US still leading in 'Iraqi-led' ops

The American lieutenant in full battle gear strode like a giant in front of the wiry Iraqi soldiers in tilted helmets and oversized flak jackets lined up in front of him. "I want this soldier, and this one too," Lieutenant Gordon Bostick said, picking out troops for a night raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda base south of Baghdad, on the kind of mission that is in theory led by the Iraqis. The troops assembled by torchlight at Camp Falcon for a mission to the farming village of Owessat, which American and Iraq forces believe is being used as a staging ground for bombings in and around the capital. As with nearly every operation in Iraq these days, the Americans insisted that the Iraqis were in charge, leading the fight against Al-Qaeda and other armed groups with U.S. forces cast in a supporting role. But the scene at Camp Falcon told a different story: six years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the Americans not only vastly outnumbered the Iraqis, but they were giving orders and providing vital logistical support. Under a security pact signed in November, Iraqi forces are to assume full responsibility for security as U.S. forces withdraw from cities and towns by June 30 and from the country as a whole by the end of 2011. Iraqi and U.S. leaders and commanders have repeatedly said that Iraq's 560,000 police and 260,000 soldiers will be able to maintain security as the Americans pull back and have vowed to adhere to the timeline of the security plan. But on the Owessat operation this month, 600 U.S. troops backed by helicopters were joined by a group of 40 Iraqi soldiers who, over the course of the 21-hour raid, repeatedly took their cues from the Americans. On the night of the mission, as the Americans tried to catch some sleep at the staging area using their helmets as pillows, the Iraqis huddled under flashlights eating U.S. military rations. Then the order came, and everyone assembled at the runway before piling into five large Chinook twin-rotor helicopters. "Moonlight, that's perfect for this kind of operation," Captain Brian Bonnema said at 2:30 am as the helicopters buzzed over the Euphrates river to avoid possible fire from the palm-lined banks. Twenty minutes later the Chinooks touched down in a swamp along the banks. The soldiers plunged into the mud and raced to take cover in the trees as the helicopters lifted off again. Then the waiting began. The U.S. Soldiers had fanned out in a protective perimeter, the Iraqis huddled behind them. As the first light of dawn trickles in through the palm branches overhead, an Iraqi soldier reported to Bonnema. "The Sahwa told him there is a weapons cache 700 metres (yards) from here," an interpreter said, referring to the local Sahwa (Awakening) group, a U.S.-allied militia made up largely of former insurgents. "There could be a cache in a house. They would like to check." 'They are not ready' The Americans gave the order, and everyone moved out. They poured into Owessat, a farming hamlet of mudbrick houses, where they found only women, children, and a few elderly men. Over the next six hours, as they scoured houses, barns and orchards, they did not encounter a single man of fighting age, and not a single shot was fired. Someone in Owessat appeared to have known they were coming. An Iraqi officer's radio sputtered. "There may be a cache of weapons in a house in the village," the interpreter said. "They should go?" Bonnema hesitated a moment before giving another order. "Okay, go there." The troops resumed their patrol of the village. The Americans moved in precise formations, and when they stopped the soldiers crouched and scanned their surroundings, providing cover. The Iraqis did not. Tired from a sleepless night, they walked down the middle of the streets, showing little enthusiasm for the mission. The Americans grew more frustrated as the day wore on. At a roadblock one of the Sahwas asked the Americans for medicine, raising his white ankle-length robe to reveal black spots on his torso. "Tell them there is nothing I can do," Bostick told the interpreter. "It's up to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi army to take care of them now." "The Iraqi army?" the Sahwa replied with a touch of sarcasm. That afternoon the troops finally found what they were looking for, a box of seven mortar rounds buried along the banks of the river. "They must have been here for quite a long time, maybe two or three years," an American lieutenant said. "But they can be used for IEDs" he added, using the military term for a roadside bomb. Bonnema later said the operation had been "very successful" and that troops had seized another weapons cache containing 155-millimetre artillery casings. "We deterred AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) from using the Owessat area by conducting this Iraqi-planned and led operation on a large scale in an area that had not traditionally seen this type of attention," he told AFP. "This was a 100 percent Iraqi-led operation. At the request of the Iraqis, we conduct operations generally by, with and through the Iraqis." But when asked why the Americans vastly outnumbered their Iraqi counterparts, Bonnema admitted that "the 17th Iraqi Army Commando Battalion does not have quite the numbers that we do." As the exhausted troops returned to Camp Falcon nearly a full day after launching the operation, the U.S. company's last before returning home, some Soldiers were less optimistic. "Once we've left, I'm not sure the Iraqis can make it alone," a U.S. Soldier who has been on four deployments to Iraq said, asking not to be named. "They are getting better, but they are not ready. We have had some problems helping them to understand that they have to take responsibility."