MOSUL, Iraq — A cluster of Iraqi army soldiers was pressed around Mosul’s mayor and police chief when Col. David Brown came upon them while inspecting troops with an Iraqi commander Thursday.

The soldiers were ostensibly protecting the city officials, but most were actually listening to their conversations instead of scanning the surrounding areas for possible attackers.

Brown plowed into the throng when he saw what a target they made, and started telling individual Iraqi soldiers to pay more attention. You need to focus on where an attack will come from, he said, not on the person you’re protecting.

Eventually he came to police chief Khalid Hussein Ali Al Hamdani, only to find that he was wearing neither helmet nor body armor. When Al Hamdani finished talking, Brown put his arm around the Iraqi warmly and urged him to protect himself better. He told the chief he was warning him only because he did not want to see him hurt.

Al Hamdani thanked him and laughed good-naturedly as he walked away from Brown, who has a term for these types of encounters: "Slow, ambiguous progress."

Brown heads the 2nd Iraqi Army Division Military Transition Team, a group of American advisers who are guiding Iraqi leaders as the U.S. military tries to hand over more of the war effort. Such work can be less clear-cut than traditional military operations, but many advisers think it is key to ending the war.

"I believe MiTT is the future," said Capt. Cole Derosa, a one-time platoon leader whose platoon earned 34 Purple Hearts during heavy fighting in Baghdad two years ago.

MiTT members emphasize the focus on advising, not ordering. The Americans can give their counterparts recommendations. But the Iraqis have ultimate authority over their men — something the advisers say American line units sometimes forget when they get frustrated with Iraqi inaction and want the MiTTs to push things along.

"I’m adviser, I’m not commander here," military police adviser Christopher Allen said.

Most of the Americans are also younger and more junior than the Iraqis they advise, some of whom have been soldiering a decade more than their counterparts. Capt. Jack Lovell, for example, is a 35-year-old explosive ordnance disposal adviser who mentors a middle-aged lieutenant colonel.

Still, the Americans are teaching the Iraqis a Western-style military organization with more of an emphasis on delegating responsibility to the enlisted ranks, Lovell said. An experienced Iraqi officer can learn a lot from them.

The personal relationship between adviser and Iraqi officer can determine the adviser’s influence. Brown, for example, had to restart the relationship-building process recently when a new division commander replaced a commander who he had gotten to know well. Communication between the adviser and Iraqi officer has since been less natural than it once was, he said.

Time and proximity are the cure for this. The 2nd Iraqi Army MiTT advisers live on an American corner of an Iraqi base called Al Kindi. They have their own rooms, their own relaxation areas, and their own place to eat. But they often forgo these to spend as much time with their counterparts as possible.

"I’ll eat down here more than I’ll eat up there," Allen said Tuesday as he dug into a meal of rice, soup and tortilla-like Kurdish bread at the Iraqi military police station. Maj. Torri Sabri Slelvany, commander of the Iraqi MP unit just across the table, gave him a hard time about eating slowly compared to the way the Iraqi soldiers rush through their meals like basic trainees.

In fact, the time these advisers spend building personal relationships masks their real focus: Systems, not people. Allen, for example, said his work with Slelvany is intended to develop procedures for the unit that would persist even if Slelvany were no longer in charge.

That fear is real. Slelvany got shot in the leg during a mission nine months ago. Allen would be advising another military commander if not for Slelvany’s stubborn refusal to let doctors amputate his leg or his grim determination to go to work day after grueling day.

Working alongside the Iraqis puts the MiTTs in the same danger as their counterparts. A suicide bomber detonated near one MiTT, who emerged mostly unscathed only because the bomber’s own body absorbed most of the blast.

That constant frontline presence, as much as anything, has given the MiTTs cachet with their Iraqi counterparts.

"If any time we call him, he’s ready, and he’s never said no," Slelvany said about Allen.

MiTT work may depend on "slow, ambiguous progress." But relationships like these make it clear in the minds of most of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division advisers that their effort is well spent.

Advisers’ duties include more than mentoring Iraqis

Few advisers think they get enough time with the Iraqis.

Rules require a certain number of American soldiers must accompany Military Transition Team members outside the base. So when Col. David Brown, who heads the 2nd Iraqi Army Division MiTT goes to a province-wide operational update — as he does almost every night — a half-dozen MiTT soldiers must tag along and wait outside until it’s time to return.

The advisers also must prepare reams of reports on their progress.

In the end, Brown estimates that the advisers spend about one-third of their time actually advising, although he noted that his job allows him to spend about 90 percent of his time advising.

An adviser’s role can also be at odds with the Army’s traditional operational focus, he said.

Imagine an Iraqi army unit with broken-down Humvees.

An American line unit might send its own mechanics with their own parts and tools to get those Iraqi Humvees back in the fight as quickly as possible.

An adviser, on the other hand, might refuse to help the Iraqis directly, he said.

While this keeps them out of action longer, it forces them to acquire their own parts and fix the vehicles with their own mechanics — hopefully paving the way for more sustainable progress in the future.

— James Warden

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