US Starts Late Manning Iran-Iraq Border

The military also plans to erect six forts by Nov. 1 manned by the Georgian troops to augment the 17-22 Iraqi checkpoints _ most nothing more than concrete bunkers that lack electricity and water _ along the porous, unmarked border. Mueller said the goal is to improve their ability to chase smugglers who use backroads.

Currently U.S. teams spend shifts of two or three days patrolling the border entry point, but they have to set up cots outside to spend the night and risk running low on fuel and water. The new base will solve that.

"Right now it's very hard for us to do our job because we've got to drive an hour, 15 minutes and sometimes it's about 2 1/2 hours up north, especially during the rainy season," Mueller said during a recent interview at his office on the Forward Operating Base Delta, a former Iraqi air base that saw heavy use during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

"We spend a lot of time drinking chai and exchanging pleasantries rather than working. So if we're there every day _ after a while we're just part of the team," he said.

On two recent days, teams of some two dozen U.S. soldiers stationed themselves at the entry point and search areas, standing alongside their Iraqi colleagues and donning gloves to sift through suitcases and plastic Barbie bags piled onto stone counters.

Iraqis, Iranians and even some Pakistanis, including men carrying crying toddlers and women shrouded in black, crowded around the counter. They were accompanied by porters, who make a healthy living carting luggage across the compound as the travelers have to walk through to tour buses or other transportation waiting on either side.

Others stood in line to undergo questioning and biometrics in air-conditioned trailers serving as passport control.

Soldiers in the cargo area X-rayed the content of trucks and singled out vehicles to be searched more thoroughly. Some 350-400 trucks are processed daily, Mueller said.

The troops were on alert for three militants believed to be trying to get to Iran for training, but the only contraband found was a batch of bad apples that failed to meet Iraq's food standards.

The apples were shoveled into barrels and burned.