Can Iraq's soldiers fight?
The recent battle between Iraqi troops and militias provides a sort of progress report on the nation's army.
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi colonel's phone rang shortly before the bloodshed began. Shiite militiamen were planning to overrun forces under his command, the callers warned, and his children would be killed if his soldiers fought back.
Within hours on the afternoon of March 25, militiamen with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns crossed footpaths spanning a sewage-choked canal that separates a militia stronghold in northwest Baghdad from a neighboring district where Col. Falih Hussein was in charge. Two Iraqi military positions along the canal quickly fell, and the soldiers retreated to the next defensible position.
The fight was on and would not end for five days.
In that time, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Kevin Petit saw a rocket-propelled grenade bounce off a Humvee in front of him, reminding him of the dust- and blood-filled battles he had fought in the alleyways of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1994. Hussein, for his part, sent his family to another neighborhood for safety. From the southern city of Basra, where the fighting began, and north to Baghdad, more than 600 Iraqis were killed.
But as quickly as the fighting started, it ended Monday, a day after Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr called a cease-fire for his Mahdi Army militia.
A burning question now is how well the Iraqi security forces performed. It is sure to figure in congressional hearings starting Tuesday when Army Gen. David H. Petraeus gives his latest assessment of the Iraq war.
In this volatile slice of northwest Baghdad, at least, U.S. and Iraqi forces say the Iraqis fought admirably, but they acknowledge problems in command and control, in logistics and among national police who were not trained to handle urban warfare.
As well, Iraqis in front-line positions ran out of ammunition and had to hurry to the next battle position to get more. Iraqi police officers sometimes proved unreliable at backing up army soldiers.
"There were pockets of excellence, but there was no synchronized excellence," Petit said Wednesday as he re-created for a small group of reporters the battles in his area of command, which includes the filthy green waterway that separates the militia stronghold of Shula and the neighboring Ghazaliya area that Hussein was responsible for.
Like most U.S. and Iraqi military officials, Petit rejects suggestions that the Iraqis proved incapable of holding their own in the heat of battle.
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