Army's adviser training focuses on 'hardest part'

By Dugald McConnell
CNN

Adjust font size:

FORT RILEY, Kansas (CNN) -- If the Pentagon follows the Iraq Study Group's advice on embedding more troops with Iraqi battalions, the first phone call might be to Fort Riley, Kansas.

One of the recommendations in the study group's report urges the Bush administration to raise the level of embedded advisers from the current level of about 3,500 to as many as 20,000. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

At Fort Riley, an intensive training program is turning out teams of American advisers bound for Iraq. The teams are drilled on the latest counterinsurgency tactics so they can teach them to Iraqi soldiers. (Watch soldiers kick down doors in mock Iraqi villages )

The Army centralized the two-month training program for embedded advisers at Fort Riley in June.

Maj. Gen. Carter Ham, who was chosen to run the new program, said that in the past few months the training has become more standardized, more rigorous and more selective.

"The training was done to a variety of different standards at multiple locations," Ham said. "The Army decided to say, 'Let's get this right. This mission is too important to approach it in a haphazard manner.' "

The current approach assigns "transition teams" of 11 U.S. soldiers to brigades of Iraqis that can number 400 or 500.

Fort Riley now can train 5,000 advisers a year for one-year tours.

On Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee scheduled a status report hearing on the embedded U.S. military teams.

In the meantime, according to Ham, some American commanders in the field sometimes embed soldiers from their own ranks into Iraqi battalions on their own initiative.

"They are providing additional advisory teams to their Iraqi and Afghan counterparts from within their own formations," Ham said. "And where that has occurred, we're hearing that that's been pretty successful."

Mock Iraqi villages

At Fort Riley this week several teams trained in mock Iraqi villages -- fanning out, searching buildings, kicking in doors, capturing suspects.

A cast of role-players -- often American soldiers who speak some Arabic -- dress in Arab clothing to play "civilians" or "insurgents." They lurk in the buildings and courtyards and ambush the soldiers when they get near.

At another part of the base soldiers practice Humvee patrols, fighting off ambushes, responding to makeshift bomb explosions and treating the "wounded" who cry out as if hit.

But in a few weeks, when they deploy to Iraq, these teams will not be commanding patrols in insurgent territory or leading nighttime raids on suspected hideouts. Instead, they will teach others.

"In a firefight, they can survive and dominate, like we've always trained. That's easy; that's what we do," said Col. Jeff Ingram. "It's the other stuff, the education part -- that's the hardest part. We have to thoroughly immerse them in a replica of Iraqi culture here."

Iraqi expatriates assist

To help them with that component, Fort Riley has recruited Iraqi expatriates, with whom the soldiers practice the softer skills: coaching, persuading and teaching Iraqi officers.

Col. Raymond Bouchard is in a role-playing exercise, a meeting with a "local army commander" and "the local mayor." He offers a greeting in their language, then relies on his translator to continue. The mayor starts to pour tea as they exchange pleasantries.

Bouchard's mission is to cajole and pressure the two men into working with each other to stabilize the surrounding area. When the mayor asks what's in it for him, Bouchard coaxes the local army commander into offering some construction projects for the area.

A few doors down, a similar meeting is going far less smoothly. Two bearded men in long robes sit down with an Iraqi commander and an American adviser. Within minutes, angry shouting in Arabic is heard.

When the meetings are over, everyone switches to English and the participants critique the talks. The American soldiers get advice from the Muslims on everything from traditional etiquette to trust-building.

The issues range from where to sit to advice on how a young American officer can give instructions to an older Iraqi officer.

Several trainees describe it as the hardest part of the program -- and the most useful.

Embedded frustration

Capt. Louis Veneziano was temporarily back at Fort Riley this week, eight months into his deployment as an adviser to an Iraqi battalion. Training and coaching require a different approach to soldiering, he said.

"We never start off with business right away. We spend a good half hour to maybe an hour talking," Veneziano said. "They want to get to know each other first, and they want to actually have that moment of greeting before they actually get into business."

Like many politicians in Washington, Veneziano says he has been frustrated with how long it is taking to train Iraqi forces.

"We have this idea that we're going to go in there and create this ultimate fighting machine, but when we got there we realized we weren't going to be able to do that right away because we had to take those small steps. You know, we had to get them proper uniforms," Veneziano said. "We're not going to be able to do it fast. It's just that simple."

"It took us [the United States] years to get where we are, just like it may do for this country right here."