[continued from previous message] 
  
 Perez-Cruz is sitting in the tactical operations centre, where he 
 and other US officers are inspecting 19 detainees seated in rows in 
 the shade of metal shack - a dozen arrested by the strike platoon, 
 the other seven picked up by other Iraqi units in the night's sweep. 
 US intelligence officers have begun their interrogation. "Are you a 
 Sunni? Are you a Wahabi?" they ask each detainee. 
  
 Looking on from the back of a pickup truck where he is sitting with 
 his soldiers is a young officer in the strike platoon. A Shia Muslim 
 formerly of the Iraqi special forces who fought the Desert Rats in 
 Basra in 2003, he speaks of his experience in Iraq's new military. 
  
 "When you join the Iraqi army now, you have to know that you are a 
 dead man. You should be sure that you will be killed," he said. "The 
 only question is when and how: will you be assassinated, killed by a 
 suicide bomber or an IED [improvised explosive device]?" 
  
 Pointing at the detainees, he says: "This is a sectarian war. Those 
 Sunnis, they have the right to resist." 
  
 The farms and villages that surround the volatile city of Baquba are 
 predominantly Sunni, but there are a considerable number of Shia and 
 Kurdish enclaves scattered around. Pro-Saddam graffiti are sprayed 
 on village walls, Sunni extremists preach jihad against Iraqi and US 
 forces, and deadly attacks are common. 
  
 For two weeks I followed the men of Iraq's new army as they 
 patrolled the thick green groves that swathe these farmlands, 
 crossed waist-deep rivers, climbed compound walls and jumped into 
 houses. I watched them as they dug out hundreds of artillery shells 
 hidden in a palm grove. I travelled in their pickup trucks, sat in 
 their checkpoints, ate their food. 
  
 These Iraqi units - comprising the 800 men of the 2nd Brigade of the 
 4th Iraqi Army division, the first Iraqi brigade to be formed after 
 the fall of Saddam - are in charge of manning checkpoints and 
 conducting security operations in this area, either alone or with US 
 backup. 
  
 During the time I spent with 2nd Brigade last month, more than 30 
 Iraqi security personnel were killed and more than 40 injured in 
 this area. A number of Kurdish soldiers deserted their unit after an 
 attack that killed their officer. Nine more Iraqi soldiers from the 
 brigade were killed on July 11 at a checkpoint. Drive-by shootings, 
 sophisticated ambushes, car bombs and a mess-hall attack: all have 
 been used against the Iraqi soldiers in this area. 
  
 The Iraqi army units work with groups of US advisers called Mitts: 
 Military Transitional Teams. The Mitt working with 2nd Brigade is 
 Task Force 66, also known as the Desert Lions: a small unit of US 
 officers who provide their Iraqi counterparts with assistance, 
 backup and advice. Its commander is Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Kessler, 
 45, an energetic Pennsylvanian. As he walks through the narrow 
 corridors of 2nd Brigade's HQ, he passes walls dotted with 
 blindfolded Iraqi detainees. 
  
 "When people think of the US army, they think we are like [the film] 
 Enemy of the State, with all the gadgets and stuff and that we can 
 monitor and see everything. But actually there is nothing like the 
 intelligence the Iraqis can bring through their ground agents," he 
 tells me. 
  
 Kessler says the team has taken its motto -"It's their war. Help 
 them win it" - from TE Lawrence, the legendary British officer who 
 advised the Arab rebels in their fight against the Ottomans in the 
 first world war. 
  
 He approaches a room guarded by an Iraqi soldier who stands from his 
 chair: "You can't go in," he says in Arabic. "The colonel is in the 
 middle of an interrogation." Kessler, unable to understand, opens 
 the doors and goes in. 
  
 "Yeah, go in, the whole country is yours now," says the guard. 
  
 The colonel is a thin man with a bony face and big hands. He was a 
 former security officer in Saddam's time, a Shia and a native of 
 Baquba. He joined the new Iraqi army on day one. Sinking into his 
 big chair behind a big wooden desk, he continues questioning the 
 detainee: "If you don't tell me where the weapons are, I will hand 
 you to them." With that, he points at the American officer. 
  
 The new army has progressed since its establishment two years ago, 
 the Iraqi colonel tells me. "When we first started, we had very few 
 rifles, and only ammunition enough for two hours of fighting. I had 
 just two pickup trucks in my battalion. Now there are 80 vehicles 
 and enough ammunition for three months," he says. "I would love to 
 have Humvees, but even if the Americans gave them to me tomorrow I 
 won't have people to drive them. We need to train people from 
 scratch for everything." There is another Lawrence-era maxim used by 
 Kessler and his Mitts: "It's better for the Arabs to do it tolerably 
 than for us do it perfectly." 
  
 "We try to put them through a mould, but they have their own way of 
 doing things," Kessler says. 
  
 If the prerequisites for US military withdrawal from Iraq are the 
 building of an effective fighting force and the Iraqis being capable 
 of defending themselves, American troops may be here for a long, 
 long time. What I saw of the Iraqi forces on the ground was 
 sobering. 
  
 One day, I went with a small American force of two tanks and a 
 couple of Humvees as they swept one of the highways on the outskirts 
 of Baquba just after dawn, looking for potential IEDs and monitoring 
 the Iraqi army checkpoints scattered on that road. A day earlier, a 
 checkpoint had been attacked from three directions; four died and 
 six were injured. The Americans wanted to boost Iraqi morale. 
  
 An American sergeant stepped out of his tank and went to inspect the 
 first checkpoint, a small fortress of concrete blast walls, Hesco 
 barriers and sandbags supplied by the Americans. One Iraqi soldier 
 sat on a chair with his Kalashnikov on his lap. The rest were either 
 fast asleep or in the back having a breakfast of scrambled eggs and 
 tea. One man, when he saw American soldiers in the checkpoint, got 
 dressed and went home, telling his soldiers: "As long as they are 
 here, no one will attack you." 
  
 The same scene was repeated at the three other checkpoints we 
 visited on that road, checkpoints meant to be guarding the main 
 access to Baquba. In every case, American soldiers found Iraqi 
 soldiers just waking up or still sleeping. Men walked around in 
 their shorts and T-shirts; flak jackets were piled under thick 
 layers of dust and pieces of dried bread and onions. Helmets hung on 
 the walls and when one Iraqi soldier was instructed by an American 
 to wear his helmet, he replied: "The sun is pouring melted iron on 
 our heads, and you want me to wear this? Look at your helmet and 
 look at mine: yours has a cooler inside." 
  
 According to Kessler and his team, as well as the difficulties 
 facing the US and Iraqi officers in building an army in the middle 
 of a bloody insurgency, there are two other problems: sectarianism, 
 and the "Saddam mentality". 
  
 As the divisions between Shia, Sunni and Kurd take shape at 
 government level, the effects are being felt in the military. Both 
 Iraqi and American officers say that the Ministry of Defence in 
 Baghdad has fallen under the control of Kurdish political parties, 
 and that this now affects all decisions taken by the ministry. 
  
 One Iraqi officer also speaks of the influence of the Badr Brigade, 
 the armed wing of the biggest Shia political party which now 
 controls the National Assembly and the ministry of the interior. 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)