Techniques for securing and building relations with the people...

[Maphu]

Your's is a very interesting post Maximus. I've been in those Marine's place, living among the people but it was several decades ago and I can only relate to that time and place, not Iraq.

We found that if we treated the people respectfully, they would reciprocate. There the local people did not have to worry about being killed or mistreated by the VC because the VC were their own family members, neighbors and friends and which I know now, having visited many times post war, that the majority of these rural peasants, at least where I was, supported the VC. To them it had nothing to do with communism. The simply wanted the foreigners to leave their country. They wanted to live in peace.

By treating us respectfully I mean playing around with the kids, having dinner with a local family, sharing tea with them, sharing C rats with them, etc. But then when we weren't looking the kids would steal our grenades.

One must understand the human factor. One can be respected or even truly liked as a friend and still as a representative of a foreign military occupation they would rather you not be there.

A friend who was in a similar unit went back to one of his former villages and when he found the former "kid" of his "adopted family" he was a government official. His family had been VC and had a tunnel entrance in the hooch they lived in. When my astounded friend asked them "... then why didn't you kill me?" The young village official replied "Because you were kind to our family".

I came to find out they my adopted family was the same. When I visited the then very elderly lady, the mother of that family from 1969, she still referred to me as "con" (her son).

For people who have been resisting foreign invaders and occupiers for centuries, there are no tactics that are going to win their heart of hearts.