More than 14,000 employees in Iraq’s Interior Ministry have been sacked for failing to respect human rights, the government said on Sunday, rejecting a report by a U.S. panel that accused the police of sectarianism. “The Jones report is incomplete and does not depict the real picture in Iraq,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said, referring to the assessment of the independent commission headed by General James Jones, the former top U.S. commander in Europe.
The panel recommended that the Iraqi National Police force, widely seen by Iraqis as Shi’ite dominated, should be scrapped and reorganised because of sectarianism within its units that made it “operationally ineffective”. It also said corruption and sectarianism were rife in the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.
The U.S. military in Iraq has said it will study the report and see where it can make adjustments to its police training programme but that it is unlikely to agree to the force being rebuilt from scratch.
Dabbagh defended the performance of Iraq’s security forces and said serious efforts were being made to clean up the police, which has long been accused of colluding in sectarian violence against minority Sunni Arabs. “Until yesterday more than 14,000 members of the Interior Ministry have been removed from their positions because they don’t respect human rights or because they are believed linked to militias and armed groups,” he told a news conference in translated remarks.
All nine national police brigade commanders and 17 out of 24 battalion commanders have been sacked and replaced, U.S. and Iraqi officials have said previously. |