First steps to arming Iraq's soldiers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6665759.stm
Providing the army with new weapons is an important part of the plan to
modernise Iraq's security services and make them self-sufficient. The BBC's
James Shaw went to the US army's Camp Taji, near Baghdad, to see one Iraqi
squad receive their new M16 rifles.
The convoy of four armoured Humvees and two black 4x4s rumbles down the
highway heading north out of Baghdad.
Blue lights flash, sirens wail, the soldiers manning the turrets on top of
the Humvees swing their machine-guns from side to side.
If a truck driver fails to pull over, the soldier in the vehicle ahead of us
produces a handgun and points it directly at him.
Treacherous journey
This is how the US military in Iraq travels from the safety of the Green
Zone in the centre of Baghdad to Camp Taji, a vast training and logistics
base just north of the city.
On the northern edge of the city, a landscape of rubbish dumps opens up to
the west. Dirt tracks weave through the heaps of smouldering refuse.
Sometimes a figure is visible.
Cattle stand inside an enclosure improvised from wooden posts and strips of
corrugated iron.
Then close to Taji our convoy is forced off the road by a traffic jam. The
Humvees lurch down a steep incline.
The poles attached to their front bumpers to detect roadside bombs scrape
into the sand and the convoy trundles through the scrub at the edge of the
road until we've cleared the traffic jam.
Climbing back onto the carriageway, we head up onto an overpass and discover
the reason for the congestion. One side of the road has been rendered
unusable by a hole big enough to lose a car in. Torn steel rods hang from
the concrete around the rim.
Ageing Kalashnikovs
The damage was done by an insurgent bomb just a few days ago, apparently
part of a new tactic to destroy road links around the Iraqi capital.
We've come to Camp Taji to see Iraqi soldiers being issued with new weapons
to replace their ageing Kalashnikovs. We find them outside a warehouse
ripping open cardboard boxes and tearing the plastic wrapping off brand-new
M16 carbines.
I was so happy when I opened the box and held the weapon and now I'm
ready to go out and fight
Safa Hussein
Iraqi army recruit
The squad of about 50 men lines up for photos. One soldier holds his rifle
still in its plastic wrapping. An officer hurriedly pulls it off. Then the
soldiers gather in a huddle, waving their guns in the air and chanting: "We
will crush the heads of the terrorists."
Safa Hussein is a 20-year-old recruit from Baghdad. He couldn't find a job
after leaving school during the chaos which followed the fall of Saddam
Hussein.
Finally he joined the army six months ago. "I joined to fight terrorism and
to defend our country," he tells us through an interpreter. "I was so happy
when I opened the box and held the weapon and now I'm ready to go out and
fight."
Huge challenge
So far, fewer than 2,000 have been given M16s. The official strength of the
Iraqi Army at the moment is more than 143,000.
The man in charge of re-arming the Iraqi soldiers is US Army Lieutenant
Colonel Don Easter.
"We're looking at the entire Iraqi Army," he says.
"We're looking at a process that's going to take well beyond a year, and
could be upward of two years, depending on if there are any pauses in the
process throughout this time."
It is a mammoth task, but in itself only a small piece of the effort to
modernise Iraq's security forces and make them self-sufficient.
And all this takes no account of the fact that pressure is mounting on
President Bush to end the US involvement in Iraq.
That might mean disengagement from the country before this and many other
programmes have been completed.
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