Iraq or West Virginia? Training For Survival
FrontLines - February 2010
By Margy Hanon
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Civilian Response Corps members training in
post-conflict stabilization learn to make fire from
flint and steel.
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The threat of heavy rain,
recent insurgent attacks, and
potential loss of communications
weighed heavily on the 24 interagency
Civilian Response Corps
(CRC) officers as their armored
cars maneuvered along remote
dirt roads.
The teams scanned the hilly
terrain, putting into action their
surveillance detection training,
as each vehicle’s navigator carefully
monitored their GPS and
map positioning.
Rounding a slight bend, their
destination soon came into view—
a small camp filled with refugees
displaced by the recent war.
And although this scenario
was only part of a training exercise
in West Virginia, the teams
carried out their assessment mission
as though they were located
in one of many places throughout
the world dealing with conflict
or civil strife.
The SNOE course, or Security
for Non-traditional Operating
Environments, prepares CRC
civilians to live and work in
remote, austere, and high-threat
countries overseas. The course
was developed jointly by the
State Department’s Bureau of
Diplomatic Security and the
Office of the Coordinator for
Reconstruction and
Stabilization.
SNOE’s unique curriculum
focuses on “survivability training”
required to operate in
regions that are hostile or semipermissive—
meaning that one
can travel outside of protected
bases but there is some, hopefully
manageable, risk.
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Civilian Response Corps members cope with a simulated field injury
during a course carried out at Quantico, Va.
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These locations include not
only Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
Iraq, but numerous other remote
posts such as the Democratic
Republic of Congo and Sudan
where reconstruction
and
stabilization is
taking place.
The training
weeks,
spent mainly
outdoors, will
prepare CRC
teams for
travel in
unconventional
regions
and teach
them how to
remain safe
and carry out
their assigned
missions even
as the field conditions worsen.
The morning of the final
exercise, the USAID CRC officers
reflected on the previous
three weeks of arduous training
in subjects such as: crafting a
mission plan, hostage survival,
and administering trauma first
aid in the field.
As they made their final
rounds of vehicle inspections,
they said they felt prepared to
encounter a simulated roadside
improvised explosive device
(IED) or roadblock during the
day’s exercise. Phrases such as
“suspicious armed individual on
left,” “reverse out,” “keep backing,”
and “prepare for Y-turn”
were drilled into their heads
during classes on high-threat,
on- and off-road driving
methods.
As the groups donned their
body armor and gathered for
their final intelligence brief
before boarding the convoy,
each team leader reviewed the
alternate strategies again should
something not go according to
plan. The leaders reminded their
teams to identify all potential helicopter landing zones in case
they needed to request a casualty
evacuation. The CRC members
nodded as they remembered their
training—wind direction, landing
zone measurements, ground
markers, obstructions, and signaling
devices were all crucial pieces of information they would
need to relay.
With the clouds rolling in, the
team leaders ordered their
advance survey vehicles to head
out. The CRC members climbed
into the armored SUVs armed
with skills that would prepare
them to save themselves and
their fellow aid workers and
complete their jobs in possibly
dangerous conditions.★
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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