Live from Iraq: BG Huggins, Part II

Completing the report on my interview of Brigadier General Jim Huggins...

"A Bachelor of Science from the University of Georgia didn't teach me that."

I asked BG Huggins about his experiences with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and if he had enough of them. He was very enthusiastic about their work, saying, "We’d take all the help we can in terms of PRTs... lots of great results with the embedded PRTs (ePRTs).” The 3rd ID has been very happy with the ease with which they can move their ePRTs around the provinces and integrate them directly into brigade activities, but right now they only have one team for each major province. "We'd like to have more, need to be more robust," BG Huggins said, "We applaud their efforts; we just need more."

BG Huggins' appetite for ePRTs is related to what he describes as Iraqis' increasing expectations. "Increasing capacity of delivery of services is critical," he reports. "Iraqi expectations go up in terms of services now that things are more peaceful." They want to go back to farming, get fresh water and paved roads, etc. "PRTs are critical to providing that support."

Embedded PRTs come in right behind the warfighters when a new area is cleared of terrorists or insurgents. Said BG Huggins, "We start with small projects like road/canal clearing to let water flow and support agriculture." They then move on to bigger activities such as the PRTs' agricultural specialists and veterinarians teaching people and supporting the creation of necessary infrastructure. The goal is to help locals "grow economically feasible products," to help them create enterprises based on what is appropriate to their region and capabilities.

It turns out that an enterprise appropriate to a significant portion of 3ID's AO is fish hatcheries. According to the AP, this was a brainchild of 3ID's Major General Lynch. BG Huggins laughed when I mentioned it, saying he'd become far more versed in the minutiae of running fish hatcheries than he'd ever expected to. With the gentle irony of a career soldier who is out of his own comfortable "water," he rattled of a list of words and phrases with which he'd recently become familiar: "Fingerlings. Growth rates. Time to grow to market sale point--which is nine months to two years, by the way... depending on how big you want 'em." He laughed again, "A Bachelor of Science from the University of Georgia didn't teach me that."

One particular part of 3ID's AO has received more than the usual 3ID/PRT support. Taskforce Marne's website has an article outlining the intensive rebuilding efforts in the modest village of Hawr Rajab (in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad). BG Huggins said it is what MG Lynch calls a "starfish area. It's been focused on with particular intensity...It's worked very well." Redevelopment activities spearheaded by 3ID in the town include $50,000 in micro grants distributed to stores, poultry and agriculture programs, medical care, and a vocational school.

I asked BG Huggins if other areas were receiving similar levels attention from 3ID, and what strategic considerations had led to Hawr Rajab being chosen for such intense support. He said Jurf Assukr and Salman Pak had been receiving high levels of assistance, but Hawr Rajab was a special case.

"Hawr Rajab was the first area of surge operations when we came in June," began BG Huggins in a new and more serious tone of voice. "We believed the enemy [al Qaeda in Iraq] had a foothold there... lots of intimidation and murder," so it was a priority. The locals subsequently started to make progress in recovering and rebuilding, but then "AQI came back--brutally--and murdered 8 Iraqis and left them in the street." They were civilians killed as a warning to the rest of the village, a taste of the intimidation and murder they'd suffered before. BG Huggins said that when 3ID pushed back into the area along with the Iraqi Security Forces, the suffering the residents had experienced made an impression. "Because it had been so bad, we decided to make a difference [by focusing rebuilding efforts there]."

I have to admit, I shed my thin journalistic cloak at that point and just exclaimed, "Wow." It explained the expressions of the children interacting with the soldier in the picture next to the article about Hawr Rajab, taken only three months after the Coalition and ISF returned.

At that point, the interview was largely over, and I brought up the previous night's bombing of a military recruitment center in New York. BG Huggins started out by saying that he saw that as a criminal act, but didn't take it personally. He then immediately mentioned that while he's been deployed, "it's violence on campuses and schools that has been amazing to me. [Here in Iraq] we're trying to increase the moderate middle; we'll never get rid of extremists--we still have them in the U.S.--but we want to expand the moderate and reduce the left and the right." BG Huggins pointed out that just as there are people who shoot up schools or bomb a recruitment center in the U.S., Iraq is never going to be able to completely eradicate terroristic behavior. There are always going to be a couple people who are "using some poor judgment," he opined, but they are going to be the rare exceptions in a secure Iraq.

BG Huggins then turned quickly to thoughts of those who are working for that "secure Iraq." "There are still 154,000 servicemen and women over here," he reflected, adding that operations in Iraq have gone on longer than World War II. "The sacrifices of these great men and women as they go out every day..." He paused for a moment before continuing, "This may not be the 'Greatest Generation,' but this might be the strongest generation."