New Military Report Acknowledges Signs of Police State in Baghdad

Virtually ignored in last week's national debate on the US military surge was a report by military experts recommending that the Iraqi police service be scrapped because of its brutal sectarian character. The scathing report stopped short of acknowledging that continuing US support for the Iraqi Security Forces is in violation of the 1997 Leahy Amendment barring assistance to known human rights violators.

So far representatives Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee have raised the issue with their HR 3134, which would end funding for the repressive Iraqi security forces. The Center for American Progress [CAP], headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, takes the same view in its July document, "Strategic Reset." Perhaps the most important sign of rising awareness is the new willingness of Senate leader Harry Reid to remove the provision for funding American trainers in the timetable legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen. Russell Feingold.

The little-noticed new report exposes the lethal nature of the counterinsurgency doctrines promoted by Gen. David Petraeus and the official warfighting manual developed in collaboration between the Army, the Marines and Harvard's Carr Center.

In comparison with past public outcries about "tiger cages" and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, death squads in El Salvador and Honduras, or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, there is little or no attention today to the issues raised in the new report. All the major Democratic presidential candidates support maintaining thousands of American trainers embedded with what the new report calls "dysfunctional and sectarian" forces. In short, whether intentional or not, all the major proposals on Iraq are based on a lower-visibility, lower-casualty dirty war reminiscent of Algeria, Central America, South Vietnam and, today, Afghanistan.

Gen. Petraeus was the commander of US transitional forces [MNSTC-I] in 2004-2005, in charge of training, arming and organizing Iraq's military and police forces. A scandal involving tens of thousands of missing weapons on Petraeus' watch has been pursued by the American Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction since that time. A Petraeus subordinate, Col. Theodore Westhusing, committed apparent suicide on June 5, 2005, leaving a note which said,

"I cannot support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses, and liars...I don't know who to trust anymore." [Newsweek, Aug. 20-27]

The new report thoroughly documents the violence, ethnic hatred, and lack of transparency surrounding the Iraq Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for some 300,000 police, national police, and border enforcement services, many of them tied to the Shi'a militias of the Badr Brigade, the paramiitary arm of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI] which the Americans empowered after the fall of Saddam Hussein.Called "The Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq", the Sept. 7, 2007 report was issued by Marine Gen. James Jones [ret.] and a panel of some 30 top military experts, many with 30 years' experience. The media noted its primary assessment, that the Iraqi army was progressing but would require another 12 to 18 months before being combat-ready. The explosive sections of the 130-page, single-spaced report were ignored. They are quoted here extensively:

From chapter 7, on the Ministry of Interior itself:

"The Ministry of Interior is a ministry in name only. It is widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian, and suffers from ineffective leadership. Such fundamental flaws present a serious obstacle to achieving the levels of readiness, capability, and effectiveness in police and border security forces that are essential for internal security and stability in Iraq." [p. 92]

From Chapter 8, on the 230,000-member Iraqi Police Service, jurisdiction over which passed from the State Department to the Pentagon in March 2004:

"This was unprecedented historically, the departments of Justice and State have taken the lead in training indigenous police forces. Placing the military in charge...has resulted in greater emphasis on counterinsurgency operations than on civil policing and more traditional law enforcement activities." [p. 93] This basically means that the police are directly involved on the Shi'a side in the complex civil war against the Sunnis, i.e. "civil policing is fundamentally different than military policing...civil police are trained to use defensive techniques, and to use deadly physical forces only a last resort. In contrast, military police are focused on force protection, intelligence gathering, and support of combat soldiers and combat operations." [ p.99] The police follow the model of an occupying army more than that of community-based policing.

From Chapter 9, The 25,000 National Police, including the former Special Police Commandos, which is 85 percent Shi'a:

"Despite efforts to reform the Iraqi National Police, the organization remains a highly sectarian element of the Iraqi Security Forces and one for the most part is unable to contribute to security and stability in Iraq. The Iraqi National Police is almost exclusively. Shi'a." [ p.109]"In its current form, the National Police is not a viable organization. Its ability to be effective is crippled by significant challenges, including public distrust, sectarianism [both real and perceived], and a lack of clarity about its identity..." [p. 112]

"The National Police should be disbanded and reorganized under the Ministry of Interior." [p. 114]

From Chapter 10, the Department of Border Enforcement, with 37, 71- personnel to police 2,268 miles of land border and 36 miles of coastline:

"The Department of Border Enforcement and the Ports of Entry Directorate face significant challenges and are not yet providing adequate border security for Iraq." [p. 118]"Corruption is a serious problem at many land ports of memory. This fact has not yet been adequately addressed." [p. 123]

"Corruption and external influence and infiltration are widespread. Absent major improvements in all these areas, Iraq's borders will remain porous and poorly defended." [124]

On the Ministry of Interior itself, which is supported by a 90-member Civilian Police Assistance Transition Team, established in 2004:

"...the MOI is rife with political and sectarian intrigues and is struggling to be even partially effective as a government institution." [p. 86]"The Coalition Provisional Authority invested considerable effort into restructuring the MOI, but focused largely on the physical reconstruction of the building itself...There is very little sense of momentum in transitioning greater responsibilities to the MOI. The ministry's physical presence - its multiple floors reportedly controlled by different factions, its location near Sadr City, and it multiple security checks and heavily armed occupants - is itself a symbol of its dysfunction, sectarian character, and ineffectiveness." [p. 86]

"Under the previous Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, who is now the powerful Minister of Finance, the Ministry of Interior became politicized. Jabr was a member of the Badr Organization and a member of {SCIRI}...He gave key ministry posts to members of the Badr Brigade, and Badr Brigade militia infiltrated Iraqi police units in many areas of the country. Although current Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani wants to reform and professionalize the ministry, this is his first senior government position; he reportedly has no political affiliation or natural political constituency, and he lacks personal experience in managing police units." [p. 88]

"It has been described as an '11-story powder keg of factions"...the security environment at the MOI is so dangerous that when Western officials visit the ministry the frequently wear body armor and move only under heavily-armed escort." [p. 88]

"Although Minister al-Bolani has attempted to address the sectarianism and corruption in the MOI...the fundamentally sectarian nature of the ministry endures. For example, a former National Police general continues to work at the MOI, despite his having been implicated in a covert detention center [ed. note: secret prison] in 2006; the Interior Minister blocked his arrest warrant." [p. 88]

"The Commission surveyed the Coalition's senior field commanders to obtain their on-the-ground assessment of the status and progress of the Iraqi Security Forces. Asked to rate the progress made by MOI forces toward ending sectarian violence and achieving national reconciliation, all four respondents rated progress as unsatisfactory." [p. 88]

In the same week of September, the Government Accountability Office reached similar conclusions in its benchmarks report to Congress:

"The government has not eliminated militia control of local security, eliminated political intervention in military operations, ensured even-handed enforcement of the law..." [GAO Report, Sept. 5, p. 9]

The Bush Administration itself admitted the sectarian character of the Baghdad regime in the fine print of its own July report to Congress on progress towards the benchmarks:

"[There is] evidence of sectarian bias in the appointment of senior military and police commanders" as well as "target lists emanating from the Office of the Commander in Chief that bypassed operational commanders and directed lower-level intelligence officers to make arrests, primarily of Sunnis."

The same conclusions were reached by a bipartisan 16-member Congressional oversight subcommittee:

"Though there is strong evidence that many of the police are operationally ineffective, and their organization is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, as of March 2007 [13 months after the "Year of the Police" began], the Coalition turned over vetting, screening, and basic training to the Ministry of the Interior." [p. 71]

All this seems to be evidence of a deep moral failure to recognize that the Baghdad regime, whose security forces are funded with $19 billion, is a massive human rights violation by its nature. As that fact becomes known, more and more legislators will become reluctant to fund a permanent police state.

On March 22, 2006, President Bush declared that "as they stand up, we'll stand down." The problem is not that the Iraqi security forces need more training, the problem is that they are standing up - as a hydra-headed Frankenstein.

There seems to be no intention to "reform" them further, a task which has failed to show progress for four years. Instead, Gen. Petraeus seeks to deliver crippling blows to the insurgency and secure control of the population with what the Pentagon calls "gated communities", where the population can be completely surveilled, monitored and controlled. This marks a departure from the previous doctrine of Gen. Casey of standing down when Iraqis stand up, to the new Petraeus doctrine of defeating the insurgents and imposing harsh controls on the Iraqi population. If the US succeeds, Baghdad may be the capital of a Shi'a police state employing the classic methods of dirty war.

Tom Hayden is a former state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His books include The Port Huron Statement [new edition], Street Wars and The Zapatista Reader.

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