September 04, 2006
Iraqi units only ready on paper?
True troop strength may be less than 30 percent of authorized amount

By Sean D. Naylor
Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Many Iraqi army units upon which the U.S. is relying to relieve American troops of the war-fighting burden are hollow organizations, with those in violent Anbar province having only 30 percent of their authorized strength available for action, U.S. officers say.

Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who leads the U.S. effort to assist the Iraqi government in establishing its new military, told a Pentagon press conference June 27 that by the end of this year, “Iraqis … will be fully capable of recruiting, vetting, inducting, training, forming into units, putting them in barracks, sending them out the gate to perform their missions.” But some of these battalions are so undermanned they would be considered “combat ineffective” by U.S. Army standards, officers say.

The situation appears to be worst in Anbar, the province from which U.S. units have recently been pulled to reinforce Baghdad. When asked at the press conference about a report that Iraqi units in Anbar were “hemorrhaging” enlistees, Dempsey said he “wouldn’t disagree that we had a problem in western al Anbar province.” But he described the word “hemorrhaging” as “clearly an exaggeration.”


But U.S. officers in Anbar say that the Iraqi army’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division, stationed in Rawah in central Anbar, is typical of other units in the province. That battalion’s assigned strength — the number of soldiers it has on paper — is less than 52 percent of its authorized strength, or the number of troops it would have if every position was filled, said Marine Maj. Tony Marro, the military transition team leader in Rawah.

However, an Iraqi army policy that allows a quarter to a third of a unit’s troops to be on leave at any one time, combined with the fact that troops do not sign enlistment contracts and can quit whenever they want, means that the battalion has no more than 30 percent of its troops available for action, Marro said.

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. The battalion cannot take the lead at battalion level, he acknowledged.

“We’ve still got some work to do — a lot of that centers around sustainment, logistics and communication,” he said. However, the battalion is ready to take charge “at the company level,” Marro added. “At the Ministry of Defense, the progress they’ve seen in this battalion since I first got here is probably pretty impressive.”

Asked to list the 3rd Battalion’s biggest challenges, the unit’s intelligence officer — a captain who spoke on the condition he not be named — immediately mentioned low personnel strength, which he blamed in part on a broken promise regarding where the battalion would be stationed and on poor living conditions. Most of the battalion’s soldiers are Shiites from the southern provinces of Dhi Qar, Maysan and Basra, as well as from Baghdad, and had little desire to serve in the desert environs of Anbar in the west, where the Sunni insurgency is at its strongest. When they got to Rawah and learned they would be living in tents, “200 soldiers quit,” the officer said, speaking through an interpreter.

Generous leave policy

New barracks have been built for the unit, but the personnel retention challenge remains.

“We are still facing these issues because of the high risk in this area, plus the long distance from home,” the intelligence officer said. That 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.

“That is the kind of system we’re used to from the former regime,” the intelligence officer said. However, it creates problems when a unit is stationed far from the home provinces of its soldiers.

“We faced difficulties going on leave,” he said.

As a result, “this battalion has a very high UA [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.

“That’s a significant disadvantage for trying to provide that forward presence,” he said. “Is the base there? Yes. Are they as capable as they could be? No, based on numbers.”

The battalion is by no means an anomaly, according to Marine Lt. Col. Ron Gridley, executive officer of Regimental Combat Team 7, whose area of operations stretches across western Anbar to include Rawah. Most Iraqi army “battalions” in RCT-7’s area of operations would more accurately be described as “two reinforced companies (minus),” Gridley said. Because they are undermanned, companies resemble platoons, and platoons resemble squads, he said, adding, “It’d be nice to have a real battalion, instead of a battalion in name only.”

A Multi-National Forces-Iraq spokesman did not respond to e-mailed questions about the average strength and readiness ratings of Iraqi army battalions.

The manning situation seems to improve slightly the closer to Baghdad that battalions are stationed. 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 [absent without leave],” Stone said, meaning that the number of soldiers present for duty is about 58 percent of authorized strength, but almost 80 percent of assigned strength. The brigade is required to have a minimum of 75 percent of its assigned strength on hand, Stone said.

“Baghdad is the center of gravity, so probably as you get closer to Baghdad you’re going to have units that are more plussed up,” Stone said. In addition, “there’s a lot of good training in this unit, and a lot of good officers, so that keeps soldiers inspired to stay.”

However, 3rd Brigade is only two battalions strong. A third battalion stood up recently and is at about 20 percent strength, Stone said.

Rated capable to fight

But despite the fact that its two operational battalions have fewer than 60 percent of their authorized strength on hand, the brigade has received a transition readiness assessment of level two, meaning that its U.S. advisers consider it capable of planning, executing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations with coalition support.

The most recent assessment, made in July, further estimates that the brigade will be able to take the lead in operations in March 2007. According to an Aug. 8 MNF-I press release, 76 Iraqi army battalions have taken the lead.

Asked how that could be the case, when a U.S. Army unit with only a little more than 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.

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. As for the 3rd Brigade, one officer’s daughter and son-in-law were murdered, and another soldier’s sister was shot in the stomach, Stone said.

There may also be financial impediments to joining the army. On Aug. 16, Freitag, whose squadron has been shifted to Baghdad, was patroling the streets of Shula, a Shia neighborhood in the city’s northwest, when he stopped to ask three youths whether they were considering joining the Iraqi army. The eldest, a slender 18-year-old, looked at Freitag as though he were crazy, then replied that joining the army requires a young man to pay an officer a $200 bribe, a small fortune in this country.

Freitag was taken aback. “That’s interesting,” he said. “I didn’t know that. That’s unfortunate.”

Ellie