BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 -- The sharp blast echoed from a cluster of buildings and trees in the morning sunshine, and almost simultaneously the target crumpled nearly 1,000 feet away. Helicopters roared in and soldier after soldier slithered down a rope onto a stone building. Armored vehicles followed, as did flashes and bangs and smoke and gunshots.
Though it would have been a fairly routine live-fire exercise for U.S. Special Operations forces, this particular display at a facility just outside Baghdad on Friday amounted to a look at what U.S. officials hope is the future. Members of an Iraqi special forces unit, armed with modern U.S. weapons and tactics, stormed and captured a mock insurgent stronghold, performing effectively, according to their trainers.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Friday to inspect what he and international security officials are calling the linchpin of Iraq's future and the key to the U.S. exit strategy: Iraqi security forces. While U.S. military commanders acknowledge that training is behind schedule and they are still clamoring for international support, providing Iraqi forces with the ability to defend and defeat has become the focus of the U.S. mission here and reflects what officials call a strategic shift in the war.
"The task ahead for us is to continue to get the Iraqi security forces on the job, and that will take time," Rumsfeld told a group of U.S. and Iraqi troops at a Mosul airfield auditorium before dawn on Friday. "They're developing confidence and skill, and once they have that confidence . . . our coalition forces will be able to go home with an honor you will have earned."
In demonstrations and briefings from Mosul to Taji and Baghdad, Rumsfeld watched Iraqi special forces, commando, police and regular military units learn how to take over the fight against the insurgency. He also met with Iraqi and American leaders in Iraq, including his top generals in the region and the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Gen. George W. Casey, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, said after a lunch meeting with Rumsfeld that the way ahead would involve shifting counterinsurgency efforts to the Iraqis. He said U.S. officials were working on the details of the transition and estimated that about 2,000 to 3,000 embedded military trainers would be needed to give the Iraqis the skills they needed to be self-reliant.
In Baghdad, Rumsfeld visited the Iraqi Counter-Terrorist Force, a group of 171 troops modeled on U.S. Special Operations forces. While fewer than half of the specialty force's soldiers have been trained, 100 of the 451 men in the force are attending a 13-week course in Jordan.
The unit has performed missions in Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf and Mosul. Army trainers who have been working with the unit said that under their watch, the Iraqis had executed 538 combat missions and have captured 431 insurgents and seized more than 1,700 weapons.
Rumsfeld said he was awed by the force's demonstration Friday and told members of the unit that their role was to fight terrorism, and to "intimidate the intimidators."
According to a Defense Department memo about the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, the unit's mission is "direct action counter-terrorism," and its members are trained to use American weapons, technology and gear. The document says the counter-terrorist force will be joined by hundreds of soldiers in an army commando battalion and an Iraqi Intervention Force, a group of more than 6,000 soldiers trained for urban combat and paid higher wages because of the associated risks. There are 12 Intervention Force battalions, and U.S. commanders said they hoped to add nearly 3,000 such troops in coming months.
But there appear to be gaps in the leadership ranks. U.S. military officials, eager to form Iraqi units that could play an immediate role, began from the ground up, gradually ceding control of specific neighborhoods to local soldiers. NATO is now focusing on training officers. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at a ministerial meeting in Nice in the south of France this week that NATO plans to train at least 1,000 new Iraqi officers each year, a mission that has gained support in the alliance since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections. NATO officials hope to be able to announce at a Feb. 22 summit in Brussels that each of its 26 members is making some contribution, whether by training Iraqi forces or contributing money.
Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of the training programs, said countries had donated funds and equipment, but that so far only about 100 NATO trainers were in Iraq, far short of the 300 pledged. "We've asked for more than what's been provided so far," he said.
Petraeus said he aimed to deploy 200,000 security forces by October and that NATO was willing to pitch in. "We can certainly reach that goal, and I think considerable progress has been made and will be made," he said in an interview with journalists traveling with Rumsfeld.
Other U.S. officers in Iraq echoed that sentiment Friday. Marine Capt. Jim McCrumb, 33, of Santa Barbara, Calif., said he was heartened by the progress of the Iraqi Intervention Force unit he has been training in Mosul. He said the soldiers had done an "exceptional" job and showed amazing dedication.
"The junior officers are really developing themselves, and they have tremendous potential," McCrumb said. "They could do it now on their own. However, they do need a little more time to be coached and nurtured."
