SPEARHEAD:

Taking Back Iraq's Streets: On patrol and training with Iraq's new Counter Terrorism force (CHRISTOPHER ALLBRITTON, 3/19/05, TIME)

Eyes peering through slits in black masks, the commandos creep up the floors of the Baghdad apartment building, ready to pounce. Their target is Omar Tamimi, an insurgent believed to have carried out the January assassination of the governor of Baghdad province. Until recently, the responsibility for such high-profile operations has been shouldered by teams of elite U.S. troops. But on this night, the American commandos are playing a support role to members of the new Iraqi army's Counter Terrorism Task Force, a unit the U.S. is training to take on more counterinsurgent dirty work. The early stages of the operation unfold smoothly. One team of troops stops on the second floor, the other continues to the third, where they place explosive charges against a thin wooden apartment door. Two booms in quick succession echo in the concrete stairwell. The doors shatter inward in a storm of wooden splinters, and the Iraqi and American troops, identically outfitted with US-made M4 carbines, night-vision goggles, boots, uniforms and body armor, burst in.

Inside the troops find children and three women, one of them elderly, cowering on the floor. The Iraqi forces search the apartment and find three men. They turn up Tamimi's identification papers, but not the target himself. After cuffing the adults—including the women—with plastic ties, the Iraqi commander grills them about Tamimi, but gets nowhere. Then an Iraqi officer begins chatting with the children; before long one of them reveals that Tamimi had been in the apartment moments before the troops rushed in. "He's still here," the officer tells the Americans. Soon a Green Beret is heard yelling and laughing in the kitchen. Under the sink he'd kicked a thin wall. Behind it was Tamimi, a thin sketch of a man, curled into a ball.

Operations like the one that netted Tamimi earlier this year provide a glimpse of what U.S. commanders hope will be the future of combat in Iraq. Two years since the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. is scrambling to train and equip a new Iraqi army to take over combat duties and pave the way for a reduction in the size of the U.S. troop presence. After a slow start, the training program appears to be picking up momentum: last week the Pentagon announced plans to trim the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from 150,000 to 105,000 by early next year, a move that reflects the improved capabilities of the Iraqi forces. The top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, said that "very much sooner rather than later, Iraq will be able to provide for its own security."

The Iraqi special-ops units like the one that captured Tamimi are spearheading that push. TIME was recently granted exclusive access to the Iraqi commandos and their U.S. advisors, observed their training sessions and accompanied the units on patrol. While their numbers are few, Iraqi special forces have assumed a bigger role in sensitive counter-insurgent operations, often acting as the lead teams in raids and rescue missions. In some cases, Iraqi units have used intelligence gleaned from locals to identify their own low-level targets, and then execute small raids on their own. Trained by Task Force Pioneer, a unit drawn from a support company from the U.S. Special Operating Force's 10th Group, the emerging Iraqi commando units have impressed U.S. commanders with their combat performance and bolstered confidence that Iraqis can keep the insurgents at bay on their own. "We can step away more now," says the U.S. commander of Task Force Pioneer, who, like all of the special forces in this story, cannot be named. "It's about 50-50."