Resurrection

The Iraqi Navy is making a comeback as a viable force in the Persian Gulf

By DAVID AXE, Special Correspondent

UMM QASR, Iraq — It’s a hot September morning when P105 pushes away from the pier at Umm Qasr naval base near Basra and motors into the Persian Gulf. Nicknamed “Shark” by its crew of around a dozen officers and sailors, P105 is one of five 28-meter Predator-class patrol boats, armed with .50-caliber machine guns, that form the backbone of the reborn Iraqi Navy. The small force is based entirely at Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only large port and the economic lifeline for this struggling nation.

Today there have been reports of a dhow smuggling sheep; Shark is en route to investigate with a squad of Iraqi Marines aboard and two fast aluminum boats trailing behind. The idea is to find the dhow, board it, check papers, and, if there is any contraband, detain the crew and tow the dhow and its cargo back to Umm Qasr.

On the cramped bridge of Shark, wedged between the wheel and a laminated navigation chart depicting Iraq’s territorial waters — a 400-square-mile swath of the Persian Gulf centered on Umm Qasr and harboring the nation’s only two oil platforms — the boat’s captain, Talib Yaseen, stares at the horizon. In the past year, there have been suicide attacks in Iraqi waters against the oil platforms, pirate raids on Basra-bound shipping and a rash of smuggling in the waters between Iraq, Iran and Kuwait. Uncertain of what awaits, Yaseen orders “10 knots” and “man the gun.”

It is a typical day in the life of the new Iraqi Navy that, since its rebirth in the summer of 2003, has been steadily expanding and growing in capability under the guidance of 20 American, British and Polish advisors co-located at Umm Qasr. This year, the Navy gained qualified independence from its Western handlers. Since May, it has trained all its own instructors and recruits. This summer, the small force assumed all responsibility for command and control in routine operations.

The advisors remain, but now they function only as the word implies. They simply advise, usually only when asked.

Day-to-day operations from Umm Qasr include patrols around the two oil platforms and support of detachments of Marines on the platforms themselves, interception of smugglers that cross the Gulf hauling livestock and black-market gasoline, and presence patrols on the channels that connect both Umm Qasr and the small inland port of Az Zubayr to the Gulf.

Missions, maintenance and constant recruitment and training keep personnel at Umm Qasr very busy.

Compared to its sister security forces — among them the Iraqi Army, police, border police, facilities protection service, traffic police, oil protection force, Air Force and Coast Guard — the Navy is small, with just 1,000 personnel, counting two battalions of 200 Marines apiece. Despite representing barely 1 percent of all Iraqi forces, the Navy is perhaps the most professional and competent of them all.

Royal Navy Capt. Wayne Kreble, who recently ended a stint as commander of the coalition advisors at Umm Qasr, said the Navy’s small size has facilitated its rapid development. He said his 20 advisors made for a favorable forces-to-advisor ratio.

Kreble adds that as the Navy is entirely based at Umm Qasr, behind barbed wire and walls, safe from the attacks that have plagued the Iraqi Army and police, it has been able to focus on training and operations rather than mere survival.

Favorable conditions have paid dividends for the Iraqi Navy, but the hard work and experience of the force’s officers and sailors cannot be discounted. They have capitalized on an opportunity to rebuild what was a proud and effective navy before more than a decade of war and sanctions took their toll.

With just five old patrol boats and a handful of rigid-hull inflatable boats and fast aluminum boats, the Iraqi Navy is one of the smallest of the Gulf navies, smaller even than Kuwait’s, but the current force is far more robust than the one that clung to life between the two Gulf Wars, when often only one patrol boat was capable of operations and new equipment had been embargoed by its builders. Compare this to the pre-1991 Navy, whose order of battle included patrol boats, missile boats, artillery boats and landing craft, and that for years waged open warfare against Iran.

While P105 churns toward the reported smugglers with guns manned and Marines ready to conduct a boarding, the crew of P104 is pier-side working on their boat. Most of P104’s crew joined the Navy in the Saddam Hussein era. On a break from turning wrenches on P104’s worn machinery, these experienced sailors compare the new Navy to the old.

Sailor Salman Kadhim, 35, a veteran of 18 years, said the current force is more flexible, if less heavily armed. “We want to be useful for peace,” he said.

Engineer Raad Talib, 35, who joined the Navy at the age of 15, chimes in, “We lack equipment.” He said requests for hulls and spares go unheeded by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

Mechanic Mosab Shebeb, 35, said spares shortages prohibit the patrol boats from staying underway for more than 12 hours at a time, making the Navy’s stated goal of having one boat on patrol at all times a tall order.

Senior Sailor Ahmad Hasan, 37, recounts seeing U.S. Coast Guard cutters (USCGC) in action with the coalition’s Combined Task Force (CTF) 58. USCGC Monomoy is currently deployed with CTF 58. In 2003, USCGC Boutwell conducted security operations in the Persian Gulf. When Hasan said he wants to see Coast Guard-style vessels in Iraqi service, his fellow sailors and engineers raise a cheer.

P104’s captain, Lt. Abdullah Al Khalidi, 34, echoes his crew’s sentiments and goes further. He casts a disparaging glance at P104 bobbing at its moorings and declares the boat “useless.”

Even Capt. Adel Hafith, the Navy’s operational commander, a man who has a lot to gain by playing up his force’s strengths, admits the material condition and a shortage of hulls are major limitations. But he said help is on the way.

Hafith points to three 30-meter Al Uboor-class patrol boats, out of service since before the 2003 war and currently laid-up near the Predators’ moorings. There is a buzz of activity around the old hulls as metalworkers repair welds, fit hatches and replace rusted bolts.

Hafith said the first of the Al Uboors, rechristened as the Al Faal class, will join the Predators in early 2006 alongside a new class of operational support vessels (OSVs). The OSVs, United Arab Emirates-built tugboats that are to be refitted as underway logistics boats, will enable the Predators and Al Uboors to maintain continuous patrols.

There are hurdles, of course. Fuel and funding are always in short supply, and it is a major headache getting the Ministry of Defense to actually sign contracts for commitments it has already made. But there is a plan in place, visible progress around the Al Uboors — and Hafith isn’t pretending when he appears confident. After all, he is more than the Navy’s operational commander, he is also one of its most experienced sailors.

Two decades on missile boats, artillery boats and landing craft in combat against Iran and the U.S.-led coalition have given him perspective that even some of his old salts lack. He has seen the best of times, and the worst — much of it from an operational commander’s perspective.

In his and the Navy’s darkest hours in 2003, Hafith was drummed out of the service — “Because of intelligence information about me,” he said, declining to expound. He then joined the Army, and was posted near the Iranian border in the southern province of Maysan. When the coalition threatened, Hafith deserted. He went home and watched the war unfold on satellite TV.

Post-war, with the Navy and the Army completely wiped out, he worked in oil security … and waited. In January, he approached the new Navy. His experience and his love for the Navy were plain to see; Hafith was quickly placed in command at Umm Qasr.

It has been a long hard road for Hafith and his service, but the worst is behind them.

Not everyone in the new Navy is a battle-scarred veteran hardened by decades of war and sanctions. The future of the force is in its younger officers and men, the ones who will fill Al Khalidi’s and Hafith’s shoes in coming decades.

Twenty-eight-year-old Sub Lt. Mohannad Al Jazairi, currently Al Khalidi’s executive officer aboard P104, joined the Navy in 1997 after earning his commission from the Iraqi Naval College. He never knew the Navy that fought against Iran. He didn’t watch coalition aircraft sink most of the force in a matter of weeks in January 1991. The Navy he joined was a navy only in name.

From Al Jazairi’s present point of view, however, things have never been better. He is proud even of the temperamental, under-armed Predators — and he hopes to command one someday.

Topside, P104 offers a vantage on the hum and throb of the naval base and Umm Qasr’s commercial port. To the north loom rows of cargo ships discharging thousands of tons of grain and other goods. Over the eastern horizon tankers line up at the oil platforms to fill their holds. Each tanker departs carrying $6 million of Iraqi crude. That $6 million will pay Iraqi police, soldiers and sailors; buy bread for the poor; and pay for roads, power plants and water treatment plants.

Al Jazairi squints to shield his eyes from the bright noonday sun as he surveys all this activity. He is silent, but it is not hard to imagine what he is thinking.

Elsewhere, the battle for Iraq’s future seems a losing one: In Baghdad, bombings and panicked stampedes claim hundreds of lives in fell swoops; in contested cities like Mosul and Baqubah, insurgents and Iraqi and coalition forces engage in deadly shootouts; and in Najaf, rival Shiite clans threaten to riot over their political differences. But here at Umm Qasr, with oil flowing, cargo arriving by the thousands of tons and the Navy pushing out patrol boats to nab smugglers, protect commerce — and, perhaps most importantly, to make the statement that Iraq can muster as sophisticated an organization as a navy — it is possible to be optimistic.

Besides, it is a beautiful day.

Royal Navy Lt. Jason Bond, 28, and a scrawny white cat lounge in the naval base’s makeshift pub, which is really little more than a shack with a rough bar, an old refrigerator and a TV tuned to the British military network.

Over cups of fruit juice, Bond gives a realistic appraisal of the Iraqi Navy’s problems. Most immediate, even more immediate than a shortage of hulls and spares, is fuel. For its patrol boats, the Navy needs diesel. For its small boats, it needs gasoline. There’s been enough diesel to sustain patrol boat operations, but a lack of gasoline has put most of the rigid-hull inflatable boats and the fast aluminum boats out of service.

Part of the problem, Bond said, is a fuel-management failure on the part of the Navy. “Once they hit the water [in their small boats], it’s open throttles, 30 knots all the way. There’s no sense of conservation.”

Only exacerbating the situation is the Navy’s tangled bureaucratic position. While the Navy itself is in the Ministry of Defense, it gets its fuel from a recalcitrant Ministry of Oil that seems to have other priorities. Fuel consignments are often late and rarely sufficient for the Navy’s needs.

And that is just the beginning of the bureaucratic nightmare. In the interest of keeping insurgents and smugglers off of Iraq’s rivers and channels, the Navy has been trying to coordinate with the tiny Iraqi Coast Guard, a force of 500 that operates 50 small boats from humble facilities along internal waterways. But the Coast Guard falls under the Ministry of Interior, which hasn’t been eager to cooperate with the Ministry of Defense. Meanwhile, Umm Qasr itself is managed by the Ministry of Transportation.

The way Bond paints it, it is a miracle the Navy gets anything accomplished with so many paper-pushers working at cross-purposes.

There is a commotion outside. Shark appears in the distance with the two aluminum boats behind it. There’s no dhow in evidence; Bond and the crew of P104 stand by watching and wondering why.

Shark ties up next to P103. A sailor breaks down and stows the .50-caliber gun. Marines debark with a visible slump to their shoulders, hauling their body armor and AK-47 assault rifles. Down the ramp comes Yaseen. He tells Bond that Shark got to the area where the dhow was reported but found nothing. Bad intelligence, he claims.

Shark’s mission was a bust, but Hafith is not overly concerned. He is looking ahead. The first Al Uboor could be completed as early as December (though probably not until March) and it will require a crew of 10 officers and men. They will need to be recruited, preferably from the ranks of the old Navy, and trained or retrained.

Meanwhile, Hafith is planning this month to assume full responsibility for the point defense of the two oil platforms, a mission that up to now has been shared by the Navy and coalition forces. The handover is a small step down the road to Iraqi self-sufficiency, but it is a big step for a Navy that two-and-half years ago did not exist.

“We started from zero,” Hafith said. “We’ve done well.”