United States officials said Monday that they would create a new Iraqi army of 40,000 soldiers and would pay idled Iraqi troops monthly stipends while the new force is taking shape.
The payments to Iraqi soldiers appeared to be a step toward defusing anger among Iraqis and reducing the threat to American troops as U.S. administrators try to secure and rebuild Iraq.
The new Iraqi army–after growing to a planned three brigades in three years–would be just a fraction of the size of the force under deposed leader Saddam Hussein.
Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator for Iraq, has said the main goal in dissolving the old Iraqi military was to remove a main tool Hussein used to stay in power.
Also Monday, three U.S. senators visiting Baghdad said Americans should expect a U.S. presence in the nation for at least five years.
Efforts to restore order received another blow when a vital oil pipeline exploded in northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. There was no immediate word on the cause.
Iraqi officials blamed sabotage in another pipeline explosion, near Hit on Saturday. Such attacks threaten the country’s most important resource, oil, which is crucial to building a prosperous Iraq.
In another attack on U.S. forces, a rocket-propelled grenade bounced off a highway and struck a Humvee on U.S. military police patrol west of Khaldiyah late Monday, said 1st Lt. Carl Mulcahay, a platoon leader with the 115th Military Police Company. A wounded American soldier was taken to an Army aid station for treatment.
Demonstrators objecting to the American decision to disband the Iraqi army, which has left thousands of families without income, have argued that many officers were not part of Hussein’s brutal machine.
Walter Slocombe, an aide to Bremer, said in announcing the U.S. plan for the nation’s military that a smaller force is necessary.
“This country was grotesquely over-militarized,” he said. “Most people who were in the old army will not be able to continue military careers.”
Slocombe said recruiting for the new force would start within a week and that the result would be a light infantry force to guard Iraq’s borders and key infrastructure.
“I am pleased to announce this first step in creating an armed force that will be professional, non-political, militarily effective and truly representative of the country,” he said.
Slocombe said that up to 250,000 former servicemen will be paid a stipend of $50 to $150 each month that could increase after a new Iraqi government is in place to make decisions. But officers with the rank of colonel or higher and senior members of the Baath Party would receive nothing.
The three senators visiting Iraq–Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Democrat Joseph Biden of Delaware–cautioned that the U.S. likely would have a prolonged presence in Iraq.
“We are going to be here in a big way,” said Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “For at least three to five years. And I don’t mean in dwindling numbers.
“The United States will be [here] in the billions of dollars in my view,” he added.
Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Bush to do some “real truth-telling” on how much commitment and money would be needed to rebuild Iraq after the war and 35 years of Baathist rule.
He also said the U.S. could not fail in its effort to build a democratic Iraq.
“We have an obligation to work with the Iraqis,” he said.
In a ceremony Monday in Fallujah, Iraqi police swapped their dark green paramilitary uniforms for U.S. Air Force-issue light blue shirts and navy trousers.
