Getting Out the Vote

Lt. Col. John Norris stands in front of a crowd of Iraqi police chiefs, Iraqi army generals and high-ranking American officers, all gathered under a massive tan tent on Forward Operating Base Courage in Mosul, Iraq. The tent is usually reserved for basketball games only—it covers a full-sized court with two hoops. But this particular Sunday, it's the briefing room to rehearse the city-wide plan for the Oct. 15 referendum on the Iraqi constitution. Large satellite maps of Iraq's third-largest city cover the wall; another map of Ninewa province is laid out on floor. "Our mission," says the 42-year old Kentucky native, is to "support the Iraqi Security Forces in providing security for the Oct. 15 referendum, and to assist the IECI [Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq]." And with the typically dry words of a military brief, so begins the busiest week of the war for Norris and his soldiers in the 4-23 Battalion, aka the Tomahawks, part of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

The mission begins on Monday with soccer balls. In a gravel lot behind the 4-23 headquarters, crews from four Strykers—heavily armored, fast-moving Stars-Wars-looking vehicles with enough firepower to take out a small nation state—wait for their commander to show up. The 172nd picked up 100,000 balls from a dealer in Kurdistan; the idea is to hand them out to kids as a goodwill gesture. The only problem is blowing them up. Sgt. 1st Class William Crowley, 32, from Seattle holds the only air pump. Sitting on the back of the Stryker, he fills two balls. The driver, 22-year old Specialist Bryon Pirilo from San Diego, decides to rig an air hose from the Stryker to speed up the process. A boom thuds in the distance, off towards the city. The consensus: sounds like a VBIED. "Somebody's having a bad day," says the unit's interpreter, a 35-year old from Dallas, fluent in both Arabic and Kurdish who goes by the name Cooper. Norris arrives, dressed in full combat gear, and gives the word: "Let's go."

Tabling the soccer-ball dilemma for now, Norris climbs into a Stryker and the convoy moves out. His first stop is to the district police station in eastern Mosul. He wants to make sure the district chief, who was at the rehearsal, understands his role in the referendum. The military's official line is that this vote is an "Iraqi show" and that the United States is keeping its "hands off." But the reality is that without extensive prodding and assistance from the American military, there wouldn't be a vote. Along with other units across the country, the 172nd Brigade in Mosul is playing a key role, from transporting IECI officials around to scouting the polls, to dropping off concrete blast barriers around the city, to protecting the Iraqi security forces, who are in turn protecting the polls. The hope is that this will be a trial run for the Dec. 15 elections that will form the first permanent government in Iraq—and that that vote really will be an Iraqi show.
 
The district police chief's office, on the third floor of the police compound, is dimly lit; sandbags block the windows. Norris goes over the plan, telling Col. Anan, the chief, how many polling sites his police need to protect. In military parlance, the chief isn't "tracking." After about twenty minutes, the chief finally says he doesn't have enough men to do the job.

"One of my police came in this morning and put his gun down on my desk, and said I'm quitting because this was the second time I was threatened," he says. The officer got a phone call and text message warning him that if he continued in his job he'd be killed, says Anan. The chief continues with his complaints: he claims 64 absentees, he says he won't protect all the sites assigned to him and says that if anything does goes wrong, it won't be his responsibility.

This is not what Norris wants to hear.

"You have enough men," Norris says. "We will work together. We will not let the Iraqi people down."