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09/26/2004 Archived Entry: "Sending in the 'Shahwanis'"

Posted by steve @ 07:07 PM EST [Link]

I'M A BAYONET, AND MY STRIKE IS HARD!: (via Brothers Judd Blog) Cool story in the next issue of US News about an elite Iraqi Marine force being built up by the Iraqis and the U.S. Marine Corps.

On the outskirts of this U.S. Marine base in hostile Anbar province west of Baghdad, an Iraqi military chant in Arabic cuts through the hazy stillness of the afternoon. "I'm a bayonet, and my strike is hard! I'm ready for death, not for shame!" shout a group of Iraqi men in military garb, their arms swinging and knees pumping to the beat of the song as they march in haphazard formation. "We're the Iraqi marines!" declares one of their officers, a 39-year-old man calling himself Major Haidr. "We're the Specialized Special Forces."

What makes this force really special is not that they are trained to rappel from helicopters or shoot with sniper precision, but that they are, effectively, an Iraqi militia under American command. U.S. Marine commanders hope the Iraqi force will bolster their units' strength in an area where the key to finding the enemy may be simply knowing whom to ask. "We're up against a country where we don't speak their language and don't know their culture," says U.S. Marine Capt. Jason Vose, 31, who works with the new Iraqi militia. These Iraqis, he says, "can go and identify the problems and the bad guys. They're sent into mosques that we can't go into. We've had them on the border; we've had them in Fallujah. And they just perform."

There's something about chants in Arabic that always stir my blood. One too many viewings of Lawrence of Arabia I guess.

Read on.