Since the U.S.-led occupation authority transferred power to the Iraqis on June 28, the chain of command has kept its structure but changed personnel.
"It's civilian control of the military," said Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who commands the 1st Cavalry. "That's what our system's all about."
U.S. Army soldiers aim from an abandoned hotel during a gun battle with insurgents in Najaf. American troops have been fighting a stop-and-go battle with the Mahdi Army militia while the Iraqi government tries to negotiate a truce.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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Except now the civilians are not Americans.
At the austere desert headquarters of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit outside Najaf, war plans were being made last week in marathon meetings kicked off by Iraq's defense minister, Hazim Shalan.
"He sets the tone," an officer who was present said.
Shalan was one of three senior Iraqi cabinet members on the base, shuttling from Baghdad to give first-hand counsel to the generals, who understand that he speaks for Allawi. The prime minister, they say, also relies on Interior Minister Falah Naqib when making major decisions regarding the shrine, a cardboard model of which dominates the planning room.
"We're following strict guidance from the prime minister," said Capt. Carrie C. Batson, spokeswoman for the Marine command in Najaf. "We're talking to them probably five or six times a day. We're in constant contact with them."
It's a dramatic change from before June 28, when the Americans could do as they pleased.
"I used to have lunch with these guys," said one U.S. commander in Najaf. "We never talked about tactics a year ago. They only wanted to talk about politics. Now we're asking them what our options are, and what they aren't. Everything we're going to do is based on what the Iraqi government says."
Officers said the ban placed on U.S. troops firing toward the gold dome of the shrine was worked out with the Iraqis, who understood the propaganda catastrophe that could result from damage to the site.
On Friday, at the request of Iraqi officials, artillery units stopped firing 155mm rounds several hours before the Interior Ministry erroneously reported that the Mahdi Army was about to hand over the shrine to Iraqi police.
The Iraqi government also requests occasional pauses in U.S. offensive operations, as well as the lifting of such pauses for raids that perhaps remind Moqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric who leads the Mahdi Army, just how big a hammer lay at hand.
So it was that on Saturday night, Ollivant was finally leading a column of tanks out of the main gate of Forward Operating Base Hotel toward a midnight rendezvous in the vast cemetery north of the shrine.
"We have to meet Bushmaster at the body washer's," the driver, Spec. Adam Dye of Chattanooga, Tenn. said. He was referring by radio code to the armored column that would be waiting at the mortuary where bodies are washed and wrapped before burial, in accordance with Muslim practice.
