Iraqi Security Has Come Far, With Far to Go

Shalan, who became defense minister last month, said the forces had to be rebuilt from the ground up after the April failures. The occupation authority "failed in how they chose people to be employed," he said in an interview last week. "They depended on how a person looked. I think it was whoever the translators liked. That created many of the current problems."

Now, he says, his forces are getting organized. He pointed to a recent sweep through Baghdad's tough Haifa Street neighborhood that resulted in more than 150 arrests and to recent gun battles in which the National Guard stood its ground.

Though U.S. officials envisioned the National Guard as the country's principal domestic armed force, with the army serving as a defense only against external threats, Iraq's new officials have revamped that plan. Allawi announced soon after taking office that the army would be used for domestic security, and Shalan said he expected to transform at least part of the National Guard into the core of a new Iraqi army of six divisions with about 50,000 soldiers. With small air force and marine contingents, he said, Iraq's total armed services would be about 70,000.

Shalan said he is conducting background checks on the guardsmen, who he said number 40,000, and is recruiting more. He would not estimate how many of the current National Guardsmen he thinks will qualify for the army. Those who do not, he said, will become civil servants.

The interim Iraqi government has plans for a proliferation of security agencies in the Middle East tradition of multiple forces that watch each other. The list includes a general security directorate for intelligence, an intervention force, a coastal defense force, an air force, border, customs, immigration and security police, a SWAT team, a facilities protection service and a diplomatic protection service.

The government is also working to get rid of poor hires and nonexistent workers. Though the police force, for example, is paying about 120,000 people, only 87,000 are accounted for, according to British Brig. Andrew Mackay, the coalition adviser for the Iraqi police. "There's a degree of ghosts in there," he said.

Training has gone slowly. For the Iraqi army, only about 3,000 soldiers have been trained and deployed in the field, according to Brig. Gen. James Schwitters, commander of the coalition training team assisting the army. One source of delays has been the lack of adequate training sites for recruits, he said.

Only 6,000 police recruits have received training in a police academy, according to Mackay. Another 21,000 have undergone a three-week training course, he said. At least 60,000 are untrained. To help, Washington has issued a $500 million, two-year contract to train Iraqi police and soldiers in Jordan and has asked NATO for assistance with training.

Schwitters said the training programs would soon start to produce more soldiers. "We will have five battalions by the end of this month, and by the end of the year, 27 battalions," he said.

Mackay, too, is cautiously optimistic about the police.

"The Iraqi Police Service has some way to go before you can really consider them . . . effective," he acknowledged. "They have come a long way. We have given them equipment -- but we haven't given them enough. More needs to come. But they are around. They are visible. They are responding. They are conducting individual operations that they plan themselves, execute themselves, and do the follow-up themselves.

He and other officers cite examples of police stations that come under mortar attack one day and are fully manned the next, of wounded officers returning to work, of applicants still streaming into recruiting offices. "All of that is hugely encouraging," he said. But "there's a lot more that needs to be done."

At a National Guard recruiting office in Baghdad, young men jostle in line to apply. They say they are undeterred by the danger or the low pay.

"I was in the army before," said Hassan Ghrier, 22. "Yes, it's dangerous, but I don't care. And the pay is better than it was before, in the army. Anyway, it's a job."