Last Friday I had the pleasure of spending about half an hour interviewing Colonel Mark McKnight, 3rd Infantry Division Chief of Staff, currently deployed to Iraq. Topics included security for Ashura, CLCs, the media, and challenges ahead. Unfortunately I didn't have the capacity to record our phone conversation, but I was able to quickly type many of his statements as I listened. Most of his answers weren't exactly terse, but he was rather succinct, so we were able to cover a lot of ground.

Soldiers of 3ID (Task Force Marne) have been in Iraq since early 2007. Their area of operations comprises a band along the southern part of Baghdad Province, running from the Najaf/Karbala region eastward to the Iranian border. COL McKnight described the northern edge of their AO as "the non-urban areas of Baghdad," and said that a significant part of their mission has been to "block accelerants [of violence] into Baghdad" so that the city can be cleaned up, though they do not operate in urban Baghdad itself.

Overarching COL McKnight's statements was something we are hearing from other military leaders in Iraq--that lots of very good things are happening, but we must not lose sight of how much is still to be done. When I asked him to identify the most important thing America needed to know about what is happening in Iraq today, this was the issue he raised. There is a great deal of progress in evidence "every day," he emphasized, but added very seriously, “There are long days ahead. There is an enemy over here that is determined to take the future away from the Iraqi people," that has not given up yet. Attacks are down, but there is “frankly, an evil still out there...that doesn’t hesitate to kill families, women and children. It's not over, over here.”

I asked about the recent conclusion of a safe and successful Ashura and what factors had made it so. COL McKnight told me there were no "significant incidents" throughout the entire AO of 3ID, nor any indications that major attacks were broken up. He credited the peaceful passage of Ashura to the efforts of the Iraqi Security Forces (police and army), pointing out that the two most important Shiite holy cities--Karbala and Najaf--were patrolled and protected entirely by Iraqis. He was happy to report that in general, the Iraqis took the lead in security preparations and activities throughout 3rd ID's AO.

But according to COL McKnight, the biggest factor in a successful Ashura was that the Iraqi people have "tired of violence, didn’t want to put up with it." He described an "increasing marginalization of extremist organizations” because the population will no longer tolerate the violence and bloodshed they have suffered. "The people stood up to put a stop to it."

Along with the greater numbers of soldiers available due to the surge, and the increasing capability of Iraqi Security Forces, COL McKnight gave a great deal of credit for the Ashura success to the existence of Concerned Local Citizens groups (CLCs). These neighborhood/tribe-level organizations provide security at checkpoints and significant locations or events. But more importantly, they “hinder extremists’ ability to move among the population.” He reiterated this several times, describing CLC activities as a kind of force-multiplier where there is "difficult terrain"--small villages, places without a strong coalition presence, etc.

The CLC groups are a "bottom-up evolution," CLC being a generic designation for what has been called Awakening and Sawha, among other titles. They are a result of Iraqis coming forward and asking for assistance in ridding their neighborhoods of violent extremists. Group members are paid by the coalition for services, but there are plans to wean them off that and into a formal relationship with the Iraqi government (McKnight called it "reconciling" them with the central government).

According to COL McKnight, the ultimate vision is to form CLCs into a kind of Civil Service Corps by training them for jobs in construction and other such trades. There is also an effort to shift selected CLC members into a provisional policeman status, or even into the Iraqi Army. COL McKnight reported that all of these plans are in their "infancy," but that there is movement in these directions.

I asked the colonel about reports that funding for CLC activities is becoming a problem, mentioning both the congressional budget battles in the U.S. and reports of changes in funding priorities at upper military leadership levels. He agreed that there had been "some restrictions given," but that it "hadn't had a large impact," and pointed again to the efforts to transfer CLCs to Iraqi administration. In general, he didn't seem to think it was a worrisome issue.

On the tactical side, I asked about reports of increases in EFPs and suicide bombers. He responded that they have seen "no indication of Iranian involvement" in either training or supplying within their AO, and that there has been "an across-the-board reduction in attacks." In fact, Thursday's Operations Report was "zero attacks in the AO" for the day. Neither are they reporting attacks on schools, or suicide bombings by females, as seen in other locales.

This is the first of a two-part report of the interview. For more from Task Force Marne/3ID's leadership, check out an extensive video interview with Major General Lynch, and the transcript of the latest blogger's roundtable with Brigadier General Cardon (pdf file). BG Cardon's topics include Ashura (great anecdotes on pg 4), and CLCs (page 6, bottom).