Teach 'em to fish

Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Paul Schultz | Meat hangs in the butcher shop in Arbot, Iraq, as the butcher watches local leaders and U.S. Soldiers tour the city center. A team of Civil Affairs Soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division visited the small northern village to help local leaders develop systems that will deal with infrastructure issues.  

IRAQ

06.13.2006

Courtesy Story

1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (AA) Public Affairs

There's an adage often repeated by various members of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division that says "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." This idea is brought to life as Bastogne Soldiers work with local and provincial leaders to improve the quality of life for Iraqis in the region.

"The typical reaction is to give the people immediate results; build something that shows a physical result. This usually just creates a system of dependency," explained Major Victor Vasquez, Civil Affairs officer for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, following a visit to Arbot, Iraq. "Giving someone an electric transformer seems like it solves problems, but it usually creates more problems than it solves. What happens when it breaks?"

Arbot is a Kurdish community in the mountains of northern Iraq's Sulaymania Province, part of the Kurdistan Regional Government, sitting at the "T" intersection of two roads that lead to several smaller and even more remote villages. The city streets are clean, trees and flowers grow in the planters that line the main road, and half of a lamb hangs in the window of the corner butcher shop. The fact finding visit to the village is to give the Brigade's Civil Affairs (CA) team the opportunity to meet the local mayor to learn how he and his department heads interact with their provincial counterparts.

"We wanted to make the linkage between the deputy governor and his directorate generals and the local mayor and his directorate generals, so that they can start working together," said Major Vasquez. "We need them to go out and govern. We need them to start communicating with each other so that they can address each others" problems."

The meeting started in typical Kurdish fashion: greetings to all in attendance, a reminder to the Soldiers that the Kurdish people are friends of America, and a round of hot Chai " the extremely sweet tea that is a favorite of every citizen in the country, transcending all ethnic lines. It continued with the deputy governor asking the Soldiers to help the mayor provide electricity to the city as well as a requesting equipment and material to build a sewage system that would keep the streets drained and sanitary during the wet winter months.

Major Vasquez responds that he and his team are not there to fix the problems, nor have they come to promise money. The goal of the CA team is to help the leaders gathered in the room establish systems that will help the Iraqis fix the problems themselves and prepare them to handle any issues that arise in the future.

After a quick tour of the city center, Major Vasquez and his team leave, confident that their days work is a giant step forward for the proud people of Arbot.

"It's about them taking care of themselves," he said. "Under Saddam, and under a lot of Middle East regimes, the people are often like sheep; they're shepherded, they're herded, and they really have no say in their destiny. We're empowering the people and giving them a say in their own future."

• Date Taken: 06.13.2006
• Date Posted: 06.13.2006 10:51
• Story ID: 6803
• Location: IQ