By Neil MacDonald
Financial Times, 19 December 2005
Before the Tigers head out on patrol, battalion poet Fadel, notebook in one hand and megaphone in the other, whips up their enthusiasm with some custom-composed verses. The aged veteran belongs to a unit that American officers describe as one of the best-trained and best-led in the new Iraqi army, assembled in fits and starts since the US-led ousting of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago.
While the US administration insists that any troop withdrawal must be "conditions based", confidence in the 900-strong Tigers - officially the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi 2nd Brigade - and several other home-grown battalions in Diyala province is high enough to warrant a reduction in the US troop presence there within the next few weeks, US commanders say.
At Forward Operating Base Normandy, 80km northeast of Baghdad, the 750 members of the US 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry "Battle Boars" expect to be replaced by incoming US forces that are spread much thinner, making the transfer of lead security responsibilities to the Iraqis an undeniable reality.
As soon as the Iraqi election commission had safely collected the ballots from last Thursday's parliamentary elections, the Americans' focus shifted to "relief in place" by fresh US units about to arrive, Lt Col Roger Cloutier, Battle Boars battalion commander, told the Financial Times. The first squad of the Battle Boars left Iraq yesterday.
Assuming that conditions remain stable, the Battle Boars and three other departing US battalions will give way to just one incoming battalion, suggesting a troop reduction from nearly 3,000 to fewer than 1,000 within the same area of operations by the middle of next month, according to US officers.
The Tiger battalion, also based at Normandy, is ready to fill many of the resulting gaps, after months of constant practice alongside US soldiers, Col Cloutier said.
At the core of this security transition is a new idea in US military practice: the Military Transition Team, or MiTT, a group of officers and lower ranks who work daily with their Iraqi counterparts in "mission-essential tasks", ranging from intelligence and operational command to communications, supply and civil-military affairs. The US military adopted the MiTT strategy in April, after months of hand-wringing over the apparent inability of Iraqi units to fight the Sunni-led insurgency unassisted.
Headquartered only a 10-minute walk apart, the Tigers and Battle Boars have maximised the MiTT system's "mentoring" advantages. Iraqi medics, for example, who started out by bringing their casualties to the US combat hospital, can now treat all but the most grievous injuries at their own facility, US officers said.
However, Col Cloutier says he encouraged all his troops to spend time with the Iraqis and "become their friends". Col Theya Ismail al-Tamimi, who commands the Tigers, says his battalion has developed a mix of US-inspired and traditional Iraqi army tactics. While adopting US jargon, the Tigers have maintained their distinctive style. A wall dedicated to 20 or so fallen Tigers looks more like an Islamic martyrs' shrine than any US war memorial. Above the dead's photographs are pinned two camouflage caps, splashes of garish red paint indicating fatal head wounds.
For last Thursday's elections, the Tigers enjoyed a casualty-free day of patrols and checkpoint duties around nearby Muqdadiya and surrounding agricultural villages, an ethnically mixed area of 400,000 residents.
That was a contrast with the October 15 constitutional referendum, which brought a bloody week for the Tigers, but they and the Battle Boars have since seen few casualties. Roadside bomb attacks, blamed on Sunni insurgent cells, have dropped to their lowest levels this year, Col Cloutier said.
Equally importantly, Col Theya, an intelligence officer under the old regime, said, the attacks diminished exactly as the Americans started withdrawing from visible patrolling.
Many of the 160,000 American soldiers deployed in Iraq look forward to rotating home in the coming weeks. But other parts of the country have not progressed so steadily. While Col Cloutier declines to comment "outside my sandbox", his Iraqi counterpart is critical of failures to welcome Sunni Arabs, the minority population that dominated the old regime, into the new order.
Around Muqdadiya, Sunni and Shia numbers are roughly equal, and Col Theya's predominantly Shia Tiger battalion is careful to present itself as part of a defence force for all Iraqis. The next step was to mix up battalions from different areas to create a "normal, integrated national army", he said.
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Citation: Neil MacDonald. "Iraqi battalion takes charge of building confidence," Financial Times, 19 December 2005.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ab9ff980-7034-11da-a1f7-0000779e2340.html
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