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Alaskans' Iraq tour passes midpoint

May-15-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By TATABOLINE BRANT, Anchorage Daily News

The largest Alaska-based Army unit since Vietnam to spend time in a war zone is more than halfway through its yearlong hitch in Iraq and the commander said in a telephone interview that his troops have helped train thousands of Iraqi security forces to fight their own battles.

The 3,800-person 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team arrived in Iraq from posts in Anchorage and Fairbanks in early September. The troops are stationed in and around Mosul, one of Iraq's largest cities; in the Tigris River Valley near Quyarra; in the Euphrates River Valley near Rawah, and in the Dahuk and Irbil provinces in Iraq Kurdistan.

Col. Michael Shields, commander of the brigade, said in a telephone interview that the biggest change the unit has seen in its months in the country is that coalition forces are no longer conducting counter-insurgency operations on their own. Now, Iraqi security forces -- the country's police and army -- are helping and, in some places, have taken the lead in operations to root out insurgents, Shields said.

"We still have a lot of work to do but we're steadily making progress," the commander said in a follow-up e-mail from Iraq.

Fourteen members of the Stryker brigade have died since the brigade arrived in Iraq: four in noncombat incidents and 10 in combat. Most of the soldiers in the latter group -- seven -- lost their lives to the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq: the roadside bomb.

Shields said 236 of the brigade's soldiers have been wounded. Of those, 170 -- roughly 72 percent -- have returned to duty, he said.

"We have soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice and those who are injured and dealing with painful rehabilitation," Shields said.


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