America's North Shore Journal

It didn’t cost a lot of money. It’s not very long. But this new canal will make a difference in the lives of hundreds of Iraqis in Anbar Province.

Private contractor Sufjan Zubar Johan and Marine 1st Lt. Daniel Thomas inspect a newly renovated canal in Sagrah, Iraq

Sagrah is a small, impoverished oasis in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The landscape is flat, cold and dry, and the small town has one hospital, but no emergency room.

Friendly waves greet the Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces as they patrol the neighborhoods where old men sit on plastic lawn chairs outside small stores smoking Jordanian cigarettes and returning complimentary gestures of “Salaam” (meaning peace, hello, and goodbye) to the patrollers.

The people here have lead simple lives and learned to live without luxury, but now they can crack a smile again because the Government of Iraq, along with Civil Affairs Team 5, Civil Affairs Group, Regimental Combat Team 8, has helped them build a water canal to irrigate land for farming.

“This irrigation system will be able to water 815 hectares of land,” said 1st Lt. Daniel Thomas, the team leader for CAT-5.

Many assessments were made by the civil affairs team and local governing authorities throughout the past year for this canal project alone.

Over $48,000 was put into the 1,000 meter canal where ten-inch pipes connect to the canal through a hand-cranked valve system that allows water to flow into selected patches of soil.

“This should replenish their food and their local economy,” said Thomas, a Santa Barbara, Calif., native.

Thomas, an artillery officer by trade, has learned a new skill set similar to that of a foreman in that he and his civil affairs team assess projects throughout their area of operations. His team is a mix of Marine communicators, food service specialists, artillerymen, and an infantry Marine.

The canal will help bring water to the barren fields of this small town, and in the spring, the locals will plant seed and care for their fruits and vegetables so that when the seasons change, the markets will have colorful displays of melons, tomatoes, cucumbers and grain.

“Everybody’s got to eat their vegetables,” said Cpl. Darnell Liesinger, a turret gunner with CAT-5 and Sioux Falls, S.D., native.

MNF-I
By Cpl. Eric C. Schwartz, Regimental Combat Team 8