The Washington Post has a piece up today about a battalion of Iraqis that have refused to fight for the Americans at Fallujah. They are saying, “We did not sign up to fight Iraqis.”
There have been some efforts in the blogosphere to follow this story, mostly by piecing together stray references that manage to find their way into print about American-trained Iraqi police who’ve joined the insurgents and ICDC (Iraqi Civil Defense Force, also American trained) who’ve either joined the insurgency, sabotaged American operations or simply walked away from their positions. One bit of this story that hasn’t surfaced in any major media is the role of Chalabi and his INC militia in the siege of Fallujah. Chalabi did surface, however, in an interview with his buddies at the Council of Foreign Relations, April 8, 2004.
There’s been a lot of publicity about the fighting in Falluja and in the south, but what is going on in Baghdad and the Iraqi Governing Council? Are you working on, the build-up to the June 30 transition?
No. We’re working now on how to stop the fighting, provide relief to civilians, uphold the rule of law, and also take stock of the security apparatus of the Iraqi government and move forward, learning the lessons from the recent fighting.
Describe the fighting going on.
There are two kinds of fighting going on. There is a sustained effort by the coalition forces in the Falluja area to systematically and rigorously find the criminals who killed and burned the U.S. contractors [on March 31], and also to disarm the terrorists that are found in Falluja. [The interview occurred about 12 hours before a temporary halt in the fighting in Falluja was announced April 9]. That is being conducted systematically and with the cooperation of the Iraqi 36th battalion of the ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], which has demonstrated its capability and its courage in the current crisis.
And they’re in Falluja?
They’re in Falluja now.
They’re fighting together with the U.S. Marines?
Yes.
There exist very few references to the “36th battalion of the ICDC.” One is another page on the CFR site dated March 16, 2004 which describes the “36th battalion”:
Are any ICDC units not locally based?
One special battalion—called the 36th battalion—consists of 80 or so fighters from the militia of each of the five main prewar Saddam Hussein opposition groups: the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National Accord, the KDP, the PUK, and SCIRI. Trained and overseen by U.S. Special Operations troops, these fighters work together in mixed platoons and have, among their other achievements, foiled two plots involving attacks on the Baghdad headquarters of the CPA, Anderson says. The unit develops its own intelligence information.
And, in an article from the NY Times dated February 6, 2004 republished on the Iraq Foundation website:
The two other political parties that had militias at the time of the American-led invasion, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord, supposedly disbanded their armed groups over the summer.
The Congress’s militia, numbering at least 1,000, was trained and equipped by the Pentagon, while the Accord’s force was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
But the Iraqi National Accord now runs the Interior Ministry, which controls many of the country’s security forces, including the police. The Congress retains many armed guards. A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, Entifadh Qanbar, said “militias are very important in certain areas” and could serve as emergency forces.
“It will counter the Iraqi army, so it will prevent coups d’état,” Mr. Qanbar said.
The Coalition Provisional Authority lets Iraqis keep properly licensed small arms, a policy that allows militia leaders to say their weapons are legal.
The American military has discovered illegal caches of artillery in the hands of some political parties. Last month, in the northern city of Kirkuk, considered a powder keg of ethnic tensions, the 173rd Airborne Brigade found rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar rounds in the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Occupation officials are experimenting with absorbing the militias into national defense units. Five major parties with militias contributed about 100 people each to the formation of the 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps last month. The battalion has mixed the different soldiers at the squad level.
So, here we have two contradictory accounts, one which seems to imply that the “36th battalion” has about 80 troops and one that would say around 500.
The 1st Armored Division Artillery accepted authority of the Al Rashid district in southern Baghdad from 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, during a transfer of authority ceremony at Camp Falcon, 23 January 2004. The Division Artillery Combat Team looked forward to working with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, specifically the 504th battalion and Alpha Company, 36th Battalion, which call Camp Falcon home.
So, here are two battalions, the 504th and the 36th. The Washington Post says there are four ICDC battalions – The battlefield refusal of the battalion — one of just four that exist in the Iraqi army — began Monday when it was ordered to travel about 60 miles to support the Marines, then locked in battle with fighters in Fallujah.
From this article, we might expect that the other two were the battalions initially alleged to accompany the US Marines in their siege of Fallujah:
Two battalions of Civil Defense troops —- about 2,100 men in all —- have been organized in the Fallujah region since last summer, one on each side of the Euphrates River.
An Army battalion, which fought Fallujah’s hard core of insurgents for seven months and occupied the U.S. base here until two weeks ago, organized the units, but passed the training mission on to the Marines last week.
Starting a week ago, a hand-picked cadre of 27 enlisted Marines and two officers trained about 60 Civil Defense troops and police officers for three days, and will begin an intensive two-week boot camp and condensed infantry school for 200 soldiers at a time starting in two weeks.
Numerous articles from around April 5th claimed that there were “1,200 Marines and two battalions of Iraqi ICDC” surrounding Fallujah. By April 8th, Chalabi was bragging to the CFR that the 36th was fighting alongside the Marines.
To round all this disparate information up, I think what we’re seeing in Fallujah is two Marine battalions fighting alongside Chalabi’s INC militia, some Iraqi Communist Party militia and some Kurdish peshmergas, in the form of the 36th ICDC batallion. There is no indication that the militia of SCIRI, the Badr Brigades, was ever incorporated into this force. Moqtada Sadr’s Al-Mahdi Army clearly wasn’t invited. There may be some INA, but this “36th battalion” is either a Chalabi show or he wants people to think that it is.
I think it can be safely concluded that Chalabi and the Kurdish faction have put all their Iraqi eggs in the American basket. For Chalabi, the possibility that the Americans might be run out of Iraq would be extremely bad news for his hide, let alone his ambitions. For the Kurds, well…they’ve already prepared for the next phase.