U.S. to Overhaul Training of Iraqi Forces

U.S. commanders in Iraq are planning major changes in how they train Iraqi military forces as part of a continuing but often frustrating effort to prepare Iraqis to defend the country against a deadly insurgency.

The latest attempt to overhaul the U.S. approach will incorporate lessons of military training successes in Afghanistan -- where American advisors remain with Afghan units for two years -- and will address what commanders describe as the scarcity of mid-level Iraqi leadership.

The overhaul, described by top commanders in interviews as a sea change in methods, would enable U.S. military strategists to assign an expanded cadre of American advisors to work closely with Iraqi units after they receive basic training. U.S. advisors traveling with Iraqi battalions would have access to American intelligence and could call in U.S. planes, bombs and quick-reaction forces, a senior defense official said recently in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Under one proposal being considered, Americans would lead Iraqi military units, which U.S. commanders say suffer from a “leadership gap.” The changes would primarily affect the military services, which account for 43% of a security force that also includes police and that commanders describe as “broken.”

“There are certainly lessons that we can take from Afghanistan and apply to Iraq,” Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said in a recent interview in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Abizaid, who heads the U.S. Central Command, directs the American military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A close relationship between American and local troops, he said, “was the key to success in Afghanistan, and it will be a key to success in Iraq.... It will also give them the opportunity to bring in U.S. firepower as a backup when they need it.”

The changes are being planned as part of the Bush administration’s strategy to turn over security functions to Iraqi forces so the U.S. military can leave Iraq. Shortcomings of past training efforts in Iraq were at center stage during a sharp debate this week on Capitol Hill, where senators questioned Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice about progress and timetables.

Rice repeatedly cited Pentagon data that said more than 120,000 Iraqis had been trained. She drew criticism from senators who noted that the number included more than 50,000 police officers who were given as little as three weeks of basic training and were considered unprepared to take over security from American troops.

“Time and again this administration has tried to leave the American people with the impression that Iraq has well over 100,000 fully trained, fully competent military police and personnel. And that is simply not true,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Rice during a hearing Wednesday before the panel voted to approve her appointment. “We’re months, probably years away from reaching our target goal.”

An effort to overhaul training for a dozen agencies that make up the Iraqi security forces began after what the senior military official described as a meltdown last April, when Iraqi police and soldiers abandoned their posts under assault by insurgents.

The Pentagon appointed Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus to oversee the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, and he has since modified the program. Before that, senior U.S. military officials said, American forces focused on protecting themselves and made training Iraqi forces “an afterthought, a secondary mission.”

The changes now under consideration by the Central Command and Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, could be melded with any suggestions made by retired Army Gen. Gary E. Luck, who was dispatched by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this month to assess the capabilities of Iraqi forces.

The Pentagon wants to train about 135,000 police officers, 62,000 national guardsmen, 24,000 army troops and others for a security force totaling 271,041. The Pentagon says 126,961 have been trained, but acknowledges that many underwent only basic training and continue to learn on the job.

“If you ask how many have the training that they really need, the number drops down to maybe a tenth of that total,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

The emerging plan was modeled in part on the perceived successes in training the Iraqi Intervention Force, considered the best of the Iraqi troops during the battle for Fallouja in November. Those troops received far more training in close quarters with American advisors.

By contrast, other Iraqi units train for several weeks with American forces, then operate independently. The new strategy, which is patterned after the ones used in Afghanistan, faces a potential uncertainty in that Iraq is a more militarized and violent country.

The new approach is likely to be implemented after national elections scheduled for Jan. 30 in Iraq, as new American units rotate into the country. Commanders have estimated that up to 50% of U.S. troops eventually will be assigned to training.

“So what we’re going to see increasingly in the next couple of months will be that [the U.S.-led coalition] will mandate those sorts of closer, tighter relationships between coalition forces” and the Iraqi security forces, said the senior military official interviewed in Iraq.

“The aim is to give them an injection of steroids, if you will, by way of these advisors,” the official said.

The new training strategy focuses on the Iraqi army, not the police force, which Abizaid called particularly weak.

Although Pentagon figures show 53,520 police on duty in Iraq, U.S. commanders complain that the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has oversight, is dysfunctional. They say many police officers are driving cars or performing chores for the ministry rather than patrolling.

Commanders also have complained that U.S. money seems to trickle slowly from the ministry to local police stations. As a result, few officers drive in armored cars and many lack body armor and sophisticated weapons. Accountability is so poor, some U.S. officials said, that police cars sometimes disappear from Iraqi police stations.

U.S. commanders say the problems stem from Iraqi police’s previous role as enforcers for Saddam Hussein. They were feared more than the Republican Army but were not as respected.

“What’s shocking to us as Westerners and as Americans in particular is how broken the police structure is,” the senior military official said.

The official said a sufficient number of well-trained military units could someday control the insurgency.

“The bottom line is we may not have to fix” the Interior Ministry, the official said. “It may be unfixable.”

To a lesser degree, Abizaid said, the Iraqi army faces obstacles.

“There’s this debate, obviously, in Washington going on right now about the failure of Iraqi security forces, and I would say they’re far from failure,” Abizaid said last week. “It’s a generational effort. It’s not one that’s going to happen within the next month.... I see failure in some places, but more successes than failures. So they’ll ultimately be successful.”

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Training goals

The U.S. Defense Department has a goal of training about 271,000 Iraqi security forces. Less than half that number are now trained, the department says.

*--* Force Trained Required Police 53,520 135,000 Civil intervention force 2,862 4,920 Emergency response unit 205 270 Border enforcement 14,786 28,360 Highway patrol 327 6,300 Bureau of dignitary protection 484 500 Army 4,159 24,425 National guard 40,063 61,904 Intervention force 9,159 6,360 Special operations force 674 1,967 Air force 214 453 Navy 508 582 Total 126,961 271,041

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Source: U.S. State Department