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Optimism on Iraq security blown away

By Doug Struck
The Washington Post

ALLISON LONG / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS People move away from the smoke and flames of a car bombing in front of the Syrian Catholic Bishopric in Baghdad, Iraq, yesterday. Eleven people were killed and nearly 40 wounded by car bombs at five different Christian churches in Iraq.

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"Each one of them had an automatic weapon. The police, we had four rifles, but only two worked. We had seven bullets for each rifle. We ran," said Talib, 25. He already had seen two colleagues gunned down at a checkpoint and two others slain by a grenade. He fled and has not been back to work since.

Established by the U.S. occupation authority and trained by foreign troops, Iraq's police and National Guard have been targets of insurgent attacks for months. With the formal end of U.S. occupation, they have been dying in ever larger numbers. The danger, coupled with low pay, has caused many to quit.

Defections pose a serious obstacle to the rebuilding of Iraq's security forces but not the only one. Planning has been chaotic, units have staged mutinies and essential equipment has not been delivered. In recent months, the entire process of recruitment and training largely has been scrapped and begun again, and the interim Iraqi government that was installed on June 28 has dictated more changes.

"It was worse than starting from scratch," complained Sabah Kadhim, a top official in the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police. "We had to weed out criminals from the policemen who the Americans put there."

After more than a year under the occupation, Kadhim said, "the police lacked efficiency, lacked organization, lacked cars, lacked weapons, lacked communication. Literally, they didn't have clothing."

	MOHAMMED IBRAHIMI / AP A door from an Iraqi police vehicle rests at the scene of a car bombing in Mosul, Iraq.

Now, Iraqi and U.S. officials insist, the security forces are making progress. They say the police and National Guard are starting to conduct their own raids and perform well under attack.

But optimistic assessments seem at odds with the daily drumbeat of mortar attacks, ambushes and car bombings such as the attacks on five Christian churches yesterday that killed at least 11 people.

"Security is the biggest problem we face," Defense Minister Hazim Shalan said. "We are working. But if you ask me, am I satisfied, I must say no."

Approximately 225,000 men, and some women, are listed as serving in the Iraqi security forces — nearly 88 percent of the recruitment goal. But the numbers are debatable — the police carry 30,000 more names on their payroll than they can account for — and of those who actually exist, only a fraction have any training, often consisting of a few weeks at a boot camp. Top officials insist they have relatively few resignations — no reliable figures are available — but officers on the street say hundreds quit every month after getting their paychecks.

"I'm waiting to finish this month and get my salary, and then I will quit," said Heider Abbas, a policeman in Baghdad, citing the low pay.

U.S. planners say Iraqi security forces must be strong enough to fight the insurgency before American troops can withdraw. But the rush to build the forces — an effort one officer called "30,000 in 30 days" — led to a crisis in April when Iraqi troops refused to fight.

Shalan, who became defense minister last month, said the forces had to be rebuilt from the ground up after the April failures. The occupation authority "failed in how they chose people to be employed," he said.

The government is also working to get rid of nonexistent workers. The police force, for example, is paying about 120,000 people, but only 87,000 are accounted for, according to British Brig. Andrew Mackay, the coalition adviser for the Iraqi police.

"There's a degree of ghosts in there," he said.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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