I thought I'd start a how-to thread on being the biggest tribe. None of this is new, but we seem to keep relearning history's lessons. My area of expertise is in the rural areas and villages. Niel,Schmedlap, and others can comment on how to do it in the urban areas.

Here's some quick notes on the seizure of Zaganiyah. By July 2007, we were one of the first units in Iraq to 1. Clear AQ, 2. Bring Violence down to minimal levels, 3. Start reintegrating displaced families, 4. Start Re-establish governance and services, 5. Start Reconciliation talks. The boys did some great work. The entire process took us 90 days.

1. Initial Entry. First, three weeks of covert/overt reconnaissance and shaping efforts to define the situation immediately followed with a massive deception operation to mask the timing/route of our clearance. Second, one week of squadron (+) clearance of Sadah, Qubbah, and Zaganiyah.

2. Seizing Zaganiyah. I established a patrol base in the middle of town and blockaded all the roads in and out. We instituted curfews and limitations on both mounted and dismounted movement as population control measures. The patrol base was our inner ring. The CPs served as an outer-ring extension to extend our sphere of influence.

3. Patrol Flooding. My boys spent 8 hours/day outside the wire on patrols. We flooded everything. It got so busy that for the first time, I could not go out anymore. My job was Command and Control or being a zombie running off caffeine and nicotine while holding two hand-mikes talking to CAS, AWT, the platoons, and squadron.

4. Killing the enemy/Defeating the IED Network. I would send small teams into hide sites for 48-72 hours. We would kill emplacers. Eventually, the enemy countered by having women and 10 year old children emplace the IEDs. I restricted our fires. We would just watch them. Later, our intelligence collection helped us kill the Bomb-maker and capture two AQ LT's. That ended the IED problem- 1. We took away the expertise. 2. We made it too costly to emplace.

5. Coercive Civil Affairs. Once a week, I would assemble all the elders and show a wad of $5000 to them. I would let them know that there was more where that came from, and I wanted peace. As soon as the violence stopped, we would build the town. The elders refused and would start complaining. I'd kick them out telling them we'd try again next week.

6. Humanitarian Support. We identified that many infants were dying from cholera. We'd conduct patrols to teach the women simple ways of hydration to save their children and provide emergency food drops. Finally, the women got frustrated with the men and started telling us where the IEDs were emplaced, where the caches were hidden, and who the culprits were.

7. Iraqi Army. I fired the first IA company there b/c they were Shia locals fighting a civil war with the Sunnis. They were replaced with MAJ Aziz and his boys from the Udaim. We partnered together, lived together, patrolled together, and became one unit. By July, he was working unilaterally in Zag with me helping with CAS, intelligence collection, and Medevac.

Just some of the things that worked for us. It was COIN not enemy-centric, not pop-centric.

v/r

Mike