"There's simply not enough forces here."

[destruction]

June 7th, 2005 1:32 pm

U.S. lacks the troops to guard Iraq border

By Tom Lasseter / Knight Ridder

TAL AFAR, Iraq - U.S. Army officers in the badland deserts of northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border, say they don't have enough troops to hold the ground they take from insurgents in this transit point for weapons, money and foreign fighters.

From last October to the end of April, there were about 400 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division patrolling the northwest region, which covers about 10,000 square miles.

``Resources are everything in combat . . . there's no way 400 people can cover that much ground,'' said Maj. John Wilwerding, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is responsible for the northwest tract that includes Tal Afar.

Rebel toehold

``Because there weren't enough troops on the ground to do what you needed to do,'' the insurgency ``was able to get a toehold,'' said Wilwerding, 37, of Chaska, Minn.

During the past two months, Army commanders, trying to pacify the area, have had to move in some 4,000 Iraqi soldiers; about 2,000 more were on the way. About 3,500 fighters from the 3rd regiment took control of the area in May, but officers said they were still understaffed for the mission.

``There's simply not enough forces here,'' said a high-ranking U.S. Army officer with knowledge of the 3rd regiment. ``There are not enough to do anything right; everybody's got their finger in a dike.''

The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concern that he would be reprimanded for questioning American military policy in Iraq.

The Army has no difficulty in launching large-scale operations to catch fighters in ``an insurgent Easter egg hunt,'' the officer said. ``But when we're done, what comes next?''

Control of the area is seen as key to stemming the insurgency in the rest of Iraq. More than 840 people have been killed since the nation's interim government took office April 28.

``This town is kind of like a staging point for the rest of the country,'' said Capt. Geoff Mangus, 25, of Milledgeville, Ga., an Army intelligence officer in Tal Afar. ``They know that weapons and foreign fighters can filter through here unscathed.''

Cat-and-mouse

Army officials in northwest Iraq described a two-year cat-and-mouse game with insurgents who move from one outpost or town to the next, sustaining casualties but buoyed by an influx of fighters slipping across the Iraq-Syria border, which in many places isn't patrolled. From their sanctuaries in the area, the fighters then spread across the country, some volunteering to be suicide bombers.

They funnel cash, arms and recruits to the insurgency, Mangus said. Repeated efforts to secure the area have failed.

In Tal Afar, the police -- with only 150 officers left in what was a 600-man force -- are holed up in the only remaining police station. Insurgents destroyed three others last year. To the west, the mayor and police have abandoned the town of Biaj. To the south, in Rawah, a recent patrol found no evidence of the mayor, police or ``rule of law,'' said Maj. Bryan Denny, 38, of Oxford, N.C.

Reinstall police

Military commanders in the region said they planned to reinstall police squads and governmental leaders where possible to keep insurgents from overrunning the towns.

Last Wednesday some 1,600 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers swept through Biaj and other nearby towns with long columns of Bradleys and tanks. When they arrived, most of the town was empty, and there were few military-age men visible. American soldiers on the scene assumed they had fled when they heard the tanks rumbling. A car had raced ahead of the convoy and fired an AK-47 in the air, presumably to warn of the impending American presence.

``When the U.S. forces got to this country two years ago they did not stay in the cities on the border. . . . They left it for these guys to walk free. It allowed the Baathists (members of Saddam Hussein's party) and the foreign fighters to organize themselves,'' said the Iraqi army division commander for the region, Maj. Gen. Khursheed Saleem Hasan. ``It's a city (Biaj) that has been taken over by insurgents.''

Sectarian and tribal tensions also have increased, putting American soldiers in the precarious position of navigating bloody disputes between warring factions with their own conflicting agendas and further straining resources.

A group of about 25 U.S. soldiers and 100 Iraqi soldiers has moved into a Tal Afar neighborhood to separate two warring tribes. The Americans said one tribe was pro-insurgent and was targeting the other because it was pro-American. Others in town said the tribes -- one is Sunni Muslim and the other Shiite -- were fighting over jobs and territory. The mayor is suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents.

`Incite violence'

``What the insurgents want to do, what the terrorists want to do, is incite ethnic and sectarian violence,'' said Col. H.R. McMaster, 42, of Philadelphia, who commands the 3rd regiment.

``The danger that all of us are concerned about is that these communities will fall in on themselves,'' McMaster said.

``If the tribes cannot work together, if they cannot make a deal, we can be here 20 more years and do nothing,'' Brig. Gen. Mohsen Doski, the commander of the Iraqi army brigade in Tal Afar, told the 3rd regiment Lt. Col. Chris Hickey, as the two spoke about how to deal with the violence in Tal Afar.

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