Defending the new Iraq

How many troops does Iraq have?

That depends on whom you ask. A year ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. had already trained 200,000 Iraqis to serve in the police, national guard, and army. Late last year, President Bush put the number of security forces at 125,000. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated that estimate at her confirmation hearing, several weeks ago, Sen. Joseph Biden called the figure “malarkey.” Military sources in Iraq, Biden said, had told him that only about 4,000 Iraqis were combat ready. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that there were 136,000 Iraqis in uniform, about 40,000 of whom “can go anywhere in the country and take on almost any threat.”

Why the confusion?

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It’s a matter of definition. The Bush administration has been counting all Iraqis hired to provide security—but giving an unemployed civilian a paycheck and a uniform doesn’t make him a competent soldier or cop. Before U.S. ground troops are ever deployed, for example, they get a minimum of 13 weeks of rigorous, round-the-clock training. Iraq’s 37,000 national guardsmen spent just three weeks marching, doing calisthenics, and learning how to fire a gun—and then were sent off to fight the rebels. Iraqi army recruits got, at most, eight weeks of training. Few were equipped with the weapons or body armor they would need in a real firefight. Only elite forces—the ones Myers was referring to—have received enough training to be able to fight insurgents without foreign troops at their side. “All of the numbers are probably valid,” says Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official, “and almost none of them are relevant.”

Can Iraqi soldiers fight?

So far, the insurgents appear to have superior training and to fight with greater ferocity. The core group of rebels has apparently been trained in terrorist camps or in Saddam Hussein’s army, and most seem willing to die for their cause; even the U.S. Marines have found the enemy to be a cunning, dangerous foe. In direct encounters with the insurgents, Iraqi troops have not fared well. On more than a dozen occasions, insurgents have ambushed and slaughtered scores of Iraqi soldiers and cops like so many sheep. These massacres, along with frequent bombings of police stations, have frightened thousands of Iraqi policemen into abandoning their posts and going home. After the insurgency exploded, last year, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey estimated that 10 percent of Iraqi forces left to fight with the insurgents, 40 percent quit out of fear, and only half “stood tall and firm.”

Is that still the case?

There have been signs of improvement. When the insurgency began to explode, last April, 620 soldiers from the Iraqi army’s 2nd Battalion refused to fight in the first U.S. attempt to retake Fallujah. But things were different seven months later, in the second assault on the insurgent stronghold. In a clear-cut victory over the insurgents, Iraq’s elite 36th Commando Battalion and other elite forces, about 2,700 in all, cleared rebels from mosques and other sites too sensitive for U.S. soldiers to enter. And prior to the Jan. 31 elections, Iraqi Army units played a major role in raids in which more than 100 rebels were captured. On election day, Iraqi police stopped eight suicide bombers, with one cop giving his life to save a crowd of voters.

So desertion is no longer a problem?

That would be overstating the progress. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says that only 60 percent of the Iraqi security forces show up for work on an average day. As the Marines and their Iraqi counterparts were routing the enemy in Fallujah, insurgent fighters stormed police stations in Mosul, and the city’s 5,000 policemen ran away. The same happened in town after town in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where the insurgency is strongest. And infiltration by the insurgents is another nagging problem. Many police and military officers served under Saddam Hussein, and some are suspected of maintaining contact with old friends among the insurgents, and passing them information to help them plan attacks.

What’s the solution?

If there is one, it’s more training—and patience. Now that the Iraqi election is over, the U.S. military will shift its emphasis from cracking down on the insurgency to training Iraqis to defend themselves. The plan is to embed as many as 10,000 U.S. soldiers with Iraqi units. The American trainers, in teams of 10, will go out on patrol with Iraqis. They’ll teach the Iraqis the tactics and discipline they need to become professional soldiers, and will fight alongside them to bolster their confidence. The goal is to create a competent Iraqi force of 270,000 soldiers and police, so that the U.S. can withdraw its troops without leaving the country in chaos. “Training the Iraqis is the whole nine yards right now,” says a senior official in the Bush administration. “If they don’t get better, we can’t get out of there.”

Who’s in charge?