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Effort to Train New Iraqi Army Is Facing Delays

Sep-20-2004 » Filed Under: Iraq News

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By ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - Three months into its new mission, the military command in charge of training and equipping Iraqi security forces has fewer than half of its permanent headquarters personnel in place, despite having one of the highest-priority roles in Iraq.

Only about 230 of the nearly 600 military personnel required by the headquarters, from lawyers to procurement experts, have been assigned jobs with the group, the Multinational Security Transition Command, military officials in Washington and Iraq said. One officer said the military's Joint Staff had given the armed services until Oct. 15 to fill the remaining jobs, but other officials said those people might not actually be in place until weeks later. [...]

Commanders in Iraq say General Petraeus's headquarters has provided crucial help in cutting through bureaucratic delays. "They were very helpful in getting us a battalion set of equipment that in the past would have taken much longer to get," Col. Michael Rounds, who commands the Army's Stryker brigade in northern Iraq, said in a telephone interview from Mosul.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi security forces are growing steadily. As late as this summer, Mr. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials frequently boasted that the Iraqi ranks had swelled to more than 200,000. Since early August, however, Mr. Rumsfeld has been careful to note that only about half of those forces are sufficiently trained and equipped.

American officials and commanders praised the performance of the Iraqi commando battalion, counterterrorist force and two so-called interventional battalions that fought last month in Najaf against loyalists to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

"Their capabilities are still uneven, but they're improving as we arm and equip them better, improve their infrastructure, give them additional training, and help them weed out the weak leaders," one American general said. "Nothing's quick in Iraq and nothing's easy."


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