Photos

Marines escort U.N. and U.S. State Department officials from a key leaders meeting here Nov. 19. In war, every Marine is as much a statesman as a rifleman. Iraq is no different. Military Police and Transportation Platoon Marines facilitated a meeting between U.N. and U.S. State Department officials, and Sinjar City’s key leaders. The meeting couldn’t have come at a better time. Sinjar’s people are in dire need of infrastructure improvements, such as water and electricity. With 44 thousand internally displaced families, Sinjar City has been pushed past its breaking point. Couple the increased population with a fleeing insurgency, which has taken refuge in the northern provinces of Iraq, and Sinjar is in desperate need of a solution. The Marines of Combat Logistics Company 19, 1st Marine Logistics Group, make up one element of the first Marine Air Ground Task Force outside al Anbar province since 2004. They traveled to the Ninawah province to conduct counter-insurgency operations aimed at stamping out the insurgency just west of the restive city of Mosul.