My platoon got assigned to a new patrol zone recently. While we were on our first patrol in the new area, we came across something totally unexpected!

I didn’t even know there were bears in Iraq! They look kind of small, so I figured they were probably malnourished. I also thought they must be Sun Bears, since I figured only bears that really like the sun could survive in Iraq. MAJ Simer, however, said that if they live in this area they are probably Syrian Brown Bears. I asked him, “if they are Syrian bears, then what are they doing in Iraq?� MAJ Simer just shook his head.

Whatever kind of bears they are, they were a little apprehensive at first (you can see that one cub is staying very close to its mother). But they were not hostile. The village sheikh came out and welcomed us.

We spoke to him for a while. He explained that they hadn’t seen Americans or British soldiers in their village very often, so they were a little concerned as to why we were there. Once we explained that we were just passing through, he was satisfied. After the sheikh finished talking, the other bears felt more comfortable. As we spoke to them, many of them smiled at us, waved, and even came up to thank us (and America, and Britain) for getting rid of Saddam Hussein! Apparently Saddam did not treat these bears very well – in 1991, his secret police apparently uprooted or poisoned all of their favorite berry bushes.

So once they saw that we weren’t there to attack them, they were very happy. After a while they even let their cubs come up and talk to us. Their cubs were fascinated by me. Apparently most Iraqi bears don’t get much bigger than about 300lbs, so to see an 1100-lb polar bear was really exciting! The cubs especially liked to climb on me:

I had a lot of fun visiting that village! I hope we get to go back there again!