Commanders: Iraqi Army Needs US Help

Iraq cannot yet sustain its army despite having managed to quell a violent insurgency, US and local commanders told AFP, raising the prospect that American troops will stay on beyond 2011.

US military advisers described myriad inefficiencies and problems, from hospitals that lacked medics and dentists to byzantine processes that must be followed to request spare vehicle parts and other vital equipment.

"Tactically, they do well, but ... warfare is about logistics," said Colonel Steven Apland, who heads a Stability Transition Team that advises the Iraqi Army's 3rd Division at Al-Kissik Base, west of the northern city of Mosul.

"Their logistics systems are just, at this point, way below what their tactical competence requires," he said, as US forces ramped up an "advice and assist" mission in Iraq, following the formal end of combat operations on Tuesday.

To illustrate his point, Apland held up his pen, and related the complicated process that Iraqi soldiers must follow to request a new box of such pens.

"I have to fill out this document in triplicate, quadruplicate, and then I have to hand it to some major, and he has to drive down to Baghdad to get it stamped ... and provide a document for you to come back up here, two blocks away, to actually release it (the supplies) to you," he said.

One of Apland's deputies, Lieutenant Colonel Craig Benson, later walked through a medical centre on the base and pointed out how well-supplied it was.

But the centre's lights were mostly off, because of a power cut on a base that has a generator farm that Benson says can provide sufficient capacity to power the base twice over.

"They have the equipment, they need the staff, and they need their logistics systems," he said.

"(Iraqi) combat lifesavers that we try and train to deal with a little bit of trauma on the battlefield have combat lifesaver kits that have expired stuff," Benson added.

Lieutenant Colonel Salah al-Din, the head of one of the base's vehicle maintenance workshops, said many Iraqi units also did not properly maintain their vehicles, eventually leading to engine and transmissions failures.

"We tell them -- before you go on a mission, check the vehicle, and after you come back from a mission, check the vehicle. If there is a small problem, you can fix it. The big problems, they start from the small problems," he said.

"Some units, they learn ... but some of them, they don't come, they forget us. When they have a broken engine, they come to me," Salah al-Din added.

As if to prove the point the colonel explained that he tells soldiers good maintenance can be compared to safe handling of IEDs, the home-made bombs that every day target the Iraqi security forces.

"When you find an IED on the road, it's better to remove it before it explodes, than for it to explode and for you to say, 'Hey, help me, what should I do?'" he said.

Salah al-Din, an 18-year veteran, said he often had difficulty obtaining spare parts from the logistics hub at Taji, north of Baghdad, and also struggled with the wide variety of cars in use.

Sitting side by side in his workshop, as if to hammer home the problem, were Nissan, Kia, Ford and Mitsubishi vehicles, all requiring their own unique parts.

A lack of competence in military logistics led the deputy commander of the new US mission, Operation New Dawn, to say he expects a new Iraqi government to ask for extra help beyond a December 2011 exit deadline for American troops.

"I know the Iraqi government are looking at some of the gaps they are going to have in their capabilities in December 2011 and they are concerned about it," Lieutenant General Michael Barbero said on Wednesday.

"I would predict that they are going to ask for some assistance. We've got a lot of work to do right up to December 2011."

Apland estimates that it will take around two to three years for the Iraqi army's logistics to improve to necessary levels, noting that after the 2003 US-led invasion, the then newly created forces were built to immediately conduct counter-insurgency operations only.

"We knew that some of the finesse of organisation, especially in areas like logistics, personnel, human resource management, those were going to lag behind," he said.

"Bottom line -- it's a terribly inefficient system right now."