The Wild Wild West

The headline is more appropriate than you may know; I am currently in the west. What was known as the Middle East is often referred to in the military as West Asia, so indeed I am in the west. The other reason it seems appropriate is because the law in West Asia is blurry at best, and it is a fine line between an outlaw and a law man.

One of the things that has taken a lot of getting used to is talking to anyone who has been here very long, if you ask them “is this person a good person?” You may get a reply, “He is an IP (Iraqi Police), but he is a very bad man.” Or you get the opposite. You end up in custody of someone who is a known killer, and a killer of police at that, but what can you do with him? The police he killed were corrupt killers themselves. If the locals wore cowboy hats and six shooters hung low on their hips, I’d think maybe I was in New Mexico circa 1880, not Iraq 2008.

To a great extent the political situation is shaped by the local tribes in the area, and how accepting those local tribes are of the insurgents or militia members. In the Balad area, we dealt mostly with AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) which is a Sunni group and frequently less Iraqi than the claim, but not always. One thing you come to accept about Al Qaeda in Iraq, or any group you deal with, is frequently they adopt a name of an organization, but have no real connection with that organization…. The Wild West?