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U.S. Commanders Say Iraqi Police Can Be Reformed
Iraqi national police cadets celebrate during their graduation in Baghdad. The force has been accused of links to Shiite death squads.
(By Hadi Mizban -- Associated Press)
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Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Interior Ministry security forces increased from about 60,000 to 350,000, as they took on more active policing roles. The ministry's key appointed positions were allocated to competing political parties, whose divisions have hamstrung Bolani, Maj. Gen. Michael Jones said.
"Minister Bolani is non-sectarian, but he has to work extra hard to get things done in a system where you have a variety of political problems," he said, adding that garnering support is hard "when you are not politically aligned."
Still, the ministry has taken steps toward overhauling its ranks, conducting more than 5,000 internal investigations and dismissing 2,3000 people this year, according to the U.S. military.
The national police has its origins in a decision by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq in late 2003 to begin creating heavy police units as a paramilitary force to deal with rising insurgent violence. In 2004 the Interior Ministry created police commando units, and in 2006 these units were combined into the national police, which are now mainly deployed in and around Baghdad.
A significant portion of the national police's top leadership has been ousted for sectarian or other improper behavior over the past year, including two division commanders, all nine brigade commanders, and 18 of 27 battalion commanders, as well as 1,300 rank-and-file police officers, according to the U.S. military. Meanwhile, all national police units are being retrained, with leaders going through a NATO-sponsored program run by Italian carabinieri that began this month. Efforts are also underway to recruit more Sunnis for the force, Maj. Gen. Michael Jones said.
Still, some sectarian police officers are "harder to ferret out," including another national police brigade commander who had been retrained but was fired in October, he said.
The fired commander led a notorious national police unit known as the Wolf Brigade, which was retrained but in recent months had scores of members arrested by U.S. soldiers for various crimes, including tolerating and encouraging attacks by Shiite militia on Sunnis in west Baghdad, and expelling Sunnis from their homes, according to the U.S. military.
"We ought not underestimate that it is hard to do," Maj. Gen. Michael Jones said of the reform effort. "There are people putting pressure on them" and trying to intimidate police members and their families, he said. "There are still people in militia and sectarian organizations hidden in the ranks," he said, but he added that "they will over time get rid of them."
Some military analysts, however, said they doubt Iraq's security forces can rise above the sectarian mistrust that permeates the society. Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised Petraeus, said the national police force is likely to remain ineffective in policing Sunni populations.
"Trying to create a hermetically sealed Iraqi security forces . . . where the country is riven with sectarian factionalism is not going to work," he said.
