missions is to support [explosive ordinance disposal] and [quick reaction force] and we have done very few missions lately compared to when we were first assigned that task. So just the decrease in those sorts of missions makes it obvious there is progress.”
A new area of emphasis the Iraqis will pass on to fellow soldiers are the Geneva Conventions and the proper handling of a detainee.
“You can see from the IA soldiers how they were interested,” said Staff Sgt. Jerry Asrat, an instructor and platoon sergeant with Company D, 2nd Bn., 7th Inf. Regt., and a Sioux Falls, S.D., native. “It is totally new from their day-to-day life. They are aware of some of the detainee treatment procedures, but they are not fully experienced about the whole international detainee law.”
Reyadsaeed Hameed, an Iraqi Army soldier who attended the classes and will be training Iraqi soldiers, said the detainee class increased his knowledge greatly.
“The biggest thing that I learned today was the international law and talking about human rights,” he said. “I have to imagine myself as the detainee and I want to treat them as I would like to be treated.”
Hameed said he is proud to help rebuild Iraq’s Army by training fellow soldiers.
With the reduction of American troops in Iraq, it will be the responsibility of Hameed and his counterparts to properly train new Iraqi soldiers.
“We don’t have enough troops to go around to conduct this training on our own,” Murnyack said. “So we pull in their guys and then run them through [the course] and validate them as trainers … they go back and train their guys.”
Murnyack said the simulated raid was tailored toward handling detainees and searching houses for evidence, which are the two classes the Iraqis said they learned the most from. Murnyack said the Iraqis did very well in performing the mock raid.
“I have been here in 2003, 2005, 2007 and now,” Arsat said. “I remember in ’03, ’05, ‘07 the [Iraqi] soldiers did not have any kind of coordination when it comes to certain procedures. Now I see totally different [Iraqi] soldiers. Right now they have learned so many things, getting educated by the different training programs.”
Company D’s three-week course is just one piece in orchestrating a firm partnership with Iraq.
“I think our partnership is stronger than ever,” Murnyack said. “I think part of that is because the Iraqis like to be in the lead; it is their country, and they take a lot of responsibility and a lot of pride in the security here.”
| Date Taken: | 10.13.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 10.18.2010 05:06 |
| Story ID: | 58293 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 108 |
| Downloads: | 8 |
This work, USD-C Soldiers train the trainers; Teaching Iraqis to teach fellow Iraqis, by CPL Daniel Eddy, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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