The importance of Cultural Awareness Training

By Major Dave Olson, Public Affairs Officer, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division

“Your soldiers shot and defaced the Quran,” declared Sheik Ayad Alawi al-Jabour, the Radwaniyah Tribal Support Council Chairman. “We demand that your soldiers be punished!” The dozen other Radwaniyah Sunni sheiks at the hastily scheduled meeting May 13, 2008 were deadly serious as they peered with stern faces at the American leader.

Lt. Col. George Patton (name changed for security reasons), commander, 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, was startled and speechless. What were the sheiks talking about? How should he respond? He reflected over his 22 years of service in the U.S. Army; he had never faced a situation like this.

It is important for military units to conduct aggressive and comprehensive cultural awareness training before deploying to a foreign country.

Cultural awareness training is critical to the successful completion of a unit’s mission.

Mistakes are easy to make even under the best of circumstances. One wrong word spoken or printed to the target audience or the right words taken out of context can have negative repercussions. Or one wrongful act, regardless if done in ignorance, can cause a firestorm of negative sentiment directed at the offending military unit compromising the entire mission.

My boss, keenly aware of the importance of cultural awareness, designed for our unit what many senior leaders from the 4th Infantry Division referred to as the best home station cultural training conducted before a deployment that they had seen.

Col. Ted Martin, the commander for the 1st “Raider” Brigade Combat Team, 4th Inf. Div., saw Iraq first hand on two previous combat deployments and knew his unit needed to focus on cultural awareness to be successful on the battlefield in Southern Baghdad.

Martin’s training plan consisted of four major events designed to hone the cultural skills of the unit’s key leaders for a 15-month combat tour in Iraq beginning in March 2008. The situation in Southern Baghdad from March to May 2007 was tenuous with approximately 30 enemy attacks per day against the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces in the Rashid District.

The first event in Martin’s training plan was a three-day seminar at Fort Hood, Texas led by the Battle Command Training Program instructors from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in June 2007. The classes focused on the history of Iraq and Arab culture. The staffs from the brigade and each of the six organic battalions plus all the 31 company commanders attended. Many of the platoon leaders from the brigade and officers from an explosive ordnance disposal company, a psychological operations detachment and a civil affairs battalion, who might deploy with us, attended as well.

The second plank of the training was a week-long seminar at Fort Hood led by the contractors from the Asymmetric Warfare Group in July 2007. The target audience was similar as the first event with the addition of select noncommissioned officers, who would be the instructors for the train the trainer sessions. The NCOs would share their training down to the squad level in each of the battalions. The information taught was expanded to include additional tasks for various special teams, such as human intelligence collection teams and personal security detachments.

An additional event was the Mission Ready Exercise conducted at the National Training Center on Fort Irwin, California during August 2007 by the entire brigade, which consists of approximately 3,800 Soldiers. The focus of the training is to verify that each unit and section from the platoon-level to the brigade headquarters has mastered the primary collective tasks to be used on the looming deployment. At the NTC, the Army hires hundreds of native Arab speakers from Iraq or other Middle Eastern nations to serve as contracted role players who live at the 10 mock villages in the Mohave Desert during the two-week scenario. The role players played the Iraqi civilian leadership, Iraqi Security Forces, local vendors, farmers, enemy combatants and everyday citizens that U.S. Soldiers or Marines would meet on the street or the countryside. Every Soldier or Marine who departed the various base camps experienced what Iraq might be like by engaging the local citizens during the scripted events of the complex scenario built by the NTC’s Operations Group. (I didn’t count this event in Martin’s cultural awareness training plan since every unit who deploys conducts a MRE, but the leaders and Soldiers do learn aspects of Iraqi culture by engaging the world-class role players.)

The third event was the quarterback arm sleeve training taught by contractors of T3 Inc. in October 2007 at Fort Hood. The target audience was the PSDs and special teams who would use the device to assist them with using Arabic. The NCOs and Soldiers attended additional cultural classes, basic Arabic language training and how to use the device during a five-day session.

The fourth event was a two-day seminar taught by the faculty of the Department for Middle Eastern Studies on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin in February 2008. The classes covered Iraqi history, Arab culture, Iraqi society and Baghdad local government. The target audience consisted of the same group as the first event.

Returning to Patton, he did respond correctly to the Radwaniyah sheiks’ demands.

During the May 13 meeting, he promised a full-scale investigation to see if the offense did happen and to swiftly correct the situation if a Soldier was found responsible for the cultural faux pas. Two days later a Soldier did confess to committing the grievous act of shooting and defacing the Quran. Patton sent the Soldier home in disgrace with a reprimand a week later. Martin and Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the commanding general of the 4th Inf. Div. and Multi-National Division - Baghdad, apologized at a public meeting and presented the Radwaniyah sheiks with a new Quran. The American leaders also promised the Sunni sheiks many reconstruction projects for their community such as cleaning the debris from the irrigation canals, repairing the fresh water pipelines, rebuilding a series of roads and bridges, furnishing micro-generation capacity, building a local government center for the community, providing 100 greenhouses for the local farmers with three farmers cooperation associations and refurbishing a medical clinic and a number of local schools. The Radwaniyah sheiks brought Iraqi media to the event, so the citizens of Baghdad saw the public apology and the people were satisfied with the handling of the situation. Several weeks later, President George Bush also publically apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

After six months the Americans kept their promise as the reconstruction projects were completed. Meanwhile, the relationship between the Sunni sheiks and the Americans continued to blossom. Many of the Sunni tribesmen severed ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist cells, joined the Sons of Iraq program that transitioned many unemployed workers into the Iraqi Security Forces and assisted the Americans in defeating the al-Qaeda network in Southern Baghdad.

The results, after completing a 13-month deployment in Baghdad, were that the six battalions from the 1st BCT, 4th Inf. Div. fared very well as the Soldiers engaged the host nation’s citizenry. The culture awareness training was one factor that helped reduce the violence levels to less than one attack per day in the Rashid District during the last several months of the deployment.

However, some battalions such as the 4th Bn., 64th Armor Regt. from the 4th BCT of the 3rd Inf. Div., who were attached to the Raider Brigade during the deployment and did not receive the same intense cultural training that we did, committed cultural mistakes and experienced challenges when working with the local population in their sectors or areas of responsibility. Perhaps, they learned their cultural awareness lessons the hard way or they had a “strategic Soldier” who caused an international incident.

Speech.
FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq – Kareem al-Kinani, the agricultural engineer, gives a speech at the Radwaniyah farmer's co-op association's greenhouse ground-breaking ceremony in southwestern Baghdad Jan. 22, 2009. Sheik Hussein Ali Alash, the co-op's chairman (left of Kareem), owns the property where the first 20 of the 100 greenhouses are being erected. Sheik Ayad Alawi al-Jabour (right of Kareem), is the Radwaniyah Tribal Support Council Chairman. Leaders from Troop B, 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, attended the ground-breaking ceremony.
(U.S. Army photo by Maj. Dave Olson, 1st BCT PAO, 4th Inf. Div., MND-B)

This story is not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Army. The views are entirely my own.