IRAQ - The Challenges Of Terrorism - Part 16 - Training To Be Stepped UP.

With US military training efforts stepped up, Iraq's government on Dec. 1 took command over another army division in the north in a demonstration of US commitment to accelerate the handover of military control to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki said after his Nov. 30 summit with President George W. Bush in Amman that all Iraqi security forces would be ready to come under his command by next June. Bush said he had listened to Maliki's "frustration" at not having the tools to do his job.

Washington has refused to confirm Maliki's timeline in public, saying the transfer is complex and depends on conditions on the ground. Nonetheless the announcement by Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, that a second division had been handed over and the remaining two northern divisions would follow by February 2007, appeared intended to demonstrate that the US was making progress and would be able to scale back its own combat operations.

Adoption by the US of a background role focused more on support and training, combined with the gradual withdrawal of the 15 US combat brigades possibly by early 2008, formed one of the core recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG), which published its findings on Dec. 6.

Officials accompanying Bush in Amman on Nov. 30 said only two of Iraq's 10 divisions - totalling some 140,000 troops - were under Maliki's full command at that point. Control of most of the Iraqi military is shared with Gen. George Casey, overall commander of US forces in Iraq.

US officials have expressed concern over too rapid a transfer of authority, because of a lack of training and fears that some Iraqi troops uphold their sectarian allegiances above their loyalty to the state. Rogue units of Iraq's police forces - which are not under US control - have been accused of carrying out extra-judicial killings and torture.

Gen Mixon, speaking by satellite from a base near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, said US troops in the north would take a more indirect security role and focus on combating al-Qaeda forces as Iraqi troops became more capable. He said within three to six months, Iraqi forces in the six northern provinces would assume full responsibility for the security of civilians. Gen. Mixon said: "I can certainly see great opportunity to reduce the amount of [US] combat forces on the ground".

Democrat Senator Chris Dodd said Bush should listen carefully to the ISG, which is led by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton. He said senators in both parties wanted a change of direction in Iraq, warning: "The administration can find themselves very, very isolated on this". National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has said the president will decide on a "new direction" within weeks after the completion of various internal strategic reviews. Bush on Nov. 30 said he would not respond to the pressure of reports calling for a "graceful exit" from Iraq.

Antony Cordesman, a former US military intelligence officer now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, recently told an audience that "the capabilities of the Iraqi army, national police and police force have been systematically exaggerated [by the Pentagon] to the point where the reporting is at least, in terms of omission, dishonest". He said out of 100 battalions "probably 20 to 30 perform a useful function". Many units are severely under strength and they are poorly equipped and untrained to deal with civil violence. His assessment of the police was even more negative.

The Pentagon says it has no way of knowing how many people are in the police or how effective they are. Duncan Anderson, head of war studies at the UK's Sandhurst military academy, says large numbers in the army are not being paid. In an effort to avoid the corruption that had plagued the Iraqi Defence Ministry, the payment of sums as small as $1,000 have to be authorised by the army chief.

When Anderson left Iraq as a training adviser in August, there was, he said, "a roomful of cheques and authorisation chits" awaiting approval. Most of his experience was with the Iraqi first division, which he said had a "very competent corps of officers" of a variety of regional and religious backgrounds that could potentially form the base of a national institution. But other divisions are less ready. Anderson says there are too many police: Basra, assessed to require 6,000 policemen, has 37,000, a majority of which are worse than useless. He suggests the solution is to disband the police force - paying suitable financial incentives - and rehire a smaller, more professional force.

The errors go back to the beginning. A former senior Republican official who has advised President Bush says: "I've never heard of an army that goes into a foreign country to train local people as its primary mission...You can train the hell out of those people but you still don't know what they're going to do, how well they're going to fight. Nor do you know for whom they're going to fight". Paul Eaton, a US general, was given responsibility for army training in May 2003, a week after Bush's "mission accomplished" speech aboard a US aircraft carrier. "A little late", he says. The plan was presented to him as a 24-page Powerpoint presentation. Since then, the US has consistently failed to direct the resources and the numbers of personnel with combat experience to the training of Iraqi forces, says Gen Eaton, who retired last year.

The US is now expanding the number of trainers embedded with Iraqi units. However, says Gen Eaton, given the current state of Iraqi society, the task will be difficult. "It's easy to develop a soldier physically and to train him to use a rifle. But giving him a moral component is the most difficult to develop...[particularly when] the government isn't considered to be legitimate".