Iraqi soldiers still rely heavily on U.S. Army

As dawn broke, a thick mist enveloped the lines of military trucks poised to sweep through a tract of rich farmland where Sunni Arab insurgents had turned miles of irrigation canals into trenches with holes to stash weapons, food and blankets.

A chilly downpour turned narrow dirt roads into sheets of slippery mud that sent vehicles skidding into ditches.

For the U.S. Army, the weather was a temporary setback. Officers said it actually worked to their advantage because it left the enemy surrounded and exposed to the wet, wind and cold.

But for their Iraqi allies in an ambitious effort to reclaim an insurgent haven in eastern Diyala province, the weather could have spelled the end of the offensive. When U.S. Humvees, Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks pushed ahead two days later, they had to tow the Iraqis to the fight. Their flimsy pickup trucks and minivans had become hopelessly stuck.

As the campaign continued into a second week, U.S. forces flew in everything the Iraqis needed to keep going: ammunition, rice, T-shirts, dry socks and cigarettes.

A long way to go

As pressure mounts here and at home for U.S. troops to start leaving, the assault in Diyala province this month showed how far the Iraqis must go before they can stand on their own.

U.S. troops with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, said the Iraqis had made great strides since they were deployed to the province four months ago. But asked whether the operation would have been possible without the United States, Iraqi Capt. Kader Abdul Kareem Majid shook his head.

“The coalition forces have airplanes, tanks, all the equipment they need. But the Iraqi army does not have that,” said Majid, a 10-year veteran of a Kurdish militia that fought Saddam Hussein’s army. “We need U.S. support.”

The offensive began Jan. 4 with a combined ground and air assault on a remote rural area the size of Baghdad. About 600 U.S. troops joined forces with about 400 soldiers with Iraq’s 1st Brigade, 5th Army Division.

Insurgents in the targeted area are thought to be providing support for attacks in Baghdad, Baqubah and other strife-torn cities. Al Qaeda in Iraq last year declared an Islamic caliphate in Diyala, and its leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike here in June.

Back then, Iraqi soldiers refused to venture into the region around Turki, stronghold of a tribe that had supplied top officers to Hussein and later forged ties with Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Iraqi soldiers referred to a checkpoint on the northern edge of the region, which drew regular mortar fire, as the “posting of death.”

“They are all dangerous here,” said recruit Ali Mohammed, a Shiite teenager from western Diyala. “Only the men wearing the same uniform as me are my brothers in this land.”

But with the might of the U.S. Army behind them, morale was much higher during this month’s offensive. Iraqi soldiers clapped their hands and sang as they rolled out of their base.

The U.S. soldiers said they had to hold the Iraqis back as they conducted a slow and meticulous search of every home, seeking to collect evidence on insurgent activities.

“These guys are not organized, but they are aggressive as hell,” said Capt. Andy Hercik, as he prepared a dozen Iraqi soldiers to search a wind-swept village eerily devoid of men. “When we went into the village yesterday, they swarmed the place.”

“Like Normandy?” said a laughing Capt. Stephen Dobbins, his troop commander in the 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.

“More like cockroaches when you turn the light on,” Hercik replied ruefully.

As the two sides searched mud huts and pillared homesteads, the Iraqis proved adept at spotting an out-of-place carpet concealing a hoard of guns or a bomb tucked among the reeds.

It was also Iraqis who recognized three brothers identified as key members of a group known as the Council, which oversaw insurgent activities in the region, just as U.S. forces were about to walk away from their mechanical repair shop in Turki.

Dobbins was delighted when he saw Iraqi soldiers squatting in a waterlogged field outside another village to provide cover as others pushed in.

“This is awesome. They are moving tactically, pulling security,” he said. “This is a great step forward for these guys.”

Details kept secret

But there also was friction. Fearful that information would leak to the insurgents, U.S. commanders kept details of the operation from all but the most senior Iraqi officers until hours before it began. Even so, one detainee later said he had been tipped off by an Iraqi officer.

Iraqi commanders said the tight security prevented them from preparing properly.

“I didn’t have time to organize supplies, vehicles or ammunition for the soldiers,” said Majid, a company commander.

Although Iraqi officers emphasized their support for the U.S. forces’ methodical approach to clearing villages, many of their men grew impatient. They repeatedly asked in broken English, “When we kill Wahhabis?,” a reference to adherents of the fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam practiced by many Al Qaeda members.

U.S. soldiers assured them they would get their chance. But because of the yawning technological gap between them, it was the Americans who did most of the killing.

U.S. troops used advanced optics and aerial surveillance to spot small groups of gunmen and then called in thundering artillery and airstrikes. More than 100 were believed killed, in most cases before they had fired a shot.

“Look at our equipment. It is not like the Americans’,” said Mohammed Habeeb, a Shiite soldier from the southern city of Basra, holding a battered machine gun with no sight. “Most of the insurgents would rather go after the Americans, but they are scared of them. So who do they go after? The ordinary Iraqi soldier.”

Majid said he was forced to rely on U.S. aircraft to ferry in supplies and evacuate the wounded. Most of his vehicles had no armor plating or covers to shield his men from the elements. And his radios did not have the range to communicate with his headquarters.

After a rain-soaked night spent huddled beneath their vehicles, many of the Iraqi soldiers clamored to return to the rear for a hot meal -- with bloody consequences.

An antitank mine ripped through the Iraqi convoy, killing a soldier and injuring three. They were among at least eight Iraqis killed and 29 injured during the operation. Antitank mines also injured more than a dozen U.S. soldiers, but because their vehicles were better protected, most of their injuries were less serious.

The United States has supplied the Iraqi 5th Army Division with 181 of a promised 211 armor-plated Humvees, U.S. officials said. But many were deployed elsewhere, and at least 45 already had been destroyed by roadside bombs or were awaiting repairs, they said.

U.S. officials are reluctant to provide more sophisticated equipment until they are confident the Iraqis can maintain and keep track of it.

Much of the training in coming months will focus on building logistics systems, they said.

“A lot of the Iraqi soldiers have the will and want to fight,” said Lt. Col. Michael Beaudette, executive officer for five teams of U.S. trainers embedded with the 5th Division. “But in order for them to succeed, they need to be supplied and maintained.”

Corruption is also a problem, he said. Some commanders inflate the numbers in their units so they can pick up the extra salaries, then wonder why they get asked to do missions they can’t handle, he said. It also can take months for a promotion to be reflected in a soldier’s pay.

“If you don’t take care of your soldiers, they are going to walk,” he said. “Because in Iraq, the soldiers are not held under any law to stay.”

Suspicious Sunnis

The region’s residents, most of them Sunnis, were suspicious of the mostly Shiite Arab and Kurdish soldiers, accusing them of shakedowns and arbitrary arrests when not accompanied by U.S. forces.

“We hear that sometimes they take the men, and they don’t come back,” said a worried Hanna Gatan. A gaunt woman wrapped in a green veil, she sat on a mat with her husband’s second wife and their six squirming children while the soldiers searched their home. She said their husband was away herding sheep.

“What if they take him?” she asked. “He is the only man we have. Can you imagine a family without a man? Who will be responsible?”

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers detained about 50 suspects and seized dozens of weapons caches in the area, then set up a new base to maintain a presence. There are plans to improve water and electricity distribution, fix roads and open schools to undercut support for the insurgency.

It remains to be seen whether the Iraqis can hold the area after the Americans leave. But they said they already had achieved one important victory.

“The government did not control this place before,” Majid said. “Now, the people understand that the government can go anyplace it wants.”

zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writer Said Rifai contributed to this report.