The commander of 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment and then G3 operations officer for the 101st Airborne Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom I - his first tour in Iraq - Colonel Bill Hickman spent his second, from July 2005 to July 2006, as the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) J3. As he explained, "MNSTC-I has representatives from many nations, plus all four services from the US are represented there - Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy. It is really a multinational, multi-service joint command. The responsibility they had was to train, equip and deploy the Iraqi security forces (ISF) across the country, which included all the Iraqi Army and police forces. Once the Iraqi Army was trained, they converted over to Multinational Corps-Iraq's control to actually deploy into operations." Responsible for current operations as the J3, Hickman served initially under Lieutenant General David Petraeus and then, from roughly September 2005 on, under Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, and in this interview discusses each one's approach and command emphasis. In addition, he talks in great depth about a wide variety of Iraqi-Syrian border security issues he had direct involvement with, including the construction of a vast network of border forts and efforts to increase cross-border trade. Hickman also discusses an elaborate command post exercise he helped organize that involved the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior and the Joint Headquarters. "We brought the leaders in," he said, "and talked about their piece of how their forces control and assist with national security and the prime minister in making decisions." What emerged, Hickman explains, was the Iraqis' need of a national command post. With respect to the high Iraqi officials he dealt with closely, sectarian divides were not in evidence, Hickman said. "These people would tell you that they were Iraqis first before they were Sunni or Shi'a or whatever. In fact, most people did not like to tell you whether they were Sunni or Shi'a because they felt they were Iraqis first and wondered why you were even asking. We see reports every day that on the street level it's a major issue - the fighting between the Sunnis and the Shi'a. Within the leadership of the Iraqi Army, though, the folks who were attempting to pull the country together, I never saw any kind of trying to break it apart." Hickman also discusses improvements to the Iraqis' security infrastructure during his tour, the motivations of those individuals who joined the ISF, the challenges in training and building Iraqi leaders, and shares his outlook for the country in the months and years to come.

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