By Dexter Filkins
The New York Times, 03 December 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 2 - The American commander overseeing the building of Iraq's security forces asserted Friday that many units had made impressive strides in the past year, but he acknowledged that the training of the Iraqi police was complicated by the armed militias still claiming the loyalties of many officers.
Speaking from Baghdad to reporters in Washington via videoconference and monitored here, Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said that the Iraqi Army would reach its goal of 160,000 troops by the end of 2006 and that a 135,000-member police force would be ready by the end of 2007. At present, about 75,000 police officers are trained and equipped, the general said. The armed forces currently number about 100,000.
Echoing President Bush's remarks of earlier this week, General Dempsey sketched a picture of Iraqis taking a greater responsibility for attaining security and fighting the guerrilla insurgency. Most of that burden is still being borne by the roughly 150,000 American troops in Iraq.
General Dempsey said 100 Iraqi Army battalions, each comprising about 800 soldiers, were conducting operations, with 33 of those battalions operating on their own and 40 of them "in the lead," backed by American troops.
Another 27 battalions of paramilitary police officers were also on the streets, he said. In addition to the 75,000 police officers patrolling the country, General Dempsey said, some 27,000 border police officers were on duty.
About 225,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers will maintain security when nationwide elections are held here on Dec. 15, he said.
General Dempsey, who took over command of the vast training project in September, measured his progress by comparing his objectives now to those he had during his prior experience in Iraq, when he commanded the First Armored Division in 2003 and 2004.
"When I was here little more than a year ago, we were looking to put an Iraqi face on security problems," General Dempsey said. "Today, neither we nor our Iraqi counterparts talk about putting an Iraqi face on security problems; we talk about finding an Iraqi solution."
The $10 billion project to train and equip the Iraqi security forces is one of the critical pillars of the American enterprise here, with its success or failure likely to influence when American troops can begin withdrawing from the country.
Despite the quantitative measures, assessing the performance of police officers and soldiers has been difficult, especially on such important factors as morale, discipline and cohesion.
In the face of American and Iraqi claims to the contrary, Iraqi security forces sustained disastrous setbacks in Falluja, Mosul and Najaf in 2004.
One of the biggest factors inhibiting the performance of the Iraqi police, then as now, has been the interference of private armed groups. In some cases, as in the spring of 2004, militias loyal to leaders like Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, attacked and overran Iraqi police stations.
A greater problem now is that hundreds of militia gunmen have joined police departments around the country, while still retaining loyalties to their militia commanders and ill feelings toward their rivals. A result, in many cities, has been a blurring of lines between the police and the militias.
In Baghdad, the Shiite-dominated police force has been accused of executing Sunni civilians, much as the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia, has been accused of doing. In Basra, in the south, where several militias are believed to have infiltrated the police forces, the police have been accused of carrying out executions.
One concern, expressed by Americans and Iraqis here, is that police officers still loyal to their militia commanders may pull the police forces apart if the militias come into conflict with the government, for instance, if Mr. Sadr, who has been relatively quiet in the past year, decides to take on the government again.
Acknowledging those concerns, General Dempsey said that the biggest obstacle in forming a cohesive police force was that police officers, unlike soldiers, were recruited and deployed locally.
Iraqi soldiers are recruited nationwide, and often removed from the local influences of tribe, militia and sect.
"What you find is that police forces naturally tend to be of single ethnic groups and are conflicted" in their loyalties, General Dempsey said.
He said that part of the problem lay in the conflicting desire of Iraqi leaders to maintain both police forces and their own "home guards" and "regional guards," which are often thinly disguised militias.
"It undermines the Iraqi security forces that we're training and equipping as the sole provider, the legitimate source, of authority and force in Iraq," he said.
--------------------------------
Citation: Dexter Filkins. "General Says Militias Split Loyalties of Iraqi Security Forces," The New York Times, 03 December 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/international/middleeast/03troops.html?pagewanted=print
--------------------------------