farmgirl
02-17-2004, 02:48 PM
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/156321
2004-02-16
by Mike Archbold
Journal Reporter
FORT LEWIS -- The three- and four-story buildings at Leschi Town inside Fort Lewis belie the name of the Army's newest and biggest urban warfare training site.
From a distance it looks more like a city. Up close, it could be an urban landscape from anywhere in the world.
Since it opened for training in December, it has been Any Town, Iraq, hosting as its first training unit the Washington State National Guard's 81st Infantry Brigade, which is leaving Fort Lewis this month for a year tour in Iraq.
Leschi Town has also given local Iraqi Americans a chance to give back to their adopted country.
The buildings are empty and cold most of the time, but add Iraqi people and soldiers in Iraqi clothing -- many of whom are local Iraqi immigrants -- and the town comes alive.
Training can get very realistic, said Dave Paddock, vice-president of Occupational Support and Services, a 10-year-old military contractor that last fall began supplying Iraqi role-players at bases around the country and elsewhere.
OSS's mission, he said, is to provide soldiers with realistic cultural experiences and training so they learn how to act under pressure in real-life situations in Iraq.
To do that the company has recruited Iraqi Americans across the country -- about 3,500 -- to be actors in a very serious and important military play. Last November, after getting the contract at Fort Lewis, OSS recruited 240 Iraqi Americans from Kent, Lynnwood and North Seattle areas.
There was little trouble recruiting them. Iraqi role-players are paid $20 per hour for their services, but money is not the prime reason they help the training effort. ``We support the troops,'' said Hadi Khadher of Kent, a Kurd who came to the United States from Iraq almost three years ago and moved to King County last July.
Some of the Iraqi role-players are refugees; others have been in the country for years and are American citizens. Some have been in Saddam Hussein's prisons.
They have been tortured. Paddock said they all have a story to tell.
Some have been guides and interpreters who worked with the military in Iraq and know firsthand how the clash of cultures in a war zone can lead to misunderstandings and death.
Paddock tells the story of what happened early in the Iraq war to two U.S. Army units -- a Special Forces Team and a regular Army unit -- that both walked through a hostile neighborhood in an Iraqi city. Both units had shoes thrown at them along with a few stones. The Special Forces Team simply kept walking; the other unit opened fire and killed eight Iraqi civilians.
What the second group didn't understand, Paddock said, is that the throwing of shoes is not done to hurt anyone, but to show their disdain for the soldiers being in their neighborhood.
``Our goal is to teach culture,'' he said.
Faiza Sultan and her husband, Hama Suseyi, who also live in Kent and came to the United States in 1997, also signed up with OSS. She works as office manager at OSS's headquarters at the Lakewood Motor Lodge near Fort Lewis. Her husband is a role-player.
Faiza said she was drafted to lecture a group of enlisted and officers on how to treat Iraqi Muslim women. Her main message, she said, is to never touch an Iraqi woman. To do so, she said, is a major insult that can lead to angry husbands and families and even revenge killings of soldiers.
At roadside checkpoints, always have female soldiers available to search females, she said.
Raids on homes are another source of conflict, she said.
Women at home do not wear traditional coverings that they do in public and for soldiers to break into a home and see them is another grave insult.
Better, she said, if at all possible to first let the occupants know you are coming in so they have time to prepare.
``I told them a lot of Iraqi women lost their babies because of lack of food, medicine, because of (United Nations economic) sanctions,'' she said. ``Maybe you will find some of them angry at your coming. They may come to talk to you. They wouldn't forget.''
Faiza asked them to understand the Iraqi people have been through three wars and they do not act normally. ``They have never seen peace,'' she said.
The presence of the Iraqi role-players in Lakewood didn't go unnoticed. A waitress in a local restaurant overheard one of the role-players ask where Fort Lewis was. She alerted the Lakewood Police who contacted the Air Force counter-insurgency unit at nearby McChord Air Base.
Paddock said the next thing they knew, police snipers and a SWAT team descended on them. ``It took an hour to explain to them who we were,'' he said.
Leschi Town is the set for much of the role-playing, Paddock said.
The $20 million town is about one-third complete with only 13 of 58 buildings constructed. There are shops, a jail, a restaurant, homes, offices, a hospital inside a walled compound, streets and even a round-about. When the role-players arrive, the town comes to life. Iraqi music might be playing. It could be any day or night in any Iraqi town. The daily calls to Muslim prayer blare from loud speakers.
``It's very realistic,'' he said.
So is the training, under the watchful eyes of supervisors.
A small unit of four or eight soldiers might come to the town to arrest a suspected terrorist in a house. The arrest may go well, but then neighbors begin to protest what is happening. A crowd gathers. Voices scream in a strange language. Tensions escalate. Soldiers set up a line to keep the crowd at bay.
The Iraqis are carrying small, hand-held speakers that increase the volume. Staying in charge of the mob rather than letting the mob take charge is lesson one, said Kimo McEwen, deputy director of OSS operations at Fort Lewis.
The first time the soldiers faced a crowd, they lost control and ended up shooting everyone in the crowd, he said.
The training sequences got so real that a soldier struck one of the role-players in the head with the butt of his rifle during a confrontation, McEwen said.
Scenarios include a mob scene with shots fired, a protest, a search at a roadblock, the finding and seizure of a suspected terrorist inside a building, a roadside bombing, a suicide bomber, an Iraqi wedding party.
Sometimes a role-player will act as a guide or interpreter for the soldiers.
``I've seen National Guard soldiers with terror on their faces,'' Paddock said.
He said the worst thing any soldier can do in any situation is do nothing, which is how some of the soldiers reacted the first time they were confronted with role-players.
OSS is finishing up its contract at Fort Lewis but could be called back.
The local Iraqis will return when needed. Faiza said her reason for working with the soldiers is because she wants them to come back, all of them.
``I told them that, my wish is I don't want them killed,'' she said.
2004-02-16
by Mike Archbold
Journal Reporter
FORT LEWIS -- The three- and four-story buildings at Leschi Town inside Fort Lewis belie the name of the Army's newest and biggest urban warfare training site.
From a distance it looks more like a city. Up close, it could be an urban landscape from anywhere in the world.
Since it opened for training in December, it has been Any Town, Iraq, hosting as its first training unit the Washington State National Guard's 81st Infantry Brigade, which is leaving Fort Lewis this month for a year tour in Iraq.
Leschi Town has also given local Iraqi Americans a chance to give back to their adopted country.
The buildings are empty and cold most of the time, but add Iraqi people and soldiers in Iraqi clothing -- many of whom are local Iraqi immigrants -- and the town comes alive.
Training can get very realistic, said Dave Paddock, vice-president of Occupational Support and Services, a 10-year-old military contractor that last fall began supplying Iraqi role-players at bases around the country and elsewhere.
OSS's mission, he said, is to provide soldiers with realistic cultural experiences and training so they learn how to act under pressure in real-life situations in Iraq.
To do that the company has recruited Iraqi Americans across the country -- about 3,500 -- to be actors in a very serious and important military play. Last November, after getting the contract at Fort Lewis, OSS recruited 240 Iraqi Americans from Kent, Lynnwood and North Seattle areas.
There was little trouble recruiting them. Iraqi role-players are paid $20 per hour for their services, but money is not the prime reason they help the training effort. ``We support the troops,'' said Hadi Khadher of Kent, a Kurd who came to the United States from Iraq almost three years ago and moved to King County last July.
Some of the Iraqi role-players are refugees; others have been in the country for years and are American citizens. Some have been in Saddam Hussein's prisons.
They have been tortured. Paddock said they all have a story to tell.
Some have been guides and interpreters who worked with the military in Iraq and know firsthand how the clash of cultures in a war zone can lead to misunderstandings and death.
Paddock tells the story of what happened early in the Iraq war to two U.S. Army units -- a Special Forces Team and a regular Army unit -- that both walked through a hostile neighborhood in an Iraqi city. Both units had shoes thrown at them along with a few stones. The Special Forces Team simply kept walking; the other unit opened fire and killed eight Iraqi civilians.
What the second group didn't understand, Paddock said, is that the throwing of shoes is not done to hurt anyone, but to show their disdain for the soldiers being in their neighborhood.
``Our goal is to teach culture,'' he said.
Faiza Sultan and her husband, Hama Suseyi, who also live in Kent and came to the United States in 1997, also signed up with OSS. She works as office manager at OSS's headquarters at the Lakewood Motor Lodge near Fort Lewis. Her husband is a role-player.
Faiza said she was drafted to lecture a group of enlisted and officers on how to treat Iraqi Muslim women. Her main message, she said, is to never touch an Iraqi woman. To do so, she said, is a major insult that can lead to angry husbands and families and even revenge killings of soldiers.
At roadside checkpoints, always have female soldiers available to search females, she said.
Raids on homes are another source of conflict, she said.
Women at home do not wear traditional coverings that they do in public and for soldiers to break into a home and see them is another grave insult.
Better, she said, if at all possible to first let the occupants know you are coming in so they have time to prepare.
``I told them a lot of Iraqi women lost their babies because of lack of food, medicine, because of (United Nations economic) sanctions,'' she said. ``Maybe you will find some of them angry at your coming. They may come to talk to you. They wouldn't forget.''
Faiza asked them to understand the Iraqi people have been through three wars and they do not act normally. ``They have never seen peace,'' she said.
The presence of the Iraqi role-players in Lakewood didn't go unnoticed. A waitress in a local restaurant overheard one of the role-players ask where Fort Lewis was. She alerted the Lakewood Police who contacted the Air Force counter-insurgency unit at nearby McChord Air Base.
Paddock said the next thing they knew, police snipers and a SWAT team descended on them. ``It took an hour to explain to them who we were,'' he said.
Leschi Town is the set for much of the role-playing, Paddock said.
The $20 million town is about one-third complete with only 13 of 58 buildings constructed. There are shops, a jail, a restaurant, homes, offices, a hospital inside a walled compound, streets and even a round-about. When the role-players arrive, the town comes to life. Iraqi music might be playing. It could be any day or night in any Iraqi town. The daily calls to Muslim prayer blare from loud speakers.
``It's very realistic,'' he said.
So is the training, under the watchful eyes of supervisors.
A small unit of four or eight soldiers might come to the town to arrest a suspected terrorist in a house. The arrest may go well, but then neighbors begin to protest what is happening. A crowd gathers. Voices scream in a strange language. Tensions escalate. Soldiers set up a line to keep the crowd at bay.
The Iraqis are carrying small, hand-held speakers that increase the volume. Staying in charge of the mob rather than letting the mob take charge is lesson one, said Kimo McEwen, deputy director of OSS operations at Fort Lewis.
The first time the soldiers faced a crowd, they lost control and ended up shooting everyone in the crowd, he said.
The training sequences got so real that a soldier struck one of the role-players in the head with the butt of his rifle during a confrontation, McEwen said.
Scenarios include a mob scene with shots fired, a protest, a search at a roadblock, the finding and seizure of a suspected terrorist inside a building, a roadside bombing, a suicide bomber, an Iraqi wedding party.
Sometimes a role-player will act as a guide or interpreter for the soldiers.
``I've seen National Guard soldiers with terror on their faces,'' Paddock said.
He said the worst thing any soldier can do in any situation is do nothing, which is how some of the soldiers reacted the first time they were confronted with role-players.
OSS is finishing up its contract at Fort Lewis but could be called back.
The local Iraqis will return when needed. Faiza said her reason for working with the soldiers is because she wants them to come back, all of them.
``I told them that, my wish is I don't want them killed,'' she said.