.Training Iraqi Troops a Logistical Feat
TAJI, Iraq (AP) - Iraq has one of the world's largest oil reserves, but the Iraqi army can't get enough fuel for its tanks. It also can't get spare parts for its trucks or supply ammunition on its own.
While the U.S. training program has made great progress teaching Iraqi soldiers how to fight, the force still relies on American help for distributing supplies - a dependency that is another obstacle to sending U.S. troops home.
"Just because you stand up all the fighters, all the combat arms organizations, they're not self-sustaining until they have some form of a logistics system," said Brig. Gen. Rebecca Halstead, commander of the 3rd Corps Support Command. "It's not there yet."
As U.S. commanders worked the past three years to build Iraqi security forces, priority went to forming combat units capable of fighting Sunni Arab insurgents.
The task of maintaining those troops was left to U.S.-led coalition forces - who got Iraqis to their missions, gave them ammunition, fed them and, in many cases, even gave them their pay.
Even in areas where Iraqis have taken over security duties, they need help getting supplies from central and regional storage facilities. In volatile Anbar province, a hot bed of insurgents, it has been especially challenging for the Iraqis to keep troops supplied with food and water.
So there is now an emphasis on building an effective Iraqi logistics operation.
Of the roughly 120,000 Iraqi soldiers, about 10 percent to 15 percent are involved in supply-related activities, said Maj. Gerald Ostlund, a coalition spokesman.
By contrast, for every combat soldier in American and other foreign contingents, there are three performing support or logistics roles, U.S. officials say.
The Iraqi military won't need quite the same ratio since they have a local economy to rely on for food, housing, equipment and repairs, unlike the Americans who need to import just about everything, said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. think tank.
Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance and Training Team that is helping Iraqis build their army, said Iraq also won't need the resources for moving troops around the world.
But many Iraqi logistical units are still understaffed, Wolff said.
For example, here at the Taji National Depot, a clearinghouse for supplies going to units across Iraq, the goal is to have about 1,200 Iraqi soldiers working at the post 12 miles north of Baghdad, but there are only about 300 now.
The American military's logistics system uses high-tech tracking devices such as radio monitors that allow items to be followed from when they leave storage in the U.S. until they arrive in Iraq.
The Iraqis use a low-tech system. Some is computerized. But records are mostly kept on paper, which means supplies can easily be lost or stolen before they get to the units that need them.
It's a system ripe for corruption, said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a research group in Washington.
"The prevailing community standard is steal everything that isn't nailed down. And when you find something that is nailed down, to go to find a crowbar," Pike said.
In one particularly egregious incident, Iraqi officials last year found that widespread fraud and corruption under former Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan led to the disappearance of $1 billion, almost the entire budget to buy new equipment.
Col. Kenneth Kirkpatrick, who advises Iraqi supply officers at Taji, said making sure everything in the depot is accounted for is a key goal.
"I think it has been a problem," he said. "Early on, things were moving through here so fast that they were just coming in on the trucks and moving out as fast as they could. Sometimes the boxes just weren't sealed properly or containers weren't locked, and that opened it up to pilferage along the route."
The depot's Iraqi deputy commander, who did not want his name used out of fear insurgents would kill him for working with the Americans, said shipping containers sometimes arrive without his staff having any idea what is in them before they are opened.
Kirkpatrick said that is mostly the case with supplies donated by other countries.
Iraqi commanders and troops in the field complain that Iraqi officials in Baghdad fail to get them essentials like fuel and spare parts for vehicles.
Lt. Col. Hassan Falah, with the highway police, likened the situation to carrying a block of ice from Baghdad to distant provinces - by the time it arrives, most of it has melted away. Falah said only four of his 20 vehicles were working due to lack of parts.
Adding to the supply problem, many Iraqi soldiers and police operate with an eclectic assortment of purchased and donated vehicles that run on various types of fuel and need different spare parts.
Then there are the fuel shortages.
An American soldier helping train the Iraqi border patrol said that when his unit pulls into a town or Iraqi base, Iraqi troops try to siphon off fuel from the U.S. Humvees because they are so low on supplies.
Wolff said the defense forces aren't allocated enough fuel from the Iraqi government. "Where do they sit on the pecking order? We believe that they're on the bottom third," he said.
In the past, when Iraqi units needed fuel, they turned to the Americans. But U.S. commanders say they have begun withholding supplies in an effort to force Iraqis to look to their own supply chains.
"For a while we really spiked where we were giving them, I would say, a majority of their fuel," said Halstead, the 3rd Corps Support Command chief. "If I keep giving you something, you'll just keep taking it."
As for maintenance of Iraqi military vehicles, the work is now being done by private contractors hired by the Ministry of Defense. But that contract expires in March, and the Iraqi army needs to decide whether to renew it or do the work itself, Wolff said.
Despite the problems, U.S. officers say they are making progress in getting Iraqis to take over more of their supply operations.
Lt. Col. William Schiek, who supervised training of the Iraqi army's 6th Motorized Transportation Regiment, said the unit has been planning, coordinating and executing its own missions for months with little direct U.S. involvement.
"They're doing 100 percent of the heavy lifting," Schiek said. "This is not a U.S. show by any means."
MyWay
While the U.S. training program has made great progress teaching Iraqi soldiers how to fight, the force still relies on American help for distributing supplies - a dependency that is another obstacle to sending U.S. troops home.
"Just because you stand up all the fighters, all the combat arms organizations, they're not self-sustaining until they have some form of a logistics system," said Brig. Gen. Rebecca Halstead, commander of the 3rd Corps Support Command. "It's not there yet."
As U.S. commanders worked the past three years to build Iraqi security forces, priority went to forming combat units capable of fighting Sunni Arab insurgents.
The task of maintaining those troops was left to U.S.-led coalition forces - who got Iraqis to their missions, gave them ammunition, fed them and, in many cases, even gave them their pay.
Even in areas where Iraqis have taken over security duties, they need help getting supplies from central and regional storage facilities. In volatile Anbar province, a hot bed of insurgents, it has been especially challenging for the Iraqis to keep troops supplied with food and water.
So there is now an emphasis on building an effective Iraqi logistics operation.
Of the roughly 120,000 Iraqi soldiers, about 10 percent to 15 percent are involved in supply-related activities, said Maj. Gerald Ostlund, a coalition spokesman.
By contrast, for every combat soldier in American and other foreign contingents, there are three performing support or logistics roles, U.S. officials say.
The Iraqi military won't need quite the same ratio since they have a local economy to rely on for food, housing, equipment and repairs, unlike the Americans who need to import just about everything, said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C. think tank.
Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance and Training Team that is helping Iraqis build their army, said Iraq also won't need the resources for moving troops around the world.
But many Iraqi logistical units are still understaffed, Wolff said.
For example, here at the Taji National Depot, a clearinghouse for supplies going to units across Iraq, the goal is to have about 1,200 Iraqi soldiers working at the post 12 miles north of Baghdad, but there are only about 300 now.
The American military's logistics system uses high-tech tracking devices such as radio monitors that allow items to be followed from when they leave storage in the U.S. until they arrive in Iraq.
The Iraqis use a low-tech system. Some is computerized. But records are mostly kept on paper, which means supplies can easily be lost or stolen before they get to the units that need them.
It's a system ripe for corruption, said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a research group in Washington.
"The prevailing community standard is steal everything that isn't nailed down. And when you find something that is nailed down, to go to find a crowbar," Pike said.
In one particularly egregious incident, Iraqi officials last year found that widespread fraud and corruption under former Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan led to the disappearance of $1 billion, almost the entire budget to buy new equipment.
Col. Kenneth Kirkpatrick, who advises Iraqi supply officers at Taji, said making sure everything in the depot is accounted for is a key goal.
"I think it has been a problem," he said. "Early on, things were moving through here so fast that they were just coming in on the trucks and moving out as fast as they could. Sometimes the boxes just weren't sealed properly or containers weren't locked, and that opened it up to pilferage along the route."
The depot's Iraqi deputy commander, who did not want his name used out of fear insurgents would kill him for working with the Americans, said shipping containers sometimes arrive without his staff having any idea what is in them before they are opened.
Kirkpatrick said that is mostly the case with supplies donated by other countries.
Iraqi commanders and troops in the field complain that Iraqi officials in Baghdad fail to get them essentials like fuel and spare parts for vehicles.
Lt. Col. Hassan Falah, with the highway police, likened the situation to carrying a block of ice from Baghdad to distant provinces - by the time it arrives, most of it has melted away. Falah said only four of his 20 vehicles were working due to lack of parts.
Adding to the supply problem, many Iraqi soldiers and police operate with an eclectic assortment of purchased and donated vehicles that run on various types of fuel and need different spare parts.
Then there are the fuel shortages.
An American soldier helping train the Iraqi border patrol said that when his unit pulls into a town or Iraqi base, Iraqi troops try to siphon off fuel from the U.S. Humvees because they are so low on supplies.
Wolff said the defense forces aren't allocated enough fuel from the Iraqi government. "Where do they sit on the pecking order? We believe that they're on the bottom third," he said.
In the past, when Iraqi units needed fuel, they turned to the Americans. But U.S. commanders say they have begun withholding supplies in an effort to force Iraqis to look to their own supply chains.
"For a while we really spiked where we were giving them, I would say, a majority of their fuel," said Halstead, the 3rd Corps Support Command chief. "If I keep giving you something, you'll just keep taking it."
As for maintenance of Iraqi military vehicles, the work is now being done by private contractors hired by the Ministry of Defense. But that contract expires in March, and the Iraqi army needs to decide whether to renew it or do the work itself, Wolff said.
Despite the problems, U.S. officers say they are making progress in getting Iraqis to take over more of their supply operations.
Lt. Col. William Schiek, who supervised training of the Iraqi army's 6th Motorized Transportation Regiment, said the unit has been planning, coordinating and executing its own missions for months with little direct U.S. involvement.
"They're doing 100 percent of the heavy lifting," Schiek said. "This is not a U.S. show by any means."
MyWay
posted by madtom at 9:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home