Stryker brigade commander reports on progress in Iraq

But as the daytime temperature begins rising past 110 degrees, it also means their 12-month deployment to the still-contested province of Diyala has passed the half-way mark.

Though there's still a lot to do, Col. Burdett Thompson told Alaska reporters Monday in a teleconference from Iraq, the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry has made progress in coalition efforts to strengthen security and civil society in Diyala, just to the north and east of Baghdad.

Thompson is the commander of the 4,200 soldiers in the brigade plus an 800-member armored battalion borrowed from an American base in Germany. One of his challenges, he told reporters in a telephone conference from his headquarters north of the provincial capital Baqubah, is keeping his soldiers sharp and focused over the long, hot summer even as they start making plans to return to Alaska starting in September.

"Our primary efforts right now, at the eighth-month mark, is to continue transition of the provisional government of Diyala, to get it some credence," Thompson said. His soldiers have walked away from three former U.S. urban combat posts in Baqubah, a city of about 500,000, as part of the American effort to turn over security to Iraqi security forces and bolster local governments.

But Diyala continues to be one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, with members of Sunni, Shi'a and Kurdish communities still jockeying for the upper hand. Thompson said Diyala was about a year and a half behind other areas that have become substantially more secure since the so-called "surge" in coalition forces in 2007.

On April 20, a man wearing an Iraqi special forces uniform and a hidden suicide vest detonated himself while members of Thompson's forces were visiting Baqubah reconstruction officials. Three Iraqi officials were killed and a dozen U.S. soldiers injured, eight seriously enough to require hospitalization.

In all, seven soldiers from the Fort Wainwright Strykers have been killed in the current deployment, five of them in combat, according to the Army. Thompson said another 75 have been hospitalized with combat injuries.

In addition, two soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment -- the Germany-based unit attached to Thompson's brigade -- were among the five killed at Camp Liberty in Baghdad May 11 when a U.S. sergeant went on a shooting rampage. Those deaths were especially difficult for his soldiers, Thompson said.

While much of his mission has been in support of local civil governments, Thompson said his soldiers have been engaging insurgents from the Al Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq in the area around Balad Ruz, east of Baqubah. After battles in March that killed at least 11 insurgents, the U.S. soldiers are still conducting clean-up operations, he said.

Thompson said he is also preparing for an unusual group of embedded journalists -- three University of Alaska Fairbanks students and an assistant journalism professor, Brian O'Donoghue, who will arrive in August.

"We'll take great care of them," Thompson said

O'Donoghue, one of the participants in the teleconference, said later the university-sponsored embedding may be the first of its kind.

"It's a big leap," he said.

O'Donoghue got approval for the month-long trip from UA president Mark Hamilton, a retired Army general who also provided funds from a discretionary account. The students, who have not yet been selected, will have to get to Kuwait before they can travel on military aircraft, O'Donoghue said.

His current plan is for the students to send home daily dispatches in text, video and photographs from the war zone, under his close supervision.

"It's a real value, the training the students are to receive," he said.

Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.