Posted on 06/03/2004 8:44:20 PM PDT by saquin
TAJI, Iraq, June 3 — American military advisers are forming an all-Iraqi counterinsurgency force and training it in guerrilla tactics like ambushing trucks and hiding alongside the road camouflaged as bushes.
The new force, called the Iraqi National Task Force, is the most ambitious effort yet to fight the uprising using Iraqis, and it already has 1,000 soldiers, with plans to grow to 7,000.
It is being created as a response to the refusal of a group of regular Iraqi soldiers to face insurgents in Falluja two months ago. That breakdown culminated in a tense standoff on an airfield with eight American marines surrounded by an angry group of 200 armed Iraqis who refused to board helicopters.
"Basically, that scene was the trigger," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, the senior military adviser in charge of training Iraqi security forces. "It was our fault. We tried to send the Iraqi Army into Falluja before they were ready, and they pushed back. After that, we realized we needed a force that was specially designed to fight in urban areas and ready to fight fellow Iraqis."
"I personally made the mistake with the Falluja incident," General Eaton said. "I didn't appreciate all the conflicting loyalties these guys have — to their families, their tribes, their imams, their sects. I've learned a lot since then of the psychology of young Iraqi men and what we're up against."
The general said all soldiers who volunteered for the task force had to agree to a mission statement that pledged they would fight terrorists, former elements of the fallen Saddam Hussein government and insurgents within Iraq. Some task force soldiers take an oath; others make a more informal commitment.
The new force is being trained at Taji, a big military-industrial complex north of Baghdad littered with the detritus of conflicts past: burned-out tanks, smashed factories and office buildings with hallways that are crunchy with shattered glass.
On Thursday, as American advisers watched, a squad of four Iraqi recruits ran through one of those buildings to attack a very threatening looking file cabinet.
"Keep your head up!" yelled Sgt. Michael Smith. "And remember your angle; make sure you're looking up when you round that corner."
At another training site, two men covered in leaves and sticks crawled out of the bushes and fired a fake rocket-propelled grenade at a truck while their comrades raked the vehicle with gunfire — blanks, of course.
The lesson: do as the insurgents do.
The American advisers say the counterinsurgency task force is the best trained of the Iraqi security services and is also the best equipped — outfitted with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and heavy machine guns.
Again, Falluja was a turning point.
"Once we saw what the resistance had, we made sure our guys wouldn't get outgunned," said Capt. Howard Adlam, another adviser. "It's a credibility issue."
Many members of the new task force said they were eager to kill erhabi, or terrorists. But when the question turned to fighting the mujahedeen, they sounded less sure.
"Many of these mujahedeen are poor farmers and uneducated," said Lt. Ahmed Hamid Kadem, a 25-year-old Iraqi officer from Basra. "I hope we don't have to fight them. They are our people."
Lieutenant Kadem added, however, "if we must fight them, we will wipe them out."
Col. Shafeen Abdul Majid is a steely eyed Kurdish fighter who, the American advisers say, is one of the most promising task force officers. He said the key to fighting the resistance was "making your soldiers understand they are fighting for Iraq, not against it."
The new force will use sport utility vehicles so that it can be light and mobile. Units have been carefully constructed to ensure that Iraq's three major groups — Shiites, Sunnis and and Kurds — are proportionally represented.
Most of the recruits are former Iraqi Army soldiers. The American advisers say all have been vetted through computer databases to make sure they are not wanted terrorists or suspected of war crimes, but commanders acknowledge the system is not foolproof. Members of the task force are paid the same as the regular Iraqi Army, starting around $150 per month.
The task force is part of the push to get Iraqi security forces up and running before the United States transfers authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
American advisers say they are pleased with the progress. The original goal for the police force was 85,000 officers; 92,000 have been hired. The border patrol is fully staffed at 17,000 officers, and so is the facility protection services, with 74,000 officers. The civil defense corps is at 25,000 members, with another 15,000 to go. The army is the furthest from its goal, with 7,000 soldiers out of the 35,000 intended.
General Eaton, who is leaving the country in a week and handing his duties to a new team, says it is a great improvement from the situation on April 5.
On that day, as 4,500 American marines were preparing an offensive against Falluja, soldiers from the Second Battalion of the Iraqi Army were called into the fight. On the way from Taji to Baghdad, the force was ambushed. American advisers then changed plans and brought the 200 untested Iraqi soldiers to an airfield to be lifted into Falluja. None had ever been on a helicopter before.
That is when the plan went sideways. Some 70 Iraqi soldiers surrounded the eight American advisers and told them they would not fight fellow Iraqis. The Iraqi soldiers who did want to go to Falluja then started yelling at those who did not.
"I had 200 upset Iraqi soldiers on my hands, and each had 100 rounds of ammunition," Maj. Chris Davis said. "Let's just say it was a volatile situation." In the end, Major Davis scuttled the mission.
American advisers said that the men who did not want to go to Falluja had now moved on to other work and that the new task force was ready for Falluja-like operations.
"We're on to something here," General Eaton said. "It's just taken us a little while to learn."
It would be nice if each of the new force members was equipped with an implanted remote controlled self-destruction device, just as an added safety feature.
Err...as previously posted on FR.
This would be their TAT (To Accompany Troop) ammo. There'd be more ammo near if they'd gone and needed it.
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