Iraqi Army, Pay for Ex-Soldiers in the Works

U.S. authorities Monday announced the creation of a defense force, christened the New Iraqi Army, and promised monthly stipends to former career soldiers in an attempt to resolve a volatile situation plaguing occupation forces.

The new army will be much smaller and have a more limited role in Iraq than Saddam Hussein’s force, which was one of the largest and most powerful in the Arab world.

The two moves, especially the payments to ex-soldiers, appear to be aimed at defusing the rage of hundreds of thousands of former military men who were left without jobs and pensions when the U.S.-led administration in Iraq disbanded Hussein’s armed forces last month.

Dismissed officers have taken to the streets to demand compensation, and officials fear they could become part of an armed resistance. Two were killed last week when U.S. troops fired on protesters during a demonstration outside the former presidential palace now used as a headquarters by U.S. and allied forces.

U.S. troops in Iraq have faced ambushes and small-scale attacks on a nearly daily basis in recent weeks. Observers say the failure to restore essential services, to transfer any power to Iraqis or to find Hussein have all contributed to the instability.

Attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at U.S. military police near Khaldiyah in western Iraq on Monday, slightly wounding one American. U.S. officials also gave details of an attack Sunday near the town of Ramadi that involved a 12-year-old girl. No one was reported hurt in that ambush.

Under the new U.S. plan, as many as 250,000 ex-soldiers and military retirees from both the regular army and the elite Republican Guard would be eligible for monthly payments of up to about $150, slightly less than their former salaries. Former senior members of Hussein’s Baath Party, ex-agents of the old regime’s internal security forces, or anyone accused of war crimes or human rights abuses would get nothing.

In making the announcement, U.S. officials made a point of praising the majority of the former soldiers and officers as honest military men.

“The Iraq army had a long tradition of service to the nation,” L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. official here, said in a statement. “Many, perhaps most, of its officers and soldiers regarded themselves as professionals serving the nation and not the Baathist regime.”

The new force will be a fraction of the size of Hussein’s bloated 400,000-man military. In two years, it is expected to grow to only about 40,000 soldiers, said Walter Slocombe, the occupation force’s senior advisor for security and defense issues.

Its role also will be greatly diminished. U.S. authorities said it would be given nonpolitical duties such as guarding the borders, providing security at key installations and clearing mines.

“This country was grotesquely over-militarized,” Slocombe said.

Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, former commander of the U.S. Army Infantry Center at Ft. Benning, Ga., will oversee training of the new force.

To be eligible for the stipends, which will depend on length of service and other factors, former soldiers will be required to renounce violence and the Baath Party. The funds are to come from Iraqi revenues, officials said. It will be up to a future Iraqi government, once it is formed, to determine whether to continue the stipends and under what terms.

An additional 300,000 former conscripts will receive a onetime payment. The size of that payment has not yet been determined.

U.S.-led occupation authorities face fierce criticism that they have failed to provide adequate security, basic services such as electricity and jobs or subsistence payments since they ousted Hussein’s government. Former soldiers have been especially militant.

It was not immediately clear whether the new plan would cool the anger of the former soldiers toward the U.S. authorities, but several officers said in interviews that the stipends were likely to help -- at least for the time being.

“The Americans played it just right,” said Abdul Majeed Ibrahim, a 43-year-old former colonel in the Iraqi army.

Majeed, who headed an engineering unit, said he now spends most of his time watching satellite television in his home in Yarmouk, a Baghdad neighborhood where many ex-officers live. Even if the monthly payments come through, he says, they will hardly be enough for the father of two to make much of a life.

Majeed, like the vast majority of former officers, will probably have to find work in the private sector, which under Hussein was a small part of a largely state-run economy. Many with once-comfortable military positions see this as a bleak prospect, especially with their homeland under foreign occupation, its economy in tatters and its infrastructure in ruins.

“I have no joy, no hope,” Majeed said. His father, a former brigadier in the Iraqi military, was equally ambivalent about the U.S. offer.

“What we need now is security and electricity,” said the father, Ibrahim Abdul Majeed, 68, a 37-year veteran of the army who voiced the major preoccupations of many Iraqis. “We hope that with a new army, there will be safety.”

Instead, Iraq faced more instability Monday.

An oil export pipeline exploded in western Iraq near the Syrian border, the latest of three pipeline blasts this month. It was unclear what caused the explosion.

Late Saturday, a gas pipeline caught fire near the western city of Hit, and Iraqi officials blamed sabotage. The fire was reportedly extinguished Monday.

U.S. military officials said Monday that they had come under small-arms fire the previous day in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, and that they had seen a girl running away with an assault rifle. Troops followed the girl and found the gun wrapped in a dress. Three men in the home were detained, but the girl was allowed to remain at home because of her age, they said.

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Times wire services contributed to this report.