PENJWIN, Iraq — Last month, six officers with the Iraqi Border Police were escorting five Iranians down a rural, unpaved road southwest of Halabjah when they stumbled across three more Iranians snooping around.

The five Iranians in custody were being released from whence they came, having been cleared by As-saish, the crack Kurdish security force entrusted with intelligence and interrogations. As is often the case in Iraq, people who live in border towns frequently cross back and forth without any mischief in mind.

That wasn’t the case with the other three Iranian men. They were armed and wearing uniforms. Words were exchanged. At one point the Iranians demanded the Iraqis surrender, even though they were in Iraq. More words were said — and then gunfire rang out.

‘Way it’s always been’

The border separating Iraq from Iran in the northeast is mountainous and a bear to effectively patrol. For centuries, merchants, smugglers and the region’s indigenous Kurds have moved about more or less with impunity. That continues to this day.

Buy a soda or a bag of potato chips in Penjwin and chances are the labels will state that it was made in Iran. The flow going in the opposite direction ranges from livestock to satellite dishes, neither of which Tehran condones.

On a recent trip to the Bashmakh border crossing near Penjwin, trucks were lined up on both sides of the border, and people shuffled back and forth.

“What we found is that there is a lot of gray area in terms of smuggling,” said 2nd Lt. John Merlette, who heads one of the five U.S. Army teams that operate along the border in northeastern Iraq.

The teams have been lending logistical support and training to the Iraqi Border Police, or IBP, since 2003.

“We tell the IBP [about smuggling], and they say that’s the way it has always been,” Merlette said. “... Anything they want to get into the country, they can get into the country.”

The same could be said about a lot of countries, but Iraq, where an estimated 150,000 U.S. troops are deployed, is different. Ever since a U.S.-led coalition took down Saddam Hussein’s government, border security has been a concern. At times, U.S. political and military leaders have accused Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Syria in particular, of permitting and sometimes facilitating the passage of weapons and Islamic fighters into Iraq.

But U.S. soldiers and Iraqi authorities believe much of the contraband has less to do with guns and goons and more to do with economic goods.

“Most of the problems we have are with smugglers, mostly livestock going from Iraq to Iran,” said Lt. Col. Mohammed Khedher, who spoke through an interpreter.

Khedher is executive officer of an Iraqi Border Patrol battalion in the Chuwartah District of eastern Iraq. The district, which is north of Penjwin, is part of Sulaymaniyah Province.

When asked what his district’s greatest needs are, Khedher didn’t hesitate.

“We need more soldiers to control that wide border,” he said.

Currently, his area has 250 border sentries, but Khedher wants 150 more. The average border patrolman makes roughly $200 a month.

Khedher also cited poor roads, but said his battalion’s communication capabilities have improved significantly from a year ago.

Progress made

A year ago, the situation on the northeastern border was quite different. At the time, a 25th Infantry Division unit out of Hawaii held sway in these parts. Like its successor, Battery B, 148th Field Artillery, the 25th ID unit provided logistical and training support to the fledgling IBP in Sulaymaniyah Province.

But in the early weeks of its mission, the unit had too few men and not enough equipment to do the job as it was envisioned, Capt. Timothy Schmitt, the unit commander, said at the time.

Even more troubling was the state of the border police.

There weren’t enough border outposts in the province to begin with, and many of those stations that were occupied were in sorry shape. Furthermore, Schmitt said the sentries were woefully short of vehicles and often didn’t have the means to reliably communicate with another outpost, or to headquarters.

In effect, many of these border guards, if they saw a band of armed men moving across the border, could do little to stop them, or even get word back to someone who could.

Since then, the provincial IBP has received vehicles, communications gear and uniforms from the U.S. Army. Additionally, the Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing an estimated $35 million project to build 44 border posts and other facilities, including an IBP academy, said Dave Varner, the project engineer.

The situation, Khedher said, “is much better than last year.”

And from what Merlette has seen, Iraqis are beginning to show initiative.

“If you give them the stuff, they will run with it,” he said. “They just need the logistical support.”

Straight shooters

Unbeknownst to the six IBP guards who encountered the three uniformed Iranians south of Halabjah was the presence of a fourth Iranian atop an adjoining ridgeline, said Merlette, who recounted the April 16 incident.

Frustrated by the Iranians’ audacity and lack of contrition, one of the IBP guards fired a warning shot into the air in an effort to end the stalemate. That prompted the fourth Iranian on the ridgeline to shoot, which triggered a brief gunfight. One of the three Iranians was struck at least twice. The two other men hustled him up the hill and back across the border.

The five Iranians, who were about to be released when the standoff ensued, were later released at another location, Merlette said.

Such encounters aren’t commonplace, but they aren’t unusual either.

U.S. soldiers who patrol the border said they’ve heard of Iranian forces infiltrating border towns to intimidate the locals and get information on what the Americans are doing. Iraqis admit their agents cross over, too.

While the Americans are interested in illegal crossings and smuggling operations, Merlette said the overriding concern is terrorists and weapons.

“We don’t want to get too involved” with the smuggling, Merlette said. “We want the Iraqi forces to step up to the plate.”

Given the lackadaisical way many trucks are checked at some ports of entry, the IBP appears to tolerate illegal commerce, at least to some degree. But bad guys with deadly weapons are a different story, Iraqi officials said.

Gen. Ahmed Gharib Muham- med Amin, who commands the border police in all of Sulaymaniyah Province, said his men have caught foreign fighters in the region.

“There were major arrests” in Kalar last year, he noted, and another one recently near Penjwin.

“All of them came from Iran,” Amin said through an interpreter. “Iran has sent over a lot of terrorists.”