THE MILITARY: In Hussein's Shadow, New Iraqi Army Strives to Be Both New and Iraqi

January 7, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

AJI, Iraq, Jan. 6 — If moments in the new Iraq strain credulity for those who knew the country under Saddam Hussein, few have done so more than the scene on Tuesday at this old Iraqi barracks: recruits of the new Iraqi Army marched across the parade square, past rows of saluting American officers, to the strains of "Colonel Bogey March," the theme for the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

When Mr. Hussein was still taunting President Bush over his threat to overthrow him, the huge base at Taji, 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, was synonomous with the dictator's yearning for military power and conquest.

New tank battalions came here in the 1980's before deploying in Iraq's brutal war with Iran. At least until the mid-1990's, a secret complex adjacent to the base was at the heart of Mr. Hussein's drive to acquire chemical weapons and missiles.

At Taji, engineers built and tested the pilotless plane that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said was one of Iraq's major threats when he addressed a crisis meeting of the United Nations Security Council in February.

Now, Mr. Hussein is an American detainee facing a probable war crimes trial, and here arrayed on the sun-beaten asphalt at Taji for their graduation parade stood 691 men of the Second Battalion of the new Iraqi Army, nearly 60 percent of them soldiers in Mr. Hussein's army until the American invasion in March.

The new battalion made a creditable showing with a precision marchpast in camouflage uniforms self-consciously different from those of both Mr. Hussein's army and the Americans': British-style berets and badges of rank and other insignia that go back to the first Iraqi republic, which was established in 1958 by the military coup that overthrew and killed King Faisal II. The badges have been stripped of the Baathist tracery that slipped in under Mr. Hussein.

A poignant but somewhat inauthentic air echoed in the discordant strains of the new army's marching band, especially when it played tunes borrowed from the country's occupiers, like "Colonel Bogey" and "The British Grenadier," which harks back to Napoleonic wars.

But the Iraqis on hand cheered up when the band shifted to "The Army Is a Fence for the Country," a tune that originated under the first military ruler, Abdul Karim Kassem, and remained in vogue under Mr. Hussein.

Through the parade and the soldiers' exuberant tribal dancing that followed, there was an air of expectancy, hesitant but still real, that Iraq can overcome the paralyzing insurgency of recent months and construct the Arab Middle East's first, or at least fullest, democracy.

Just as palpable was the soldiers' unease at the shadow still cast by Mr. Hussein, in whose cause, or memory, many of the insurgent attacks have been made, and many threats have been leveled against any man joining the new army.

It was a moment for the politicians vying for power in the new Iraq, and for the British and American officers, to speak proudly, or at least hopefully, of the role the new army of 40,000 men can play in burying the grim memories of Mr. Hussein. They are to be deployed by September.

Among the hopeful was Adnan Pachachi, the current chairman of the government-in-waiting, the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

He is one of the leading candidates to be Iraq's next president, after the United States returns sovereignty to Iraq. The scheduled date is June 30.

The new Iraqi Army, Mr. Pachachi said, would return all Iraqis to their lost days of "glory and pride." As well, he said, it would be the guarantor that nobody like Mr. Hussein could ever arise again.

"You, my friends, are the nucleus of our new army, the bastion of a new democracy and freedom in Iraq," he said.

As Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld reckons it, Iraqis are already bearing a major share of the burden in defending the post-Hussein state.

By the Pentagon's count, the new battalion will join 160,000 armed Iraqis serving alongside the United States-led occupation forces — in the police, in a new civil defense force, in the border police, in a unit called the Facilities Protection Service, which guards important buildings and installations. The figure is greater than the total strength of the occupation forces, currently about 140,000 troops from 38 countries.

But the hard fact, admitted by American commanders, is that the new Iraq will depend on a steadying presence of tens of thousands of American troops for years, even if Iraqi politicians, Arabs and Kurds and Turkmens, Shiite and Sunni Muslims and the small minority of Christians, can settle their squabbles over power-sharing in a new constitution.

Some American officers said troops would be here three to five years; others say 10 to 15. Iraqis tend to the higher estimates, even as they say they wish the Americans could withdraw much sooner.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq, told reporters at the parade that he believed that the American command had overcome a setback that developed when about 400 men from the first 700-man battalion to graduate, in October, quit within a month in protest over low pay. Other American officers said about 30 of those who deserted had been taken back, or are under review for readmission, after a decision to add a "hazardous duty allowance" of $72 to the basic monthly salaries of the new soldiers, which begin at $60 for a private first class and rise to about $150 for a lieutenant colonel.

Among the new soldiers, thoughts ran back to Mr. Hussein. After the parade, many told of abandoning their front-line units in the dictator's army as American troops pushed north from Kuwait toward Baghdad.

Faris Islam, a 34-year-old native of Mosul, in Iraq's northland, said he was based in Basra, in the south, as a captain, the rank to which he has been restored in the new army.

As the invasion began, Captain Islam said, he and his fellow officers broke years of silence born out of the fear of being arrested and executed for disloyalty.

"We talked about Saddam for the first time," he said, "and we discovered that we all thought the same: that he had tyrannized the entire country and driven all of us into poverty, and that there was nobody to blame for this but him."

So, Captain Islam said, he and the rest of the unit fled north. "I was not prepared to die for him," he said.

In a group of men gathered around Captain Islam, all said that joining with the Americans in constructing a new army put them and their families at risk of attack by the insurgents, who have vowed to kill any Iraqis in league with the Americans.

But one officer pushed forward and said, to mutters of approval, that the risk was worth it.

"Ignorant people don't respect us," said the officer, Capt. Uday Najam, 28. "Former regime people, flunkies of Saddam, say we are serving the Americans. But we don't pay them any attention. Iraq is our country, and we will serve it in any way we can until we can get the country back on its feet again."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company