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12/16/2004:

"Iraq's National Guard No People's Army"

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When the U.S. military looks at Iraq's 40,000-strong National Guard, it sees an exit strategy. What Iraqis often see instead is an ill-disciplined rabble many regard as more foe than friend.

With Iraq's police force widely considered ineffectual and the army only a few thousand strong, the U.S.-trained National Guard has become the frontline domestic security force in the fight against a determined guerrilla insurgency.

The sooner the National Guard, eventually due to expand to 60,000 men, is trained and backed up by a reliable police force, the sooner U.S. forces can withdraw, U.S. commanders have said.

That may be all well and good for U.S. forces, who have occupied Iraq for the past 21 months, losing nearly 1,300 troops in the process.

But many Iraqis have a low opinion of the Guard, a force half-way between a police and an army, rather along the lines of Italy's Carabinieri or Spain's Civil Guard.

The animosity stems in large part from the fact National Guard soldiers wear a camouflage uniform similar to the Americans and, being U.S.-trained, have picked up attitudes and habits many Iraqis associate with the disliked U.S. military.

``Are the National Guards wearing the same uniform as the occupiers?'' Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafoor al-Sammerai, a preacher at Baghdad's Um al-Qura mosque, asked the faithful recently.

``They fire randomly at people,'' said Sammerai, who also accused a National Guard trooper of shooting dead one of his bodyguards while he was queueing for petrol.

``Is the blood of Iraqis that cheap? Who is responsible for this bloodshed? Many children, young men, old men, and women have died from random shooting for no reason,'' he said.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters