WHO ARE IRAQ’S 36TH?

So the assault on Fallujah is under­way, with the tak­ing of the town’s hos­pi­tal, “a refuge for insur­gents and a cen­ter of pro­pa­ganda against allied forces,” accord­ing to the Times.
Joining in the attack were “two com­pa­nies from the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion.” It’s a group that’s men­tioned con­stantly in war reports from Iraq — most recently, in last month’s (very tem­po­rary) tak­ing of Samarra.
So who are these guys? Defense Tech recently spoke with an Army offi­cer, present at the 36th’s cre­ation, to get the scoop.
“The 36th was orig­i­nally known as the ‘polit­i­cal bat­tal­ion,’” he said. That’s because it was formed from the mili­tias of five major polit­i­cal groups in Iraq: Iyad Alwai’s Iraq National Accord (INA), Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which backs Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and the two main Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). About 110 sol­diers were orig­i­nally culled from each group.
Because of the group’s diverse roots, it’s sup­posed to be the “most reli­able” of the Iraqi forces. But, in real­ity, only a seg­ment of the 36th has really been trust­wor­thy the Kurdish fight­ers known as pesh merga. In an early oper­a­tion, the U.S. Army offi­cer recalls, about 60 of SCIRI’s sol­diers fled; so did 30–40 each from the INA and INC. But between the two Kurdish groups, only 11 dropped out, total.
Further bat­tles have, hope­fully, hard­ened the 36th’s resolve. But they likely haven’t eased the resent­ment that Iraqi Arabs feel towards the Kurds, and their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the unit. “I will send my broth­ers north to kill the Kurds,” a Fallujah insur­gent told the Washington Post (via Iraq’d), after the April assault on the city, to which the 36th con­tributed.
“The 36th was sup­posed to grow and become the cen­ter of the [Iraqi] national armed forces, not beholden to the war­lord lead­ers,” the U.S. Army offi­cer notes. But with these war­lords jock­ey­ing for posi­tion in advance on the January elec­tions and with Arab-​​Kurd ten­sion still run­ning high the 36th remains a frac­tured group, still loyal to their chief­tains. “We’re com­ing to depend on them,” the American offi­cer says, “And they’re not beholden to the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.“
THERE’S MORE: Back to Iraq’s Chris Allbritton reminds us that the 36th’s “Kurdish mem­bers also have a rep­u­ta­tion for bru­tal­ity, and [for] shoot­ing any­one in the field of fire. The Kurds don’t mind killing a few civil­ian Arabs — it’s pay­back time.”

November 8th, 2004 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.