Practicing for Iraq in Louisiana

Houston Chronicle:

If the armored combat vehicles rolling by are the first clue that there's something unusual about this pine forest in rural Louisiana, the street signs in Arabic are the second.

On 200,000 acres about four hours from Houston, the Army has replicated 22 Iraqi villages — complete with markets, mosques and even goats — to train soldiers how to cope with everything from a suicide bombing to tea with a local sheik.

As the military strategy in Iraq has shifted from open warfare to counter-insurgency, American soldiers increasingly are trying to build relationships with Iraqis to help reduce violence. Their lives and the lives of the civilians they encounter could depend on their ability to communicate across cultural and language barriers.

So, to prepare soldiers for Iraq, the Army needs Iraqis. More than 300 of them — including about 50 from the Houston area — travel to Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center every few months to populate the fake villages. They don traditional robes, speak only Arabic and wear elaborate makeup to simulate bloody wounds.

The job is popular with recently arrived refugees, many of whom left Iraq because their collaboration with Americans made them targets for terrorists. Adel Naji, 41, worked as a driver at the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad before death threats forced him to flee. He applied for refugee status and moved into a southwest Houston apartment with his wife and two daughters in April.

Sometimes the simulated explosions and gunfire at Fort Polk make Naji feel like he is still in Iraq. But he's proud of what he does, especially efforts to teach American soldiers cultural sensitivity through role-playing.

''I work against the terrorists," he said. ''I work to serve the U.S., and I work to help Iraq, too."

Over the past few months, Naji has played a bombing victim, an Army translator and a Sunni cleric, a role which tested his acting skills. "Actually, I'm Shia," he said with a laugh.

...

Naji's employer is a Virginia-based contractor that hires the fort's "cultural role players" from six cities with substantial Iraqi populations: Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Nashville, Tenn., Dallas and Houston, said Bruce Schomaker, director of operations for SMI Global Mission Support.

At first the company had to advertise to find qualified applicants, but these days positions tend to fill by word of mouth.

...

It sounds pretty realistic except for the pine forest. I think it saves both US and Iraqi lives. The key to Iraq was understanding the tribal culture and putting a strategy in place to protect the people and their culture against the onslaught of al Qaeda.

I haven't sen similar projects for Afghanistan. Its culture is even more strange to the US and the ethnic mix is even greater.