Camouflage idea grows on troops

JAPAN’S soldiers are experimenting with a new form of camouflage - and it’s right under their noses.

Troops heading for Iraq over the next few months are being advised to grow moustaches to fit in with the locals, while the ten or so female members of the 600-strong contingent are being issued with dark green scarves to cover their hair, in accordance with local custom. Drinking alcohol and eating pork will be forbidden in the Japanese compound, which will be built outside the southern town of Samawa.

"We are not going there to wage war but to help with reconstruction," a spokesman said. "The success of the mission depends largely on how far we are able to establish friendly relations with local people."

The deployment of troops to take part in humanitarian work constitutes Japan’s riskiest military mission since the Second World War.

But favourable Iraqi reaction to the mustachioed Colonel Masahisa Sato, the leader of an advance party dispatched last month, seems to have proved the advantages of facial hair.

"What a magnificent moustache. He looks just like an Iraqi," a Japanese newspaper quoted one local as saying.