By Eric Schmitt
New York Times
24 February 2005
TAJI, Iraq - In a ceremony at this sprawling Iraqi Army base in early January that drew virtually no attention abroad, the Iraqi military took what American officials say was a pivotal step and a calculated gamble in the effort to defeat the insurgency.
As nearly 100 Iraqi tanks, gun trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled by a reviewing stand filled with ribbon-bedecked Iraqi and American generals, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, and top Iraqi officers made an announcement: Iraq's national guard, a regional civil defense force formed less than two years ago, would be merged into the relatively small national army.
What at first glance appeared to be a symbolic shift of command and set of new uniforms is now coming to be seen as an important example of finding new ways to train and equip Iraq's fledgling security forces to defend the country and to allow 150,000 American troops to leave, senior American and Iraqi officers say.
The 38,000 national guard troops will swell the regular army's ranks to nearly 50,000 soldiers, creating a unified ground force that will have common pay, uniforms and standards.
Being part of the army will make the former national guard soldiers more available for missions away from their home bases. Most guard units now conduct patrols and operations only in their region, often in tandem with American troops in places like Baghdad and Mosul.
Gen. Babakir al-Zibari, chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, said incorporating the national guard into the army would "ensure unity of command and effort to meet the security challenges we currently face."
The Iraqi Army is trained and equipped at higher standards than the national guard, whose heavier weaponry will now be significantly increased. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American officer in charge of training the Iraqi forces, said that in many of the 42 national guard battalions, the number of heavy machine guns has increased to 32 from 8 per battalion. More radios, vehicles and other equipment are also flowing in as the transition takes place.
Those changes come at a cost. The Pentagon recently asked Congress for $5.7 billion in additional money to help finance the training effort this year, and it is spending that will not give immediate results.
"In the near term we won't see much change," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who until recently commanded American forces in northern Iraq. "Longer term, I think there is goodness that can come from having more units trained and equipped to the same standards across the nation."
Important Iraqi political and cultural considerations are also at work, some of which reflect Iraqi officials' desire to exert more control since the elections held on Jan. 30, American and Iraqi officials said.
While the national guard has relied heavily on American and other allied forces in Iraq, the regular army has more direct ties - and answers more directly - to the Iraqi government.
Perhaps most important, the Iraqi Army is a highly respected institution in the country, largely untainted from the three-decade rule of Saddam Hussein, who never trusted the army and created special military and intelligence units, like the Special Republican Guard, to preserve his power.
It was no coincidence, for example, that Dr. Allawi and top Iraqi officers chose Jan. 6, the 84th anniversary of the creation of the modern Iraqi Army in 1921, to announce the merger of the national guard into nine new Iraqi Army divisions, officials said.
The national guard, originally called the Iraqi civil defense corps, had none of that institutional loyalty or history. "Civil defense" connoted the fire department and emergency services, not military fighters, American commanders said.
Incorporating the national guard into the army has given those units legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis and has bolstered morale, commanders say. "It's a significant move for them to be part of the regular army," said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., a retired commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent two tours in Iraq. "It's like saying, 'You're a real warrior again.' "
But training and equipping the national guard is fraught with challenges, and converting its units into army forces is a calculated gamble, some American officials say.
While some national guard units have performed well, particularly in securing the elections, others are still battling high absentee rates. Some American advisers expressed concern that the Iraqi Army's command and control structure was not ready for the sudden integration of the national guard. If that is not built up quickly, it will pose a major hurdle to the Pentagon's plan to withdraw from Iraq.
Dispatching national guard units to trouble spots across the country can also pose steep challenges. "There are likely to be some concerns from former national guard units that may not want to leave their home areas," General Ham said. "I haven't seen that manifested yet, but I feel it may be likely."
Disbanded in the spring of 2003 by L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq at the time, the Iraqi military has been slowly reconstituted in several distinct units, along with separate police forces.
The original concept of the national guard was to have a modest military ability, largely to help at a local level, without adding those formations to a regular army that might become tempted to carry out a coup.
But in fighting the current insurgency, the level of force that even a well-trained guard unit can deliver is inadequate in the view of some field commanders and some Iraqi officials who are pressing for a greatly increased military ability.
Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, said bringing the guard units' capacity up would be a consuming task. "The long-term goal is to get them all the same," he said. "That's where the Ministry of Defense has work to do."
In a national security strategy paper issued on Jan. 15, Dr. Allawi said the goal of training 100,000 Iraqi soldiers by July would be increased to 150,000 "fully qualified" soldiers by the end of the year. Over all, according to the Pentagon, Iraq will have 270,000 trained soldiers and police officers by next year.
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Citation: Eric Schmitt, "Iraqi Army Adds National Guard to Its Ranks," New York Times, 24 February 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/24guard.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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