The Evolving Iraqi Security Forces: Anatomy, Vision, Challenges (Part 1)
* The author wishes to dedicate the article to the memory of Captain Richard Gannon II, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, United States Marine Corps.
More than democratic institutions, a civil society or economic reconstruction, Coalition leaders consider that the ability of the interim Iraqi Government to enforce its own security is essential to the resuscitation of the Iraqi state, and—at least at this point—a precondition to Coalition troop withdrawals from Iraq.1 Recruiting, training, and fielding indigenous Iraqi security formations have therefore become the highest priorities. The desertion, or collusion with insurgents, of large numbers of Iraqi soldiers and police during the late spring disturbances around Autumnuja, Ramadi and Najaf reinforced the pressing need to create credible, cohesive Iraqi security forces in the run-up to sovereignty in late June. As anti-Coalition and anti-Iraqi government violence continues, this urgency remains constant, even as Coalition forces’ relationships with indigenous government and security officials changes.
American, British and other selected Coalition partners currently in Iraq undertake most training and equipping of Iraqi forces, though private security contractors and Coalition-friendly governments have assisted with some of this training.2 Since late spring 2004 the various Iraqi security formations have been nominally reorganised as the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). However, the unification on a national level of recruitment, training and equipping standards for the ISF has lagged behind, as has the standardisation of order of battle. Among different Coalition areas of responsibility and even within one Coalition member’s operational areas, the ISF’s standards of training and equipment can vary greatly. A vision for the roles of each branch of the ISF, their future and the relationship between branches of the security services also remains undefined. The extension of the now-sovereign Iraqi Government’s authority into increasing realms of national life is likely to either aggravate or accelerate this process of definition for the ISF.
The Iraqi Security Forces: Structures
In Iraq, security services that in the West would possess different, clearly delineated competencies often overlap in the course of providing public safety. For the near to medium term, several elements of Iraq’s law-enforcement agencies will engage in combat-like operations and thus it is necessary for any assessment of the ISF to include all agencies involved in security, not just ‘military’ forces. However, this significant caveat already hints at some of the emerging problems in the overall operational and logistical conception for the provision of security in Iraq.
It is just as important to bear in mind a basic difficulty in comprehending the size, efficacy and equipment of these services. Since the Autumn of 2003, widely differing statements about numbers of Iraqi recruits, trainees and personnel actively serving have emerged from a variety of official and unofficial sources. These sources include the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the Combined Joint Task Force–7 (CJTF–7) and now Multi-National Force—Iraq (MNF–I), the US Departments of Defense and State, the Interim Iraqi Government, as well as various Western think-tanks. Such statements routinely confuse different categories, such as Iraqis arriving at recruitment stations who may never actually enlist; those receiving wages in spite of rarely showing up to train or patrol; Iraqis in training but not service-ready; Iraqis serving without undergoing training of any sort; Iraqis in service with minimal ‘transitional’ training; and finally, fully trained, regularly serving members of the ISF.3
Further, some reports asserting satisfactory levels of training and manning use older target goals, even though these goals continually shifted through the Winter and Spring of 2004. Likewise, when reporting equipment provision, not all statements distinguish between equipment pledged and equipment delivered, with reference rarely being made to quality of equipment, arms, and ammunition. Just as with training, discussions of equipment often rely on outdated requirements. To complicate the picture further, the names of Iraqi or Coalition organisations have also continued to change. As a result, reports from such different sources with varying motivations have recently been criticised as ‘a far less honest reporting system that grossly exaggerates the actual level of training’, such that ‘status reports do even more to disguise the level of true progress’ to a ‘simply unacceptable’ degree. References to quantitative data thus produce a haze of numbers, despite some recent heroic efforts to add clarity to the picture.4
Numerically, the largest service is the Iraqi Police Service (IPS), under the administrative control of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. The Interior Ministry is intended to gradually take over operational control of the Police from Coalition units. With 85 000–95 000 personnel nationally, it has the highest degree of continuity from the period before March 2003. In any given locality, a number of commanders and patrolmen have either continued in place or returned to the job, either with or without Coalition-provided retraining. In blue uniforms, Iraqi police carry a combination of 9 mm pistols (increasingly foreign-supplied Glocks) and 7.62 mm Kalashnikov Avtomat (AK) variants, and transportation for the most part consists of light, non-armoured vehicles. Tactical radios are of limited capability, and some officers possess body armour. Additionally, attached to the Iraqi Police is a multicompany–sized formation to be deployed on the pattern of American police special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT) while there is also a Counter-Insurgency Force that is separate from the Police. Consisting of 3000 men, the Counter-Insurgency Force has three battalions designated as public-order forces concerned with securing demonstrations, riots and other incidents. The remaining two battalions of the Counter-Insurgency Force are dedicated counterinsurgency formations, to be focused on specific trouble spots as they emerge.
The Interior Ministry currently controls two more services. The Iraqi Border Police concentrates in particular on managing transportation corridors in proximity to border outposts. These outposts include Rafha and Ar Ar with Saudi Arabia; al-Turaybil with Jordan; al-Walid, al-Qa’im and al-Rabi’a with Syria; and al-Munthriya with Iran. As of late June, the Border Police included between 12 000 and 18 000 personnel, partially armed with AK variants, body armour and 9 mm pistols. Cars, light trucks (ranging from pick-ups to troop carriers) and sports-utility vehicles provide the main means of service-organic transportation for the Border Police. A minority of vehicles are fitted with mounted radios. In addition, a Customs Police and civilian Customs Service actually operate at the border posts. Finally, a Facilities Protection Service was created in the Autumn of 2003, and is intended to protect strategic infrastructure from insurgent attacks, as well as individual ministry assets. On a monthly basis, the Ministry of Finance delivers funds to individual ministries, which then hire out elements of the Facilities Protection Service. Often recruited on a local–tribal basis, the FPS has grown in size from 14 500 members in December 2003 to more than 70 000 in April–June 2004.
The Ministry of Defence controls fewer personnel, though the organisations are more substantive. The Iraqi Armed Forces (IAF), previously dubbed the New Iraqi Army, is intended to be a small force (between 25 000 and 35 000 men) organised as twenty-seven battalions in three divisions. Plans call for designating between three brigades and a division’s worth of these troops (nine battalions equals 6600 troops) as an Iraqi National Task Force (now referred to as Iraqi Intervention Force), to combat terrorists and foreign anti-Coalition forces within Iraq. A separate force of two battalions will combine the Iraqi Counterterrorist Force and Commandos (about 1600 troops) into an Iraqi Special Operations Force. Members of the latter served competently under Coalition special operators in the Spring of 2004, and possess weapons and equipment qualitatively similar to those of US infantrymen.5 In the current operational concept, the role of the army is specifically directed away from domestic security enforcement and towards defending Iraqi territorial integrity—although in the past few months recently formed army units have been deployed domestically, with mixed results. The IAF has an outward focus, with brigades tethered to fixed bases due to limitations in fuel, provisions and ammunition. These logistical restrictions mean that the brigades have about a 70 km combat radius. By June 2004, the IAF’s hub-bases were located at al-Numaniya and Talil in the south, Taji and Kirkuk in the centre and north-east, and Mosul in the north-west.
Rather than the old Iraqi Army’s mechanised infantry model, the primary tactical formations of the IAF are motorised rifle battalions operating most frequently as companies. Thus, rather than tracked heavy tactical vehicles mounting missile launchers, automatic cannon or heavy machine-guns, the IAF will be truck-mounted with light armour and light machine-guns. A 120-man company, for example, will field six crew-served Pulemyot Kalashnikov (PKM) 7.62 mm machine-guns and eighteen (RPK-2) light machine-guns. The company is mounted in trucks with intentionally limited fuel rations. The remaining personnel are armed with AK variants and/or 9 mm pistols. Uniforms are a combination of dark-green old Iraqi Army pattern fatigues, as well as tan, dark brown uniforms, with some ‘chocolate chip’ desert camouflage fatigues. Due to the level of their armament, the IAF’s formations are for sector defence. Without the traditional rocket-propelled grenades, recoilless rifles or tactical vehicles of the Saddam-era Soviet-equipped forces, IAF would be decimated by any of their regional neighbours. Likewise, Iraqi air and naval assets are limited both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, the air force will have only several hundred personnel and provide only transport assets (C-130, UH-1H) with capacity for several companies at any one time. The Coastal Defence Force is envisioned solely as a brown-water navy, and currently operates out of a training base in Umm Qasr. Rather than operating as separate services, an Iraqi joint headquarters will unify the command of a small army and minuscule air force and navy to a much higher degree than in other Middle Eastern armies, with the exception of Israel.6 Ultimately, given the threats posed by Syria and Iran, as well as tensions between Turkey and the Kurds, the small Iraqi army will require a Coalition presence for an extended period. However, political expediency and Coalition manpower difficulties might force a hasty expansion of the IAF both quantitatively and in terms of the weapons systems it could field.
Currently, there is a predisposition not to use the IAF in operations to enforce domestic stability. If limitations on the IAF’s table of organisation and equipment continue, these two factors will ensure that the Iraqi National Guard (ING) becomes the most significant force contributing to the internal security of Iraq. Until it was renamed by the Interim Iraqi Government under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the ING had been known as the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC). The ING has been a problematic service, with an always uncertain future. Emerging in late Autumn 2003 as an adjunct to Coalition units, its purpose evolved over Winter 2003–04 to fill in the gap between the Police and the Army (the latter was in fact only notional during this period). In the first half of 2004, the ICDC was considered a constabulary force comprising light infantry with some tactical vehicle mobility. ICDC units were able to deploy operationally with American units that would train, advise and assist them. The hope was that joint deployments would improve Coalition force protection and more duties could be undertaken with, or turned over to, locally recruited forces. Coalition planners also envisioned that ICDC–Coalition deployments would increase linguistic capabilities and reap intelligence dividends. Likewise, it was important to Coalition leaders to portray the ICDC as a leading and successful element in the indigenisation of Iraqi government and security, thus demonstrating the sincerity of the Coalition in returning sovereignty to Iraq.7
The growth of the ICDC reflected this policy. By December 2003 there were 15 000 members of the ICDC, with battalions of over 800 personnel, each designated to serve in all of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. By April 2004 the ICDC had ballooned to about 32 000 personnel, and currently stands at over 41 000 members, almost twice that of the Army. Their uniforms consist of the ‘chocolate chip’ camouflage pattern, supplied from American surpluses or produced by foreign and local contractors. Weapons include AK variants from Iraqi depots as well as central European manufacturers, a limited number of light machine-guns (RPK), and pistols for officers. Vehicles include cars, pick-up trucks and some heavier troop transport trucks.
The ICDC was originally under the control of the Ministry of the Interior until Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 73 handed it over to the Ministry of Defence. The Coalition Provisional Authority Order refers to the ICDC as ‘a component of the Iraqi Armed Forces’, but its units remain under the operational control of local Coalition assets.8 The ING’s future administrative and operational command is uncertain. Some Coalition authorities, but especially the ING’s own command, advocate its continued existence as a service separate from the Iraqi Army. Others have proposed that, over time, the ING be trained more as a military force, in preparation for its eventual absorption into the Army. Another proposal suggests that the ING be divided between the other Iraqi security forces, with up to 25 000 of its personnel going towards doubling the size of the Army, 10 000 going to the police, and the remainder joining the Iraqi National Task Force. Each scenario possesses ramifications for the cohesion, strength and potential political power of the forces concerned. Until the interim Iraqi Government makes a clear decision, Coalition commanders and trainers as well as Iraqis will find it difficult to think strategically.
Training Challenges
By mid-June 2004, only four of the Army’s projected twenty-seven battalions had undergone training. The Kirkush base northeast of Baghdad is the primary location for recruit training. Initially, basic training was provided to Iraqis by US contractors from the Vinell Corporation, and was supervised by Coalition military personnel under the overall command of US Army Major General Paul Eaton. Eaton, previously commander of the United States Army School of Infantry, was until June 2004 the Coalition’s senior military assistance officer, in charge of the Office of Security Cooperation. However, initial training of the army went poorly, with Coalition personnel accusing the contractors of misunderstanding the Iraqi environment, instilling poor discipline in the training process and not cultivating sufficient commitment to the job. The first battalion to form during training suffered nearly 50 per cent attrition even before it left its training base. These losses were partially due to the training deficiencies but also in some measure due to the CPA offering the recruits wages that were woefully insufficient, even by Iraqi standards. Speaking in December 2003, Eaton remarked that ‘soldiers need to train soldiers. You can’t ask a civilian to do a soldier’s job’.9 By mid-2004, he reiterated his criticisms, asserting that contractor-led training ‘hasn’t gone well. We’ve had almost one year of no progress’.10 By the end of 2003, US Army units assumed closer control of basic training, with additional assistance from Jordanian and Australian forces.11
For the near future, barring any extreme contingencies, the ICDC–ING will remain the main effort of Coalition trainers, followed by the Iraqi Police. A Coalition training initiative emerged in the Summer of 2003. However, the political timetable driven by Western capitols and Iraqis themselves soon outpaced the security training timeline, just as various training infrastructures have differed from area to area and are only now taking the initial steps towards unification on a national level. By some estimates, only 30 per cent of Police, ICDC and Border Police officers had undergone training by Coalition forces when sovereignty was handed over to the Iraqis on 28 June.12 One difficulty for the Coalition is that the Iraqis have widely differing skills, experience, maturity, motivation and basic education.
One may assume that the overwhelming majority of those Iraqis joining the Police and National Guard have been attracted by the possibility of steady pay, and not sympathy to the Coalition or even Iraqi national pride.13 This factor influences levels of motivation to undergo the difficult training, show up regularly for fixed hours of work and undertake often dangerous missions. Likewise, many recruits served either in the old army or police forces, with the majority of ICDC officers having previous service. The major problem arising from personnel with previous service is not one of latent pro-Ba’thi sympathies, but rather the level of skill. In the Autumn of 2003 there was a sense of urgency in the re-establishment of Iraq’s security forces. The initial training programs of between ten days and three weeks were developed in the hope that Iraqis with previous service would need very little retraining in basic police or infantry skills. Not only did these training programs prove insufficient to eliminate old ways and assumptions, but they could not fully account for those raw recruits with no significant prior service or training.14
In fact, at the platoon level in the ICDC, some soldiers had no prior experience and were extremely young, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, having been encouraged to join by families desiring the funds. These inexperienced, ‘immature’ recruits make the most enthusiastic, open-minded soldiers who are ready to learn. They often prove quite devoted to Coalition trainers. This enthusiasm, however, only partially makes up for illiteracy. New soldiers and police cadets as well as veterans often cannot fully comprehend written points of instruction. Training time is taken up with literacy classes and tests. Local instructors often help their students to cheat in these tests and American trainers frequently turn a blind eye to the test results as they struggle to increase the number of serving soldiers and police. Likewise, trainers often bend rules regarding age requirements, so much so that recruits as young as twelve or thirteen years of age have entered service, sometimes becoming the most energetic, loyal soldiers.15
With the exception of unconventional units such as US Special Forces and UK Special Air Service, whose direct-action mission load remains quite heavy, Coalition forces do not possess units or programs specifically designed to train foreign forces.
In the Autumn and Winter of 2003–04, the responsibility for providing basic training to the Iraqi National Guard resided with the individual Coalition units deployed to areas where ING elements operated. In March–June 2004, standardisation of basic training for larger ING brigade and regiment formations began. Since then, it appears that division-level training standardisation has also proceeded.16 In every case, the trainers have been Coalition troops whose military specialties have not included training. The trainers have included infantrymen, military police, and armoured and artillery corps personnel. By contrast, personnel whose regular functions are training-related, such as drill sergeants and combined arms exercise trainers, are accustomed to very different operating environments and standards from those experienced in Iraq.
Compared with the problems faced in training the Iraqi military forces, the nascent law enforcement agencies have fared better. The Coalition forces have relied on reservists with strong backgrounds in their countries’ police, fire and investigative departments to carry the training load. In fact, it is often these reservists—and especially the senior noncommissioned officers (NCO)—who are best equipped as trainers. Instinctively and through experience, senior noncommissioned personnel understand how to adapt instructional methods and programs to the local environment. In the words of one such reservist, ‘we know how to take a class designed for a cadet from Des Moines, and make it work out here.’17 Certain Army and Marine civil affairs units also possess similar skills because of the civilian backgrounds of their largely reserve personnel. The US Marine Corps also deploys Combined Action Platoons after their personnel have received training in foreign culture, language, and weapons systems.18 Still, in the majority of cases, trainers arrive on scene without the requisite instructional, cultural or linguistic preparation, and often with insufficient logistical or materiel support. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that many trainers experience very abbreviated predeployment notices and also because training formations, by their very nature, do not possess organic intelligence or information operations (IO) capabilities, which are necessary both to monitor and motivate Iraqi recruits.
Since the Spring of 2004, especially after the events of April and May around Najaf and Autumnuja, Coalition forces have begun providing follow-on training to Iraqi Police and ING units. These forces have carried out such training at facilities loosely collocated within the areas of responsibilities of the Coalition units. Though the format of the training varies, such continuation training often includes an enhanced platoon course for enlisted men and their commanders, who on graduation go on to operate as platoons. Additionally, an NCO course focuses on strengthening both the NCO corps and the concept of an NCO in a military that has traditionally not conceived of NCOs in the same sense as NATO armed forces. An officers’ course is attended by company- and battalion-level officers sent by their ICDC commanders. Following graduation from both the NCO and officer courses, graduates return to their parent commands and are distributed among units, in the hope that they will communicate their new skills to other Iraqi soldiers. By May 2004, US, British and Australian trainers had instituted squad leader and NCO courses for the Iraqi Army as well. The content of these courses focused on counterinsurgency and urban warfare.
By the end of May the British- and Australian-run courses at Kirkush had produced 1000 graduates, with plans to run similar courses at the Army’s bases in Taji, al-Numaniya, Kirkuk and Talil. Coalition trainers plan on indigenising the training over time, with graduates of the first NCO courses teaching subsequent raw recruits.19 By late June 2004, about 1500 Iraqi officers had also graduated from the King Abdullah Military Academy in Zarqa, Jordan, with US officials deeming them fit to take over training new recruits and officers in the future.20 In the law enforcement realm, police returning to the job with prior service often undergo a three-week Transitional Integration Program. The instructors on this course are often reservists with law enforcement backgrounds, in addition to international police advisers who also evaluate police operations. Over time, the vision is to indigenise the training staff for police courses as well. Fresh recruits, as well as returning veterans, also attend an eight-week Police Academy, either in Baghdad or Jordan.
Structural Impediments?
These training courses for Iraqi security service personnel and ongoing Coalition mentoring programs are part of an overall security assistance framework that continues to evolve. Before May 2004, foreign forces operating in Iraq functioned under the umbrella of CJTF–7. During this period, the individual land components themselves mostly directed training of indigenous Iraqi security personnel, particularly for the ICDC. As mentioned above, US Army Major General Paul Eaton oversaw CJTF–7’s Office of Security Cooperation (OSC), which was divided into a Coalition Military Assistance Training Team and a Police Assistance Training Team. The military team commander was British Brigadier Nigel Alywin-Foster, and his team focused on the Army and the ICDC. British Brigadier Andrew Mackay led the police training team and concentrated on the Police Service, Border Patrol and Facilities Protection. The training efforts of the OSC appear to have been rather ad hoc, with some trainers called away to other tasks, and others with disparate backgrounds volunteering for duty with the training teams. In late May, General Eaton commented: ‘this is a pick-up team ... with all branches, skills, and nine nations in between’.21 From the perspective of commanders in the field and trainers, the OSC provided insufficient direction, feedback and equipment. In fact, many soldiers and Marines involved in setting courses of training and provisioning at the local level were uncertain of OSC’s exact role or utility.22
Since May 2004, CJTF–7 has been replaced by the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF–I). MNF–I is currently commanded by a four-star general (General George W. Casey), unlike CJTF–7, which was commanded by a three-star officer (Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez). In this new command arrangement, the Multinational Corps—Iraq (MNC–I), commanded by Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, is subordinate to MNF–I. Training structures come under MNC–I and are managed through an ISF coordinating office at the Corps level. These structures and arrangements have been grafted into the evolving relationship between MNC–I and the Iraqi Ministries of Defence and Interior. The OSC has since expanded. Now commanded by Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus, it is an ‘up-ranked’ version of American Military Cooperation offices in Egypt and the Gulf. OSC’s military and police assistance offices must now develop training policy jointly with MNF–I, and serve as the point of direct senior-level liaison with the Iraqi Ministries of Defence and Interior, both of which are to be run by senior Iraqi flag officers. OSC now apportions tasks to the ISF assistance office at MNC–I, which is empowered to provide feedback and suggestions to OSC. As OSC and MNC–I are both run by three-star officers, this arrangement has the potential to generate a certain amount of friction and the OSC will have to work hard in order to avoid becoming an added level of operationally obstructive bureaucracy.
By all accounts, General Petraeus was wisely chosen to lead Coalition training of Iraqi forces. The former commander of the American 101st Airborne Division, he was successful in working with indigenous forces in north-central Iraq in Summer–Winter 2003. It should be noted, however, that the mostly Kurdish composition of those indigenous forces facilitated their cooperation with the Coalition. While General Petraeus and his staff have been conscientious in determining the shortcomings of previous training efforts and in learning the training needs specific to various regions of Iraq, by mid-July 2004, he and his office had still to make a noticeable impact on local-level Coalition operations.23
The ISF office at the Corps level provides orders and direction to the actual field components of the MNC–I. These components are now organised as six Multinational Divisions (MND) distributed throughout Iraq on a geographic basis. Each MND has its own ISF training cell, further subdivided according to Coalition personnel working with individual Iraqi services. For example, in the US 1st Infantry Division area, on any given training initiative, the MNF–I and OSC staffs will formulate policy. When this step is completed, the OSC’s police and military training teams communicate the policy to, and coordinate it with, the Iraqi Ministries of Defence and Interior. The OSC then orders the ISF training office at the Corps level to enact the policy. The ISF office relays orders to MND–North-east, which is the 1st Infantry Division. Divisional command will then filter instructions to its organic ISF coordination cell. These command arrangements require coordination and agreement among Coalition and Iraqi four-star officers, two Coalition three-star officers, and communication through to the Coalition two-star level (division), and execution through senior fieldgrade officers commanding company-grade officers and enlisted personnel.
Though not abnormal for joint, multinational or security assistance relationships, this arrangement is nonetheless potentially quite cumbersome and time consuming, especially as there is an abundance of over-interested participants. The arrangement invites tangles of input, direction and feedback. It also entails practical and operational difficulties involving, for example, timelines for providing equipment. Furthermore, greater complications might ensue in areas where forces are truly multinational and have multiple commanders, such as in the central-south of Iraq. Other problems might arise in situations where US forces have intermediary commands between MNC–I and the divisional level, such as the west where the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, a three-star command, is in overall control of the 1st Marine Division.
Conceptual Problems
One persistent conceptual difficulty is that, by and large, US forces have yet to substantively implement the train–advise–assist model for creating indigenous military and constabulary forces. Coalition units tasked to train Iraqis are often either structurally or by regulation unable to patrol with them. These impediments mean that the personal relationships and training-operating continuum, which historically have been essential to effective indigenous force creation, are inadequate. In most regular militaries, particularly the American, depersonalisation and discontinuity are built into the training and operating dynamic in order to encourage a unit-as-machine conception and greater interoperability. However, in training foreign and ethnically different forces, depersonalisation and discontinuity create problems with establishing trust, rapport and problem-solving abilities. ING officers themselves have repeatedly complained about Coalition trainers’ and units’ aloofness from Iraqi soldiers and their disinterest in interacting meaningfully with them.24 The exceptions to these problems are among those Special Forces units recruiting, mentoring and operating with Iraqis, as well as those Marine Combined Action Platoons whose areas of operation permit them to live, train and patrol with ING and Iraqi Police.
A parallel problem creating the same effect is the short time span of training programs, most of which last no more than three weeks. In part, the brevity of the training programs has been politically dictated, to provide the appearance of ‘Iraqification’. The hope is that this policy will translate into greater acceptance of the Coalition as well as a greater indigenous desire to support or join the ICDC or police. Likewise, the essential need for more Iraqis to be out on the streets performing fundamental public-security tasks has driven the requirement for shorter training courses that produce graduates quickly.
On the other hand, some trainers have themselves lamented the ineffectiveness of short training periods, but still favour them as a measure to inhibit Iraqis’ developing skills that could be turned against the Coalition if they were to join the insurgents.25 Of equal concern is the bias that the Coalition currently displays towards training initial cadres of Iraqi soldiers and National Guardsmen who then go on to instruct and train other Iraqis in situations where the oversight of the Coalition is gradually scaled back. This approach to training is known in the military as ‘train the trainer’. While some Iraqis are pleased to be seen as autonomous from foreign forces and appreciate the ability to command fellow Iraqis, ‘training the trainer’ raises the likelihood that the mentoring and monitoring bond between Coalition forces and Iraqi counterparts will be broken too soon. The consequences of breaking these links too quickly may be a precipitous decline in standards, accountability, and operational dependability within the ISF. In contrast to Coalition authorities’ overly enthusiastic public statements about the ‘Iraqification’ of security and accelerated indigenisation of training, senior US officers intimately familiar with the ISF have cautioned that several years and a sustained Coalition human and material commitment will be necessary to train credible Iraqi forces.26
This article will be continued in the next issue of the Australian Army Journal.
Endnotes
1 See ‘Written Statement of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Prepared for the House Armed Services Committee’, 22 June 2004, p. 9, <http://www.house.gov/hasc/openingstatementsandpressreleases/108thcongre… ‘Of course, the long-term key to success in Iraq requires building indigenous Iraqi capacity and transitioning responsibilities from the Coalition to Iraq. Nowhere is this more vital than in our efforts to build capable Iraqi security forces ...’ For commanders’ echoes of this sentiment, see Aamer Madhani, ‘In Race to Train Iraqi Security Force, GIs Find Trust is Biggest Obstacle’, Chicago Tribune, 14 July 2004.
2 See Borzou Daragahi, ‘In Iraq, private contractors lighten load on U.S. troops’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 28 September 2003, <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03271/226368.stm>.
3 As an example of how different nomenclature and methods of accounting can lead to quite different results, compare two sources: Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp, Director of Strategic Plans and Policy, The Joint Staff, ‘Statement to House Armed Service Committee’, 16 June 2004, <http://armedservices.house.gov/openingstatementsandpressreleases/108thc…;; and ‘US turns over Untrained Forces to Interim Government’, World Tribune.com, 25 June 2004, <http://216.26.163.62/2004/me_iraq_06_25.html>. The latter itself is based on a late-June Pentagon report, yet reaches different quantitative and qualitative conclusions.
4 Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘Inexcusable Failure: Progress in Training the Iraqi Army and Security Forces as of Mid-July 2004’, Center for Strategic and International Studies Report, 20 July 2004, pp. 8–9, <http://www.csis.org/features/iraq_inexcusablefailure.pdf>. Cordesman’s is thus far the best critical work on these matters. The author has chosen the most general numbers in this essay. For a highly critical listing of various conflicting statements of personnel numbers in the ISF, see the Center for American Progress, ‘Iraqi Security Forces: Adding It Up’, <http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=11300>.
5 Darrin Mortenson, ‘US to Give Iraqi Soldiers Another Try’, North Coast Times, 29 April 2004, <http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/30/military/iraq/23_17_424_29_0…;.
6 For unification of command in Israel, see Yehuda Ben Meir, Civil–Military Relations in Israel, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995, pp. 76–99.
7 For early articulation of these views at senior US policy-making levels, see Donna Miles, ‘Iraqi Civil Defense Corps Grows in Number and Role’, American forces Information Service, 29 October 2003, <http://www.dod.mil/news/Oct2003/n10292003_200310293.html>. Also see Tim Ripley, ‘Unstable Iraq Looks to New Security Forces’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, 1 December 2003, pp. 29–31.
8 See CPA/ORD/22 April 2004/73, <http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/20040425_CPAORD_73_Transfer_of_the_…;.
9 Ariana Eunjung Cha, ‘Recruits Abandon Iraqi Army’, Washington Post, 13 December 2003, p. A1, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60899-2003Dec12>.
10 Dean Calbreath, ‘Iraqi Army, Police Force Fall Short on Training’, San Diego UnionTribune, 4 July 2004, <http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040704/news_mz1b4iraqi.html>.
11 ‘Australian Force to Boost Iraqi Army Training’, Australian Ministry of Defence Media Release, 23 February 2004, <http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Hilltpl.cfm?CurrentId=3553>; Raju Gopalakrishnan, ‘New Iraq Army Officers Head for Training in Jordan’, Jordan Times, 30 December 2003; ‘Iraqi Women Soldiers Graduate from Training Course’, Jordan Times, 10 July 2004.
12 Lisa Hoffman, ‘Efforts to Rebuild Made Progress in Many Areas’, 29 June 2004, <http://www.tennessean.com/nation-world/archives/04/06/53434674.shtml>.
13 See Ariana Eunjung Cha, ‘Flaws Showing in New Iraqi Forces’, Washington Post, 30 December 2003, p. A1, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39885-2003Dec29>.
14 United States General Accounting Office, ‘Rebuilding Iraq: Resource, Security, Governance, Essential Services, and Oversight Issues’, (GAO-04-902R), June 2004, pp. 56–60, <http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04902r.pdf>.
15 Interviews with Police and ICDC instructors, al-Anbar province, Iraq, June–July 2004; observation of training sites.
16 Roland G. Walters, ‘Iraqi National Guard Graduates First Basic Training Class’, Army News Service, 14 July 2004, <http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=6157>. This article refers to the 1st Infantry Division’s ING training academy in Tikrit.
17 Interview with Marine training Iraqi Police, 10 June 2004.
18 The Combined Action Program is inspired by the program of the same name used to good effect in Vietnam. It places culturally trained Marines in closer proximity to indigenous civilians and security forces in order to create human bonds and cultivate a better security environment. See John Koopman, ‘Marines Seal Bonds of Trust Special Unit Wants to Win Hearts, Minds’, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 July 2004, <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/04/MNG4T7GM…;. For Vietnam-era experiences, see Michael E. Peterson, Combined Action Platoons: The Marines’ Other War in Vietnam, Praeger, New York, 1989; Albert Hemingway, Our War was Different : Marine Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam, Naval Institute Press, New York, 1994; for discussion of CAP applications, see Major Brooks R. Brewington, USMC, ‘Combined Action Platoons: A Strategy for Peace Enforcement’, MCCDC/CSC Small Wars Center for Excellence, 1996.
19 Jared Zabaldo, ‘Iraqi Army Soldiers Graduate from Coalition School’, Defend America, 24 May 2004, <http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/may2004/a052404b.html>.
20 ‘U.S. Deems Iraqi Officers Capable of Training Recruits’, World Tribune.com, 23 June 2004, <http://216.26.163.62/2004/me_iraq_06_23.html>.
21 Jared Zabaldo, ‘Office of Security Cooperation Trains Iraq’s New Protectors of Freedom’, Defend America, 18 May 2004, <http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/may2004/a051804b.html>.
22 Conversations with Army and Marine Police and ICDC trainers in Iraq, June 2004.
23 Correspondence with division-level ISF trainers, July 2004.
24 Eric Schmitt, ‘US Needs More Time to Train and Equip Iraqis’, New York Times, 24 May 2004, p. A14.
25 Interviews with several anonymous Coalition officials, June 2004.
26 Charles Snow, ‘Training the New Iraqi Army’, Middle East Economic Survey, vol. 47, no. 4, 26 January 2004, <http://www.mees.com/postedarticles/politics/PoliticalScene/a47n04c01.ht…;.
