Return to Pointer View home page June 18, 2004

West Point grad dubbed 'father of Iraqi Army'

By Sgt. Jared Zabaldo
Office of Security Transition

BAGHDAD, Iraq,— Less than a year ago a modest man from Weatherford, Okla., arrived in Iraq to guide an organization that didn’t even exist – to build an army that wasn’t there.

There was no plan, no force and only slight guidance.

And 363 days later – despite a host of staggering setbacks and difficulties – Iraq’s armed forces and civil security forces total more than 230,000 people. In only a matter of months, the army will consist of a 27-battalion, nine-brigade, three-division army and air force, navy, coastal defense force, civil defense corps, police service, facilities protection service, border police force, customs police force, immigration police force, national security police force and a diplomatic protection service officers force.

“There’s nothing that could have prepared me for what I’ve faced here – but many things have happened to me in my career that have proven helpful,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the former Office of Security Transition Commanding General.

Eaton recognized the parallels between his career and the huge assignment to rebuild the Iraqi Armed Forces and civil security forces.

“When I was commissioned, the Army was a conscript army,” the solidly built, slightly grey-haired 54-year-old Eaton said, recalling his beginnings with the U.S. Army in 1972 as a fresh graduate from the U.S. Military Academy.

“One year later when I took over my platoon,” Eaton said, “It was an ‘all volunteer’ platoon. We had become a professional army.”

“The analogy,” Eaton said from behind his desk at the headquarters of the soon to be disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, “Coming out of the Vietnam War – having lost it – and going into a professional army from a conscript army is precisely what we have done with the Iraqi army. I trained my own platoon. And that’s what I’m asking these cadre officers and noncommissioned officers to do.

“So much what we are doing here is a direct reflection of what I’ve done in my career,” Eaton said.

What Eaton’s done is spend 32 years serving his country in various capacities and stations beginning with his first assignment as that young platoon leader with the 4th Infantry Division in Fort Carson, Colorado. Most recently he served as the commanding general at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga., – as a master of training Soldiers and instilling in them the values and ethos of being a Soldier.

It was with that in mind that Eaton was brought to Iraq only weeks after U.S. officials disbanded the old Iraqi army in May 2003.

His original mission was to command the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team. However, after delivery of the Eikenberry Report – an assessment of Iraq’s security forces authored by Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry earlier in the year – Eaton’s mission was greatly expanded and intensified. The result was a recommendation the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team be generated and subordinated with the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team under the umbrella organization now known as the Office of Security Transition.

In a year, Eaton has grown the police and military teams to an all-encompassing unit that has overcome a withering daily storm of shortfalls, disappointments, changes, barriers, timelines and a myriad of other problems that never make the headlines. Among the reports, as well, a wave of silent successes has gone largely untold.

“This organization is an ad hoc organization,” said Eaton, who is married with three grown children, including two sons also serving in the Army – one in Iraq.

“We have built a team that is high performing where people have operated outside their comfort zone,” he continued. “Outside their experience, outside their competence, and have risen to the occasion and have continued to keep moving this important project and very demanding project down the road.

Eaton’s pride in his team is matched by the inspired affection Eaton’s soldiers and coalition partners feel for the soon-to-be departed commander.

“I’m not saying it’s unusual that leaders inspire loyalty in the workforce,” said Office of Security Transition Deputy Commander, British Army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster. “But he inspired an unusual degree of loyalty in the workforce.

“As much as anything it’s his compassion and his care for his people,” Aylwin-Foster said. “That’s what sticks in my mind.

“And he’s meant everything to the organization,” he added. “He’s taken it from nothing, literally five guys standing around at the back of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters with the instruction, ‘Build an army,’ to now the Office of Security Transition.

“It’s gone from five to 863 in the space of a year and a mission which started off just, ‘Build an army’ … to ‘Build an army and air force and navy. Take on the ICDC – the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps; take on the Iraqi Counterterrorist Force; the Iraqi Police Service; the Border Police; the Facilities Protection Service ….’” “He’s the father of the Iraqi army,” Aylwin-Foster said.

The Soldiers agree.

“He put the first block in our army. The first brick of the building,” said Iraqi army Lt. Col. Ahmed Lutfi Ahmed Raheem. “He gave us the confidence inside us to do our duty and showed us that there’s no difference between a small duty and a big duty,” he said.

“When you speak with him and ask him a question, he doesn’t move his shoulders or his arms,” said Raheem. “He’s like a machine. But he’s a good man. You find the answer in his eyes before his mouth.”

“God loves men like this,” Raheem said. “This country will never forget him.”

Now Iraq approaches sovereignty with police and military forces in place where none stood before. And the modest man will continue to work behind the scenes and do what he has done for decades: build Soldiers. Eaton will be the training officer for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va.

In a few days he will leave Iraq as quietly as he came, but he will leave behind the house -- and values -- he built.