New Iraqi army is born in desert

The first recruits to the fledgling New Iraqi Army showed off their fighting skills yesterday at a desert camp where the US-led occupiers hope to turn out 35,000 soldiers in a year.

An initial batch of 750 soldiers at the Kirkush camp, near the Iranian border northeast of Baghdad, included ex-members of Saddam Hussain's disbanded army and Kurdish Peshmerga rebels who until five months ago had been fighting one another.

"That was Saddam's fault," said Abubaker Mohammad, who fought for 11 years with the Peshmerga. "Now we are one family, Arabs and Kurds together, working for a new army, a new Iraq."

Saddam's vast army, tho-ught to number as many as 400,000, collapsed in the weeks after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March. Some fought and died, most turned and fled.

Washington decided to disband the army and hired a US company, Vinnell, to train a new force from scratch. The first battalion of 750 in the New Iraqi Army is near to finishing an eight-week initial training course at Kirkush.

Risking retribution from anti-US Iraqi guerrillas who often target "collaborators", 3,000 more would-be soldiers have signed up at three recruitment centres in Baghdad, Basra in the south, and Mosul in the north, American military officers said.

"I am not scared. Saddam's people are gone and they will never come back. We in the new army will make sure of that," said recruit Saman Talabani, clasping a gun to his chest.

Senior officers from Saddam's army are excluded from the new army, but two-thirds of the recruits are former soldiers.

"By this time next year I want 35,000 men in 27 infantry battalions," US Major-General Paul Eaton, the top commander overseeing the new army's formation, told Reuters.

"That would be a great start, then it will be up to the new Iraqi government to see how it wants to build on that. Saddam's army was far greater than a country of this size should need."

All the new recruits will come through Kirkush, a large half-built garrison for the old army set in arid, sandy plains that are good for training but tough to live in.

Once a full division is ready next year, it will be attached first to the American Fourth Infantry Division, based in Saddam's hometown Tikrit, and given limited responsibilities like border patrols and guarding bases.

Yesterday, the new recruits, due to graduate in October, were on their best behaviour for a mini-army of journalists flown in by helicopter to watch them train and take classes.

One unit cracked off AK-47 assault rifles on a firing range, while another simulated combat over mounds of sand.

In the classroom, a group of about 100 were being taught about fitness, health and hygiene. "Don't forget to clean your teeth, that's very important," the American instructor barked.

Commanders say most recruits know how to fight but need to be taught about human rights and democracy. "We show them the philosophy we use in a free society, that armies exist to serve their own people," Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Combs said.

But not all is hunky-dory in the New Iraqi Army. Away from the commanders, some of the $70-a-month recruits and trainers told of indiscipline and desertion at Kirkush.

Of an initial 1,000, 250 have given up and gone home, they said. Arab-Kurd squabbling was common. "I was in a riot the other day," one trainer said. "I dragged a guy into my office who wouldn't shut up, and all his friends came chasing after me. I was terrified," he added.