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U.S. pullout from Iraq a mountainous challenge

23 August 2010 19:31 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. For months now First Lieutenant Sidney Leslie’s mind has not been on protecting U.S. military convoys in Iraq from bomb and insurgent attacks but on packing up, loading trucks and going home to Bedford, Virginia, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
His 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment ran military convoys across Iraq but is now among thousands of troops pulling out as the U.S. military cuts its numbers in Iraq to 50,000 by August 31, when combat operations end.
"We started about three months ago. The whole process to turn in equipment took a whole month," said Leslie, executive officer at Alpha Company, speaking while soldiers loaded their backpacks onto a truck in the middle of the night.
The operation involved in extricating the U.S. military from Iraq after 7-1/2 years of war is one of the biggest logistical challenges it has ever faced.
"This is the largest operation, that we’ve been able to determine, since the build-up for World War Two," Lieutenant General William Webster, commander of the Third Army overseeing the pullout of equipment, said in a statement.
Almost 100,000 U.S. soldiers have been redeployed over the past 18 months, many to Afghanistan where NATO-led forces are confronting a resurgent Taliban.
Around 2.2 million pieces of equipment, including thousands of tanks, armored troop carriers and trucks, have streamed out of the country and more than 500 of 600 bases, some the size of small cities, closed down or handed to Iraqis.
Just under one million items worth $151 million, ranging from SUVs and Humvees to air conditioners, have been deemed surplus to U.S. requirements and donated to Iraqi security forces.
Based in Contingency Operating Base Adder, or Camp Adder, near Nassiriya, 300 km (185 miles) south of Baghdad, Leslie’s unit alone moved gear worth at least $20 million, he said.
Logistical units worked day and night at Camp Adder, a large air base complex that dates back to the regime of Saddam Hussein before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, to keep the U.S. military to its withdrawal schedule.
The 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry packed up some 200 vehicles, said its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Smith, of Lynchburg, Virginia.
"It’s a lot of gear, motor pools full of gear," he said, waiting to board a plane bound for neighboring Kuwait.
Every day over the past weeks, convoys of 40 or more trucks and troop carriers have rumbled south through hundreds of km (miles) of desert to Kuwait, the launchpad of the invasion.
The convoys prefer to roll at night, to have clear roads and reduce the threat of roadside bomb attacks, mainly carried out in the south by Shi’ite militia, but with so much tonnage to be moved they have also been running at day through the pounding heat of the Iraqi summer.
More than 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the invasion. Overall violence has ebbed from the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006/07, but bombings are still routine, making the job of protecting U.S. convoys a dangerous one.
"Convoys can take eight hours. We had some that ran 16 hours and that’s non-stop in a truck," said Sergeant Kevin Stewart of Appomattox, Virginia.
"It’s never relaxed on the road," agreed Sergeant Barry Curtis of Colonial Heights, Virginia.
COUNTRY STILL VULNERABLE
The six U.S. military brigades remaining behind in Iraq ahead of a full withdrawal by December 31, 2011 will be tasked with advising and assisting Iraqi police and troops.
That does not mean they won’t face combat - they will still be armed to the teeth and ready to defend themselves if necessary, U.S. military officials say.
But responsibility for battling Sunni Islamist insurgents and Shi’ite militia will rest fully with Iraqi security forces.
The country remains violent and vulnerable and the number of civilian deaths almost doubled in July compared to the previous month, according to Iraqi government figures.
Insurgents have kept up a stream of attacks in the aftermath of a March election that produced no clear winner, and as yet no new government, and which pitted a Sunni-backed cross-sectarian alliance against the country’s main Shi’ite political factions.
The reduction in U.S. troop numbers in Iraq is a blow for companies in neighboring Kuwait for which the Iraq invasion brought a bonanza as they won contracts to feed thousands of U.S. soldiers, diplomats and contractors.
A prominent example is Kuwait’s Agility, which used to be small when it was called Public Warehousing Co. but overnight became one of the Gulf’s biggest logistics firms, raking in billions of dollars from U.S. supply deals. Caravans of trucks have operated for years out of a warehouse complex near Kuwait City on the main road to Iraq.
But Agility’s shares have been hit for years on worries that U.S. supply deals will fade ahead of the withdrawal next year.
At the Ali al-Salem airbase in Kuwait south of the Iraqi border, C-130 transport planes park in rows, while soldiers waiting for flights sit in a huge air conditioned tent, watching American football on TV or sleeping, their bags piled outside.
Many ignore the MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) provided by the military and some head straight upon arrival for a Pizza Hut restaurant on the base.
While some may be heading into a different war, in Afghanistan, many are returning to normal lives.
Platoon leader Lieutenant Aaron Pennekamp of Arlington, Virginia, will be going back to law school.
"This is about 180 degrees different, sitting in a classroom, reading books," he said, smiling.
He’s glad the mission in Iraq is over.
"For a very few people this is fun. For everybody else we’re doing it because we’re told."