Iraqi general wants US to stay

Sunday Times:

THE Iraqi general leant back and laughed so hard that his belly shook. General Jamal Ahmed was recounting Saddam Hussein’s visit to his war room, when all his generals knew that the Iraqi army would be beaten by the Americans but feared to contradict their leader’s insistence that they would prevail.

As commander of a 1,500-man brigade in a province that borders on Baghdad’s northern limits, Ahmed, 48, now has to listen to Iraq’s new leaders call for American troops to withdraw, knowing full well that the Iraqi army would again be overrun if they did.

“One hundred per cent we need the Americans in Iraq now,” Ahmed said last week in his office at the Taji base, 20 miles north of Baghdad. “The army can’t stand. We will be killed. We need training. Weapons. Equipment.”

Under Saddam he would have been executed had he spoken up, while in today’s Iraq he can expose hypocrisy without risking his neck. He laughed at the paradox that his mentor in the process of creating a fighting brigade is Colonel Stan Wilson, who fought against him in the war that toppled Saddam.

Wilson now heads a team preparing the Iraqi army to fight alone. Success is crucial to the American exit strategy, in which Iraqi forces will be substituted for US troops in a staged withdrawal.

Yet there are only 30 “transition teams” working in Iraq. They are embedded with Iraqi units, training them to fight a ferocious insurgency by al-Qaeda infiltrators and supporters of Saddam.

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Ahmed is in command while the Americans mentor and train. Several days a week, the two commanders go out on patrol together. The Americans do not give orders but try to nudge the Iraqis towards better tactics.

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Ahmed is in command while the Americans mentor and train. Several days a week, the two commanders go out on patrol together. The Americans do not give orders but try to nudge the Iraqis towards better tactics.

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Ahmed says that although he cried when Saddam fell, it was because he felt dishonoured as a soldier who could not defend his country. Now he is proud.

“The difference is that the Iraqi army under Saddam fought the Iraqi people,” the general said. “The new army is fighting to protect the people.”

They still have a ways to go. Many have questionable loyalty, to go along with questionable leadership. At this point Iraq is failing to seize the opportunity that the US has given it.