DISPATCHES FROM IRAQ
Security corps gradually building

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MCHENRY, Iraq — As a captain in the old Iraqi army, Jasim Yunis Hamed had trouble making ends meet.

A member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps from the Huwijah battalion examines used combat boots offered to the ICDC while new boots are on order. The battalion still needs more uniforms and other basic items. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

He also has another wife and two more children in Kirkuk, but because she is Kurdish — a group at odds with the former ruling Baath Party — she was not given a car by the government.

Hamed had received 30,000 Iraqi dinars a month — about $21.

"I can't buy any clothes for me or my families," he said. "But now, it's good."

Hamed now has a car, a $221 monthly salary, and a new calling — working as a major in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

"This is good, and the favor belongs to the coalition forces."

The coalition, too, thinks it's good.

But now it is desperately seeking something in return: a trained Iraqi national security force that can take over the job American troops have largely performed for the past year.

"Long-term, we want to work ourselves out of a job," said 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Capt. Victor Olshansky, one of the Schofield Barracks officers charged with making that happen.

Some 45 battalions of ICDC, likened to an Iraqi National Guard, are planned for the country as part of a 210,000-member security force that includes police.

Members of the ICDC wear U.S. "chocolate chip" pattern camouflage and work outside cities. Police are responsible for security within urban areas.

In the 25th Infantry Division (Light's) operating area in northern Iraq, four battalions, or about 4,000 of the security soldiers, are being put in place.

U.S. commanders elsewhere have publicly complained about a lack of money and equipment for the ICDC as a June 30 sovereignty date looms. But Schofield's top commander in Iraq said progress is being made — particularly around the southern area of Tuz.

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team is responsible for a chunk of Iraq around Kirkuk that's more than six times the size of the Big Island.

"I think, quite honestly, the ICDC that we have here in the southern portion of our (operating area) is probably one of the best that you'll find here in Iraq," said 2nd Brigade commander Col. Lloyd Miles. "It's not as strong as you get out in the western portion, and even up in the north they are very weak. But they are newer ... they are still trying to get barracks for them, etc. Whereas down in the southern portion, they are very well equipped."

If any area is closest to assuming primary responsibility for security, it's around Tuz, Miles said.

"I don't think they are there yet," Miles said. "But they are getting very close."

Soldiers like Olshansky, operating in the Huwijah area to the southwest of Kirkuk, have a bigger challenge ahead.

The 1-27's liaison for ICDC, Olshansky, 29, inherited 823 security force members who had received only rudimentary training from the 4th Infantry Division. Many served in the former Iraqi army.

"Since we've gotten here, we've started to work their supply issues very deliberately," Olshansky said. "Right now, they don't have their own budget, so everything they use, from vehicles, office supplies, weapons and ammo, to food and bedding, all comes through us. I'd say 90 percent of our involvement over the past weeks has been on supply issues."

That day, the Schofield battalion supplied 100 U.S. Army-style cots for the Huwijah battalion headquarters so the ICDC personnel could stay in barracks.

They will be trained in conducting roadside traffic checks and searches of personnel and buildings. A "quick reaction force" also will be set up.

"Right now, they are doing (some of those things)," Olshansky said. "But they really haven't been trained on how to do it well. We want to get to the point where they can do it on their own without U.S. forces."

However, some cultural obstacles remain.

On a raid in the village of Al Bassi southwest of Kirkuk, 1-27's soldiers came up empty handed in their search for four men who had been videotaped with rockets for sale. The men had been tipped off.

Soldiers discovered that an ICDC member lived just several doors away, and that the brother of one of the men being sought — a man named Mohammed — was a police officer in a nearby village.

"I don't want you working for the ICDC if you can't catch who is breaking the law," the 1-27's commander, Lt. Col. Scott Leith, told the man.

Stopping at the nearby village, Mohammed's brother, a police sergeant dressed in a blue silk robe who lived in a large mud home, told U.S. soldiers "if I knew my brother was doing this (selling rockets), I'd arrest him myself."

But Leith also was told "the hard life maybe made him go this way, and he doesn't have a job."

"You understand, you cannot be a police officer and have criminals so close and allow it to happen. You have an obligation beyond family," Leith told the police officer.

He also demanded that the police sergeant find his brother and bring him to coalition forces for questioning.

Olshansky said one of his biggest challenges has been overcoming internal rivalries and nepotism.

"I've got a battalion commander who wants to fire his logistics officer just so he can replace him with his cousin — even though the logistics officer does a fantastic job, and the cousin has no experience in logistics," he said.

Progress is being made in equipment and training, though.

The battalion Olshansky is responsible for has 10 pickup trucks. He's working on getting Russian-made jeeps and 5-ton trucks.

Ten drill sergeants from Fort Benning, Ga., were brought in to work with the ICDC in the 2nd Brigade area.

Miles said the ICDC in the southern Tuz area, made up of different ethnicities, "is seen as a fairly legitimate organization. People take a lot of pride in the ICDC in (Area of Operation) South."

In Huwijah and Al Bassi, where Sunni Arabs predominate, there is greater resentment of the U.S.-backed security force.

Though there has been no shortage of applicants, Iraqi police and ICDC members have been increasingly targeted by insurgents for working with the United States.

Four men in the ICDC were killed on Friday during a raid with U.S. forces near Tikrit.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for Combined Joint Task Force 7 in Iraq, recently said, "We remain concerned at what is clearly a program of intimidation and targeting of not only the Iraqi police service, but all government officials."

Kimmitt added that about 350 police have been killed over the past year.

"ICDC is in danger now because we work together with coalition forces, and all the people hate us. They call us the spies," Hamed said. "I have trouble with my wife, and the first time there was danger, she said, 'I want you to leave your job.' I told her, 'I can't do this. I like working with the military.' "

Miles said the commitment to the security of Iraq was shown after the Feb. 23 suicide car bombing at the Rahimawa police station in Kirkuk, which killed 10 officers and injured 45 others.

"If you had a chance to talk with the ones who were injured ... those individuals said they will not be scared off, that they do see it as their job to provide for the security of their people," Miles said. "So I think if you can get that kind of attitude to spread among the ICDC and police forces, then I think they'll eventually work us out of a job."