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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq: A New Army With New Mission Taking Shape |
| 2004-10-31 |
| Iraq these days is a land of queues. People line up to pass through checkpoints, to enter a school or hospital, and even to buy food. Some of the longest queues are formed by men, aged between 18and40 , who want to join the Iraq National Defense Force (INDF), the country's renascent army. Here and there one can even spot young women in the queues. Often tempted by wages of $40 a month, thousands have enrolled in the past eight months. The recent series of massacres of which over 800 recruits to the new Iraqi Army and police have been victims, does not seem to have affected the length of the queues. Nor do fears that some of the new army's units may have been infiltrated by unrepentant Baathists undermined the resolve of the new leadership in Baghdad to build a new national military machine. One of the first moves of L. Paul Bremer, the American diplomat who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) at the time, was to disband the Iraqi Army. Within weeks it had become clear that Bremer had made a mistake by depriving some 1.5 million military personnel, and their families, of a livelihood. The disbanding of the army also meant that Iraq was left with no native force to defend its borders and secure its infrastructure. By last September plans were in place to create a new army. Its first division was to be operational with 12,000 men. But things went awry last October when 300 of the 700 men trained to form the new army's first battalion walked out in a dispute over pay. Hundreds of others quit after receiving death threats from insurgents opposed to the coalition. By the time the interim government assumed power at the end of June the coalition had managed to train only 3,500 men. |
| Posted by:tipper |