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| Iraq |
| Jabr refuses to deploy US-trained police |
| 2006-04-04 |
| Iraq's interior ministry is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits who have been trained by the US and the UK and is hiring its own men and putting them on the streets, according to western security advisers. The move is frustrating US and British efforts to build up a non-sectarian Iraqi police force which would not be infiltrated by partisan militias. The disclosure highlights growing US and British concern about the role of militias in sectarian killings, and their links to senior Iraqi politicians. "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday. "We have sent very, very strong messages repeatedly, and not just on this visit, that one of the first things ... is that there is going to be a reining in of the militias... It's got to be one of the highest priorities." The interior ministry, which is controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), has not deployed any graduates of the civilian police assistance training team (CPATT), a joint US/UK unit, for the past three months. The CPATT was designed to put the police on a fair footing after Saddam Hussein's 30-year dictatorship. Its goal is to train 134,000 officers by the end of the year and ensure an equitable ethnic and sectarian balance. The ministry's refusal to use the new graduates is causing alarm. "There are concerns about the infiltration of the police by extremist groups and the coalition is right to be concerned about transparency," a western security adviser told the Guardian. Senior ministry officials say they refuse to deploy the graduates because they have no control over the CPATT's selection process. Sunni politicians and residents of Baghdad have claimed that the ministry supports several "death squads" which are said to be responsible for abducting and murdering hundreds of Sunnis in recent weeks. In one incident last week, men dressed in the camouflage uniforms of police commandos drove up in three vehicles and stormed into an electrical appliances store in Mansour, a middle-class Sunni district of west Baghdad. They rounded up three young women employees and five males in a room and shot them dead. It emerged late last year that the interior ministry has been running secret detention centres. US troops discovered two prisons in which more than 800 men and boys, mostly Sunnis, were held in shocking conditions. Under the Iraqi constitution only the ministry of justice is allowed to run prisons. Many Sunnis now say they would rather be detained by the Americans than the Iraqi police. No figures are available for the police's religious and ethnic make-up outside Kurdistan, partly because there is no central data base, but estimates put it at 80% Shia. Until recently the special police and commando units were 99% Shia, according to a CPATT spokesperson. Charges that the police were becoming partisan developed after Bayan Jabr, a SCIRI leader, became interior minister last April. The SCIRI's powerful armed wing, the Badr organisation, was founded in Iran during the supreme council's 20-year exile from the Saddam Hussein regime. According to the International Crisis Group thinktank, Mr Jabr worked with the commander of the Badr organisation and its intelligence chief to give Iraq's police and paramilitary forces a sectarian thrust.He infiltrated Badr militia members into the commando units set up in 2004 to fight the anti-occupation insurgency. Mr Jabr has denied that commando units have been involved in murders and says criminals use police uniforms to hide their identity. Sectarian violence continued yesterday with a car bomb exploding near a Shia mosque in north-eastern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 30. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #13 Jabr may not have long to live. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-04-04 20:47 |
| #12 Edward - You better go study the transcripts of Hirohito's radiu broadcast to the nation of Japan - explaining the decision to surrender -which was the first time a Japanese Emperor's voice had ever been heard by most Japanese citizens. After the surrender, Hirohito was completely cooperative with the true decision-maker in post-war Japan - GEN Douglas MacArthur. Had MacArthur felt that Hirohito was an impediment, Hirohito would have been hung the next day. You need to spend more time studying. My father - an officer in the 11th Airborne Division - accepted the Japanese surrender in Sendai - and then served another year in the occupation forces. He was a minor player - but clearly understood that the Japanese Emporer had proclaimed cooperation - albeit at peril of utter destruction. |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2006-04-04 14:51 |
| #11 #8 we conquered it 3 years ago. And we never really conquered the Sunni triangle, not till the last few months. We didnt really conquer the Iraqi Shia, either, cause contrary to the MSM and the left, they DID welcome us (though not with flowers) What we did was destroy Saddams army. With the force we have in Iraq, we've only managed to really be able to hold gains in the Sunni Triangle since weve trained up enough Iraqis to give us more boots on the ground. Now I suppose we could play a game of terr hunting in the Sunni triangle indefinitely, with our current forces alone. I dont think anyone serious thinks thats a very good idea. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-04-04 13:26 |
| #10 In those days, no one involved in rebuilding Germany or Japan would have given ANY consideration WHATSOEVER to allowing remnants of the former population to resist establishment of a stable nation Seems to me that Lone Ranger's never heard of Hirohito (and his successors). Oh wait, that'd just contradict you, now wouldn't it? |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2006-04-04 13:02 |
| #9 "the lessons of just 60 years ago have been completely There, that sounds more accurate to me. |
| Posted by: Fordesque 2006-04-04 11:35 |
| #8 You seem to forget, we just conquered this country. We'll conquer it again if necessary. We should dictate the removal of all things Iranian, period. All those not in favor, line up against the wall. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-04-04 10:38 |
| #7 Despite Jabr, SCIRI seems to have been more cooperative than the other Shiite parties. You can support having Jabr fired - but you cant just go in and disband Iraqi political parties. Not if you expect to have an Iraqi army and police force fighting by your side in large numbers. And if you dont want them, you need a lot more American forces. the 133,000 who are left are not enough. Does the admin have any appetite for a significant buildup in Iraq? I dont think so. So we're going to have to maneuver more subtly. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-04-04 09:54 |
| #6 "Many Sunnis now say they would rather be detained by the Americans than the Iraqi police." Does this mean that Rumsfeld's tilt hs finally begun? |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2006-04-04 09:21 |
| #5 It's going to be hard because of the publicity. Perhaps the shakeup could be done under cover from a monthlong bombardment of Iran's defence and nuclear facilities. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-04 07:52 |
| #4 Agreed. I'm fed up. |
| Posted by: anon 2006-04-04 07:22 |
| #3 I agree. With great misgivings and deepest regrets to the world community, we should decisively imprison or shoot all the throwbacks to the dark ages of history, disband SCIRI, and insist that modern, civilized, and approximately "neutral" professional forces hold all the power in Iraq. Hey - it's not goung to be idealistic democracy, or open-minded tolerance of another culture - but, well, we live in an imperfect world, and everyone is just going to have to get used to a secular Iraq. Weeping, gnashing of teeth, and howls of frustration will be allowed - but - to a certain extent, the fate of the world as we know it depends on Iraq not turning into a wellspring of the Caliphate, and if it takes an arrogance similar to that which spawned the "Monroe Doctrine", so be it. I cannot friggin' believe that the lessons of just 60 years ago have been completely forgotten. In those days, no one involved in rebuilding Germany or Japan would have given ANY consideration WHATSOEVER to allowing remnants of the former population to resist establishment of a stable nation, with strong rule of law. "Tolerance of different viewpoints and perspectives" - that sounds good in parlour arguments. But - forget about that on the ground. Time to lay out the choices : either get with the modern program that runs most of the succesful part of the world, or become a revered ancestor - like, immediately. We don't need to apologize, or squirm in embarrassment. Just get it done - carrying a bigger stick that the gangster militias. They don;t have to like it - they just have to live with it. |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2006-04-04 05:51 |
| #2 Obviously the Mullahs succeeded in planting agents and subverting the election - recall the tankers filled with phoney ballots, the millions ($70M, wasn't it?) spent every month for the militias and agents - and they bought the SCIRI party leaders outright. We should've taken those reports seriously and acted. Damn. I'm afraid we're just not devious enough or paranoid enough to do business with Arabs. Take down the Mullahs and eliminate Sadr and his militia both with extreme prejudice, and then see if the assholes can win without the money and dirty tricks. If they do, then fuck em. |
| Posted by: Angomp Omang4072 2006-04-04 04:30 |
| #1 Housecleaning time. Enough of this shit. Jabr, Jaafari, throw the entire lot out and start over. No apologies. |
| Posted by: Angomp Omang4072 2006-04-04 03:40 |