Tough Times for 5th Brigade of Iraq’s Army

The rank smell of sweat, stale cigarettes and garbage engulfs the cavernous aircraft hangar where hundreds of Iraqi men in khaki fatigues lounge on black metal bunk beds with bare mattresses. A door in the corner leads to the bathroom -- a dozen or so metal cubicles reeking of human filth.

For many of the more than 2,000 men who make up the Iraqi army’s fledgling 5th Brigade, this dank metal shed with sporadic electricity and no running water has been their home for the last six months as they prepare to take their place on the front lines against the country’s insurgency.

U.S. politicians and military commanders hail the rapid development of Iraq’s security forces as the key to ending the insurgency and speeding the homecoming of the nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq. But a day spent with the 5th Brigade reveals the interlocking obstacles of logistics, bureaucracy and human nature that stand in the way of that goal.

Uncomfortable, unsanitary living conditions on this abandoned Baghdad airfield have eroded brigade morale, Iraqi officers say. Many soldiers have quit, and more say they plan to.

“We come home from training or patrols soaking in sweat and can’t even wash,” says one soldier who didn’t want to be identified for fear of being punished. “Is this the way we should live?”

To a man, the soldiers say they’re willing to face the dangers of an insurgency that kills dozens of police officers and soldiers every month. Most cite patriotism and economic need as reasons for joining; the approximately $300 monthly salary is one of the better incomes available in Iraq.

But that dedication is tempered by a mounting feeling of anger at having been neglected and left to stew in the hangar for six months. Says one soldier: “We don’t need electricity. We don’t need more money. We just need water.”

Despite the conditions, the men continue to train. In the midday heat, a squad of about 25 Iraqi soldiers fans out through the surrounding residential neighborhood. Three U.S. soldiers walk in the midst of the phalanx, checking up and down the line and offering discreet tips to the leaders.

Staff Sgt. Ryan Frodge turns to Sgt. Mohammed Abdel Amer and asks in heavily accented Arabic, “Zein?” Good?

“Yes, very good,” Abdel Amer replies in equally accented English.

As the soldiers walk a several-block route past gated homes and clothing stores, Lt. Aamer Farhan rides herd over his patrol, instructing his troops to cover certain buildings for snipers or inspect parked cars, and yelling at those caught daydreaming or bunching too close together.

“Every day on the street, they learn something new,” Farhan says.

Several soldiers adopt hard-boiled thousand-yard stares, but others make a point of greeting residents and passersby. Several groups of men stare blankly at the passing troops; some offer heartier greetings.

“Praise the Lord. God give you strength,” says one middle-aged woman peeping over her driveway gate.

“The honorable citizens welcome us,” Farhan says.

As for the not-so-honorable citizens, he shrugs. “There’s nothing I can do to convince them.”

The multiple daily patrols are the final step in the 5th Brigade’s training, a real-life classroom exercise designed to test how the soldiers will react on the streets.

“The first or second time, I was scared,” Pvt. Hamid Obeisi, 28, said. “After doing it again and again, we’ve become lions.”

But the U.S. trainers are careful not to push their students too far too fast. Previous post-invasion incarnations of the Iraqi army were exposed in times of conflict as under-prepared and unreliable. In spring 2004, when simultaneous conflicts erupted with Sunni Muslim insurgents in Fallouja and the Shiite Muslim militia of populist cleric Muqtada Sadr, thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers either ran away, switched sides or refused to fight fellow Iraqis.

The 5th Brigade is scheduled to graduate this month, when it will assume partial responsibility for guarding the Green Zone, the heavily fortified swath of central Baghdad that houses most of the Iraqi government and the U.S. and British embassies.

Until then, U.S. instructors run them through daily patrols.

The dynamic between U.S. and Iraqi soldiers seems genuinely collegial. Before and after the mission, the Iraqis and their trainers trade jokes, challenge one another to mock fights and exchange bilingual obscenities.

“We treat them like human beings,” says Maj. Chris Worrill, operations officer for the 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, which is overseeing the training. “They’re not colonial troops. They’re not our defeated enemy.”

Iraqi officers say the Americans have taken pains not to come across as high-handed, and have worked hard to navigate the minefield of cultural taboos and the ever-prickly sense of Iraqi pride.

“They’re very careful not to offend us,” says Capt. Bahjat Khalil Ibrahim, the brigade’s assistant operations officer. “They ask us to tell them if they make any cultural mistakes.”

Despite the mutual respect and camaraderie on display, Worrill acknowledges that there’s no way of knowing just how reliable the 5th Brigade will be until the soldiers get out in the field. He also knows that many of the Iraqis under his care are not necessarily friends of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

“Not all these guys like us. Some of them are in the army because they want us to leave Iraq,” he says. “I respect that. I think it’s awesome.”

The soldiers are overwhelmingly Shiite, and the barracks is filled with portraits of Imam Ali, the original Shiite martyr, and Sadr, the anti-American cleric.

When asked about Sadr, soldiers eagerly begin pulling pictures of the portly, black-bearded cleric out of their wallets. Several speak with admiration of his long-standing opposition to the U.S. occupation.

Pvt. Ahmed Twair, 30, sheepishly admits that a year ago he was fighting Americans in Najaf as part of Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia.

“It was different circumstances,” he says. “At the time there was no elected government to get behind and support.”

Still, Iraqi and U.S. officers acknowledge that the living conditions on the base have bred a palpable sense of discontent. Many troopers interpret the conditions as a sign of disrespect.

Soldiers complain bitterly that they are provided with 1 1/2 liters of bottled water per day to wash with and drink. Many trudge about half a mile to bathe and wash their uniforms at a broken water main on the base.

No one understands how a military as powerful and capable as America’s could be unable to run a water pipe less than 1,000 yards over safe ground. Perhaps the only thing that has kept the soldiers’ resentment from bursting into open revolt is the knowledge that their own leaders are suffering too.

“I’m an officer and I haven’t been able to shower for three days,” Ibrahim said. “It definitely affects the morale of the soldiers.”

Since its formation in January, the brigade has lived and trained on a walled-off section of tarmac at the former Muthana air base in the heart of Baghdad. Massive concrete columns and rusting construction cranes tower over the training site, remnants of a structure that was to be the Saddam Mosque but was abandoned by then-President Saddam Hussein before the war.

For four months, the brigade languished unattended, practicing formation marching and military etiquette as negotiations dragged on for months over the formation of a new, elected Iraqi government.

When Worrill’s unit arrived in April, members found the soldiers living amid piles of garbage and metal debris and rebar from the mosque construction site.

“As bad as it is now, it’s 100 times better than it was in April,” Worrill says. “I know it’s still terrible.... We’re doing our best to improve living conditions, but it’s just taking longer than we thought.”

The reasons for the prolonged water outage are tied up in engineering realities and bureaucratic procedure, mixed in with a bit of a culture clash.

Worrill says the base was never meant to be occupied this long by this many soldiers, and there hasn’t been a strong desire to pour money into renovating a temporary facility.

The majority of the soldiers are country boys from Iraq’s rural Shiite south, Worrill says, and many don’t know what to do with Western-style plumbing.

The base’s contractor, Anis Dyi, says that running a line from the broken water main to the barracks is technically very simple. But the sewage system underneath is so backed up that doing so would immediately prompt an ecological crisis, and fixing the sewers is beyond his scope.

In the meantime, Worrill has moved two portable water tankers onto the tarmac for the soldiers to use. Dyi is building free-standing trailers holding 10 showers stalls each. Long, air-conditioned tents are being rapidly built inside a second hangar.

For now, the soldiers count the days until graduation, not only as a validation of their status as protectors of their country, but as a desperately needed reprieve from the Muthana hangar.