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Pretending to patrol, ill-equipped U.S. soilders conduct ‘search and avoid’ missions

By Dahr Jamail | Last updated: Nov 7, 2007 - 4:27:00 PM

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Image released by the U.S. military Oct. 20, two U.S. Army soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 10th Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division dismount from the back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle to conduct a cordon and search at a brick factory in Narahwan, Iraq, Oct. 12. Photos: AP/Wide World Photos

WATERTOWN, N.Y. (IPS/GIN) - The morale of U.S. soldiers in Iraq has plunged so low that many have begun parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, according to an active-duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division.

Phil Aliff, who is stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York, said more and more soldiers have begun engaging in these “search and avoid” missions.

“We were hit by so many roadside bombs we became incredibly demoralized, so we decided the only way we wouldn’t be blown up was to avoid driving around all the time,” said Mr. Aliff, who served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad. “Most men in my platoon in Iraq were just in from combat tours in Afghanistan.”

“Morale was incredibly low,” Mr. Aliff continued, adding that he joined the military because he was raised in a poor family by a single mother and had few other prospects. He said he participated in roughly 300 patrols.

According to Mr. Aliff, the U.S. soldiers’ mission was to help the Iraqi Army “stand up” in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad, but in fact his platoon was doing all the fighting without support from the Iraqis who were supposedly preparing to take control of the security situation.

“I never heard of an Iraqi unit that was able to operate on their own,” said Mr. Aliff, who is now a member of a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War. “The only reason we were replaced by an Iraqi Army unit was for publicity.”

Faced with this situation, soldiers started deciding to engage in cynical “search and avoid” missions, Mr. Aliff said. “We would go find an open field and park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapons caches in the fields and doing weapons patrols and everything was going fine. ... All our enlisted people became very disenchanted with our chain of command.”

Mr. Aliff, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, refused to return to Iraq with his unit, which arrived in Kirkuk recently. “They’ve already lost a guy, and they are now fostering the sectarian violence by arming the Sunnis while supporting the Shia politically,” he said.

Mr. Aliff is set to be discharged by the military next month because its leaders claim that his post-traumatic stress disorder “is untreatable by their doctors,” he said.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder increased nearly 70 percent in the 12 months ending on June 30.

The nearly 50,000 VA-documented cases of post-traumatic stress disorder greatly exceed the 30,000 military personnel that the Pentagon officially classifies as wounded in both occupations.

VA records show that mental health has become the second-largest area of illness for which veterans of the ongoing occupations are seeking treatment at VA hospitals and clinics. The total number of mental health cases among war veterans increased by 58 percent, from 63,767 on June 30, 2006, to 100,580 on June 30, 2007, according to the VA.

Other active-duty Iraq veterans tell similar stories of disobeying orders so as not to be attacked so frequently.

“We’d go to the end of our patrol route and set up on top of a bridge and use it as an over-watch position,” said Eli Wright, another active-duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division. “We would just sit with our binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We’d call in radio checks every hour and say we were doing sweeps.”

Mr. Wright added, “It was a common tactic—a lot of people did that. We’d just hang out, listen to music, smoke cigarettes and pretend.”

The 26-year-old medic said his unit did not have any armored Humvees during his time in Iraq, where he was stationed in Ramadi, the capital of the volatile Al Anbar province.

“We put sandbags on the floors of our vehicles, which had canvas doors,” said Mr. Wright, who was in Iraq from September 2003 until September 2004. “By the end of our tour, we were bolting any metal we could find to our Humvees. Everyone was doing this, and we didn’t get armored Humvees in [the] country until after we left.”

Nathan Lewis, 25, who was in Iraq from March until June 2003 while serving in the 214th field artillery brigade, said that in addition to not having armored Humvees for their travels, the soldiers received inadequate training.

“We never got training for a lot of the work we did,” he explained. “We had a white phosphorous mortar round that cooked off in the back of one of our trucks, because we loaded that with some other ammo, and we weren’t trained how to do it the right way.” The “search and avoid” missions appear to have been commonplace around much of Iraq for years now.

Geoff Millard served nine years in the New York Army National Guard and was in Iraq from October 2004 until October 2005, working for a general at a Tactical Operation Center.

Mr. Millard, who is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said part of his duties included reporting “significant actions,” or SIGACTS, which is how the U.S. military describes an attack on its forces.

“We had units that never called in SIGACTS,” said Mr. Millard, who monitored highly volatile areas such as Baquba, Tikrit and Samarra. “When I was there two years ago, there were at least five companies that never had SIGACTS. I think ‘search and avoids’ have been going on there for a long time.”

Mr. Millard said “search and avoid” missions continue today across Iraq.

“One of my buddies is in Baghdad right now, and we e-mail all the time,” he said. “He just told me that nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda and shoot at the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything and to please just leave them alone.”