By Steve Negus
Financial Times, 29 March 2006
The Iraqi army unit bivouacked in a former chicken coop in Hit is not happy.
One weary veteran says two-thirds of his unit have gone absent without leave since it arrived in this western Iraqi town in September - he too would have left if there were any jobs at home and his meagre pay were not the only way to support his family.
"There is no sense of respect in this army," adds a young sergeant, and the recruits piled into dilapidated bunk beds nod approval. The mostly Shia soldiers in the unit say they are convinced they can take the enemy - whom they describe either as "terrorists'' or Sunni ultra-puritan "takfiris'' - in a stand-up fight, particularly if they had enough weapons and supplies.
Instead they face a gruelling battle of endurance with a largely invisible foe here in the far west of the country, in a Sunni town spread along the Euphrates river with hundreds of kilometres of desert on either side, at the end of a long and often dysfunctional supply train.
This unit's deployment fits in to a larger plan to establish Iraqi government control over Anbar province, considered a key supply route for insurgent volunteers and money heading from the Syrian border south and east to the battlegrounds of Ramadi and Baghdad.
Since the fall of theinsurgent-held town of Falluja in November 2004 the US military has been able to free up enough units to deploy a permanent presence in towns along the Euphrates valley that were all but abandoned to the insurgents.
US units will provide the protective cover to build up the Iraqi army, which in turn will allow local leaders to form police forces to monitor their communities.
As part of this plan the Iraqi army units live and patrol with their US counterparts, a scheme that is supposed to give both tactical skills and confidence.
But while their US trainers say the Iraqis are coming along tactically, the presence of well-equipped, well-paid Americans appears only to highlight the deficiencies of their own leadership.
The Iraqis say they lack the high-tech equipment used by the US military to fight insurgents in the area, - surveillance gear to spot guerrillas laying roadside bombs, the ordnance teams that clear them and the sensors that pinpoint the location of incoming mortar fire.
"All we have are these," says a 20-year veteran of the previous Iraqi army, pointing to a Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifle hanging on his wall - the unit also has some older-generation night-vision equipment but the troops are convinced it is not up to American standards.
By numbers, the Iraqi military is doing well, with 113,000 troops on duty today, up from 68,000 a year ago.
More than half the battalions in the field can plan their own operations; some even deploy tanks and other armoured vehicles. What is lacking, says the coalition, are the "greater complexities of military management" - in particular, procurement and supply - and in Hit, one of the more isolated corners of the country, the deficiency is keenly felt.
By the troops' count, casualties caused by the insurgents are light but the sense of isolation saps morale. The US military must still organise and escort the convoys that keep the troops supplied, and ferry them across the desert for their frequent and extensive leave, without which many would not serve.
Food often runs short, the soldiers say, and the shuffle through various depots to and from their homes is a days-long, humiliating ordeal.
The soldiers also complain of the Iraqi government's disorganisation - "a hundred different parties, each working for their own interest'' - and say they have no faith in its leadership.
"No one enlisted out of nationalism or principles. They signed up for the money," says one young officer. The troops earn just over $300 (€250, £170) a month, a relatively good salary in postwar Iraq but one many feel is not worth their time and the risk.
They say that if they are killed bureaucratic routine will prevent their families from drawing a pension. They are indignant that units based in safer areas receive the same pay.
US officers say the process of building up troop capabilities will be a long one but that ultimately Iraqi soldiers should have an advantage over foreign troops in an intelligence-driven campaign by their ability to interact with the population.
This unit, however, has little trust in the people of Hit - "they fear us and we fear them," one says - and wonder how they can be expected to find an enemy that even the Americans have trouble locating.
US officers in Hit admit there are challenges to creating a motivated military in the midst of a counter-insurgency campaign that taxes even the most professional forces.
In some parts of Baghdad, Iraqi army units are cheered in the street, and can draw motivation from the sense that they are fighting to defend their homes against "terrorists". In Hit, the reason to fight appears to be less clear.
One Iraqi officer says local leaders have suggested US and Iraqi forces withdraw and the community be allowed to police itself - a strategy he endorses.
Barring that, he says, the only way a conventional military force can handle insurgents is by doing what the Iraqi military has done in the past - inflict wholesale collective punishment on the communities that shelter them.
"In Saddam's era, if a shot came from one area, then all that area was laid waste," he says. "The policy of Saddam is better than the current policy if you want to exert control."
Such nostalgia for the previous regime, from a soldier too young to have served in it, is not what the coalition forces had in mind when they talked of the progress being made by Iraqi units.
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Citation: Steve Negus. "Far-flung deployment saps the morale of Iraqi soldiers," Financial Times, 29 March 2006.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/009d5b74-bec0-11da-b10f-0000779e2340,s01=1.html
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