Money man keeps citizens’ groups going

[unhappycamper]

Since arriving in Iraq in August, Staff Sgt. Dale Horn's unit, Fires Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, has paid just over $2.7 million in discretionary funds toward Sons of Iraq checkpoints and infrastructure programs.


Money man keeps citizens’ groups going
By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, March 10, 2008

AGAR QUF, Iraq — Back in 2005, when Army Staff Sgt. Dale Horn started wearing a dishdasha and hanging out with sheiks, close interaction with Iraq’s tribal society was somewhat of a novel idea in the military.

And if Horn was a trail blazer, he blazed in style, wearing traditional dress as many as four or five days a week by the end of his deployment. He even got himself named a real live sheik of the al Jabouri tribe, complete with a tiny plot of land near Mosul and a flock of five sheep.

Nowadays, engaging the tribes has become such a central part of the U.S. strategy in Iraq that the term “sheikfest” has entered the military lexicon. And now Horn, who is back at it, can offer quite a bit more in the way of social lubricant than cheap cigarettes and a warm, dry personality.

On Friday, he stepped off a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected combat vehicle carrying a nondescript nylon briefcase. It might have been a cheap bag, but it carried more than $340,000 in bundles of crisp, newly minted hundred dollar bills. It was pay day for the Sunnis, and Horn was the money man.

“That’s $8,400,” he said moments later, sitting in an office at a compound belonging to a leader of Sunni Sons of Iraq groups in this rural area northwest of Baghdad. He passed the stack of cash to one of the checkpoint chiefs, who sat counting his money as the next chief stepped in.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53195