Despite attacks, PTT makes gains

[unhappycamper]

A boy in the Fallujah’s Jubayil district walks alongside Iraqi police and Marines training them as part of a Police Training Team. The 9-man “Aries” PTT, based in Jubayil, has been attacked three times since its deployment began last fall. Some Marine companies in the city haven’t been attacked at all.


Despite attacks, PTT makes gains
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, February 16, 2008

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the beginning of his second deployment to Iraq late last year, Marine Cpl. Robreno Gomez said he expected to get attacked.

Despite this grim expectation, the violence has fallen disproportionately on his small group of Marines who are serving as a police transition team, or PTT, in Fallujah.

While the city has seen a significant drop in violence over the past six months — Company L of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines hasn’t been attacked once since they arrived last fall — Gomez’s “Aries” PTT has been attacked three times so far. And it cost them two badly wounded Marines from their 11-man team.

But Gomez, of Coffeyville, Kan., thinks his comrades are more vulnerable because of their mission, not some cruel twist of fate. As the PTT Marines train Iraqi police to become more independent, it brings extra risks because extremists now target the country’s fledgling security forces.

“At first I thought we had (bad) luck,” Gomez said of the attacks. “But more and more, people know who we are. We go on the street, we work different and we take more (Iraqi police).”


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52524