Capt. Charles Greene is out of the fight, at least for a while. But the future of America’s involvement in Iraq rests largely with men like him.
A blunt-talking former Army Ranger instructor whose drawled sentences are peppered with a soldier’s obscenities, Greene led American advisers assisting a battalion of the Iraqi Intervention Force, an elite unit meant to be a strike force against insurgents.
He grew his mustache in the style of the Iraqis he advised and slapped the same Iraqi flag patch they wear onto his shoulder when he patrolled the streets of Mosul, a roiling stronghold of the insurgency. At times he left his armored Humvee so he could ride with Iraqi troops in the unprotected pickups they use to traverse the city’s dangerous streets.
On Sunday, as he walked with some of those Iraqi soldiers, he was shot in the face by a sniper. Greene, 42, is expected to live, but his wounds were serious enough that he had to be evacuated from the region.
Greene’s experience at a sandbagged, mortar-damaged Iraqi army combat outpost and on patrol offers a glimpse of the ground-level reality in the Bush administration’s exit strategy for Iraq. The troops Greene trained and others like them must take up the burden if U.S. forces are to come home.
The Americans face formidable and frustrating challenges. They must overcome barriers of culture and language and work with the relics of an old Iraqi military that crushed initiative and charismatic leadership. Faced with a tenacious insurgency, they are under pressure to quickly field Iraqi troops that often are poorly equipped, inadequately trained and show a dangerous lack of discipline in the use of weapons.
During 24 hours spent watching Greene in action before he was wounded, as well as discussions with other U.S. advisers, a picture emerged of what the Americans say is an Iraqi army whose officers fail to “lead from the front,” contributing to the repeated collapse of their troops in combat.
The Iraqi commander of the battalion Greene advised, as well as most company commanders, avoid going out with their troops, Greene said. Only one company commander in the battalion regularly goes on missions, and the rest of the unit’s senior officers ostracize him for it, Greene said. “They treat him like a scab in a strike,” he complained.
The Iraqi vehicles provide no protection against bullets or bombs. Most Iraqi soldiers in the battalion do not have a change of uniform or a second pair of boots despite the cold, wet winter. And they have no sniper rifles to accurately return fire from insurgent snipers.
Wild gunfire
Unlike American troops, this battalion was not trained with realistic battle simulations including blank ammunition and pyrotechnics, Greene said. U.S. officers in the Mosul area said that when the Iraqi troops face insurgent attacks, real or imagined, they often fire wildly in all directions, wounding civilians and each other. American soldiers have nicknamed the response “The Death Blossom,” a reference to the 1984 science fiction film “The Last Starfighter” in which a doomsday weapon spreads death in all directions.
In January, a U.S. serviceman in Mosul died when an Iraqi negligently fired his weapon while getting into a Stryker armored vehicle, according to several American advisers and a senior officer in the deceased soldier’s unit.
Less than two weeks ago, Greene said, he saw a company from his Iraqi battalion spray gunfire in all directions after a sniper shot at a traffic checkpoint. Several soldiers pirouetted as they fired, shooting 360 degrees on busy streets.
“There’s no doubt in my mind people got wounded that day,” Greene said, adding that Iraqi officers took no action as three American advisers ran down the street trying to get them to cease fire.
Still, Greene believes that with the right resources, a lot of determination and time, all of those problems can be overcome.
He has seen bravery in plenty of Iraqi soldiers. A handful of the battalion’s officers have the makings of true military leaders, he believes. One young lieutenant, he said, could even hold his own at the elite U.S. Ranger School where Greene used to teach.
“There’s issues,” he said. “But there’s hope. What we’re doing is viable.”
Effort so far `lip service’
At the same time, he thinks the process will take at least a year or two, and a greater commitment from the United States. Right now, given the level of equipment and training and the tolerance for indifferent leadership, “we’re paying lip service,” he said.
Combat Outpost Eagle, the base of operations for the Iraqi army’s 22nd Battalion in Mosul, is in a squat office building commandeered from the city’s electrical department. Desolate, rubble-strewn fields surround it. The entrance resembles something out of a “Mad Max” movie, with rusting, twisted car frames arrayed along the road, forcing vehicles to weave as they approach.
Mortars regularly fall on the position. Snipers take shots from a few hundred yards away. Just 500 yards down the road, U.S. forces last week found a stack of three anti-tank mines rigged to detonate together.
“Can you imagine what that would do to one of our 2-by-4s [pickups]?” Greene said.
A few weeks ago, the bodies of six executed Iraqis were found 800 yards from the outpost. During one five-day period in December, U.S. forces found 77 bodies within a half-mile radius. On Election Day at a polling station nearby, Greene watched one young man outside glare at the Iraqi soldiers, then take out a knife, turn to a friend and mimic a beheading.
The 22nd Battalion arrived in January to help quell insurgent violence in Mosul and secure polling stations for the election. The province’s entire 10,000-member police force disintegrated in the face of insurgent attacks in early November. Currently Mosul, with a population of more than 1 million, has only 700 to 800 police officers, said Maj. Lonny MacDonald, the military liaison to local police.
The battalion is supposed to be one of the Iraqi army’s best-manned and best-trained. Most of its members are veterans of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and many were in the guard’s special forces. The new battalion trained for nearly six months, Greene said.
Holes in the net
But more than a month into their deployment in Mosul, they still have a long way to go, as one recent raid exemplified.
U.S. forces had just received a tip that insurgents were using a complex of buildings a few hundred yards away from the outpost to launch attacks. The intelligence included the name and description of a suspect. The mission for the battalion was to seal off and search a city block.
A platoon of 40 soldiers walked in formation toward the target. But once there, they were distracted by an approaching car and bunched up in front of the building. They began the search, but it took 10 minutes before the back of the one-block complex finally was guarded.
“See my difficulty?” Greene exclaimed at the time. “They can’t even surround the building.”
The Iraqis came up empty-handed. The intelligence could easily have been wrong or stale by the time the troops arrived. But the suspect also could have slipped out the back while the troops were gathered in front.
In the U.S. Army, non-commissioned officers–a platoon sergeant, squad leaders and team leaders–would move troops through such an operation, ensuring that soldiers were executing preassigned tasks and staying focused and attentive. That’s how U.S. units avoid neglecting the rear door in a raid.
The Iraqi army historically had weak non-commissioned officers, and the battalion’s non-commissioned officers exist in name only, Greene said.
Trainers forced to ease up
Non-coms take considerably more time to train than regular soldiers. And there is less to the current training regimen for Iraqi forces than meets the eye.
In a theme echoed by U.S. soldiers who have worked with other Iraqi units, the advisers said they had to ease up on the Iraqi recruits’ training schedule to avoid mass desertions. Twenty members of the battalion quit when the unit was ordered to pull guard duty at the training base.
Recruits in the 22nd Battalion trained only five hours a day and were given 10 days of leave per month, said Greene, who began working with the unit while it still was training.
Even so, with insurgents engaged in a campaign of violence and intimidation against security forces, the battalion is down to 460 members from 750 initial recruits. The original battalion commander quit in August after insurgents visited his home and threatened his family, Greene said.
A 22-year veteran who rose from the enlisted ranks, Greene is not inclined to blame Iraqi soldiers for their shortcomings. “Six hundred boys from Alabama” probably would do no better if thrust into Mosul with the same equipment, training and leadership, he said.
Sitting on a his green cot at the end of a long discussion that stretched well past midnight, Greene acknowledged that his task can be frustrating, sometimes maddening.
But the Iraqi grunts, the men who go out to face insurgents in mismatched flak jackets and unarmored vehicles, have not given up. And neither would Greene.
“They try,” he said. “And as long as they keep trying, I’ll keep risking my life.”
Three days later, Greene took a bullet.
