Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
Training Iraq's army
to battle insurgents
u.s. chief plans support and assistance
By Dexter Filkins
June 28, 2004
BAGHDAD: .On a recent afternoon in
his new office in the heavily fortified
Green Zone, Lieutenant General David
Petraeus, a celebrated American field
commander, sketched his vision for
how U.S. forces might one day extract
themselves fromthis country.
"I know where this ends, ~ said Petraeus,
SI, who earlier this month took
control of a vast project to oversee the
training ofIraqi security forces. "It ends
with the Iraqis in charge of their country.
Our job is to help with a very important
part of that." .
He added, "At the end of the day, you
get as many Iraqis as possible to have a
stake in the success of the new Iraq to
defeat the insurgency." .
Just a few hundred meters from his
office, the magnitude ofPetraeus's challenge
loomed in the form of Zhuhair
Khamis, an Iraqi Civil Defense officer
standing guard at' the entrance to the
American compound.
"I am not ready to fight Iraqis," said
Khamis, 33, standing post outside the
American-controlled Green Zone. "I
will throw down my weapon, I will
throw down my uniform, and I will give
back my badge. I will fight foreigners
but I am not ready to fight Iraqis."
Petraeus, an American commander
who scored some of the army's most
notable successes in the previous year
here, is now charged with perhaps the
most ambitious project that will unfold
in the year that begins with the restoration
ofIraqi sovereignty on Wednesday:
rebuilding an Iraqi security force that
collap~ed during April's uprisings,
when Iraqi soldiers quit and ran rather
Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Til"es
lieutenant General David Petraeus is charged with rebuilding the Iraqi security foree.
break,1ill already impressive military
careér. The task. creating a credible
army in, a foreign country under siege,
seems likely to require unusual skills
for U.S. generals, like offering advice
that might be ignored or standing back
while Iraqis step to the fore.
Major General Paul Eaton, who oversaw
the training of Iraqi forces until
Petraeus took over, said the Americans
had tried to do too much too fast, and
had missed how the country's various
ethnicities and religious groups had.
failed to coalesce. .
"In America. we have this national
ethos; you identify with the Pledge of
. Allegiance and th~ flag, the Stars an.d
security unit, the civif defense corps,
and begun turning it into a branch of a
revamped lOO,OOO-manIraqi Army.
The locally recruited corps officers
will be taken out of their homes and cities,
away from their families and
mosques, and turned into soldiers who
live on bases and train and fight together.
To make that happen, the Americans
have .committed $3 billion to build
training site!! and regiorial headquarters
and to better equip Iraqi soldiers.
It will be up to Petraeus to carry out
these changes, and he says he plans to
carry them out as he did before.
than fight their own pedple.
"What we are going to do now is
Petraeus's goal, in his own words, is
to help crea~ an Iraqi Army that will
. Stripes," Eaton saId. "In Iraq, that IS nothing new - it's what we did in Mosul,"
Petraetis said. "We are enabling,
have the heart to defeat the insurgency
overshadowed by tribe, imam, family
and ultimately enable U.S. forces to go
and ethnicity. I talked to countless supporting and assisting Iraqis. We
-. . .
made a lot of friends there." .
home. Anything less will probably condemn,
the Americans to a long-term in-
Mu~mmad, and I am a Turkoman' or 'I . sul experiment began to sour last au-
young soldiers who said, 'My. name is For all the general's efforts, the Motervention
or to a withdrawal that am a Sunni' or 'I am a Shiite.' ..
tumn. A number of Iraqis cooperating
. would send Iraq spinning into chaos
Petraeus acknowledges the obstacles with the American-backed government
and could jeopardize elections.
but says he believes he can transcend have been killed in recent months. MosuI's
experience is similar to that of
In a war that seems to loom more like
them. A 1974graduate of West Point, he
a quagmire every day, Petraeus said he
is a veteran of peacekeeping in Haiti, many other cities in central Iraq, where
could see the shape of victory in Iraq.
Kosovo and Bosnia. He has a doctorate
"But I can't predict when that will be.
millions of dollars spent on projects ultimately
failed to quell the insurgency.
in internatioOàl relations from Princeton
University, whel,'e he wrote his dis-
To set up an effective Iraqi Army, Pet-
It's not going to be someone flipping a
light switch."
sertation on the Vietnam War.
. Last year, when Petraeus was head of
raeus said, he believes the most important
change is already happening: put-
Even.b.efore Petraeus arrived, American
commanders had begun overhaul-
the elite 100st Airborne Division, his ef-
: forts in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
ting Iraqis in charge of the army and the
ing the Iraqi security services, based on
constituted one of the few bright spots
.government.
the experience of the April uprisings. . The New York 'firnes
in an otherwise troubled occupation. .
With the new Iraqi leadership, they.
For Petraeus, the new job presents an
have taken the most important internal
e~ormous risk. pp,e that could make or
'..,
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