Marines Train to Train Iraqis

[USMC Chuter]

Twentynine Palms, San Bernardino County -- With this story, Chronicle staff writer John Koopman and staff photographer Carlos Avila Gonzalez begin covering the U.S. military’s efforts to train the new Iraqi military. The first step is to train the trainers.



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In a heated trailer parked in the middle of the Mojave Desert, a Marine captain from San Francisco stood in the turret of a fake humvee and scanned the video screens on three walls.
"Contact right, contact right!" came the call over the radio, and 35-year-old Capt. Tuan Pham swung the fake .50-caliber machine gun in that direction. Tracer fire whipped past his vehicle, but he couldn't see where it was coming from. Up ahead, there was a blast and black smoke spewed from a video version of another humvee.

"I couldn't see where that tracer fire was coming from, so I couldn't shoot," Pham said after the recent exercise, when he and the other members of his team gathered for a debriefing.

As a captain, Pham would normally never get into the turret of a humvee nor man the machine gun. That's for the young privates and lance corporals. But Pham's going through a special training program designed to prepare him and small, select teams to work as military advisers for the Iraqi army and police forces.

The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, is putting together 35 teams of 11 to 15 men each who will spend the next seven to 12 months training, developing and working alongside their Iraqi counterparts to help them become the military presence in their own country.

This is the next phase of the conflict in Iraq. Politicians and generals alike have said 2006 is the year the United States must find a way to bring Iraqi security forces up to a level where they can defend themselves. It is crucial and a key component, they say, to bringing U.S. troops home and slowly reducing the U.S. presence there.

"The war has changed since the spring of 2003," said Col. Tom Greenwood, who is in charge of selecting and training the 35 teams. "This is no longer about regime change. We're working with the Iraqi Security Forces to improve their capability to conduct independent counter-insurgency operations by themselves.

"Right now we have a number of Iraqi units that are capable of doing that, but there are probably 50 percent or more that aren't. It's not going to happen overnight."

Greenwood and his cadre of trainers have put together 17 teams so far, and they are all either in Iraq or on their way. The rest will be going through the next month or so as the 1st Marine Division slowly moves back to Iraq for another deployment. They are going to Al Anbar province, home to Fallujah, Ramadi and the troublesome border area with Syria. The 1st Marines will relieve the 2nd Marine Division, which is based in North Carolina.

For several months, word has gone out among units large and small that the division was looking for men to join the adviser teams. It's not for everyone. The teams consist of officers and senior enlisted men who have shown proficiency in their respective fields. They are commanded by majors or lieutenant colonels.

The teams are embedded with Iraqi units, meaning they live with them and work with them outside the normal working environment of other U.S. military forces.

"Psychologically, they don't enjoy some of the same comforts as their counterparts who are on these fairly large forward operating bases that resemble little Americas," Greenwood said. "While they are always within range of being supported by U.S. and coalition forces, psychologically it's different than being in a big, conventional unit."

American troops have been working with Iraqi soldiers and police since shortly after the invasion, but the mission and scope of that work has evolved over time. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the Iraqi army pretty much disappeared; police forces were scattered and without clear civil authority.

As a result, the entire military and police structure had to be built from scratch. Early on, the soldiers and police were new and raw, with few or no weapons, uniforms, body armor or vehicles. U.S. military units worked with the Iraqis to reconstruct the military, but at the same time were also battling insurgent attacks and helping with civil affairs projects.

Over time, the Iraqi police and army have grown and taken on greater responsibilities. And now, their ability to operate as an effective police force is seen as a linchpin for any possible U.S. withdrawal.

That's what motivates a lot of the men who are volunteering to be advisers.

First Lt. Ken Bomongcag, 26, of Redwood City, said he thought of getting out of the Marines, but stayed in so he could go to Iraq as an adviser.

"I felt this was a real opportunity to do a good thing," he said.

Pham, armed with a business degree from UC Davis, was working in the Pentagon as a budget analyst a couple of months ago. When he heard the Marines needed advisers, he asked to go.

Pham said he's comfortable leaving his desk job and going into the dirt, heat and danger of Iraq. "Every Marine is a rifleman and every Marine officer is a platoon commander," he said with a smile.

Pham was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States when he was 16. He settled in San Francisco, delivered papers for The Chronicle and graduated from George Washington High School. He enlisted in the Marines, then got out and got his college degree. After graduation he rejoined the Marines as an officer, specializing in finance and budget analysis.

But Pham had a special reason for wanting to be an adviser in Iraq: His father served in the South Vietnamese Army and worked with American advisers there. Now Pham wants to do his part.

"This is important to me," he said during a break from training on a video simulator in the middle of the desert. "I hope we can avoid the same mistakes that were made in Vietnam. I hope we don't abandon the Iraqis the way we did the Vietnamese."

Pham's team will advise the Iraqi police; his primary job will be helping them develop logistics and support. Shooting and fighting are part of war, but even more important is the ability to do simple things, like make sure your forces have enough bullets, water and food. An army or police unit needs vehicles and a way to maintain them. Also, communications.

"The Iraqis don't have the same network of logistic support as we do," he said. "As advisers, our job is not necessarily to fight, although that might be necessary. We want to help them create a military that is self-sustaining, and the way to do that is to help them develop a system of support to keep them going."

Pham and his team, nicknamed "Longstroke," were in the desert at the Marine Corps base here last month for field exercises. For the most part, that training was more about building team cohesion than learning to survive in Iraq. They learned how to drive humvees in a convoy, both in the desert surrounding the base and in a high-tech simulator something like a PlayStation setup. They learned the fine art of avoiding roadside bombs, called IEDs (improvised explosive device) and they went through a combat exercise in a "town" built to resemble an Iraqi village.

About a mile from where Pham was learning how to drive in convoy, another team of advisers -- who will work with the Iraqi border patrol -- was training at the combat marksmanship range. Marines lined up facing a row of man-sized silhouettes and aimed their new, high-tech M-4 assault rifles. A whistle blew and they moved forward in unison, doing the "combat glide," shooting and stepping in one easy movement. After expending their rifle ammo, they pulled 9mm handguns and fired those, too, from close range.

"Damn, if I have to get out the 9 mil, we're all in a heap of trouble," said one team member as he reloaded his magazine.

The team is led by Lt. Col. Steve Hanson, who is 47 and has spent 29 years in the Marines. Most people retire sometime between their 20th and 30th year in the corps, when retirement benefits max out. But Hanson is staying beyond 30 just to go to Iraq. He'll be working with an Iraqi division, a yearlong overseas tour instead of the seven-month stints served by most Marines and adviser teams.

"I've seen some classified assessments of the units we'll be working with," Hanson said. "I feel good about the knowledge and readiness of the Iraqis. But, you know, some units are go, some are no go. Our mission, really, is to make them self-sustaining, so they can take over when we leave."

From what he has learned, Hanson said, the Iraqis have a pretty good officer corps, but are lacking leadership among their senior noncommissioned officers. He thinks the Marines' main job will be instilling a higher level of discipline and leadership among the Iraqis, because that will sustain them long after the Americans are gone.

Hanson's team is complemented by a junior officer from San Francisco who has been to Iraq before and tries to give his comrades some real-world tips.

First Lt. Phil Downs, 24, son of San Francisco police Officer Phil Downs, said it all comes down to attention to detail.

"In training, you have to get people out of their comfort zones because that's how it is over there," Downs said. "You have to throw in as much chaos as possible because you have to know how to react. You can't sit around and think about it."

Greenwood said the most important element of creating adviser teams is selecting the right Marines for the job.

"You're looking for someone who is mature and has the right character attributes," he said. "You're really talking about patience, because this is a marathon, not a sprint. You're looking for someone who can think fast on their feet, exercise a high degree of initiative, likes independence and doesn't require a lot of close, adult supervision.

"This is a very dynamic environment. An adviser is out there sort of alone and unafraid, at the edge of the empire, so to speak."

Greenwood said the advisers also must be receptive to other cultures, somewhat knowledgeable in the history of insurgencies.

"They have to understand the complexities of what's going on here," he said, "someone who understands that it's more political and economic than pure military."

Adviser training begins with two weeks of classroom work at Camp Pendleton. The advisers get a little bit of Arabic language training and instruction in cultural issues. But it all starts with a round-table discussion with advisers who recently returned from Iraq.

While everyone agrees that training is necessary, it's still difficult to know exactly what kind of training an adviser needs. Each Iraqi unit is different, the needs are different and the commanders are different. U.S. advisers who have been there say language skills would be most useful, but it can take months or years to become proficient. Same with cultural studies.

"I got some training before I went over, but it was done by a guy who'd done this in Vietnam and his message was pretty much, 'Don't trust Charlie,' " said Maj. Howard Hall, who recently returned from a tour as an adviser. "So when I got to Iraq, I found the advice didn't really match what we were getting."

Hall said the key to being a successful adviser in Iraq is patience and flexibility.

"You have to know the people you're training in order to find a way to get through to them," he said. "You have to come up with the tools to make things work quickly. These are not the skills we're used to as Marines. We do the fighting very well, but we have trouble with the 'soft skills' required for this kind of mission."

Lt. Col. Jonathan Goff, a 40-year-old Texan, volunteered for adviser duty and ended up taking the Iraqi 1st Brigade into combat for the first time.

"At that time, the unit was really in its infancy," he said. "But in the end, they were able to restore order and help make the elections a success."

Goff said he tells the new guys to read the book "1776" because it explains in detail the experience of forming a new military.

"It's amazing how many parallels there are between our experience and that of the Iraqis," he said. "Years ago, there was no Iraq, and so there is very little loyalty to the state. Just like the United States in 1776.

"You hear criticism of Iraqi soldiers in the past for throwing away their uniforms and changing sides, but there was plenty of that right here, too. The point is, you have to understand that and not expect the Iraqis to be Marines."