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BY STEVE GEARY, EDITOR AT LARGE
DEFENSE
mission:
With a deadline less than three years away, a team of
U.S. Army specialists is racing to bring the Iraqi Army up
to speed on military logistics. Despite a Humvee-load of
challenges, it’s on track to meet that goal.
possible
AT A U.S. MILITARY OUTPOST SOME 60 MILES NORTHwest of Baghdad, the U.S. Army’s First Sustainment Brigade
is engaged in a little-publicized but crucially important
part of the program to bring U.S. forces home from Iraq.
The brigade has the job of helping the Iraqi Army develop something it currently lacks—a logistics capability.
Before they can safely exit, the coalition forces must ensure
that they’re leaving behind a self-reliant Iraqi Security
Force—one with a solid grasp of military logistics. The First’s
mission is to provide support for that effort and an umbrella while the instruction is under way, and it has less than
three years to pull it off. Now that’s a training challenge!
The First is located at Camp Taji, a former base for the
Republican Guard. It has a complement of 85 soldiers divided into four Logistics Training and Advisory Teams that work with Iraqi units of some 1,200 men.
The teams partner with Iraq’s Taji Location Command and General Transportation Regiment
(GTR), which is at the center of the emerging logistics capability. Since Sept. 1, the GTR has had
the responsibility of distributing all classes of supplies to location commands positioned
throughout Iraq as well as maintenance facilities at Taji and Rustamiyah in eastern Baghdad.
Capt. Audrey Iriberri was one of the soldiers at the heart of the effort. The Manhattan native
and 2005 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point served as deputy commander of
one of the First Brigade’s advisory teams and worked with the command staff of the Iraqi
Army’s Taji Location Command before returning home late last year.
Speaking to DC VELOCITY while still deployed in Iraq, Iriberri said that to be successful, the
American advisers have to understand the way the Iraqi Army works. “Iraqi Army logistics is
very centralized on the leaders,” she explained. “All of their supply, maintenance, and transportation orders come from the top, from the Ministry of Defense.” She described the Iraqi soldiers the First mentors as a group with a very diverse mix of experience—ranging from veteran officers to brand-new privates.
According to Iriberri, providing advice in this context requires flexibility. “It is a little bit of
adopting some of the new techniques that they have seen used in coalition logistics and also
using some of the doctrine that they have established in their old army.”
The challenge, she added, is learning the Iraqi approach, accepting it for what it is, and resisting the impulse “to impose what we believe is right and what works in our army [on the
