U.S. pins exit hopes on Iraq troop training

By Mark Mazzetti
Los Angeles Times

JIM MACMILLAN / AP Iraqi National Guard soldiers line up last month for their graduation in Baqouba, Iraq. Having completed a five-day U.S. Army training, 154 soldiers will serve as the Iraqi 504th Motorized Infantry Regiment.

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TIKRIT, Iraq — Next to a dirt-packed soccer field on an island in the middle of the Tigris River, the men who represent the long-term U.S. exit strategy for Iraq crawl through the dirt.

Taking shelter behind a makeshift barricade of stacked sandbags, one of the Iraqi National Guard trainees aims his AK-47 and fires at an invisible enemy.

"Bang, bang," he shouts, mimicking the sound his rifle would make if it were loaded. After firing several imaginary rounds, he ducks his head back under the sandbags.

"That's bull," U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Haily Darnell, one of the ING drill instructors, shouts — along with several colorful expletives — at the trainee prostrate in the dirt. "That's just bull. Go back and do it again."

Parris Island it's not. Here at "ING Island," a 25-acre facility inside the sprawling grounds of the 1st Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit, the 330 ING recruits get just three weeks of training before being dispatched into Iraq's roughest areas to take on insurgents. Yet as U.S. commanders in Iraq see it, what goes on here could be the biggest factor determining whether the Bush administration's goal of a drawdown and eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq is achievable.

The compound in Tikrit is one of six centralized facilities in Iraq set up to train the nation's fledgling National Guard, which Iraqi and U.S. officials plan will be the principal force in Iraq to put down an insurgency that has shown few signs of weakening since the U.S. transferred sovereignty to Iraqis on June 28.

U.S. commanders are planning for the National Guard to control the overall security of Iraq's major cities in time for elections scheduled for January.

A standing Iraqi Army won't be trained by then, and when it is, it would focus on external threats to Iraq, not the internal security woes the country currently suffers. Moreover, the Iraqi police service in some of Iraq's most troubled locations is riddled with corruption. In Ramadi, for instance, U.S. officials believe the police have been almost entirely co-opted by the insurgency.

The hopes of the 135,000 foreign troops in Iraq, 116,000 of whom are Americans, thus rests largely on whether the National Guard — currently totaling just more than 41,000 — can be built into a professional fighting force in short order.
 
For that to happen, U.S. officers at ING Island say the biggest challenge will be to develop a professional corps of young officers and senior noncommissioned officers promoted on merit, as opposed to the nepotism and bribery that was the basis of promotion in Saddam Hussein's military.

"Iraqi forces have had a big problem in the past. When the fight starts, they run," said Army Capt. Gene Waldenfels, who oversees the day-to-day training at ING Island. "The reason is because the Iraqi officer corps is completely ineffective. In the old Iraqi army, you bought your way into the officer corps."

Building soldiers essentially from scratch takes time, U.S. officials say, yet trained Iraqi troops desperately are needed to tamp down the insurgency.

"I only have three or four weeks. I can't make Rambo in that time," said Waldenfels, adding that the basics of soldiering can nonetheless be taught in a short period of time. "We need them, so it's important to shorten the process."

Perhaps the biggest problem over the past year, officials say, has been outfitting the nascent Iraqi security forces with the right equipment. Contract problems have slowed the effort, delaying the flow of uniforms, weapons, helmets and radios.

Those supply problems largely have been addressed, and now "the floodgates have opened," said Army Maj. Scot Bemis, the Commandant of the Iraqi Training Academy on ING Island. But there are still shortages of helmets and body armor for the ING forces, officials say.

The training facility in Tikrit sits on a spit of land just over a bridge from a collection of garish palaces rumored to be the settings of some of the most extravagant parties thrown by Odai Hussein, Saddam's hedonistic son who was killed by U.S. forces last summer.

After a morning of training, the ING recruits take refuge from the relentless heat beneath trees and balconies, ripping into pre-packaged Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) provided by the U.S. military. Dipping plastic bags filled with cheese tortellini and "country captain chicken" into a separate bag filled with boiling water.

The current crop of recruits at ING Island has not yet been told, but their U.S. instructors have decided to prolong their training by one week because the unit soon will be dispatched into Samarra and Baqouba, two of the most dangerous cities in the so-called Sunni Triangle region. Their instructors have kept the news from the recruits to keep down the number of trainees who might drop out.

But according to Saddam Abbass Mahdi, one of the Iraqi drill instructors on base and a veteran of the army of Saddam, his trainees will be ready — after they learn one critical skill of urban warfare.

"We need to work on how to enter a building that enemy fighters are in," he said.

For the U.S. officers on base, the ING recruits represent not just the future of Iraq, but their ticket home.

"This is the exit strategy," said Maj. Bemis, looking out over a platoon of recruits training to defend themselves against an insurgent ambush. "The success of these guys will determine when we can actually leave."