Elite Iraqi Unit Seeks Footing as It Fills U.S. Boots
AREA IV, Iraq — The three helicopters took off after midnight from this Special Operations base outside Baghdad, bound for a rural community where a man suspected of being a ringleader of the insurgency was hiding in a compound marked on military maps as Objective Hades.
Landing beyond earshot of the village, three dozen troops began a quick march along silent roads, cutting across fields, plunging through a gully filled with frigid, waist-deep water, racing to complete the operation before sunrise. Wearing black masks and night-vision goggles, the troops circled the house, to trap anyone who tried to escape — "squirters," as the soldiers put it.
It was the kind of smash-and-grab mission that not many months ago was conducted solely by American forces in Iraq. But this time, only one-third of the troops were American, there to observe and advise. Kicking down the door and seizing the suspect were members of the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force.
The Bush administration has anchored its plans for troop withdrawals from Iraq on the promise of increasingly capable indigenous security units: the army, the police, border patrols and a facilities-protection service, currently totaling 227,000, although they are trained to vastly different levels of proficiency.
Now, as part of that program, American Special Operations forces commanders say they have shifted their own efforts from carrying out raids and attacks to training elite Iraqi teams to take over the most challenging missions.
Like their American counterparts, the new Iraqi special operations forces, now about 1,800, will be only a tiny percentage of the country's overall security forces, but they will take on some of the most dangerous missions, including capturing or killing insurgent and terrorist commanders, guarding Iraqi government leaders and rescuing hostages.
The Iraqi special operations forces are rapidly moving toward full self-sufficiency in carrying out the combat part of their missions, American officers say, and there is general agreement these Iraqis are the best in the new military here. Even so, it is clear that some American troops will have to stay in Iraq for some time to come. American officers say that is because they share the burden of supplying food, fuel, weapons, ammunition, spare parts, maintenance and, perhaps most of all, intelligence on individual targets and a disciplined planning process.
"Going through the door is the easy part," said Col. Kenneth Tovo, the new commander of the American Special Operations mission in Iraq. "Planning is more difficult."
Colonel Tovo said his goal in the months ahead was to insert American Special Operations forces into the training for the Iraqis, and then to stand back in an "overwatch" role during their missions.
Members of the Army Green Berets and Navy Seals accompany the Iraqi counterterrorism unit, but the Iraqis take the lead.
Iraqi special operations forces receive the highest level of training and best equipment available in the country. They fly aboard Special Operations helicopters with high-technology optics for night operations, and they drive armored, and heavily armed, Humvees with Iraqi desert camouflage and the national flag.
The budget for their new operations base includes $50 million for the construction of a headquarters, a training center, barracks and a hospital. The pay for special operations forces can exceed that of their colleagues in the regular army, where the base pay is up to $340 per month, American officials say.
They also receive daily lectures from American advisers on the need to respect the laws of armed conflict, as well as warnings not to use their emerging commando abilities to settle historic religious or ethnic scores.
The Iraqis who sign up for their nation's new special operations forces face a degree of risk far beyond those who choose to serve in a restructured army or police force. The Iraqi counterterrorism and commando troops are registered on Iraqi Ministry of Defense payrolls by numbers, not by names, since several have been kidnapped or killed after their identities were disclosed.
Interviews with Iraqi counterterrorism troops in training revealed that they had a variety of reasons for enduring the danger, the rigorous selection process, the basic training conducted in Jordan and the advanced combat courses in Iraq, many now taught by a growing number of Iraqi sergeants who have graduated from the program.
A 26-year-old Sunni from a village south of Baghdad said he enlisted after his brother was killed and his father was wounded in a terrorist attack. A 28-year-old volunteer — his mother Shiite and his father Sunni — left his engineering courses with a desire to halt the rise of partisan militias. A 26-year-old Baghdad native, also the son of one Shiite parent and one Sunni parent, said he hoped to fight Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents and foreign terrorists "because they all are a threat to my country."
The commander of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade, Col. Fadhil Jameel al-Barwari, said his troops lived anonymously in their communities. The troops receive about 10 days of leave a month, not only to allow them to recover from their missions but to give them time to deliver their pay to families across a country that still operates as a cash economy.
The volunteers tell relatives they work for the government. Not one has told the full truth.
"They are citizens, they live outside the compound — so they see whatever they can see and they collect information for us every day, even when they are not here training or on a mission," said Colonel Barwari, in an interview in an office decorated with a stuffed falcon, a bust of a samurai and ornamental weapons.
The new Iraqi counterterrorism unit is 70 percent Shiite, 20 percent Sunni and 10 percent Kurdish. About 65 percent have military experience, and American advisers have to take into account how Saddam Hussein used his military to quash political opponents, and how some members of today's new Iraqi military and police forces have been discovered committing abuses, even atrocities.
Raids by American forces of Iraqi government detention centers have uncovered scores of abused prisoners, prompting the Americans to lead an inquiry into the Iraqi prison system. Adding to concerns was the news that the Interior Ministry had begun its own inquiry into claims that its officers were operating death squads to hunt Sunni Arabs.
"I spend a great part of every day going over how you are to treat civilians, how you are to treat those you capture," said the Army Special Forces major who leads the training program. (Under rules for a reporter embedded with the Special Operations forces, only senior commanders could be quoted by name.)
"I want them to get to the point where I don't even have to go outside the wire with them on missions," the major said. "That's our ticket home."
Col. Kevin M. McDonnell, reflecting in a recent interview on his seven-month assignment as commander of American Special Operations forces in Iraq, which ended in late January, said: "At this point, we are not doing any unilateral operations. Everything is in conjunction with Iraqi special operations forces." The focus of the raids is not only to capture suspected insurgents, he said, but also "to generate intelligence" to identify other insurgent leaders, planners and financiers.
The Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade, led by Colonel Barwari, a Kurd who worked with Army Green Berets in northern Iraq during the war to oust Mr. Hussein, was created by American Special Forces in 2004, and since has grown to command two battalion-size units.
One of them, the Iraqi Counterterrorism Force, is modeled on secret American special-mission units, is trained at this base. (The military keeps the precise location secret.) This unit is trained to conduct precise small-unit operations.
Nearby, in the shadow of a palace once reserved for members of the Hussein government, American Special Operations forces are training a commando battalion to carry out a heavier combat load in specialized missions, similar to those assigned to Army Rangers. The unit, formerly called the 36th Commando Battalion, has been reorganized. It is now known as the First Battalion under the command of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade.
"The Iraqi Counterterrorism Force is the scalpel," said one Army Green Beret captain involved in the training. "The commandos are the big bat."
Clinton 1998 wagging finger: "I did not have sex with that woman!"
Bush 2005 wagging finger: "I did nothing illegal!"
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