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A campus for Iraqi soldiers

Dec-19-2005 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By Julian E. Barnes, US News & World Report

One vision for the future of the American presence in Iraq is rising in the ruins of an Iraqi agricultural university just south of Mosul.

The campus is being renovated by the American and Iraqi militaries into the new home of a regional training academy for young officers and noncommissioned officers. Agricultural university buildings that were looted to their concrete walls during the 2003 American invasion of Iraq are being carefully rebuilt and renovated into barracks for students, instructor housing, classrooms, and auditoriums. On the school grounds, American military engineers are building rifle ranges and obstacle courses. [...]

Col. Michael Shields, the commander of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, which has helped oversee the rebuilding and startup of the school, says he hopes the academy will be in full swing by next summer, teaching a variety of classes and working to create a new kind of officer and senior enlisted soldier. Shields says the hope is that the school's graduates will in turn teach their Iraqi units the fine points of squad-based tactics, searching, clearing, and patrolling.

"The NCO is the backbone of the army," he says. "We need to train the trainers in order to breed competence throughout the Iraqi army."

The problem with the old Iraqi army—and the reason it crumbled in the face of two American assaults—is that it was a top-down organization. Power was concentrated among senior officers. Those officers developed the plans and kept a tight hold. Soldiers didn't know anything of their larger missions and were given no power to make decisions on the ground. Making the new Iraqi army stronger requires changing that custom, and teaching Iraqis that they have to give authority to squad and platoon leaders, allowing them to decide how to maneuver and protect their soldiers. [...]


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