By Alastair Macdonald
Reuters, 07 September 2006
BAGHDAD, Sept 7 (Reuters) - When Iraq's prime minister took command of his own army from a U.S. general on Thursday in Baghdad's Green Zone, all around was evidence of the challenge his army faces in becoming a serious force for national unity.
The limited presence of Iraqi troops inside the Baghdad government compound itself speaks of the struggle for competence and cohesion ahead if the armed forces are to become an instrument for preventing the country's collapse into civil war and so allow for a dignified departure for 140,000 U.S. troops.
Not only do U.S. soldiers provide the heavy firepower, air cover and high-tech surveillance that keep the sprawling citadel in the city centre safe from most attacks, but within the zone's several square miles Iraq's leaders surround their own offices and residences with their own private armies, not Iraqi troops.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's unity coalition has vowed to disband sectarian and ethnic militias and build an army to defend the state. Yet a colourful mix of Sunni, Kurdish and Shi'ite forces proliferates at the seat of government, highlighting the mutual mistrust hobbling the Iraqi military.
"We trust our own people," one Iraqi official said simply of the party militiamen who guard his own workplace, which like many offices of state is effectively a fiefdom of one faction.
Some of these private armies, especially Shi'ite and Kurdish veterans of long guerrilla wars against Saddam Hussein, have more experience and better equipment than Iraq's new soldiers.
Trained by Americans over the past two years and due to be at its planned strength of over 130,000 within a few months, the Iraqi army is 12-18 months away from coping without heavy U.S. assistance, U.S. commander General George Casey said last week.
Few doubt the case for a national army, but some analysts question whether such a force is possible and some U.S. officers wonder whether Iraq's leaders have the political will for it.
"Iraq simply cannot be held together much longer without a national army that can defend the new political order," Larry Diamond, once a U.S. adviser in Iraq, wrote in Foreign Affairs in July. A critic of much recent U.S. policy there, he qualified the efforts to rebuild Iraqi forces as an "incremental success".
But a senior U.S. military official, noting the constraints Iraqi forces face in confronting militias linked to parties in Maliki's government, said: "The Iraqi security forces will perform as well, or as poorly, as their government allows them."
"MISTRUST"
Casey spoke of a virtuous circle ending what another general called an "environment of mistrust" among Iraqis toward Iraqi troops: "When the people begin to feel more confidence in their security forces they'll feel less need to rely on the militias."
But the Pentagon, for whom rebuilding Iraq's security forces is the linchpin of a strategy for bringing stability and a U.S. withdrawal, recorded two other "obstacles to progress" in a quarterly report this month: desertion and communal divisions.
"Battalion commanders of one particular group tend to command only soldiers of their own sectarian or regional backgrounds," the report said. It also noted "absenteeism" rates rising up to 8 percent when units were deployed to combat, with commanders having no legal punishment system to deter desertion.
Maliki addressed his troops directly on Thursday, reminding them bluntly: "You have to follow the chain of command."
On at least two occasions, one of them last month, Iraqi troops have essentially mutinied and refused to move to combat zones. Once there, their fighting abilities win mixed reviews from U.S. commanders, high praise blending with caution.
Last week, U.S. troops were sent to Diwaniya after the Iraqi army suffered at least 20 dead fighting Shi'ite militiamen. Casey said the Iraqi soldiers performed "quite well".
U.S. military analyst Andrew Krepinevich, proponent of a strategy by which U.S. and Iraqi troops are now surging through Baghdad's troublespots to bring down violence, argues for a trebling of U.S. advisers inside Iraqi units to improve them.
"We need to substantially expand the number of American advisers," he said. "These would be steel rods to reinforce these units but also an invaluable source of intelligence about units, which are corrupt, incompetent, loyal, sectarian ... The sooner these units become capable the sooner we can leave."
Chaim Kaufmann, a Lehigh University academic also writing in Foreign Affairs, believes, however, that Iraq is heading for a break-up and that efforts to build a united army cannot stop it:
"Trying to create a genuinely Iraqi security force will not work ... because there is no powerful, legitimate political movement loyal to 'Iraq' ... Nor could most members of the security forces be persuaded to identify with such a force if it did exist," he wrote, describing many units as openly sectarian.
Underlining limits to patience among the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq -- and pressure to bring foreign troops home -- some diplomats concede privately they expect Iraqi forces will suffer problems of discipline and cohesion after foreign troops leave:
"We're doing what we can. But in the end, of course, you're going to see a dip in standards when we leave," one Coalition official said this week. "Then it really will be up to them."
Additional reporting by Ross Colvin
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Citation: Alastair Macdonald. "Iraqi army faces challenge of cohesion, competence," Reuters, 07 September 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MAC723003.htm
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