In Iraq, US troops widen role as soldier-teacher

Huddled around a map at an Iraqi Army base here, Iraqi and US officers hash out plans for an evening raid on the home of a suspected IED maker - the son of insurgent leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's right-hand man, according to an informant.

The Iraqis are eager to lock, load, and get their target. They seem uninterested in planning. "We want to go now," says one Iraqi Army captain. "Or it will be too late."

Such haste is anathema to US officers, taught to prepare for every possible contingency. "We don't want to go too quickly," cautions American Capt. Kent Park, a West Point graduate and Texan of Korean descent. "Remember, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. You got to have a plan."

The Iraqi Army picked this target themselves and developed the intelligence largely without US involvement, a sign of progress, says Captain Park. "Before, we fed them the targets, and we'd say 'go after this one, go after that one,' " he adds after the planning session. "They've come a long way."

But despite the best-laid plans, before Park's soldiers have even cordoned off possible escape routes, their radio crackles to life. The Iraqis have already stormed the suspect's home. They jumped the gun, but they got their man - a lanky 20-something with hair down to his neckline.

Throughout this battalion, and throughout Iraq, American officers like Park, who is from Houston and commands the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team 2-1 Battalion's Charlie Company, are finding themselves thrust into a role they little expected - responsible for bringing the Iraqi Army and police up to US standards.

The Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade, stationed in this Sunni-Kurdish city of 1.8 million, is just one of many such units across Iraq that are being hurried through a US-led training process, readying them to take over for the US in fractured, war-weary Iraq.

While the Brookings Institution reports a total 241,700 Iraqi enlistees, only 54,000 of those troops are considered capable of operating independently from Coalition units. The remaining soldiers must fight alongside coalition forces.

Though this largely Kurdish brigade, considered one of the best trained in Iraq's young army, is slated to assume control of eastern Mosul this summer, questions as to their effectiveness remain.

Here, as in much of Iraq, US efforts to turn over control to Iraqis are running into familiar foes. Sectarian rivalries pull at the fabric of local government councils. Amid increasing calls from both American and Iraqi officials for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step down, the country's inability to form a unity government threatens to deepen the sectarian conflict that continues to kill Iraqi civilians daily.

"Are they ready to stand up?" asks US Army Special Forces Capt. Bill Edmonds, from Fillmore, Calif., who has been living with and training the Iraqi Army for much of the past year. "They're going to have to be. Maybe they're not ready, but the American pressure is to do this as quickly as possible and it's a necessity that we're going to have to take that risk."

It's a risk the US has taken before in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

In the fall of 2004, Iraqi police began to assume responsibility for security here. Insurgents quickly overran the city, waging running gun battles against US forces who stepped in to fill the breach. Insurgents seized control of bridges, set up roadside checkpoints, and destroyed all but one of Mosul's 26 police stations. In the midst of it all, Iraq's newly trained police recruits evaporated.

A year and a half later, things have improved. Mosul has become something of a model city. Many of those police stations have been rebuilt and an estimated 11,000 police are now on the payrolls.

To be sure, things here remain precarious. Insurgent attacks continue apace. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are a daily concern. Prominent politicians and their families have been targeted time and again. University professors are afraid to talk to the media. Residents complain of frequent kidnappings and gunfire in the streets.

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