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Local soldiers say combat is preferable to guarding Iraqi prisoners

By Michael Gisick
Monday, November 5, 2007

First Sgt. Jonathan Bonnette of the Las Cruces unit, C Company, 200th Infantry, says his soldiers are doing a good job guarding Iraqi prisoners at Camp Cropper. Many, however, say they would rather be in combat.

Michael Gisick/Tribune

First Sgt. Jonathan Bonnette of the Las Cruces unit, C Company, 200th Infantry, says his soldiers are doing a good job guarding Iraqi prisoners at Camp Cropper. Many, however, say they would rather be in combat.

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CAMP CROPPER, Iraq — Miguel Gonzalez signed up for the New Mexico National Guard because he wanted a break from his job at Metropolitan Detention Center.

The Albuquerque-area resident said he wanted to see what his 46-year-old body could handle.

And after an earlier career in the military, he wanted to come to Iraq for a taste of combat.

Instead, he's back inside the walls of a jail.

"It's disappointing," Gonzales said as he prepared to start a 12-hour-guard shift at Camp Cropper outside Baghdad on Wednesday. "I joined the infantry because I wanted to be out there, but here I am."

About 300 New Mexicans from Guard units based in Rio Rancho and Las Cruces are spending their yearlong deployments here at the center of the U.S. detention system in Iraq - and almost all of them would rather be somewhere else.

"In the eyes of these soldiers, it's probably the worst mission they could have been given," says 1st Sgt. Jonathan Bonnette of the Las Cruces unit, C Company, 200th Infantry.

But, as Bonnette notes, the Army isn't about what you want to do, and the sergeant says his men have given him no problems.

"They're doing an outstanding job, but they'd rather be doing something else," he says. "It's a letdown, hell yes."

Much of the letdown stems from the feeling that soldiers who volunteered to serve in the infantry should be out fighting, not guarding detainees at a base miles from the action. And past prison abuse scandals have largely killed whatever cachet might have been associated with guarding Iraqi detainees.

But as the military focuses on a counterinsurgency strategy keyed on winning support from the Iraqi population, prison conditions remain a critical issue. Touting job training and education programs, regular family visits, quality health care and freshly prepared halal meals, the military says conditions at its detention facilities bear no resemblance to the infamous images from Abu Ghraib.

"I hear these soldiers say how disappointed they are, but they are on the cutting edge of detainee operations," said Capt. Lynn Chapp, a spokeswoman for the task force that runs the U.S. detention system. "They have a lot to be proud of."

The military only recently began allowing reporters inside detention facilities, but Camp Cropper remains heavily restricted. Two public affairs officers accompanied a single reporter on a brief tour of the detention facility, where no photographs were allowed and interviews with soldiers were monitored both inside and outside the jail.

They asked that soldiers' home towns not be specifically identified, because they said insurgents have sent threatening e-mails to the families of soldiers assigned to detention facilities in the past.

"We're running as transparent an operation as we can under the law," said Army Capt. David Pearson, a spokesman for Camp Cropper.

As the setting sun shimmered on the horizon, the night guard shift formed up under shade nets Wednesday and received a briefing on a disturbance at the jail the day before.

Inmates in one of the compound's four detention zones had become upset because guards told an inmate who claimed he was sick to wait until morning sick call, said the sergeant who gave the briefing. Those inmates started throwing their slippers and blankets.

Meanwhile, inmates in another zone took the opportunity to stage their own uprising, and some began throwing bottles of urine and trying to climb the walls, the sergeant said.

The disturbance was quelled, though a few inmates suffered minor injuries, mainly from exposure to pepper spray, he said. As a result, the sergeant said, sick call would now be held at night as well as in the morning.

Gonzalez, the MDC guard, said there are a lot of differences between Camp Cropper and Albuquerque's West Side jail.

"The main difference is that detainees here are a lot more afraid," Gonzalez said. "They don't know what they're walking into when they come through the front gate in a blindfold. At MDC, we have a lot of repeat offenders who know exactly what the inside looks like."

Also at MDC, guards on mandatory overtime work similarly long hours to the soldiers at Camp Cropper, who work 12-hour shifts six days a week.

Though only a few thousand inmates are held at Camp Cropper, the facility processes all detainees in U.S. custody, which number about 25,000. Once they've been held for six months, a detainee's status is reviewed by a panel of military officers, and they can be released if the panel deems they do not pose a continuing threat, Chapp says. The average stay is 309 days, she said.

About 82 percent of the 25,000 detainees in U.S. custody are Sunnis, the military says. Ten of those 25,000 are women.

The military acknowledges that many detainees have done nothing wrong and says steps are being taken to speed up the release process.

"A lot of people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Pearson said. "We have a lot of detainees who are just waiting to get released. We try to give them some skills while they're here."

Pearson said a study of the inmate population found that the majority who had participated in attacks on U.S. troops did so for economic reasons, not ideological ones.

"They could make enough by planting an IED (improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb) to feed their families for two or three months," he said.

Inside one of the detention compounds, Pvt. 1st Class Rudy Vasquez stood on a 20-foot-high catwalk watching the detainees below, who all wear yellow suits. A bearded man in yellow walked over and started staring up at him.

"None of us are doing what we want to be doing," Vasquez, a 19-year-old from southern New Mexico, said. "You just got to keep yourself from getting bored and letting down your guard."

The bearded man kept staring up at him.

"We need to move along," Chapp said.

In their off-time, soldiers say they watch movies, work out and stay in touch with their families.

Lt. Cody Ayon, 34, a platoon leader in C Company, said he calls his wife and three daughters almost every day.

"That's one good thing about this mission - we can stay in contact with our families," he said. "We can't complain about that."

One of the few places where soldiers said they enjoyed their work was at the center where Iraqi families can visit detained relatives.

"It's one of the better missions, because you get to interact with the public more," said Sgt. David Almaguer, 41, another member of C Company. "There's more variety. It's tolerable."

A Company Sgt. Patrick Toya, a 44-year-old from a northern New Mexico pueblo, said he's "trying to represent New Mexico in a positive way."

"We really try to make these people feel like we're here to help them," he said. "I take that personally. You know, I think back to what happened to my people way back when."