Recruits make their way through the 'shoot-house.'
Photo: Jeff Emanuel

Tal Afar, Iraq
THE DAY BEGINS AT 0500, when the sun is still out of sight and the weather cool. As the pickup truck pulls up to the inside of the front gate of the Forward Operating Base (FOB), the men begin to emerge from the pre-dawn darkness, dressed in various assemblages of civilian and military clothing ("they usually wear the same thing every day," says a U.S. Special Forces soldier) and carrying AK-47s, having just been searched by the base guards.

An American Special Forces sergeant jokes with the men--25 of them--in English, as they load their weapons in the back of the truck and walk to another checkpoint for a more exhaustive search, which must be completed before they are allowed onto the base. The drill is the same every day--the same show time, the same process, the same searches--yet the men appear good-natured about it, as though they have long since learned to compartmentalize such trivial discomforts, and have accepted that, in order to accomplish something difficult, and to join of an exclusive group, such discomforts and hassles must be tolerated with a smile.

And these men are in the process of joining quite an exclusive group within their profession. Some are already Iraqi Police, while others are simply recruits off the street; however, for those who successfully complete the training laid out for them by their Green Beret-wearing

The city of Tal Afar, home to an old castle and other remnants of the Ottoman Empire, sits in northwestern Iraq, near the country's borders with Turkey and Syria. The population, primarily Shia Turkmen, is supplemented by Kurds, as well as by Sunni and Shia Arabs. One conventional military unit--the 1-9 Cavalry Squadron--is tasked to the area; other than that, security in the region is primarily the job of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, led by one elite unit: the Tal Afar SWAT, a highly trained (by Iraqi standards) team of police who conduct a wide variety of important missions throughout the region, both alone and backed up by an American Special Forces (SF) team, responsible for training and advising these Iraqis.

PROSPECTIVE TAL AFAR SWAT team members are put through a two-part training course by U.S. Special Forces. First is a four-day 'smoke session,' characterized by very little sleep and a great deal of physical activity.

"We try to test their desire," said the Special Forces team commander. "They have to want to be here."

This attempt to test the mettle of those joining the elite unit isn't without difficulties, of course. "With the last group we trained," he continued, "some of them had simply been told by their police commanders to show up at a certain place at a certain time, for 'training.' They had no idea what they were getting in to." Very few quit, though, despite the uncomfortable situation ("These guys hate to run, for example," said one SF sergeant, "so we'd take them for run after run after run"). "We'd have some folks that we want to quit," said the team leader. "And a lot of times they wouldn't--which I guess is a good thing."