Neighborhood Watch

As Civil Affairs soldiers, our main function was to look out for and in many cases be the advocate of, the Iraqi civilian populace. Often, this made us about as popular as the ACLU at the Republican National Convention. In fact, way out ahead of the Abu Ghurayb scandal, we were asking the MP’s up there about Iraqis arrested without charge. Their families either wanted to know why they were there or wanted them back. Seemed reasonable to us. So we would advocate for them. And we sprung a lot of innocent guys. Anyway, a society that has lived for decades under any kind of dictatorship has no social infrastructure, no “civil society”. They are brought up believing that the state alone will be responsible for everything. So you have to bring them along by teaching them about civil society. As crime was rampant and an incipient insurgency was beginning, it was decided to go into select Iraqi neighborhoods and teach them about Neighborhood Watch. This program is very effective in the US for combating crime and it gives everyone in the neighborhood a stake in the community and the welfare of his neighbors. So a guy that was a police officer in civilian life was brought in and he taught the Iraqis in a neighborhood in Baghdad the ins and outs of Neighborhood Watch.

Some time later, the unit got a call from the Neighborhood Advisory Group head for that neighborhood that he had two terrorists in his neighborhood! So a force was organized and headed out to the neighborhood. When they got there, they saw two young men lying dead in the street. Shot full of holes. The locals came streaming out of their houses, singing and clapping. They were asked what happened. The neighborhood leader said, “We have done as you taught us! Our neighborhood watched these two bad men come into our street, and we shot them!”