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| Iraq |
| Progress in training Iraq's "New Model Army" |
| 2005-12-05 |
| "The Right Sort of Men" Iraqi boot camps are producing young soldiers who will stay the course By W. Thomas Smith Jr., National Review EFL & emphasis added. For background, see this article from two years ago. Seventeen-years-ago, Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army officer and military-history professor at West Point wrote, "In the final reckoning, wars are won by men, not weapons. Fortunately, the United States has the right sort of men." Today, as a brigadier general on the ground in Iraq, Bolger says the Iraqis are also turning out "the right sort of men." These are the men who join the army for all the right reasons: Not for reasons of self, money, or opportunity. "They [the Iraqis] don't have to join — it is all voluntary," Bolger, commanding general of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, tells National Review Online. "A young man can find many jobs in today's Iraq, including new ones like selling cars; now widely available to most folks: or cell phones; a true post-Saddam 'must have' item." . . . Fact is, like their U.S. counterparts, thousands of young Iraqis — Bolger's "right sort of men" — are volunteering for service and training to become soldiers at several basic training facilities and officer academies located across Iraq. The largest and the primary Iraqi-army basic-training facility is at Kirkush in the Diyala Province (eastern Iraq between Baghdad and the Iranian border). A second basic training center recently opened in An Numaniyah in Wasit Province (south of Diyala). At both schools, training lasts five weeks (comparable boot-camp training lasts nine weeks for the U.S. Army, eight weeks for the U.S. Navy, six weeks for the U.S. Air Force, and 12 weeks for U.S. Marines). "Iraqi basic training is shorter than American basic training because the Iraqi military has fewer weapons and less complex equipment and tactics," says Bolger. "There is, of course, room to grow." Like American GIs, newly minted Iraqi soldiers move on to advanced training. Infantrymen, for example, must attend an additional seven-week course in infantry skills and tactics. In addition to the Iraqi army's basic training camps, army divisions occasionally receive permission to train members of the former Iraqi army at specific divisional training centers. Army divisions also operate separate training camps for noncommissioned officer (NCO) schools where instructors train future squad leaders and platoon sergeants. And three academies — Ar Rustamiyah, Qualachulon, and Zakho — turn out commissioned officers in one-year training programs. . . . Based on the American models of Parris Island, S.C. (for U.S. Marines) and Fort Benning, Georgia (for U.S. Army infantry); Iraqi basic training is far more challenging today than it was during Saddam Hussein's reign. Old school brutality was certainly more severe under the old regime, but there is no comparison in terms of actual combat skills training. There is no value derived from beating and abusing a recruit. There is value in teaching him how to fight and how to lead others in a fight. "There is the same emphasis [as in American boot camps] on teamwork, physical fitness, mental toughness, and shooting," says Bolger. "Iraqi soldiers in the former army fired 12 bullets a year. Today's Iraqi recruits each shoot more than 600 rifle rounds in marksmanship training." Attrition varies from one class to the next, Bolger adds, but the rates have run as little as five percent to as high as 20 percent in isolated cases. "Attrition has been lower in recent classes as the Iraqi military gains greater societal acceptance and as the new standards are more widely understood by prospective recruits," he says. The training instructors are the best in the world: U.S. Marine and Army officers and NCOs who have spent time as instructors on American drill fields, as well as those from British and Australian military forces. They not only train Iraqis, but assist in the selection and training of Iraqi drill instructors. Though Iraqi boot camps are based on the American model, Iraqi military drill and ceremonies are largely patterned after the British army: A holdover from the 20th-century British Mandate in Iraq. Each training facility and division has a marching band. "And they are good," says Bolger. "The Iraqis understand that being a soldier does take some appeal to emotion and pride, and drill and ceremonies can instill that." . . . Though there are many similarities in the entry-level training experiences between American and Iraqi recruits, there are obvious cultural differences. "Iraqi training allows for the five daily Islamic prayer periods and different meal routines, though when demanded by training — such as night firing — these can be and are adjusted," says Bolger. "With regard to grooming, Iraqi males do not favor 'buzz cuts' so hair, while short, is not clipped as often seen in U.S. recruits. Iraqis are also permitted a much fuller mustache by their regulations, even in basic training." Bolger adds that illiteracy is also a factor. "Not all recruits are literate," he says. "A consequence of Saddam's brutal era, in which schooling was de-emphasized, about a third or more Arab adult males (and even high percentages of women) did not benefit from schooling. This must be accommodated in training, which tends to be 'hands-on' and interactive as a result." Once graduated and advance-skills courses completed, Iraqi soldiers become members of specific divisions. And each division has its own training program to integrate new soldiers into the division's operational environment. "This is very important, as Iraqi combat units are in combat daily," says Bolger. "New arrivals are taught the unit SOP (standing operating procedure), and they learn the local areas before heading out as parts of fighting units." Division compounds also have shooting ranges, urban-combat mock-ups, and vehicle-training areas that allow practice and rehearsals before and after actual missions. "Training is part of combat — you learn as you fight in any good army," Bolger adds. "The training centers are not only turning out good soldiers, but the Iraqi people are also viewing those soldiers — and the Iraqi army overall — in a different light," U.S. Army Col. Michael Cloy, the senior military adviser for the 2nd Iraqi Army (Light) Infantry Division in Mosul, tells NRO. "Iraqi civilians see the new Iraqi army as servants to the people: Not a force that will abuse them, or steal them away in the night never to be seen again." . . . . . . The guerrillas also have a newfound respect for the new Iraqi soldier. "A year ago, they [the insurgents] freely attacked the Iraqi military, but now the Iraqi troops dominate the killing ground," says Gen. Bolger. "So the hostiles have resorted to remote bombings because they can't stand and fight the Iraqi soldiers anymore. Their worst nightmare is to confront an Iraqi rifleman in the dark, face-to-face. That will only go one way." Bolger adds, "The new Iraqi military's officers and NCOs lead from the front, and what we see in training translates into combat. I have been on many, many operations with Iraqi forces, to include numerous infantry platoon foot patrols, with Iraqi Marines on guard out on the oil platforms, on mechanized sweeps, and with midnight raids, and the Iraqis have never quit. They get the job done, under fire. They run to the sound of the guns sometimes at cost. They recover their dead and wounded. They seek the enemy. They expect to win their firefights." And they do. . . . . . . At the individual level, the Iraqi soldier is aggressive. Of course, soldiers are supposed to be aggressive. But the Iraqi soldier seems to have a natural flair for aggressive action in battle. It's an Iraqi infantry specialty that Coalition troops and instructors believe is giving the Iraqi army an edge over the insurgents. . . . Those who understand the difficulties associated with standing up a new military force, realize that progress is being made — and in amazing time — under adverse conditions. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #3 Being able to stand up an army from scratch is an SF dream. Normally it amounts to going into a corrupt military that has removed any remaining NCO Corps and trying to fix it. Of course the officer Corps is fighting the change all the way. It is incredibly frustrating. The Iraq model is altogether different. New troops, new NCO's, and new officers allow the creation of new standards and practices without any holdovers. What most don't realize is we are building the next dominant force in the area. I would bet Israel is watching this very closely. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2005-12-05 16:35 |
| #2 Sounds like a good investment for the Iraqi government to make would be a third installation modeled after the DLI (Defense Language Institute). Its basic course would be literacy, which is known to radically improve morale among those who were previously illiterate. Its intermediate course would be foreign language, primarily English. They would probably also want to study French, Iranian, and who knows what all else. But those who completed such training would be on the promotion fast track. The advanced course would be education for what amounts to a high-school GED. Soldiers who showed promise there would be on the officer track, and could be farmed out to any of the major Iraqi universities. The best part is that none of these ideas would be strange in any way to the Iraqis, they wouldn't have to have the logic of it explained to them, and it would raise the professional quality of their military far above any other military in the region, save Israel. Eventually, as part of the Status of Forces agreement, I hope the US and Iraq agree to conduct an annual joint maneuver, which will eventually be fully integrated into the Bright Star exercises. It will be a sight to see the Egyptian and Iraqi armies utterly perplexed at the sight of each other perfoming the same NATO-style maneuvers and with the same discipline. The light may dawn that there's still a little hope for some Arab pride left. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-12-05 13:32 |
| #1 Duh-oh! Left out the link to the atricle from two years ago. It's here. |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-12-05 12:38 |