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The Ministry of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff confined Korean medical and engineering corps active in the southern Iraqi city of Nasariyah to their barracks in accordance with the rapidly deteriorating situation in the country. Meanwhile, the ministry is trying to get a feel for how the situation in Iraq might influence public opinion concerning the scheduled deployment of Korean forces later this year.
The Joint Chiefs sent emergency instructions to Korean forces on the ground that completely suspended out-of-barracks activities for medical and engineering units until the security situation stabilizes, and called for much strengthened security measures in Iraq, including heightened security checks for all those entering Korean bases. Last November, too, Korean medical and engineering units were instructed to remain in their barracks following a suicide car bombing in Nasariyah that left 20 Italian soldiers dead. There is currently an engineer corps of 379 men and a medical corps of 85 men as a single base in Nasariyah; the units have been there since October. 53 of the engineering corps and 22 of the medical corps are Special Forces operatives assigned to guard the base.
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A U.S. Marine drives a vehicle that was riddled with bullets during an attack by resistance forces in the Sunni city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, Tuesday./EPA
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Despite the deteriorating situation, however, neither the Defense Ministry nor the Joint Chiefs are considering re-examining either the plan to send troops to Iraq itself or the size or character of the deployment. A high level Defense Ministry official said, "The situation in Iraq is like a roller coaster, so it's quite difficult... If we withdraw our plan to send troops to Iraq just because the situation more or less deteriorated, we'll become an international laughingstock."
The ministry plans to send a fact-finding team as scheduled on Friday to choose a site for the Korean deployment. The team will spend ten days in the northern Kurdish towns of Sulaimaniyah and Irbil. The fact-finding team will be composed of 13~15 men from the Defense Ministry, Joint Chiefs, Army Headquarters and the officials connected to the "Zayituun Unit," the Korean force to be deployed in one of the two cities.
The ministry also plans to relieve the engineering and medical corps on April 21 and April 28 and send an advance contingent of the Zayituun Unit, all as scheduled.
Military officials worry, however, that if the domestic situation in Iraq worsens to the point of civil war and American and allied casualties continue to mount one after the other, public opinion demanding a cancellation of the deployment may grow unmanageable. Around the Defense Ministry, people are wondering if this means a situation is in the making in which a dispatch would be impossible. Moreover, as both Sulaimaniyah and Irbil area were hardly touched during the war, there is no need for post-war reconstruction, and both areas are controlled by no more than 220 American troops, so some also say that there is no choice but to cut down the size of the force and change the composition of the unit.
(Yoo Yong-won, kysu@chosun.com )
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