Troops wage new fight: Get Iraqis up to speed

ZAIDON, Iraq – Sleeping bags and poncho liners provided little insulation as the temperature plunged below freezing.

Nine soldiers lay on the roof, floor and seats of the Stryker as it sat parked outside an Iraqi army compound on this frigid night.

The Stryker troops, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, arrived at the base in western Baghdad province shortly after nightfall. The plan called for them to spend the night and begin a joint mission with the Iraqis. They were to search for weapons caches, starting before dawn.

The start time of 5 a.m. came and went for the men of 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. There was no sign of the Iraqis. An hour passed. Then another.

Finally, 21/2 hours after the planned start time and long past sunrise, the Comanche Company commander stepped on the ramp of one of the Strykers to address his troops.

Several Iraqi army Humvees sped past as he spoke.

“The IA is leading straight to the objective,” Capt. Andy Lembke said. “We’re falling in behind. I know that wasn’t quite the plan, but that’s just how they operate.”

In dozens of interviews with soldiers of myriad rank and responsibility, American troops appear to view the Iraqi army as increasingly capable of doing independent operations. But the Iraqis are held back by several problems: a laissez-faire work ethic, fluid scheduling, inconsistency of skill level among units and, on a larger scale, the inability to train and supply themselves.

The 2009 security agreement between Washington, D.C., and Baghdad stipulates that all missions must include Iraqi security forces. American service members must remain outside cities and towns unless explicitly allowed in by the Iraqis.

Soldiers who have made repeated deployments to Iraq say their counterparts’ improvements in recent years have been vast – despite differing views about whether the Iraqi army could secure its country without U.S. support.

“Are they at a point where they can stand toe-to-toe with the threats their nation faces internally right now? The answer is yes,” said Brig. Gen. Peter Bayer, the I Corps chief of staff serving in Baghdad. “We’ve seen quantum leaps in where they are.”

About 675,000 people serve in the Iraqi security forces – the army, local police, federal police, border patrol and other agencies. That number does not include the military and police forces under the auspices of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.

But despite the growth in numbers from the early days of the war, the Iraqis still rely on American help for more advanced jobs such as combat air support, air medical evacuation, intelligence and aerial reconnaissance.

The watershed moment for the Iraqi military came in March 2008, when the army entered Basra in the southeast to clear the city of Mahdi Army fighters. The American and British added air and artillery support, and by April that year a cease-fire had been brokered.

The Iraqi army regained control of Basra and a relative peace has been established.

Lewis-McChord’s 17th Fires Brigade controls the American battle space of Basra, and the unit’s executive officer said the Iraqis run most operations with little American support. Brigade specialists still collect evidence and intelligence on targets and hand it over to their Iraqi counterparts.

“They’ll take the targeting packet, and in half an hour they’ll be rolling out,” Lt. Col. Chuck Roede said.

NOT ENOUGH BACKUP

In Diyala province, Lt. Col. Chuck Hodges commands Lewis-McChord’s 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment – a part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

He said the Iraqi army is capable of carrying out missions, but calls their logistics and equipment maintenance “real problems.”

Throughout the country, American soldiers offer anecdotes of Iraqi Humvees breaking down because they’re not properly maintained.

Spc. Jason Westfall, a Marysville native serving with 17th Fires Brigade, trains Iraqis to drive and maintain their vehicles. But many are thrust into it with very little prior knowledge.

“The (Iraqi Army soldiers) I deal with are pretty quick learners,” said Westfall, a mechanic with the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 377th Field Artillery Regiment. “They understand when we tell them things, and they want to learn.”

Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, the general overseeing U.S. operations in the north, said a sudden American pullback would “not go well on the Iraqi security forces side” because of problems keeping the troops resourced.

But, Cucolo added, “That’s not necessarily at the platoon or even the division level. That’s on the Baghdad level.”

Several Lewis-McChord soldiers voiced concern about graft and corruption stymieing the Iraqi army’s development.

“When you’re dealing with the Ministry of Defense, you order 10 tires in the hope that one gets through to the units in the field,” said one battalion-level officer who partners with an Iraqi army brigade. “It seems to get worse the farther you are from Baghdad.”

But Bayer, the I Corps chief of staff, said he has yet to personally witness corruption.

“When I talk on this subject with my partner, who’s the chief of staff for the Iraqi Ground Forces Command, he acknowledges that there is (corruption),” he said. “And he has, in fact, made some adjustments this year in some of their manning structures to try and eliminate some of the opportunities.”

Bayer said the Iraqis’ procurement system, which relies on paper-based requests and cash transfers, opens the opportunity to skim. To a soldier at a lower level, Bayer said, the inefficiencies can appear as graft.

“So the allegation that it’s all corruption, I think, is an exaggeration,” Bayer said. “At the same time, we would not say there is an absence of corruption.”

POOR WORK HABITS

On the tactical level, U.S. soldiers often express frustration at the wildly varying degrees of professionalism between Iraqi units – likely a result of the rapid buildup of troop numbers in recent years.

“It’s really hit-or-miss,” said Spc. Nick Harper, a Burien native serving as an artilleryman with 17th Fires Brigade. “They’ll show up late, ask right away when they get to leave, and then stop halfway through. Others are a lot better.”

One of the responsibilities of Harper’s unit, the 1-377th Field Artillery, is to patrol the areas around Contingency Operating Base Basra with the Iraqis and search for the source of rocket attacks aimed at the base. On one three-hour patrol in January, the Iraqi lieutenant didn’t say a single word.

The American platoon leader on that mission, Lt. Patrick Pirkle, said Iraqi officers sometimes take the lead.

“They run the gamut from really good to really mediocre,” he said. “Some don’t get out of their trucks and just sit inside and smoke cigarettes the whole time. Others want to lead the way and show us how it can be done better.”

Lembke, the company commander who was critical of the Iraqi army in the hours before the late December pre-dawn mission, said each unit’s professionalism flows from its commander.

Much of the Iraqi army is still based on the British system, in which officers make virtually every decision.

“Some guys can completely do it on their own,” he said. “Others wouldn’t withstand the first round of gunfire during a battle. If their commander is tactically sound, if he understands what he’s doing, their guys will feed off that.”

Some of the problems appear to arise from cultural differences. Some Iraqis use the Arabic term meaning “God willing” to explain their casual way of doing things.

“They’re set up on the ‘inshallah’ system,” said Spc. John Johnson, a Colorado native who serves under Lembke’s command. “‘We’ll be there at this time, ‘inshallah.’ We’ll do this mission, ‘inshallah.’ It can be trying.”

But, Johnson added, “they’re becoming competent enough to conduct ops without our supervision. Sometimes there’s not much more we can add.”

scott.fontaine@thenewstribune.com

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