Joint Security Fire Team Works For Security Transition
The area near Camp Taji is a model for how an orderly security transition can proceed. The Iraqi forces have slowly assumed operational control for the region as the Coalition has worked to first train and then transition the security to the Iraqi National police and Army. The Iraqi security forces and the Coalition forces have created a joint fire team that has members of both security forces. This has led to unprecedented levels of positive cooperation and the orderly shift in overall responsibility for the security in the area to the Iraqi forces.
The fire team consists of members of the Iraq security forces along with 25th Infantry, 2nd Platoon, Company A, 1st battalion, 27th infantry and 2nd Stryker BCT combat team “Wolfhounds. Along with the Iraqi 36th brigade, 9th Army Team members the fire team has become a concise and fairly close knit effective unit. The idea to form a combined group seemed like a good idea as part of the orderly transition from a mission led by the Coalition to one that is ran and organized solely by Iraqi security forces. As members of the Coalition fire team were assigned to other duty or received normal environmental morale leave, the opportunity to replace them slowly one by one by members of the 9th Iraqi Army came available.
The joint fire team has forced the Iraqi and US soldiers to overcome language barriers and to work together, and it has largely been a success for both nations. Overcoming the different obstacles was not easy but in conquering the hurdles it helped establish trust and understanding at a much deeper organizational level. This has helped ease a lot of the normal stress that shifting security responsibility could have otherwise have caused.
