US Starts Late Manning Iran-Iraq Border

ZURBATIYA, Iraq -- The U.S. colonel had a simple question.

"Where are the signs you were supposed to get?" he asked the Iraqi border guard as they stood on a remote desert road believed to be a smuggling route from Iran.

The Iraqi officer pointed his flashlight at three signs that were intended to alert motorists to checkpoints. The signs were lying on a mound of sand.

"Why haven't you put them up?" Col. Mark Mueller asked during a late-night inspection. "All you have to do is pound the stakes into the ground."

But, the Iraqi explained, he didn't have a shovel.

Such are the obstacles facing U.S. soldiers as they increase training of Iraqi border guards in this sparsely populated mountainous area southeast of Baghdad, believed to be a major route for weapons and fighters slipping into the country from Iran.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia sent 2,000 troops to help last month, but they haven't yet left a major base in the area. Mueller and his troops are also getting a late start, basically trying to secure the thinly patrolled border from scratch after it was largely ignored during more than four years of war.

The area has attracted new U.S. attention as the military steps up allegations that Tehran is aiding Shiite extremists who have killed hundreds of American troops with powerful bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, believed to be brought in from Iran. Tensions between the two countries also have been rising over Iran's nuclear program and the recent detentions of each others' citizens.

Mueller, 48, from Yorktown, Va., is the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's border transition team at the heart of an intensified U.S. push to stop the smuggling. The strategy is similar to American efforts elsewhere in Iraq _ build up the infrastructure and train the Iraqi forces to take over eventually.

The 900-mile border between the two countries, however, is laced with ancient smuggling routes and tribes who spent decades bringing in weapons to fight Saddam Hussein's regime and are now believed to be making their living from Shiite militias. The problem is particularly stark along the 90-mile section in predominantly Shiite Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad.

Mueller acknowledges the virtual impossibility of securing such a border but says the U.S. forces can at least disrupt the flow of weapons into the capital.

The centerpiece is a plan to build a new base to house some 100 Georgian troops and as many as 66 Americans just four miles from the Iranian border.