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Eglin Airmen train Iraqi police through transitions

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. Alyson Smith
  • 96th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFMCNS) --  Introduction of democracy and the reconstruction of Iraq hinges on its police force’s ability to handle those fighting against the transition. Two Eglin Air Force Base Airmen are in-country to make sure the Iraqi police force gets the training it needs.

First Lieutenant A.W. Rittgers and Master Sgt. Anthony Miller are in Iraq on a one-year deployment from Eglin.

Part of a five-man military assistance and training team, they are advising an Iraqi military police battalion of about 1,100 people. The team’s duties are to train the Iraqis to conduct vehicle searches and establish entry control points and tactical control points while showing them the proper equipment to use and wear. The joint team of advisors lives with the Army on the Iraqi compound within the base.

Sergeant Miller is deployed from his job as chief of non-lethal weapons at the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center and Lieutenant Rittgers was a section commander in the 96th Security Forces Squadron. Ironically, Lieutenant Rittgers said, he and Sergeant Miller had never met prior to their deployment, despite working across the parking lot from each other.

Sergeant Miller, along with Tech. Sgt. Shawn Carter from Offutt AFB, Neb., have established a 10-day military police training academy covering ECP and TCP operations; AK-47 training; tower observation procedures; squad-level tactics; and personnel, vehicle and area searches. They expect to put 30 students through at a time.

The Airmen have 36 years of experience between them, and Lieutenant Rittgers said he can already see the positive influence they’re having on the MPs. They are also training Iraqis on how to conduct armory operations.

“We’re doing our best to teach the Iraqis how to be professional soldiers,” Lieutenant Rittgers said.

That’s difficult, though, because most of the Iraqis have had very little formal training, with skill levels equivalent to an Airman straight out of technical school.

“Our challenge is to develop them and take them further, and we’re doing the best we can with what we have,” Lieutenant Rittgers said.

The people on the assistance and training team rotate on-call duty, and every time the Iraqis respond to a security incident, one of them goes along. They are not yet fully confident that the Iraqis can handle everything on their own.

Lieutenant Rittgers is the officer-in-charge of the base’s south gate, which is located on a main supply route and is the only gate exclusively used by Iraqi military, civilians and contractors. This gate is the busiest one, he said, since about 300 vehicles and thousands of people come through daily. He supervises about 120 personnel, a mixture of Iraqi MPs, civilian contractors and a few coalition forces. He hopes that soon he’ll be moving toward strictly advising instead of operations.

The biggest threats they face are from vehicle-borne IEDs and small arms fire. They are in a heightened state of awareness since the Iraqis vote on their new Saturday constitution. The vote on the constitution is one more step in the journey to a new Iraq.