Iraq's army seeks a few good Sunnis
Poor turnout at a Sunni neighborhood recruiting drive underscores the challenges facing US military trainers seeking to build a balanced Iraqi force.
from the April 4, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
$360 is a big salary
The starting monthly salary for soldiers is $360, a relative fortune for the jobless youth.
At mid-morning, a teenager begins to sob hysterically. He was just turned away because he did not have his original ID. He begs an Iraqi officer to let him in. He must work to feed his ailing father and two little brothers, he says. His mother died in a car bomb earlier this year after the family was expelled from a town south of Baghdad just because they were Shiites.
Another man is told that he is too old for the Army. "Please, I will do anything. I will sell my blood just to feed my children," pleads Musleh Mutashar, a Shiite from the Bayaa neighborhood.
Lieutenant Waggoner, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, discovers there are 20 people from Adhamiyah among the crowd. He separates them and has them escorted to the clinic for the medical checkup and literacy test. "We are jobless and we also want to protect our neighborhoods," says Osama al-Dawoodi, who came with his brother.
After a long wait, only eight pass the medical and literary test, which consists of reading newspaper headlines. A total of 12 Sunnis are turned away, including two because of a lisp. Mr. Dawoodi, who was accepted, becomes angry and says he will not board the bus to the Numaniyah training center southeast of Baghdad without his friends.
"Well, if that's how you're going to be, do not go all of you. You should be grateful that we came to you," Iraqi General Kadhem responds. The Americans intervene and the two lisping Sunnis are allowed on the bus. An enlisted Iraqi soldier standing nearby disagrees with recruiting Sunnis from Adhamiyah. "The people of Adhamiyah are not to be trusted. They will work in our midst as informants for the insurgents," he says.
2,500 Sunni recruits in Ramadi
General Kadhem says they will keep trying, but they will only succeed in hiring Sunnis when the people in the community decide to throw their lot behind the government. He notes the Iraqi Army's success in Ramadi last month. It recruited 2,500 Sunnis, thanks to the Anbar Salvation Front, a group of US-backed tribal sheikhs who are fighting Al Qaeda in the province. He says that 1,500 Anbar Sunnis are now in basic training, while the remainder of the recruits are waiting for training. The general says that currently, about 65 percent of the Iraqi Army are Shiites.
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