Deploying to Iraq? Lessons from an infantry company commander

Infantry Magazine, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Daniel Morgan

Information operations are simple at the company level. IO has two purposes. First, you must distribute information to the people. Uninformed citizens in a country we just subjugated in war have the potential to demonstrate and possibly riot. You must inform them of your goals and actions. Second, IO involves not only passing out information, it requires the collection of information. The development of an informed populace and involvement of community leaders by a commander leads to information about hostile threats and benevolent projects.

The first step in CMO/IO is to identify in priority areas to be funded for CMO. Simultaneously, commanders need situational understanding of the mindset of the sector. There are many TTPs that help in accomplishing this assessment. First, commanders need to determine who can help them. I broke my focal groups into business, education, political, and religious. Since we were the first forces into Mosul, Iraq, my Soldiers and I had to get out into the streets and meet people. We developed a "list of influence" and began developing relationships.

On September 13, 2003, one of my platoons was ambushed, wounding three of my Soldiers. The platoon was ambushed in a congested urban area with narrow alleys. After linking up with the platoon and conducting an aerial medical evacuation, a member of an Iraqi political party called me and said he saw the ambush and knew the attackers. The attackers were not home, but these men watched the houses of the attackers for 48 hours. They called me at 0200 to inform me they were home. The brigade commander gave us approval to conduct a cordon and search. We infiltrated the neighborhood, linked up with our "informants," and grabbed the attacker. This ambush cost the leg of one of my Soldiers, and through relationships we caught the culprit.

Leaders must understand the environment prior to committing blindly to some CMO plan. I had no true understanding of the mindset of the citizens in my sector. In addition, there were no performance measures of effectiveness to determine any success we were having in our efforts. Consequently, I developed a survey of attitudes and needs in Arabic that was common across all my sub-sectors. My Soldiers hated this at first, but in the end we saw where we needed to be and what we needed to do. This situational understanding is vital to CMO/IO. Performance measures of effectiveness prevent wasted efforts, allocate resources efficiently, and focus your company on valid, verifiable priorities.

Force Protection

Force protection must remain on the forefront of every leader's mind. Protecting your Soldiers requires a tough balance between the safety of your Soldiers and mission necessity. Many times in this environment leaders will avoid missions in order to protect Soldiers. This bad habit is not force protection. We protect Soldiers to maintain combat power for mission accomplishment and to bring them home. Force protection has been alluded to throughout this discussion, but two areas demand specific attention--vehicle preparation and compound security.