By Eric Schmitt
New York Times
16 January 2005
FORT BRAGG, N.C., Jan. 11 - The American military's main mission in Iraq after the Jan. 30 elections will be to train Iraqi military and police forces to take over security duties, a task that could involve assigning thousands of additional Army advisers to Iraqi units, says the general who will take over next month as American ground commander in Iraq.
The officer, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, said that battling insurgents and reducing the violence would still be high priorities, but that the No. 1 job after the elections would be to improve the training of Iraqi security forces, whose performance is the linchpin of America's strategy for withdrawing from Iraq.
To do that, General Vines said, as many as 10,000 American military advisers could be assigned to work directly with Iraqi units to hone the leadership skills and confidence of newly trained Iraqi officers. He said he could not give precise figures until he had assessed the situation first hand. At present, a few thousand American advisers are assigned to Iraqi units.
"The most desired course of action is that there be rapid progress in training and preparing Iraqis to assume responsibility for security in every province," said General Vines, 55, an Alabaman who served with Special Operations Forces in Somalia and commanded an airborne-assault battalion in the Panama invasion.
From President Bush down, senior American policy makers and commanders have emphasized the need to correct the training of Iraqi security forces, particularly after the disappointing performances of many Iraqi units last year. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent a retired four-star general, Gary E. Luck, to Iraq this week to review military operations and the Iraqi training program.
General Vines's comments in interviews here and those of some of his top staff officers are the most explicit so far on the redirection of American military priorities in Iraq. The general's estimate about the number of possible American advisers is also higher than previously reported.
Col. Ben Hodges, the corps' operations director, said, "When the elections are over, our main effort will be building the Iraqi security forces' ability."
General Vines is preparing to leave here with his headquarters staff this month in time to observe the Iraqi elections. He will take command of ground operations in mid-February, replacing Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz as part of a regular force rotation, and he will report to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq.
This will be the second time General Vines and the corps headquarters have deployed in the last three years. He spent 14 months in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, first as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, then as head of the overall American military operation there, from May 2003 to October 2003.
To prepare for this tour, General Vines, who has spent a total of nearly five years in Afghanistan and Egypt, assigned his commanders and senior noncommissioned officers a reading list on Islam to help them understand the culture in which they will be operating. He brought in Islamic scholars from Yale and the State Department's Foreign Service Institute to speak to his staff on cultural and regional issues.
About half of General Vines's 500-member headquarters staff have served at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, giving them a head start on their new mission. "It's like an N.F.L. team that's been to the Super Bowl," said Brig. Gen. James L. Huggins, the corps chief of staff.
General Vines has also been getting advice from his Pentagon bosses. A couple of weeks ago, he flew to Washington for a private dinner with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. Last week, Mr. Wolfowitz came here for a two-hour meeting that touched on operations in Iraq, as well as the influence in the region of Iran, Syria and Jordan.
The American command is facing insurgents not only on the battlefield, but also on the airwaves in Iraq and throughout the region, the general said. "With regard to information operations, there are multiple audiences: Iraqis on the street, other Islamic nations and the international community at large, as well as Americans at home," he said.
Some of the forces that will fall under his command have been in Iraq for several weeks, part of the military's effort to stagger the latest rotation of forces.
Marines from the Second Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C., will relieve those from the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Falluja.
The 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard is taking over for the First Infantry Division north of Baghdad, becoming the first National Guard division to deploy in combat since the Korean War. Guard members from more than a dozen states, including New York and New Jersey, make up part of the 18,000-soldier task force.
Nearly half of the new rotation of more than 135,000 American troops will be Reserve or National Guard forces, the highest share since the war in Iraq started in March 2003. Many of the New York National Guard soldiers going to Iraq also served in New York City in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Army's Third Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga., whose units led the charge to Baghdad in 2003, will be the first full division to have a second tour in Iraq. Senior Army officials in Washington will be watching the unit's operations closely. It is the first division to undergo a program to revamp the Army's system of divisions, breaking them down into smaller, more mobile brigades that are designed to be self-sustaining. Each brigade, for instance, will have its own engineers, artillery and medical unit.
As for when the Pentagon might significantly reduce its forces in Iraq, General Vines said that depended on conditions and discussions with the Iraqi government.
"We won't dictate the terms of when we will draw down," he said. "Mutual assent is the mechanism. Is the Iraqi government satisfied that they have enough control, that they have an adequate level of security and their citizens can go about their daily lives?"
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Citation: Eric Schmitt, "New U.S. Commander Sees Shift in Military Role in Iraq," New York Times, 16 January 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/international/middleeast/16command.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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