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IV. TRAINING AND TRANSITION FROM COMBAT

U.S. combat troops in Baghdad like the 82^nd Airborne and 1^st Armored Division are being asked to perform law enforcement and policing tasks for which they are not prepared. According to soldiers and commanders, there was inadequate training and equipment for what the military calls SASO (Stability and Support Operations) and an inadequate supply of Arabic interpreters.

The problem was articulately presented by an unnamed U.S infantry commander in an After Action Report filed April 24, 2003 and since declassified (See Appendix II).¹⁶ “After less than 48 hours after the first battlefield engagement,” the commander said:

members of this company team were tasked to conduct checkpoint operations southwest of al-Najaf. With no training, soldiers were expected to search vehicles, interact with civilians with no CA [Civil Affairs] or PSYOPS [Psychological Operations] support, detain EPW’s [Enemy Prisoners of War], and confiscate weapons. Less than 48 hours after this, the unit was again heavily engaged in combat operations. The radical and swift change from combat operations to SASO and back to combat operations over and over again causes many points of friction for the soldiers and their leaders.

With the exception of a class given to the platoon leaders, there were no formal classes or training conducted by CA prior to the operation. No training on checkpoint operations or dealing with civilians was received.

The commander also noted that the unit’s limited supply of construction and barrier materials for checkpoints was exhausted by the time they had reached Baghdad. Soldiers had to use “destroyed cars, flower pots, bicycle racks, and whatever else was available for force protection.” Interpreters, he wrote:

were not available to the company team at any point during the operation. These interpreters are critical to the team’s ability to interact with civilians, discern their problems, and broadcast friendly unit intentions. Often times the unit had crowds and upset civilians to deal with and absolutely no way to verbally communicate with them.

The report emphasized the “fundamental shift in attitude” demanded of the troops as they shifted from combat to law enforcement tasks:

The soldiers have been asked to go from killing the enemy to protecting and interacting, and back to killing again. The constant shift in mental posture greatly complicates things for the average soldier. The soldiers are blurred and confused about the rules of engagement, which continues to raise questions, and issues about force protection while at checkpoints and conducting patrols. How does the soldier know exactly what the rule of engagement is? Soldiers who have just conducted combat against dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty trusting dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes.

Other officers have reflected the above concerns. In an interview published on a U.S. Army-related website, a 2^nd Lt. from the 82^nd Airborne described the complications of Iraq’s post-war scene:

Pulling the trigger against groups of Fedayeen was easy compared to this post-war environment where we are still taking casualties daily. Understanding why one village waves and blows kisses at you while the next one down the road sets up ambushes and IEDs is not as easy as friendly/enemy, don’t kill/kill. We are ambassadors with our thumbs on the selector lever and always scanning for a set-up. It’s so hard to help and interact with a people when you trust no one. Getting your soldiers to understand the need to be hot/cold, on/off, at war/at peace with only milliseconds between the two is very challenging.¹⁷

An article from the August 10, 2003, newsletter of the 1^st Armored Division based in Iraq described how platoon leaders were adapting urban operations because the tasks in Iraq—patrols, raids and checkpoints—were different from the combat exercises for which they had trained. “[I]n Iraq, civilians are not merely an occasional presence, as urban terrain training often depicts civilians,” the author wrote. “Instead, interactions with civilians often comprise the entire mission.”¹⁸

“Our mentality as soldiers is combat,” said Lt. Lucas Hale, from the 1^st Armored Division, who is trying to modify urban combat techniques (Military Operations in Urban Terrain, or MOUT) in the field. “We don’t deal with civilians well as a whole. But in Iraq, you have to understand that 99 percent of the people [we encounter] are simple people who just want to get on with their lives.”¹⁹

U.S. Judge Advocate General (JAG) and CPA legal officials who spoke with Human Rights Watch were sympathetic to these concerns, and they agreed that combat troops had not all received adequate training for post-war tasks. Special instructors were brought in to assist the 1^st Armored Division, they said. “They must come to terms with this kind of environment,” Australian Col. Mike Kelly said. “Policing requires a different skill set.”²⁰

According to the JAG, the U.S. Marines are performing better in the peacekeeping role because they were “quicker to adapt.” And Military Police are better trained for crowd control, checkpoints and other peacekeeping tasks. In general, they said, the biggest problems have been in Baghdad due to the intense urban environment and the high level of resistance.