Word: iraqi
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...years old, the chain-smoking Ali grew up in Baghdad, the third-generation son of a military family. Graduating in the top 10 of the Iraqi military college in 1988, he fought against coalition forces as the executive officer of a commando battalion around Baghdad's airport during the invasion of 2003, before quitting on April 9 as the Iraqi army crumbled. Rejoining the army in March 2004, he quickly established himself as one of the rising stars of the new military due to his aggressive instincts ("My tactics are simple," he says. "Whenever we see the enemy...
...officers refused to come here," says Iraqi Army Brigadier General Ali Jassim Mohammed Hassen al-Frejee, describing how in November 2004 he became the battalion commander of the area surrounding Lutufiyah, a town 18 miles south of Baghdad that had become one of Iraq's worst nests of insurgent activity and sectarian violence. "It was a dark time...
...after nearly four years of continuous fighting, the area is now one of the safest in the country as a result of increasingly sophisticated counterinsurgency techniques and close cooperation between the Iraqi and American armies. The success here may be a model for Iraqi-U.S. Army cooperation in the future, and many American commanders in the region attribute a large part of the success to "General Ali's" skill as a professional soldier. "He has been here from the beginning," says Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp, the U.S. commander of a unit that works daily with General...
Promoted to general in May 2007, Ali now commands the 7,000 soldiers of the 25th Brigade of the Iraqi 6th Army Division, who defend the 20-mile band south of Baghdad between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Although the Iraqi Army is plagued by charges that many units are not fit for battle, U.S. officers say that is not the case with the 25th Brigade. "Are they ever going to maneuver and fire like American troops? If that is your yardstick, then probably not for a very long time," says Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Rohling, who is in charge...
...mainly Shi'a units demonstrated a loyalty to secularist ideals during the Sadr Uprising instigated by the Mahdi Army that engulfed several cities in late March. While many Iraqi soldiers in Basra and Baghdad either refused to take up arms against other Shi'as or even handed over their weapons to them, General Ali's soldiers in Mahmudiya, the largest city in the area, stuck through five days of heavy fighting that killed five Iraqi soldiers and 25 insurgents. Ali threw approximately 1,000 Iraqi soldiers into the battle, devised and directed their missions to clear the city, and visited...