Posted on 07/31/2004 7:09:54 PM PDT by blam
Iranians flood across Iraq border unchecked by military
By Neil Barnett in Shalamcheh
(Filed: 01/08/2004)
Iraqi border officials have admitted that buses full of Iranians routinely enter the country without passports or other official identification, despite Baghdad's attempts to clamp down on terrorist infiltration.
Col Jassem al-Qabi, the regional border guard commander in a remote stretch of southern Iraq, said that scores of Iranians enter every day.
Only three of 15 forts at the Iran/Iraq border are operational
'Sometimes a bus-load of Iranian pilgrims will come to the border, with perhaps 45 people on board, and only one will have a passport,' he said.
The dilapidated border station at Shalamcheh bears no signs that it is a vital outpost in the war on terror. It is a huddle of ramshackle buildings and plasterboard cabins in the middle of a flat desert plain where, during the bitter war between the two nations, Iraq used cyanide and mustard gas to halt Iran's attacks.
On either side of Shalamcheh, hundreds of square miles of unpoliced desert are scarred by trenches and strewn with shell craters, mines, barbed wire and burnt-out tanks.
The debris is the only barrier against extremists entering from Iran, a state that sponsors terrorism.
Last month, Washington's 9/11 Commission disclosed that Iran allowed al-Qa'eda terrorists to move freely across its border with Afghanistan and instructed officials not to stamp their passports.
At Zayd fort, another remote border station, the 12 Iraqi guards look across a pond at an almost identical Iranian building, but the men can do little to stop the two-way traffic.
'We often see signs of illegal crossings, like motorcycle tracks and hoof prints,' one guard said. 'In May we fired at two motorcycles, but they got away.'
The guards are woefully ill-equipped, even though British troops recently supplied modern radios. Often there is not enough fuel for the fort's vehicles.
Lt Khaled Hamdan, the fort commander, said: 'We need more Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades. When we meet smugglers, we are outgunned.'
There are 15 forts along the border but only three are operational. British soldiers in the area believe that Iraq's border guards take bribes to supplement their salaries, about £110 per month.
Lt-Col David Cullen, the commanding officer of 1 Royal Horse Artillery, said: 'Passports will get you through Iraq's borders, but so will money.'
ping
Pilgrims? That's a new one.
What if it's people trying to escape the Islamic paradise of Iran?
More like, bus loads of Iranian soldiers in civvys.
What a way to run a warl.
Only three of 15 forts at the Iran/Iraq border are operationalForts? As in, say, forts? Do they have drawbridges and castellated walls and cauldrons for pouring boiling oil on people?
FMCDH(BITS)
Bush should fire his officers in Cent com. This kind of ineptitude is inexcusable.
Border should have sealed before hostilties started-end of war at the latest.
Unlimited explosive supply in Iraq.
Well, this part of Iraq is under British control, so I'm not certain that firing American officers would change the situation much.
Just think of it as a mission of attrition before the big push.
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