Totten on the ROK Army in Iraq

Via OFK, is this fine report from Michael Totten about his trip to Kurdistan in northern Iraq. In his report he mentions this about the ROK Army Zaytun unit serving in Iraq:

Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi, advisor to Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani, told me that South Korea is the official occupier of “Northern Iraq.” Korean soldiers are stationed just outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga (“those who face death”), surround the South Koreans to make sure they’re safe.

Andy at the Marmot’s Hole feels that Totten is slighting the ROK Army’s contributions in Iraq. I have been posting on the ROK Army deployment since its inception and here is a roundup of my thoughts on this issue.

I have been against the Zaytun unit deployment from the beginning due to the political costs the Koreans were demanding along with the fact that if a mass casualty event happened the anti-US hate groups and demagogue politicians in Korea would use it to advance their own anti-US agendas. Fortunately Kurdistan has turned out to be safer for ROK Army soldiers than remaining in Korea where the ROK Army in the last couple of years has lost numerous soldiers to accidents and multiple shooting rampages. By comparison, not one ROK Army soldier has been killed in Kurdistan.

My second issue with the deployment is that for having originally a unit of 3,500 soldiers the Korean government has done little reconstruction. The current construction boom happening in Kurdistan that Totten mentions has nothing to do with the Zaytun unit in Iraq. When I was in Iraq during OIF1 I had a chance to go to Kurdistan multiple times before the Zaytun unit arrived there. The construction boom was just beginning then and Totten is now seeing the results. The clinics and trade schools provided by the ROK Army are nice, but what are all those soldiers not involved with clinics and trade schools doing? According to this ROK Army major, not a whole lot:

The original purpose of sending Korean troops there was to rebuild Iraq. But we went there and spent most of our time in maintaining our own living facilities. We are too withdrawn and I think it’s problematic. The people high up in the ranks are so concerned about our safety. For them, a safe return is more important than accomplishing anything.

I don’t know how South Korea’s sending troops has contributed to the national interest. I get the feeling that we didn’t offer something really useful for Iraqis. We did so for the sake of our national image in the outside world. American soldiers in Korea enjoyed a good reputation in the past because they gave chewing gum and chocolates to the locals. Perhaps my government is thinking about something similar. Personally, I believe that if we had sent actual combat troops to Iraq, we would have gotten a lot better deal from the United States.

Plus some in the Korean media tend to agree with the Major:

First of all, there is not much for the Korean soldiers to do in Irbil, the Kurdish autonomous state. Contrary to some media stories, the local police, not Korean soldiers, are maintaining public security. The engineering corps of the Korean unit, called Zaytun, is bent on either maintaining Korean compounds or supervising construction works done by local firms. Its medical team has only dealt with the minor complaints of residents, according to soldiers and civilians familiar with the local situation.

We are not belittling the struggle of the Korean troops who are trying to contribute to a bilateral friendship and improve the nation’s image there. In sum, however, the Korean troops seem mostly to be killing time. The government’s keyword is “safety,” meaning Seoul wants to maximize the Korean troops’ stay and have minimum casualty. And their latest excuses for cementing Korea-U.S. ties are the ongoing negotiations to take over the wartime operational control and bargaining for the free trade agreement.

Additionally, I also have to wonder if the goal of the Korean government is to conduct clinics and work shops for the locals, than why don’t they just send in the Korean equivalent of the Peace Corps? Soldiers like the Major quoted above want to be soldiers, and the ROK Army can still do security missions in Iraq directly related to reconstruction without participating in combat operations. Perfect examples of this is providing security for the USAID team that was denied security assistance by the Zaytun unit last year or protecting the multiple South Korean aid convoys that were filled with expensive aid including computers that were meant for Iraqis that ended up being hijacked by criminal gangs. Also the Zaytun unit had to be pressured to allow 40 soldiers out of over 3,200 to guard a UN building in Irbil, one of the safest cities in Iraq. Security missions like this are what soldiers want to do, not make toilet seats.

30 years from now when a prosperous Kurdistan is holding a commemoration ceremony honoring the nations that sacrificed for the freedom of the Kurds what will Korea be remembered for? As it stands now for bringing the wonders of modern plumbing to Kurdistan. Korea has the potential to do so much more. I have always thought a perfect reconstruction project for Korea would be to build a modern highway in Kurdistan. From my experience in Kurdistan a highway upgrade is needed and Korea excels at creating modern highways. Use the military to provide security in conjunction with the Kurdish Peshmerga and have a Korean construction firm work hand in hand with a Kurdish firm to show them how to build a modern highway from Duhok to Salahaddin via Irbil. That is a real reconstruction project. 30 years from now no one is going to remember Korean toilets, but they would remember that highway.

Judging by this Chosun Ilbo article the Kurds are thinking the same way I am and would rather have less Zaytun and more Hyundai:

Right now most of the development in Irbil is being done by businesses from nearby countries like Turkey and Lebanon, but Irbil’s leaders are keen to attract investment from South Korea. The prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the body that rules northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, has noted with interest South Korean investments in other Middle Eastern countries.

In a meeting with South Korean journalists Saturday, Nawjad Hadee, the governor of Irbil Province, said he’s hoping Korean oil and energy businesses will recognize his region’s potentials. He unfolded a map on a table and pointed to nearby oil fields. “Thanks to the trust built by the Zaytun Division, we’d like to help South Korea companies develop Irbil’s oil fields,” Hadee said. Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil deposits with proven reserves of around 115 billion barrels.

Sadly it appears that Korea will be remembered in Iraq just as much as the Japanese. It is frustrating to me because Korea really had an opportunity to exert itself internationally, play a prominent role in the world, and show global leadership. The Korean government decided not to play it safe and try to appease all sides, which has made them by default irrelevant.

A perfect model for Korea would be the Australian contributions in Iraq. Australia a country with only a population of 20 million people compared to Korea’s 50 million people sent 1,400 combat troops to Iraq who participated in the initial war and to this day continue to guard facilities in the Green Zone and provide convoy escort for VIPs and diplomats through the mean streets of Baghdad and southern Iraq. They also were the security contingent for the Japanese engineer unit in southern Iraq. Amazingly they have been able to do all this while losing only one soldier to an accidental gun shot wound.

Australia only has a standing Army of 25,000 soldiers and along with their Iraq operations, they have seen heavy combat in Afghanistan, while continuing to spearhead peacekeeping operations in the Solomon Islands and East Timor along with participating in UN observer missions in places such as the Egyptian Sinai and Lebanon. The ROK Army with over 600,000 soldiers cannot match the world wide relevancy of the Australian Defence Force. This is not a question of capability because the ROK Army is highly capable, it is a matter of governmental policies of irrelevancy.

If Australia can do so much more in world with less, than why can’t Korea?