Plus Ultra Brigade

The Plus Ultra Brigade, or "Brigada Hispanoamericana", was a military contingent of mixed personnel from Spain (some 1,300 troops), the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua (about 1,200 troops between the four), which was commissioned to support coalition troops in the Iraq War. The deployment started in July 2003. The brigade's name was a reference to "Plus Ultra", the national motto of Spain [http://www.ejercito.mde.es/mexterior/irak/plusultra_i.htm]

The battalions of the four Hispanic-American countries were equipped and transported by the U.S. military, and received some specific training in Germany prior to their arrival to the Gulf.

The Spaniards were based in Al-Qādisiyyah, and the Hispanic-Americans in Najaf, in South-central Iraq, near Dīwānīyah. Their objective was to relieve U.S. Marines in the area so they could be transferred to other, more problematic, regions in the country.

During their tenure in the region, the Plus Ultra Brigade's troops had few hostile clashes with insurgents. Some of their camps were harassed with RPG and grenade attacks, but there were few casualties. There was only one serious incident, a skirmish in early April 2004 involving radical Shiites in Najaf, which left 1 dead Salvadoran soldier and at least 19 dead Iraqis [http://www.elmundo.es/papel/2004/04/05/mundo/1617753.html] . The Rules of Engagement that the units followed were very restrictive and the authorization to use deadly force needed high command clearance, due to a directive seeking to "avoid or minimize at all costs collateral damage to people or property" [http://www.elpais.es/articulo/elpporint/20060124elpepinac_14/Tes/espana/tropas/espanolas/Irak/tenian/orden/evitar/minimizar/danos/colaterales] .

The Plus Ultra Brigade finally dissolved in April 2004, when the recently-elected new Spanish socialist government decided to withdraw its troops (a decision that somewhat tensed U.S.-Spanish relations), as well as lack of public support for the deployment and the war in Iraq in the other four nations, though the Salvadoran military pledged to keep their forces there until August of the same year.

ee also

*Multinational Force in Iraq