NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Empire State MP's Partners in Safe Iraqi Election

By Sgt. Neil W. McCabe, 17th Fires Brigade PAO

CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE BASRA, Iraq - As tens of thousands of Basra residents voted in the national election, Military Police Soldiers from the New York National Guard's 206th Military Police Company joined their Iraqi Security Force partners monitoring the country's second largest city in its Provincial Joint Communications Center.

The PJCC is a compound of many facilities, including a modern crime lab, a criminal intelligence center, a jail and barracks and administrative offices, said 1st Lt. Nicholas Monuteaux, a platoon leader with the company, a N.Y. National Guard unit based in Albany. The company is deployed to COB Basra, where it falls under the 203rd Military Police Battalion, attached the 17th Fires Brigade.

Rather than a staging area for executing missions, Monuteaux, who lives in Rensselaer, N.Y., said the PJCC is where representatives from Government of Iraq law enforcement, public safety and military agencies and forces work together in single command room to keep each other informed, hearing the same reports and looking at the same map.

Iraqi Police Lt. Col. Awooda Abdal Hafael Manaa, the election day shift commander at Basra's Provincial Joint Communications Center, reviews a map of the city March 7 with Lt. Col. Charles Buxton, from Duluth, Ga., the commander of the 203rd Military Police Battalion. Buxton spend most of the day with MP's from the 206th Military Police Company, a N.Y. National Guard unit attached to his battalion. U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Neil W. McCabe, 17th Fires Brigade PAO

For roughly eight hours election day, Lt. Col. Charles Buxton, the commander of the 203rd, itself a unit of the Alabama National Guard, stayed at the PJCC to be on hand if something happened to break the peace.

To help the Iraqis better follow the movements of military units and teams of election observers the MP's were tracking, Buxton, who lives in Duluth, Ga., brought with him pieces of paper, just smaller than a postal stamp, labeled with the name of a military element or election observer team. These tabs were placed on the large high-resolution satellite image of the province the Iraqis laid out on the map table of the long room.

For the MP's, another advantage is being available to answer questions the Iraqis have about the missions and posture of American forces, he said.

Throughout the national election day, Iraqi Police Lt. Col. Awooda Abdal Hafael Manaa, the election day shift commander at Basra's Provincial Joint Communications Center, participated in video conference calls with the national operations center in Baghdad. After Manaa's repeated reports of peaceful and orderly voting, he was told by Baghdad: "Then, Basra is still the 'White Province.'" U. S. Army Photo by Sgt. Neil W. McCabe, 17th Fires Brigade PAO

A case in point was the report after the polls had closed that an American military convoy was spotted in a just outside the Basra city limits. The Iraqis were not tracking the convoy and an Iraqi police commissioner went to the map table at the end of the command center's long room to plot the convoy's location.

Joining the commissioner were other IP's and an Iraqi Navy lieutenant commander, whose work space and desk were near the table. Together with some MP's, they compared the report with the positions and movements of American forces labeled on the map, while other MP's called up to their battalion Tactical Operations Center with their own query.

Within 15 minutes of the report, the police commissioner was able to report to the shift commander that the American military vehicles were part of an Iraqi team securing ballots from polling stations.

Another example was when the battalion TOC called the MP's at 5:30 p.m. to make sure the IP's knew that the GOI lifted the election night curfew. One MP turned to another and said, "Yeah they know-they told us." In fact, the IP's had passed the information to the Americans just before noon.

Throughout the day, Lt. Col. Awooda Abdal Hafael Manaa, the election day PJCC shift commander, conducted video conference calls with the national operations center in Baghdad with updates on the public safety and security situation. This dialogue from a mid-afternoon call was typical:

Baghdad: Are there any reports of violence?

Manaa: No, nothing.

Baghdad: Are you sure there are no emergencies?

Manaa: Yes.

Baghdad: Then, you are still the "White Province."

By "White Province," the national operations center meant the city and province of Basra were not marred by trouble or violence, Monuteaux said. "Basra is the model for all the other provinces today."

As reports came to the MP's, often Buxton himself would move the tabs and use these updates as an opportunity to brief the shift commander.

At 6:15 p.m., after the polls had closed and before Buxton returned to the Basra Operations Center, a centralized facility specifically for the Iraqi military, he gestured to his interpreter and said, "Let's let the shift commander know what is going on."

Then, at the map table, the battalion commander briefed Manaa on the most recent movements of American, British and other foreign contingents. When he had finished, the IP colonel asked Buxton for an honest assessment of the how the day's operation had gone.

During his drive through the city that morning, Buxton said to him, he saw that both security force officers and patrolmen carried themselves with professionalism.

"I am glad it went well today and there were no accidents," the battalion commander said. "I think you had a very good plan."

The practice of keeping the Iraqi Police as the inner ring, with primacy in the city, while the Iraqi Army provided security around the outer ring, also worked out very well, he said. "Now we just have to work together to secure the ballots."

For the voters, the day was over. But, for the Iraqi Security Forces and their partners from New York State, it was on to the next phase.