Can Iraq be Fixed?
Politicians dance around this question, but here's the reality: It will take U.S. troops years of work, and success is hardly a sure bet
At the time of the walkout, some military officials downplayed the event--one spokesman called it "a momentary but very brief display of displeasure" involving "a very small number" of graduates. In reality, fully three quarters of the class quit the military in the weeks that followed. "We cannot sustain this level of attrition," says a senior U.S. military official, who estimates that the Iraqi Army needs 20,000 recruits in Anbar province just to make its goal of 6,500 new soldiers.
Nationwide, the Iraqi Army has grown substantially in size--up to 113,000 soldiers. But many of the units are still not fully integrated, and few can operate without U.S. support. The Pentagon has touted the handover in July of Multhanna, one of Iraq's most peaceful provinces, to Iraqi security control. But even Nasier Abadi, deputy chief of staff for the Iraqi armed forces, concedes that not a single Iraqi Army battalion is ready to operate independently.
Coaching. Within the Pentagon, many officials privately agree with the assessment of retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who in a widely circulated memo estimated that the United States needs "at least two to five more years of U.S. partnership and combat backup to get the Iraqi Army ready to stand on its own." What's more, he added, the "corruption and lack of capability of the ministries [of defense and interior] will require several years of patient coaching."
It is patient coaching that is meant to come from hundreds of transition teams throughout the country, in which U.S. military trainers are embedded with Iraqi Army and police units--teams that are widely considered to be the linchpin in America's exit strategy in Iraq. But though these vital military transition teams are billed as handpicked, elite units, the forces are too often "cobbled together," according to a defense official who has studied the teams. Indeed, one U.S. military report concluded, "The Army could do better to screen [military transition teams] for proper qualifications in skill."
Marine trainers in Fallujah tend to agree. "We're not really set up to train other people to be policemen," says one marine. The teams often report feeling undertrained and overwhelmed. One senior Pentagon official estimates that, throughout the country, Iraq is short U.S. military training teams "by a factor of four or five." President Bush seemed to acknowledge the shortfall last week, when he called for more U.S. military personnel to be embedded with Iraqi units to make them "more effective." What's more, the transition teams all too often lose institutional memory as U.S. trainers rotate to new assignments. In one team that was training an Iraqi Army battalion, seven of the dozen marines volunteered to extend their seven-month tour to one year in order to build on the progress made with their military counterparts. But their requests were denied, according to their commander. The marines were told they were needed by their home units, which were facing manpower shortages.
In addition to requesting more trainers, U.S. defense officials have for months been privately lobbying for better equipment for the Iraqi Army. "Clearly, we can't withdraw from Iraq unless Iraqi security forces have a clear-cut advantage over the forces they're dealing with," says McCaffrey, who has called for more light armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, and air support capabilities for Iraq's military. But some military officials express grave concern about what would happen to U.S.-provided equipment should Iraqi security further degenerate. "It's the question of the century: How much of our technology to give them, considering the possibility that the country could degenerate into civil war," says one Army Forces Central Command official. "How much ends up six years down the road in Iran? What if we give them all new technology, and they use it against each other? What capabilities should we give them?"
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