BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 15, 2004 – Soldiers from 1st Armored Division's 8th Finance Battalion, and the 1st Cavalry Division's 15th Finance Bn., conducted a three-day course to give Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members a lesson in “paying for freedom.”

“We're training the ICDC on internal pay operations,” said Lt. Col. Stan Brown, 8th Finance Bn. Commander.

The ICDC is one facet of Iraq's defense services. It was built from scratch after the fall of the former regime to act as the country's “National Guard.”

In the short time the ICDC has been in operation, an officer commissioning ceremony was held in February and the noncommissioned officer corps was developed.

Providing the ICDC the capability to maintain its own finances is a necessary step on its way to becoming a self-sufficient military organization.

The U.S. finance battalions trained dispersing agents, paymasters and fund certifiers.

The job of the dispersing agent is to maintain accountability of money for all ICDC troops in a battalion, Brown explained. The paymasters are the finance clerks at the company level. Their job is to ensure every service member in a company gets paid his or her correct salary.

The certifiers monitor the overall transaction of pay throughout a battalion and handle separation-from-duty pay, he continued. ICDC battalion command sergeants major or executive officers will fill the certifier positions.

Before now, pay operations for the ICDC battalions were conducted by U.S. forces.

The newly trained pay operators will relieve a workload for approximately seven U.S. Soldiers per ICDC battalion, Brown said.

“(The ICDC soldiers) want to take care of their own business,” said Spc. Said Choukri, a finance specialist with 8 th Finance Bn. “And it's better for them to know what is going on.”

Originally from Morocco and speaking Arabic as his first language, Choukri served as an instructor and a translator during the training.

During the month of March, the new ICDC pay operators will conduct a “right-seat” ride with their U.S. counterparts to learn more about their assignments and duties. ICDC soldiers will accompany his or her U.S. counterpart and will conduct transactions under the finance Soldiers' supervision.

A retraining session will be held after the 1AD/1CD transfer of authority ceremonies, to work out any “bugs” and train additional troops, said Capt. Yolanda Bell, 8 th Finance Battalion's Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment commander.

“In this class, we had about 100 (Iraqi students),” said Bell. “Hopefully by May they will do (pay operations) on their own.”

Capt. Radhi Mageed, 303rd ICDC Bn., who received training as a dispersing agent, said the course was informative and useful and the instructors were very professional.

“The lectures were educated but simple – they mixed theoretical with practical – and the teachers have experience in what they're teaching,” he said.

Additionally to Iraqis taking over pay operations, IDCD will be paid with their country's currency, the new Iraqi dinar.

“It makes me proud that we are going to use our own currency,” Mageed said. “It makes me feel like all the promises (of a new Iraq) are real.”

Overall, the students seemed enthusiastic to learn about pay operations and did very well in class, Bell said.

Choukri said that some of his students were finance specialists in the old Iraqi army and were eager to learn a new method of conducting finance operations.

Though the students seemed to understand financial procedures during the class's practical exercises, the real assessment of how well they learned will soon begin, Bell said.

“Once they get out there and start drawing money, that will be the true test,” Bell said. “Then we'll know if the training went well.”

For more information, please contact Capt. Jason Beck, Deputy Division Public Affairs Officer by email at: jason.p.beck@us.army.mil .