Iraqi Battalion Refuses to 'Fight Iraqis'

The battalion, traveling by truck and escorted by troops from the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, passed through a Shiite area in northwest Baghdad. They were fired on, and six members of the unit were wounded, one seriously, Eaton said. A crowd of Shiites gathered and "surged" at the convoy, he said. "They were stunned that they were taken under fire by their fellow population," he said.

The battalion was then sent back to Taji, where preparations were made to fly it to the Fallujah area. But opposition to the mission stiffened, Eaton said, "so we decided not to involve them in the Fallujah operation."

Accounts differ on whether the other Iraqi battalion based at Taji also indicated that it would decline to go to Fallujah. Eaton said it was not involved, because it was not yet deemed ready to fight.

But the other Army official said that a decision was made not to force the issue with that unit's commanders. "I don't think they pushed them to the brink where they said, 'Hell, no, we won't go,' " the official said.

The two senior officers also differed on what motivated the refusal.

The Iraqi rebuff was based on "pure fear," said the Army official. "They just got cold feet."

But Eaton, who visited the unit the day after the incident, disagreed. He noted that Iraqi troops have "fought very, very bravely" against Iran. He said that, in his view, the problem was caused by poor leadership and complicated by the fact that the unit was trained by U.S. advisers who emphasized that their job would be to defend Iraq against outside forces.

Eaton, who oversees the organization, training and equipping of the Iraqi army, the civil defense force, the police, security guards and border patrol, said the recalcitrant battalion's Iraqi leadership would be "reorganized."

He also said that training would be different for future battalions, and handled almost exclusively by Iraqi officers, a group of which recently finished re-training in Jordan. "They will train their own men," he said.

Eaton, who previously was chief of infantry training for the U.S. Army, said that solutions would be found to the setback.

"Is it disappointing? Obviously," he said. "We're just going to work our way through it."