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thedrifter
04-05-06, 08:15 AM
One final mission
April 05,2006
CHRIS MAZZOLINI
DAILY NEWS STAFF

The 6th Civil Affairs Group, which returned Tuesday from a seven-month deployment to Iraq, has a strikingly un-Marinelike approach.

“The Marine attitude is take that hill, regardless,” said Col. Miles Burdine, a reserve Marine with the group. “In civil affairs, you have to convince somebody else to take that hill.”

It’s an approach that may mean the difference between success and failure in Iraq.

The group of roughly 200 Marines — mostly reserves with civilian occupations ranging from engineers to cardiologists to farmers — spent their time in Iraq in the sprawling Al Anbar province, a hotbed of insurgent activity.

Instead of routing insurgents, these Marines concentrated on helping Iraqis take the first tentative steps towards democracy, stimulating their economy and rebuilding their cities. They set up local governments, supported the elections and worked on contracting out reconstruction jobs to Iraqi companies.

The key, said commanding officer Col. Paul Brier, is to put the onus on the Iraqis.

“We were trying to work ourselves out of a job,” he said. “If we pick up garbage or fix a water pipe, we’ll be doing it forever. We could build California for them and there would still be an insurgency. They need to do it themselves.”

Brier said they encouraged people to seek out their government to address problems, to understand that it’s the job of those elected to office to serve them.

Another hurdle was getting the various levels of government — from local level to the national level – cooperate with each other.

“It was a challenge,” said Burdine, who is a CEO of a chamber of commerce in Tennessee. “The Iraqis, for the most part, want to learn democracy, but it is unique to them. They were limited in their initiative.”

Burdine said he worked closely with Anbar’s provincial governor and recalled having to urge him to delegate more responsibility to those beneath him.

It’s a problem also seen on the street level. CWO Gregory Melotte, a combat engineer and team leader in Fallujah, had the task of helping build a power grid in Fallujah, along with his work with various construction projects and governmental and economic boards.

He said the hands-off approach to teaching is the only way to get the Iraqis to manage themselves — and get American troops home sooner.

“Some of the team leaders played Christmas in Iraq, handing stuff out all over the place,” he said.

“But that’s not helping them. It’s about getting the Iraqi people to work on their own system.”

Civil affairs groups have a different demographic than average Marine units. They tend to be older — the average age of 6th CAG was 34. There’s more officers and senior noncommissioned officers, and they tend to be reserves because they bring valuable life and job experience.

The Marines have two CAG units, the 3rd and 4th, which are both reserve groups. The 6th CAG is a provisional unit created to take the strain off the two permanent civil affairs groups, said Maj. Juliet Chelkowski, a 6th CAG spokeswoman.

Now that the 6th CAG has returned, it will be dissolved. And while it could be reformed in the future, it will feature new Marines, Chelkowski said.

But the CAG leadership said their brief life as a unit was a success because of the Iraqis they worked with. Burdine mentioned people like Ma’amoun Sami Rashid, the Anbar governor, who had his son kidnapped the first week the CAG was there and has survived more than 20 attempts on his life.

“They’re country is going to be successful not because what we do, but because their leaders show the courage to sacrifice,” he said. “I’d say (to the governor), ‘So, do you want to quit?’ He’d say, ‘Never.’”