CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq — After more than four months of side-by-side training with U.S. Marine and Army forces, the Iraqi Security Forces of the 2nd Battalion, Muthanna Brigade are heading home to Baghdad.

The parting is bittersweet for troops from both sides who have formed bonds of both professionalism and friendships. But while some would have liked for the battalion to remain in the Fallujah area, it’s time for the unit, also known as the “Prime Minister’s Brigade,” to take on the missions for which they have been training.

“They’re some of the best soldiers I’ve ever worked with,” said Marine Capt. Andrew “Del” Del Gaudio, 30, with 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, who serves as the senior adviser. He has helped train the armies of six Middle Eastern countries. “These guys really want to show us that they’re capable of running their own show.”

Friday night, Del Gaudio moved the first third of the 500-plus soldiers from the Eastern Fallujah Iraqi Camp, or EFIC, to the Muthanna Airfield in Baghdad, where the ISF will now work with the 10th Mountain Division.

While in the Fallujah area, the ISF soldiers patrolled daily with Marines and have carried out two large-scale joint operations: securing polling places for the Jan. 30 elections and raiding the city of Karmah, which had become a safe haven for insurgents.

Iraq’s security forces are training under the Coalition Military Advisory Training Team, or CMATT. In Fallujah, elements of the Army’s 98th Division (Institutional Training), a Reserve unit out of New York, worked with Marines in the training.

The Muthanna soldiers are handpicked by the brigade commander, said Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Lambert, attached to the 98th Division. What they possess in talent, however, they lack in equipment such as up-armored vehicles, Lambert said.

Del Gaudio’s challenge has been molding the soldiers to be an army that works under a democracy, instead of a dictatorship plagued by corruption, intimidation and fear tactics.

The army under Saddam Hussein’s reign was based on an old Soviet model, he said, in which only the senior echelons made decisions. Now, decision-making trickles to the lowest levels of the rank-and-file.

“They have good solid leadership, a full-up staff, solid all the way down the to the company level and a good NCO corps,” Del Gaudio said. “We’re not teaching them what to think, we’re teaching them how to think.”

That’s a key difference, said Lt. Col. Ammer, Headquarters and Services Company commander.

“[The soldiers] are learning they can go and do things for themselves. That was not possible under Saddam Hussein,” he said through a translator.

The ISF soldiers are driven by a “desire to terminate the insurgents,” who are “destroying the economy and destroying the country,” said Ammer, who enrolled in Iraq’s military academy in 1984 just out of high school and requested only his first name be used in this story.

Not everyone praises the ISF’s tactics. After the May 1 sweep of Karmah, some Marine platoon sergeants grumbled that the ISF soldiers lack a certain amount of discipline. When outside of bases, the ISF soldiers sometimes shed protective body armor and helmets to bathe in a creek, Marines said. A few have negligently discharged their weapons, resulting in two who were shot in the feet during the weekend raid.

But the soldiers still are learning, and comparing them to Marines is an unfair association that doesn’t take into account cultural differences, senior Marine battalion leaders say. What might work for the U.S. military, they said, might not work for the Iraqi one.

“They don’t have to be as good at the Marines, they just have to be better than the insurgents,” said Lt. Col. Stephen Neary, battalion commander, echoing a running mantra among Marine leaders.

The ISF soldiers provide things Marines simply don’t pick up, such as intelligence on the country, the culture, the language, and who is Iraqi and who isn’t. They can spot fake identification cards, pick up on dialects and identify subtle behavior that U.S. troops can’t.

When he advises, Del Gaudio said, he doesn’t reinvent the wheel.

“I always ask them, ‘Teach me how you do things, then we can modify from there,’” he said. “Some things they do simply work best for them.”