thedrifter
08-21-06, 09:33 AM
August 21, 2006
Iraqi army units undermanned
By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer
BAGHDAD — Some of the Iraqi Army units that are supposed to take over from U.S. troops are too undermanned to be effective, military officers say.
U.S. officers in Anbar say the Iraqi army’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division stationed in Rawah, is typical of units in the violent province.
An Iraqi army policy that allows up to a third of a unit’s troops to be on leave, combined with the fact that troops do not sign enlistment contracts and can quit whenever they want, means the battalion has no more than 30 percent of its troops available for action, said Marine Maj. Tony Marro, the military transition team leader in Rawah.
By U.S. Army standards, Marro acknowledged, the battalion would be considered “combat ineffective.”
But that hasn’t stopped it from receiving a high readiness level rating. The Iraqi ministry of defense “sees this battalion as being able to operate semi-independently with coalition support,” Marro said.
“We’ve still got some work to do — a lot of that centers around sustainment, logistics and communication,” he said. “At the Ministry of Defense, the progress they’ve seen in this battalion since I first got here is probably pretty impressive.”
Most of the battalion’s soldiers are Shiites from the South who had little desire to serve in the harsh desert environs of Anbar in the west, where the Sunni insurgency is at its strongest.
The distance exacerbates the Iraqi army’s leave policy, which, in the case of 3rd Battalion, allows its soldiers to spend 10 days at home for every 20 days at Rawah.
As a result, the battalion has a very high unaccounted-for rate, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, commander of 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, which partnered with 3rd Battalion in Rawah until late July.
“Is the base there? Yes. Are they as capable as they could be? No, based on numbers,” Freitag said.
The manning situation seems to improve slightly closer to Baghdad. Two of the three battalions under the Iraqi army’s 3rd Brigade, 6th Division, stationed beside Baghdad International Airport, have about 72 percent of their authorized strength, said Army Col. Kenneth Stone, who heads the military transition team responsible for the brigade. However, the leave policy means the battalions never have close to that figure on hand.
”At any one time, they’ll have about a company on leave and a dozen AWOL (absent without leave),“ Stone said, meaning that the number of soldiers present for duty is about 58 percent of authorized strength.
U.S. advisers consider the brigade capable of planning, executing and sustaining counter-insurgency operations with coalition support. The most recent assessment in July estimates the brigade will be able to take the lead in operations in March 2007.
Asked how that could be the case, when a U.S. Army unit with only a little over its authorized troop strength available would likely be rated ”combat ineffective,“ Stone said it would be a mistake to compare the brigade to its U.S. counterparts.
”The U.S. Army is a world-class army and we were told we’re not here to build a mirror image of the U.S. Army, we’re here to build an Iraqi army,” Stone said. By Iraqi standards, he said, “If you have 60 percent of your people, that’s pretty good.”
“In this country, people get threatened: ‘If you work with the Iraqi army or the coalition forces, we’ll kill your whole family,’ so the people who join at times can be under a lot of pressure,” Stone said.
AP-NY-08-19-06 1644EDT
Ellie
Iraqi army units undermanned
By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer
BAGHDAD — Some of the Iraqi Army units that are supposed to take over from U.S. troops are too undermanned to be effective, military officers say.
U.S. officers in Anbar say the Iraqi army’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division stationed in Rawah, is typical of units in the violent province.
An Iraqi army policy that allows up to a third of a unit’s troops to be on leave, combined with the fact that troops do not sign enlistment contracts and can quit whenever they want, means the battalion has no more than 30 percent of its troops available for action, said Marine Maj. Tony Marro, the military transition team leader in Rawah.
By U.S. Army standards, Marro acknowledged, the battalion would be considered “combat ineffective.”
But that hasn’t stopped it from receiving a high readiness level rating. The Iraqi ministry of defense “sees this battalion as being able to operate semi-independently with coalition support,” Marro said.
“We’ve still got some work to do — a lot of that centers around sustainment, logistics and communication,” he said. “At the Ministry of Defense, the progress they’ve seen in this battalion since I first got here is probably pretty impressive.”
Most of the battalion’s soldiers are Shiites from the South who had little desire to serve in the harsh desert environs of Anbar in the west, where the Sunni insurgency is at its strongest.
The distance exacerbates the Iraqi army’s leave policy, which, in the case of 3rd Battalion, allows its soldiers to spend 10 days at home for every 20 days at Rawah.
As a result, the battalion has a very high unaccounted-for rate, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, commander of 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, which partnered with 3rd Battalion in Rawah until late July.
“Is the base there? Yes. Are they as capable as they could be? No, based on numbers,” Freitag said.
The manning situation seems to improve slightly closer to Baghdad. Two of the three battalions under the Iraqi army’s 3rd Brigade, 6th Division, stationed beside Baghdad International Airport, have about 72 percent of their authorized strength, said Army Col. Kenneth Stone, who heads the military transition team responsible for the brigade. However, the leave policy means the battalions never have close to that figure on hand.
”At any one time, they’ll have about a company on leave and a dozen AWOL (absent without leave),“ Stone said, meaning that the number of soldiers present for duty is about 58 percent of authorized strength.
U.S. advisers consider the brigade capable of planning, executing and sustaining counter-insurgency operations with coalition support. The most recent assessment in July estimates the brigade will be able to take the lead in operations in March 2007.
Asked how that could be the case, when a U.S. Army unit with only a little over its authorized troop strength available would likely be rated ”combat ineffective,“ Stone said it would be a mistake to compare the brigade to its U.S. counterparts.
”The U.S. Army is a world-class army and we were told we’re not here to build a mirror image of the U.S. Army, we’re here to build an Iraqi army,” Stone said. By Iraqi standards, he said, “If you have 60 percent of your people, that’s pretty good.”
“In this country, people get threatened: ‘If you work with the Iraqi army or the coalition forces, we’ll kill your whole family,’ so the people who join at times can be under a lot of pressure,” Stone said.
AP-NY-08-19-06 1644EDT
Ellie