U.S. Attempts To Build Trust, Leaders in Iraq

Marine Maj. Frank Shelton, far left, speaks with Iraqi troops. As a military adviser, he works and lives with Iraqi units. (Steve Fainaru -- The Washington Post)

MOSUL, Iraq -- A dozen U.S. and Iraqi military officers dropped in on the Mosul police chief last week. After arriving at his headquarters in their armored Humvees, the men crowded into the chief's office to discuss security for the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections.

An Iraqi special forces officer, Lt. Col. Adell Abbas, quickly took over. "I have everything I need to protect you," he assured the police chief.

The police chief appeared doubtful. He looked pleadingly around the room at the Americans, the real power in Mosul. What would they do to protect him?

A Marine seated next to Abbas intervened. "Sir, Colonel Adell and I are brothers," said Maj. Frank Shelton. "He has a picture of my daughter. I have a picture of his son. Anything we can do to assist you, that is our mission together."

Abbas, 39, is commander of the 23rd Battalion, 6th Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force. Shelton, 35, is his senior American adviser. In addition to keeping a photo of Abbas's 4-year-old son, Mustafa, strapped to his left arm, Shelton sleeps five feet from Abbas, eats meals off the same plate and seldom leaves his side. With limited success, he has grown a mustache to resemble the facial hair worn by Abbas and his men. Both men were trained as military divers.

Their intense relationship is part of a changing U.S. strategy to find a way out of Iraq. After a string of battlefield failures by the nascent Iraqi security forces, the U.S. military has committed as many as 10,000 advisers to work directly with Iraqi units in the coming months. The goal is to develop quality leaders who can prevent the units from falling apart under attack and ultimately assume responsibility for Iraq's security.

In Washington, U.S. officials also said that after the elections they would incorporate more troops and officers from Saddam Hussein's army into the Iraqi military and move Iraqis to the front lines to battle insurgents.

In Iraq, U.S. commanders have developed a security plan for the upcoming elections in which Iraqi troops will have the mission's most dangerous assignment: protecting the polling sites that will inevitably be targets for attack. U.S. troops will provide perimeter security and respond to emergencies but will stay away from the polls to avoid any appearance they are trying to influence the elections, officers involved in the planning said.

Viewed up close, the relationship between Shelton and Abbas shows how complicated the strategy is: an American Marine teaching fundamental leadership skills in the middle of an escalating insurgency.

Shelton, an intense, 5-foot-7 fireplug whose father, Roy, was an American military adviser in Vietnam, said he and his team of eight U.S. advisers would continue to ride with the Iraqis in vulnerable, unarmored trucks as election day approaches. He said he would stay as close as possible to Abbas, who has been told he has a $20,000 bounty on his head, along with other Iraqi battalion commanders.

"You can kill me and get rich and famous," Abbas joked to Shelton as they ate corned beef hash from the same metal pan one afternoon last week at the 23rd Battalion's temporary base, a vacant building with neither electricity nor running water.

"Yeah, that's why I'm your primary bodyguard," said Shelton, laughing.

Shelton, who speaks in machine-gun-like bursts, alternates ordering, teaching, scolding and praising. Upon hearing that a vehicle with insurgents had been identified in Mosul, he told a soldier: "If they see this vehicle, they need to stop it and capture it. I want them alive, do you understand? Maybe slightly injured, but alive."

Later, after a soldier from the battalion was badly burned in a kerosene heater accident, Shelton told a group of soldiers to be more careful. "I'm an American, so I'll speak bluntly," he said. "That injury was caused by stupidity, by carelessness. Mortars, rockets, we can't do anything about. But we have to careful."