Our first pay operation was to pay the Headquarters and Service Company (H&S Company) Iraqi soldiers who resided at Camp Ali. We set up shop in Captain Hasen’s swahut, which was in the center of the jundi swahut area. To the untrained eye it seemed as though the jundi payday scene was absolute chaos. The jundi were simultaneously excited and stressed. They yelled and fought with each other to get a favorable position in the line. They relied on the paychecks to survive and to feed their families. No paycheck meant an Iraqi could not take care of his family, a dishonorable position in the Arab world.
There were seven individuals involved in the management of the pay process. Sergeant Major Kasem, the senior enlisted Iraqi in H&S Company, stood at the door to the swahut and asked for three identification (ID) cards at a time; he acted like the bouncer outside a club. He continually yelled at the pay line, which consisted of anywhere from fifty to a hundred Iraqis, all of whom were trying to push their way to the front of the line.
Inside the swahut Tseen and I set up a long table with six chairs behind it. The Iraqis receiving pay started at chair one and moved down the line. The first and second chairs were for me and a terp, usually Imus, Mark, or Moody—the most honest terps. While I rarely used a terp, during pay operations I relied on them heavily to give me the honest scoop. Pay operations were notorious for various kinds of shady business, which my basic Arabic skills might not have caught (for example, officers paying favorite soldiers more money, stealing soldiers’ pay, forging signatures on the pay charts, and so forth). Sadly, I had no real function at the table except to monitor the process and assure the jundi that the Iraqi officers would not engage in nefarious activity. No matter how much Iraqis publicly claimed that Americans are dishonest, stingy, and generally rotten people, in private situations, they relied on us heavily to provide oversight.
The third chair was for Naji, an S-1 warrant officer with over twenty years in the old Iraqi army who is respected throughout the battalion. Naji’s duty was to verify IDs, verify names, and keep a written record of payment for the battalion’s pay records. Iraqis love to keep paper records of everything. Their record-keeping ability is old fashioned and inefficient but functional. Next to Naji sat Tseen. Tseen read names and pay amounts from the official pay rosters from MOD. When the pay recipient verified that his name was correct, he signed on the official MOD pay rosters. Tseen also acted as an impact zone for jundi complaints, bearing the full brunt of every emotional jundi who found out he had a pay issue—a sight women and children should never have to witness.
Once Tseen had read the payee’s name and pay amount from the roster, the payee moved down the line to the money counter. Typically Captain Hasen acted as the money counter. He grabbed a lump of cash and started flipping through it so fast he could have used it as a small fan. He had to be fast since each jundi received about 500,000 dinar. Once the money had been counted, he handed it over to the soldier receiving it, who then stepped out of the line and counted it to verify Captain Hasen’s work. If he had problems with the amount, he told Hasen, who would either recount the money if he thought the jundi was lying or grab a few bills from his cash stacks and hand it to the jundi who was shorted.
The sixth seat in the process was reserved for the pay overseer. In our battalion this was Lieutenant Colonel Ali, the executive officer (XO) of the battalion and the only officer trusted by the jundi. His primary duty was very similar to mine: ensure the pay process is orderly, fair, and honest. His additional duty was to clarify and mediate any issues with pay punishments, a highly contested and passionate affair. Fortunately, my role in the pay punishments was passive. I had to understand the process and ensure it was not leading to further corruption or creating impediments to the Iraqi army’s future success. Ali actually dealt with the emotional or distressed Iraqis who wanted to argue their case.
Pay punishments are the only method of reprimanding Iraqi soldiers, aside from restricting leave. Because restricting leave usually guarantees a soldier will never return to active duty, restricting pay is the preferred punishment. Pay punishments are necessary because the Iraqi army doesn’t have a functioning or enforceable Uniform Code of Military Justice or similar government construct that allows for a more fair and orderly method of punishing poor soldier behavior.
In the old Iraqi army there were many more ways to impose good order and discipline among the troops: beatings, threatening families, sending soldiers to jail, and so forth. In the new Iraqi army the easiest way to enforce standards is for the battalion commanders to be the judge, jury, and executioner for Iraqi soldier misbehavior. Unfortunately this system is prone to nepotism and corruption, but most of the time it accomplishes its objective of motivating Iraqi soldiers to do the right thing.
Payday Problems
The pay process for H&S Company went relatively smoothly for an Iraqi operation. The same held true for the pay operations we carried out in Barwana, Haqliniyah, and Baghdadi. But the hinges came off the doors when we paid the jundi in Haditha. There we were down to the last group of soldiers to be paid, none of whom had received pay for the past few months because of the bureaucracy and corruption at the MOD. The first jundi approached Tseen, smiled with a mouthful of five teeth, and said, “Sir, have you worked my pay problem out with MOD yet? It has been five months since I have been paid.” Tseen responded, “I am sorry, I am still trying to figure it out. God willing, we get it next payday.”
This was obviously not the answer the jundi wanted to hear. The jundi and his comrades approached the table and verbally attacked Tseen. The situation appeared beyond control. I was getting worried, but my terp said, “Jamal, Arab people are very emotional. I will let you know if something needs to be done.” I sat back in my chair and watched the bedlam as the group continued to confront Tseen, calling him names, calling him a liar, and accusing him of theft. I was amazed at the disrespect the jundi were showing to a senior officer. It is expected that emotions will sometimes run high, but if the jundi had done this in the U.S. military it would have resulted in a court-martial. In the old Iraqi army, it would have ended in a beating.
In my short experience with Iraqis it seemed they chilled out after venting for a few minutes. In this case, however, they didn’t. They did not calm down; they got more furious as Tseen exited his seat and sprinted to Captain Najib’s office to get away from them. Tseen’s exit meant the fury and anger of the jundi would be directed to the next best candidate—me.
“Jamal, you must help us, Tseen is Ali Babba!” the group exclaimed. I was facing a dilemma. I could agree with their sentiments and reinforce their distrust and disrespect for Tseen or I could tell them their pay system was valid, that Tseen was working hard, and that their system simply needed time to work (a blatant lie). I took a compromise position and used a trick I learned from some of our predeployment culture training—blame problems on a higher unit or organization. I told the disgruntled jundi, “Listen, I will help you as best I can. I think Tseen is an honest man and is trying his best, but he has to deal with all of the corruption at the MOD.”