US helping Iraq develop professional police force
Iraq-USA, Military, 2/18/2006

Major General Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad yesterday said that the insurgents and their supporters have shifted focus from targeting US forces to civilian targets.

The spokesman for the Multinational Force - Iraq said an example of this is a suicide bomber "wearing a suicide vest filled with ball bearings approached a group of innocent Iraqi civilians who were standing in line to cash in food voucher for money, detonated himself, and killed 25 civilians and wounded 30 others," on February 16.

The increased violence had been expected, he said, as those wishing to derail Iraq's movement to democracy try to disrupt the formation of the newly elected government.

He said, however, that although insurgent attacks in Iraq increased the week of February 12, 85 percent of them took place in the same four troubled provinces – Baghdad, Al Anbar, Nineveh and Salahudden.

Lynch reported that the Iraqi security forces, working independently, located a facility where roadside bombs were being manufactured and captured 102 insurgents, 25 of whom were on their list of most wanted fugitives.

Along with listing these successes, he also addressed the problem of private militias. "There is no denying," he said, "that there are militias present in Iraq and that some of those militia forces have displaced loyalties, and some of those militia forces have indeed integrated with the Iraqi security forces."

Coalition forces are assisting in investigations into the problem and looking for ways to help the Iraqis prevent additional occurrences of murders and beatings by militia groups.

Colonel Gordon Davis, in a later press briefing, said the coalition is working with the Iraqi Public Order Special Police who serve as a bridge between local police and the Iraqi army in handling terrorist and insurgency threats.

Asked to "address the issue that comes up pretty regularly about the complaints that Shi'ites in the Ministry of Interior forces are carrying out vigilante and other ethnic-based attacks against Sunnis, that this is driving more Sunnis onto the side of the insurgency?" Davis said "first and foremost, our formations within the national police and specifically the public order police are mixed formations.  We have both Shi'a and Sunni.  As of right now, the public order division is roughly just under 80 percent Shi'a and 20 percent Sunni, and a very small percentage of Kurds and Christians and some others. There are Sunni brigade commander -- there's a Sunni brigade commander and several battalion commanders and several deputy commanders, both brigade and battalion, that are Sunni, so it would be specifically very difficult for these leaders to carry out what we consider sectarian-based or biased operations. In fact, our detainee population is mixed.  So within the public order -- police specifically, we haven't seen that kind of specific sectarian-based type of targeting."

Davis said "There are currently 9,000 public order policemen, and that takes into account 1,100 who just graduated from a six-week training course at Numaniyah, and that's where we get all of our candidates.  They're recruited and then trained and then provided to the public order police. We differentiate them primarily by mission, as I explained earlier. The public order police, like the special police commandos, like the 1st Mech Brigade, are high-end national police.  They focus more on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency threat that exists, anything that goes beyond what local Iraqi station or patrol police can deal with.  So they handle anything beyond that which the local police can't handle.  In fact, there's a very close relationship where the Iraqi police will come to, in our case, the national police of public order and pass on targets, or targets they believe are beyond their capability. In terms of problems, I'd like to address both problems and, say, successes."

Davis said "But in terms of problems, almost like any Iraqi security force, we've had difficulty in professionalizing the force over time just based on the fact that they're coming out of a -- their basis of experience is pre-Saddam Iraqi army, with those biases that those forces had, as well as a very -- a lack of a professional and a strong NCO core, and that's really where our major problem is in terms of unit control or individual discipline. We find it as soon as we have trained the leaders, then the training that we provide the special police or national police sticks, and we're still very, very short on NCOs, but we've got a plan in place throughout 2006 to bring us up to the authorization that we require for the national police."

In addition, each battalion of the force works directly each day with special police transition teams made up of 11 US military personnel who act as coaches, trainers and advisers, Davis said. The colonel is the commander of 17 transition teams.

Davis said "we haven't found anyone within the public order police who is a -- who we considered an enemy or an infiltrated insurgent or terrorist. We have in fact picked out a cadet while he was still down at the training course -- because all the names we get for the recruits are vetted through MOI, and so they check their databases, and one was taken out at graduation simply because they identified and cross-checked that name. In terms of other potential insurgents or terrorists within the group, they have very tight operational security measures that they employ which prevents, I would say, the loss of operational security or information getting out. But more importantly, there are a heck of a lot of strongly willed patriots amongst that group, and if they believed one of their own may be an insurgent or terrorist, then they would pick them out right away because that puts their own lives on the line, as well as those of their families.  So in some ways they're policing themselves. And we have had a number that have gone absent, small numbers, and we don't know if the work was too tough or if they were pressured out."

Davis said "n terms of mission profile, they both do cordons and searches, raids, counterinsurgency operations.  But, in fact, the commando brigades have been more often deployed for short-term deployments, but they have been given some recent assignments where they're staying for extensive periods of time in some of the failed cities.  They're now becoming more and more stable just because they need national police to help bridge between the Iraqi army and eventually the Iraqi police taking over the civil security responsibility. I would say there's a difference in uniform right now, but in mission profile, maybe one distinguishing mark might be that the Public Order have had assigned battlespace in Baghdad.  But in the near future, there is an initiative to develop combined operating areas for the commandos to also have assigned battlespace in Baghdad. So there's a bit of merging of missions and roles, but that's also the long-term intent -- is to merge the special police, the national police commandos and Public Order into one professional national police force."

Now, the public-order police operate as a light urban infantry but as they become more professionalized and merge with the Iraqi police commando group, they will form a high-end national police force similar to the gendarmes of France and the carabinieri of Italy, Davis said.

"We believe that there will be a threat that continues on in the future and the national police will help fill that gap within the internal security of Iraq so that the Army doesn't have to be employed for civil security," he explained.

Previous Stories:
  US on Abu Ghraib prison photographs; Guantanamo detainee report   (2/16/2006)
  US commander says infiltration routes into Iraq have been disrupted   (2/13/2006)
  Six marines killed in Iraq   (2/10/2006)
  Washington negotiates with gunmen in Iraq   (2/9/2006)
  Six American soldiers killed in Iraq   (2/4/2006)
  Continued American losses in Iraq   (2/3/2006)

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