Iraqi Soldiers Refuse to Go to Baghdad, Defying Order
    By Michael R. Gordon
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 29 August 2006

    Washington - A group of Iraqi soldiers recently refused to go to Baghdad, Iraq's capital, to help restore order there, a senior American military officer said Monday.

    The officer, Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, who oversees the American-led effort to train Iraq's security forces, said the episode last week involved about 100 Iraqi soldiers based in Maysan Province, which borders Iran.

    A formal investigation has begun, and the Iraqi government will soon decide whether to rescind the deployment order to the soldiers' parent Iraqi Army unit, the Second Battalion of the Fourth Brigade of the 10th Division.

    "The majority of this particular unit was Shia, and they felt - the leadership of that unit and their soldiers - like they were needed down there in Maysan," General Pittard told reporters in a videoconference from Iraq. "Now, that will be worked out by the Iraqi government and the Ministry of Defense, and we'll be in support of that."

    Though the episode involves only a small fraction of the 10-division Iraqi Army, it points to an important issue. The new Iraqi government wants to build a national military, one that is ethnically diverse and can be deployed anywhere in Iraq. It does not want to field a military that is essentially a collection of local units with regional loyalties.

    But many Iraqis are reluctant to serve far from their home provinces. Sunnis in Anbar Province, for example, are reluctant to join the army if they will be sent far from home to predominantly Shiite areas. Shiites are often hesitant to serve in overwhelmingly Sunni regions.

    "The Iraqi Army is supposed to be a national army," said General Pittard. "They were recruited regionally, and for the most part they've been operating regionally. So that's where the difficulty is."

    The refusal of some Iraqi soldiers in Maysan Province to serve in Baghdad was reported late last week in The Daily Telegraph of London and The Washington Post. General Pittard's comments, however, appear to be the first time that a senior American officer involved in training the Iraqi military has explained the episode and discussed the investigation.

    This is not the first time that Iraqi soldiers have refused to deploy to a distant area. A large number of soldiers from a predominantly Kurdish unit in northern Iraq, the Second Battalion, Third Brigade of the Second Iraqi Division, refused to go to Ramadi, where American Army troops have been involved in a tough fight to take the city back from insurgents, General Pittard noted.

    Even when Iraqi soldiers agree to serve far from home, many quit. The two Iraqi divisions in Anbar Province in western Iraq have had high attrition rates and are more than 5,000 soldiers below their authorized levels. When leaves are taken into account, the day-to-day strength of the two Iraqi divisions in that province is 35 percent and 50 percent.

    The Bush administration has cast the effort to train Iraq's security forces as part of its exit strategy. More than 3,000 soldiers in the American-led coalition are involved in training the Iraqi Army, police and border troops. As President Bush put it last year, "Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

    The current operation in Baghdad, which is called Together Forward, is intended to break the cycle of sectarian violence that threatens to plunge the country into civil war.

    Under the plan, American and Iraqi forces are working their way through the city, neighborhood by neighborhood, in an effort to clear it of insurgents and militias. Once the areas are secured, the plan is to hand them over to the Iraqi police, who will work with American advisers. Millions of dollars of Iraqi and American funds are to be spent to restore vital services, create jobs and, essentially, try to build good will for the new Iraqi government.

    An additional 12,000 troops have been sent to Baghdad to carry out the operation, 7,000 of whom are Americans. Some of the American troops have been diverted from other parts of Iraq. The Iraqi soldiers who refused to deploy from the Maysan areas were to have been part of the Iraqi reinforcements.

    General Pittard said an important milestone would be reached in September, when the Eighth Iraqi Army Division will be placed under the control of the Iraqi Ground Forces Command. "It will be the first time that an Iraqi division will no longer be under the tactical control of the coalition forces," he said.